I
to give to the stern warrior the gentle features and gestures of our
heart-ensnaring poet."

"Well, and how does Amasis answer your remarks on this stagnation in
art?"

"He deplores it; but does not feel himself strong enough to abolish the
restrictive laws of the priests."

"And yet," said the Delphian, "he has given a large sum towards the
embellishment of our new temple, expressly, (I use his own words) for
the promotion of Hellenic art!"

"That is admirable in him," exclaimed Croesus. "Will the Alkmaeonidae
soon have collected the three hundred talents necessary for the
completion of the temple? Were I as rich as formerly I would gladly
undertake the entire cost; notwithstanding that your malicious god so
cruelly deceived me, after all my offerings at his shrine. For when I
sent to ask whether I should begin the war with Cyrus, he returned this
answer: I should destroy a mighty kingdom by crossing the river Halys.
I trusted the god, secured the friendship of Sparta according to his
commands, crossed the boundary stream, and, in so doing, did indeed
destroy a mighty kingdom; not however that of the Medes and Persians,
but my own poor Lydia, which, as a satrapy of Cambyses, finds its loss
of independence a hard and uncongenial yoke."

"You blame the god unjustly," answered Phryxus. "It cannot be his fault
that you, in your human conceit, should have misinterpreted his oracle.
The answer did not say 'the kingdom of Persia,' but 'a kingdom' should
be destroyed through your desire for war. Why did you not enquire what
kingdom was meant? Was not your son's fate truly prophesied by the
oracle? and also that on the day of misfortune he would regain his
speech? And when, after the fall of Sardis, Cyrus granted your wish to
enquire at Delphi whether the Greek gods made a rule of requiting their
benefactors by ingratitude, Loxias answered that he had willed the best
for you, but was controlled by a mightier power than himself, by that
inexorable fate which had foretold to thy great ancestor, that his fifth
successor was doomed to destruction."

"In the first days of my adversity I needed those words far more than
now," interrupted Croesus. "There was a time when I cursed your god and
his oracles; but later, when with my riches my flatterers had left me,
and I became accustomed to pronounce judgment on my own actions, I saw
clearly that not Apollo, but my own vanity had been the cause of my
ruin. How could 'the kingdo