to take a
prisoner. It is a day of vengeance and of down-treading, of fury allowed
to do its worst, of a people drunk with passion that has cast off all
self-restraint.

Even passion exhausts itself at last, and the arm grows weary of
slaughtering. Having sufficiently revenged themselves in the great
battle, and the pursuit that followed it, the Egyptians relaxed somewhat
from their policy of extreme hostility. They made a large number of the
Libyans prisoners, branded them with a hot iron, as the Persians often
did their prisoners, and forced them to join the naval service and serve
as mariners on board the Egyptian fleet. The chiefs of greater
importance they confined in fortresses. The women and children became
the slaves of the conquerors; the cattle, "too numerous to count," was
presented by Ramesses to the Priest-College of Ammon at Thebes.

So far success had crowned his arms; and it may well be that Ramesses
would have been content with the military glory thus acquired, and have
abstained from further expeditions, had not he been forced within a few
years to take the field against a powerful combination of new and
partly unheard-of enemies. The uneasy movement among the nations, which
has been already noticed, had spread further afield, and now agitated at
once the coasts and islands of South-Eastern Europe, and the more
western portion of Asia Minor. Seven nations banded themselves together,
and resolved to unite their forces, both naval and military, against
Egypt, and to attack her both by land and sea, not now on the
north-western frontier, where some of them had experienced defeat
before, but in exactly the opposite quarter, by way of Syria and
Palestine. Of the seven, three had been among her former adversaries in
the time of Menephthah, namely, the Sheklusha, the Shartana, and the
Tursha; while four were new antagonists, unknown at any former period.
There were, first, the Tanauna, in whom it is usual to see either the
Danai of the Peloponnese, so celebrated in Homer, or the Daunii of
south-eastern Italy, who bordered on the Iapyges; secondly, the Tekaru,
or Teucrians, a well-known people of the Troad; thirdly, the Uashasha,
who are identified with the Oscans or Ausones, neighbours of the
Daunians; and fourthly, the Purusata, whom some explain as the Pelasgi,
and others as the Philistines. The lead in the expedition was taken by
these last. At their summons the islands and shores of the Mediterranean
g