, with all its contradictions, until contemporaneous
documents enable us to decide what to accept and what to
reject in it.

The ground being cleared of his rival, and affairs on the Scythian
frontier reduced to order, Cambyses took up the projects against Egypt
at the exact point at which his predecessor had left them. Amasis, who
for ten years had been expecting an attack, had taken every precaution
in his power against it, and had once more patiently begun to make
overtures of alliance with the Hellenic cities; those on the European
continent did not feel themselves so seriously menaced as to consider it
to their interest to furnish him with any assistance, but the Greeks of
the independent islands, with their chief, Poly crates, tyrant of Samos,
received his advances with alacrity. Polycrates had at his disposal
a considerable fleet, the finest hitherto seen in the waters of the
AEgean, and this, combined with the Egyptian navy, was not any too large
a force to protect the coasts of the Delta, now that the Persians had at
their disposition not only the vessels of the AEolian and Ionian cities,
but those of Phoenicia and Cyprus. A treaty was concluded, bringing
about an exchange of presents and amenities between the two princes
which lasted as long as peace prevailed, but was ruptured at the
critical moment by the action of Polycrates, though not actually through
his own fault. The aristocratic party, whose chiefs were always secretly
plotting his overthrow, had given their adherence to the Persians,
and their conduct became so threatening about the time of the death of
Cyras, that Polycrates had to break his engagements with Egypt in order
to avert a catastrophe.*

* Herodotus laid the blame for the breach of the treaty to
the King of Egypt, and attributed to his fear of the
constant good fortune of Polycrates. The lattor's accession
to power is fixed at about the year 540 by some, by others
in the year 537, or in the year 533-2; his negotiations with
Amasis must be placed somewhere during the last fifteen
years of the Pharaoh.

He made a treaty with the Persian king, and sent a squadron of forty
galleys to join the fleet then being equipped in the Phoenician ports.*

* Herodotus records two opposing traditions: one that the
Samians joined in the Egyptian campaign, the other that they
went only as far as the neighbourhood of Karpathos.

Amasis, theref