l and hand of his rider
could not always curb, though in the end his enormous strength proved
him the man to tame even this fiery animal. This rider, beneath whose
weight the powerful steed trembled and panted, wore a vesture of scarlet
and white, thickly embroidered with eagles and falcons in silver.

[Curtius III. 3. Xenoph. Cyrap, VIII. 3. 7. Aeschylus, Persians
835. 836. The king's dress and ornaments were worth 12,000 talents,
or L2,250,000 (estimate of 1880) according to Plutarch, Artaxerxes
24.]

The lower part of his dress was purple, and his boots of yellow leather.
He wore a golden girdle; in this hung a short dagger-like sword,
the hilt and scabbard of which were thickly studded with jewels. The
remaining ornaments of his dress resembled those we have described as
worn by Bartja, and the blue and white fillet of the Achaemenidae was
bound around the tiara, which surmounted a mass of thick curls, black as
ebony. The lower part of his face was concealed by an immense beard. His
features were pale and immovable, but the eyes, (more intensely black,
if possible, than either hair or beard), glowed with a fire that was
rather scorching than warming. A deep, fiery-red scar, given by the
sword of a Massagetan warrior, crossed his high forehead, arched
nose and thin upper lip. His whole demeanor expressed great power and
unbounded pride.

Nitetis' gaze was at once riveted by this man. She had never seen any
one like him before, and he exercised a strange fascination over her.
The expression of indomitable pride, worn by his features, seemed to her
to represent a manly nature which the whole world, but she herself above
all others, was created to serve. She felt afraid, and yet her true
woman's heart longed to lean upon his strength as the vine upon the elm.
She could not be quite sure whether she had thus pictured to herself the
father of all evil, the fearful Seth, or the great god Ammon, the giver
of light.

The deepest pallor and the brightest color flitted by turns across her
lovely face, like the light and shadow when clouds pass swiftly over a
sunny noonday sky. She had quite forgotten the advice of her fatherly
old friend, and yet, when Cambyses brought his unruly, chafing steed to
a stand by the side of her carriage, she gazed breathless into the fiery
eyes of this man and felt at once that he was the king, though no one
had told her so.

The stern face of this ruler of half the known world r