The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [121]
19. ‘King, do not allow yourself to give way entirely to your youth, and the heat of your temper, but control yourself.
20. ‘It is well to look to consequences, and wisdom lies in forethought.
21. ‘If you do such things as these, your Persians will eventually rebel against you. It is by your father’s wish that I say this; he charged me strictly to give you counsel if it became necessary.’
22. In thus advising Cambyses, Croesus meant nothing but what was friendly. But Cambyses answered him,
23. ‘Do you presume to offer me advice? You ruled your own country well when you were a king, and gave sage advice to my father Cyrus at times;
24. ‘Yet by misdirection of your own affairs you ruined yourself, and by your own bad counsel, which he followed, you brought ruin upon Cyrus, my father.
25. ‘But you will not escape punishment now, for I have long been seeking to find some occasion against you.’
26. As he spoke, Cambyses took up his bow to shoot Croesus; but Croesus ran hastily out, and escaped.
27. So Cambyses ordered his servants to run after him and seize him, and put him to death.
28. The servants, however, who knew their master’s humour, thought it best to hide Croesus;
29. So if Cambyses relented, and asked for him, they might bring him out, and get a reward for having saved his life.
30. If, on the other hand, he did not relent, or regret the loss, they might then dispatch him.
31. Not long afterwards, Cambyses did in fact regret the loss of Croesus, and the servants, perceiving it, let him know that he was still alive.
32. ‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘that Croesus lives, but as for you who saved him, you shall not escape my vengeance, but all of you shall be put to death.’ And they were killed.
33. Cambyses committed many other such outrages, both upon Persians and upon allies, while he was at Memphis;
34. Among the rest he opened the ancient sepulchres, and examined the bodies that were buried in them, and had no respect for the Egyptians, but mistreated them at will.
35. Thus it appears certain, by many such proofs, that Cambyses was mad; he would not otherwise have set himself to mock the Egyptians’ traditions and laws,
36. But would have learned from his successor Darius, who set a good example in this.
37. For Darius, after he had got the kingdom, summoned certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked,
38. ‘What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?’ To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing.
39. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians,
40. These being men who ate their fathers’ corpses to honour them, as they thought, with continued life;
41. And asked them, while the Greeks stood by, ‘What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers?’
42. The Indians exclaimed aloud, and begged him not to say such a terrible thing.
43. Thus Darius showed the variability of human opinions and traditions, and accepted them, ruling accordingly.
Chapter 26
1. While Cambyses was in Egypt the Greeks were at war with one another over slights and insults that different cities felt they had received from one another.
2. During these troubles some banished Samians went to Sparta to seek aid, and were given audience by the magistrates, before whom they made a long speech, as is the way with supplicants.
3. The Spartans answered that by the end of the speech they had forgotten the first half, and could make nothing of the second half.
4. Whereupon the Samians begged a second audience, and at it simply showed an empty bag, saying, ‘The bag lacks flour.’
5. The Spartans answered that the Samians did not need to say ‘The bag’, but merely, ‘lacks flour’; nevertheless they resolved to give the Samians aid.
6. The Samians were subject to a concerted attack by their neighbours for wrongs, real and perceived, done by them in earlier times.
7. Among these were the Corinthians, whose grievance against Samos was that it had prevented