he foreign monarch with their own solar line, and to
transform an Achaemenian king into a legitimate Pharaoh. That which was
especially odious to them in a Cambyses or an Ochus was the disdain
which such sovereigns displayed for their religion, and the persecution
to which they subjected the immortals. They accustomed themselves
without serious repining to have no longer one of their own race upon
the throne, and to behold their cities administered by Asiatics, but
they could not understand why the foreigner preferred his own gods,
and would not admit Amon, Phtah, Horus, and Ra to the rank of supreme
deities. Ochus had, by his treatment of the Apis and the other divine
animals, put it out of his power ever to win their good will. His
brutality had made an irreconcilable enemy of that state which alone
gave signs of vitality among the nations of the decaying East. This was
all the more to be regretted, since the Persian empire, in spite of the
accession of power which it had just manifested, was far from having
regained the energy which had animated it, not perhaps in the time
of Darius, but at all events under the first Xerxes. The army and the
wealth of the country were doubtless still intact--an army and a revenue
which, in spite of all losses, were still the largest in the world--but
the valour of the troops was not proportionate to their number. The
former prowess of the Persians, Medians, Bactrians, and other tribes of
Iran showed no degeneracy: these nations still produced the same race
of brave and hardy foot-soldiers, the same active and intrepid horsemen;
but for a century past there had not been the improvements either in
the armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which were
necessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the Greek
army. The Persian king placed great faith in extraordinary military
machines. He believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes;
besides this, his relations with India had shown him what use his
Oriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employ
these animals, he had collected a whole corps of them, from which he.
hoped great things. In spite of the addition of these novel recruits, it
was not on the Asiatic contingents that he chiefly relied in the event
of war, but on the mercenaries who' were hired at great expense, and who
formed the chief support of his power. From the time of Artaxerxes II.
onwards, it was the Greek hopl