on the sides of pylons, in interminable _bas-reliefs_, in
frescoes without end? Was it indeed too much for a king who could
raise a hundred conquered races by the hair of their heads, and from
his high throne corrected the nations with his whip; for a living sun
burning their dazzled eyes; for a god, almost eternal?

After the musicians came the barbarian captives, strangely formed,
with brutish faces, black skins, woolly hair, resembling apes as much
as men, and dressed in the costume of their country, a short skirt
above the hips, held by a single brace, embroidered in different
colors.

An ingenious and whimsical cruelty had suggested the way in which the
prisoners were chained. Some were bound with their elbows drawn behind
their backs; others with their hands lifted above their heads, in a
still more painful position; one had his wrists fastened in wooden
cangs (instruments of torture, still used in China); another was half
strangled in a sort of pillory; or a chain of them were linked
together by the same rope, each victim having a knot round his neck.
It seemed as if those who had bound these unfortunates had found a
pleasure in forcing them into unnatural positions; and they advanced
before their conqueror with awkward and tottering gait, rolling their
large eyes and contorted with pain.

Guards walked beside them, regulating their step by beating them with
staves.

Tawny women, with long flowing hair, carrying their children in ragged
strips of cloth bound about their foreheads, came behind them; bent,
covered with shame, exhibiting their naked squalor and deformity: a
wretched company, devoted to the most degrading uses.

Others, young and beautiful, with lighter skin, their arms encircled
by broad ivory bracelets, their ears pulled down by large metal discs,
were enveloped in long tunics with wide sleeves, an embroidered hem
around the neck, and falling in small flat folds to their ankles, upon
which anklets rattled. Poor girls, torn from country, family, perhaps
lovers, smiling through their tears! For the power of beauty is
boundless; strangeness gives rise to caprice; and perhaps the royal
favor awaited one of these barbarian captives in the depths of the
gynaeceum.

They were accompanied by soldiers who kept away the crowd.

The standard-bearers came next, lifting high the gilded staves of
their flags, representing mystic baris, sacred hawks, heads of Hathor
crowned with ostrich plumes, winged i