on and
accepted by Pompoius Trogus. A chronological calculation
easily demonstrates its unlikelihood. It follows from the
evidence given by Justin himself that Artaxerxes died of
grief soon after the execution of his son; but, on the other
hand, that the battle of Cunaxa took place in 400 B.C.:
Aspasia must then have been fifty or sixty years old when
Darius fell in love with her.

By the removal of this first obstacle the crafty prince found himself
only one step nearer success, for his brother Ariaspes was acknowledged
as heir-apparent: Ochus therefore persuaded him that their father,
convinced of the complicity of Ariaspes in the plot imputed to Darius,
intended to put him to an ignominious death, and so worked upon him that
he committed suicide to escape the executioner. A bastard named Arsames,
who might possibly have aspired to the crown, was assassinated by Ochus.
This last blow was too much for Artaxerxes, and he died of grief after a
reign of forty-six years (358 B.C.).* Ochus, who immediately assumed the
name of Artaxerxes, began his reign by the customary massacre: he put to
death all the princes of the royal family,** and having thus rid
himself of all the rival claimants to the supreme power, he hastened on
preparations for the war with Egypt which had been interrupted by his
father's death and his own accession.

* This is the length attributed by Plutarch to this reign,
and which is generally accepted. It was narrated in after-
days that the king kept the fact of his father's death
hidden for ten months, but it is impossible to tell how much
truth there is in this statement, which was accepted by
Dinon.

** According to the author followed by Pompeius Trogus, the
princesses themselves were involved in this massacre. This
is certainly an exaggeration, for we shall shortly see that
Darius III., the last king of Persia, was accounted to be
the grandson of Darius II.; the massacre can only have
involved the direct heirs of Artaxerxes.

The necessity for restoring Persian dominion on the banks of the Nile
was then more urgent than at any previous time. During the half-century
which had elapsed since the recovery of her independence, Egypt had
been a perpetual source of serious embarrassment to the great king. The
contemporaries of Amyrtseus, whether Greeks or barbarians, had at first
thought that his revolt was