long before this, the oracle of Buto had predicted
that he should end his days in Agbatana, and he, believing it to be the
Agbatana in Media where were his treasures, understood that he should
die there in his old age; whereas the oracle meant Agbatana in Syria.
When he heard the name, he perceived his error. He understood what the
god intended, and cried, 'It is here, then, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus,
must perish!'" He expired about three weeks after, leaving no posterity
and having appointed no successor.**

* It has been pointed out, for the purpose of harmonising
the testimony of Herodotus with that of the inscription of
Behistun, that although the latter speaks of the death of
Cambyses by his own hand, it does not say whether that death
was voluntary or accidental.

** The story of a person whose death has been predicted to
take place in some well-known place, and who has died in
some obscure spot of the same name, occurs several times in
different historians, e.g. in the account of the Emperor
Julian, and in that of Henry III. of England, who had been
told that he would die in Jerusalem, and whose death took
place in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. Ctesias has
preserved an altogether different tradition--that Cambyses
on his return from Babylon wounded himself while carving a
piece of wood for his amusement, and died eleven days after
the accident.

What took place in the ensuing months still remains an enigma to us.
The episode of Gaumata has often been looked on as a national movement,
which momentarily restored to the Medes the supremacy of which Cyrus had
robbed them; but it was nothing of the sort. Gaumata was not a Mede by
birth: he was a Persian, born in Persia, in the township of Pisyauvada,
at the foot of Mount Ara-kadrish, and the Persians recognised and
supported him as much as did the Medes. It has also been thought that
he had attempted to foment a religious revolution,* and, as a matter of
fact, he destroyed several temples in a few months.

* Most of the ancient writers shared this opinion, and have
been followed therein by many modern writers. Rawlinson was
the first to show that Gaumata's movement was not Median,
and that he did not in the least alter the position of the
Persians in the empire: but he allows the Magian usurpation
to have been the prelude to a sort of religious