Histories

Now the learned men among the Persians say that it was the Phoenicians who caused the quarrel. They say that the Phoenicians came from the sea called the Red Sea to this sea of ours, and settled the land they still live in today. At once they took to long voyages, and carrying Egyptian and Assyrian cargoes they put in at various places, among them Argos. 2 At that time Argos was the foremost of all the places in the land now called Greece. The Phoenicians, they say, came to this Argos and set out their cargo for sale.note

This, according to the Persians, is how Io came to Egypt, and not as the Greeks tell it, and this was the first of the wrongs. After this, they say, some Greeks put in at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king’s daughter Europa. They cannot give their names, but these may have been Cretans.

In the second generation after this, they say, Alexander son of Priam heard all this and wanted to get himself a wife from Greece by abduction. He was quite sure he would pay no penalty, since the Greeks had paid none. 2 So he carried off Helen. The Greeks decided first to send messengers to demand Helen back and to ask for compensation for the abduction. When they made these demands, the Trojans threw the abduction of Medea in their faces: the Greeks, the Trojans said, had neither paid compensation nor given her back when asked, and yet they wanted compensation from others.note

Up to this point, they say, there had been nothing but abductions on both sides. From then on, though, the Greeks were very much to blame, because they began a military expedition into Asia before the Persians made one into Europe. 2 Carrying off women, in the Persians’ view, is the act of wrongdoers. But to make a great fuss about avenging them once they have been carried off is the act of fools, and to pay them no attention is the act of sensible men. For clearly, if the women had not wanted it themselves, they would never have been carried off.

That is how the Persians say it happened, and they find that their hostility to the Greeks began with the capture of Troy. 2 About Io, however, the Phoenicians do not agree with the Persians. They say they did not use abduction to bring her to Egypt. In Argos, they say, she had been sleeping with the ship’s captain. When she found out she was pregnant, she was ashamed to face her parents, and so she sailed away with the Phoenicians of her own free will, so that she would not be found out.

Croesus was a Lydian by birth, the son of Alyattes, and tyrant of the peoples on this side of the river Halys. The Halys flows from the south between the Syrians and the Paphlagonians and empties northward into the Black Sea, the so-called Euxine. 2 This Croesus was the first non-Greek we know of to subjugate some of the Greeks and make them pay tribute, and to make friends of others. He subjugated the Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians of Asia, and he made friends of the Lacedaemonians. 3 Before Croesus’ reign all the Greeks were free. The expedition of the Cimmerians that reached Ionia, which came before Croesus’ time, was not a conquest of the cities but a raid for plunder.note

The rule, which had belonged to the Heraclids, passed to Croesus’ family, called the Mermnads, in the following way. 2 Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, was tyrant of Sardis and a descendant of Alcaeus son of Heracles. For Agron, son of Ninus, son of Belus, son of Alcaeus, was the first of the Heraclids to be king of Sardis, and Candaules son of Myrsus was the last. 3 Those who were kings of this country before Agron were descendants of Lydus son of Atys, after whom this whole people was named Lydian; before that they had been called Meonians. 4 The Heraclids, to whom these kings had entrusted the government, obtained the rule because of an oracle. They were descended from Heracles and a slave woman belonging to Iardanus, and they ruled for twenty-two generations, five hundred and five years, son taking over the rule from father, down to Candaules son of Myrsus.note

With words like these Gyges tried to fend him off, afraid that some harm would come to him from it. But Candaules answered: “Don’t worry, Gyges. Don’t be afraid of me, thinking I’m saying this to test you, or of my wife, thinking some harm will come to you from her. To begin with, I’ll arrange things so that she won’t even know you’ve seen her.

Since Gyges could not escape, he went along with it. When Candaules judged it was time for bed, he brought Gyges into the room, and soon afterward his wife came in too. As she came in and laid down her clothes, Gyges watched her. 2 When her back was to him as she went to the bed, he slipped out and made his way outside—and the woman caught sight of him going out. She realized what her husband had done, but she neither cried out in her shame nor let on that she had noticed; she had it in mind to take revenge on Candaules. 3 For among the Lydians, and among nearly all other non-Greeks too, it is a great disgrace even for a man to be seen naked.

So for the moment she gave nothing away and kept quiet. But as soon as it was day, she got ready those of her household servants she saw were most loyal to her, and sent for Gyges. He came when he was called, thinking she knew nothing of what had happened, for he had been used to coming before whenever the queen sent for him. 2 When Gyges arrived, the woman said: “Gyges, there are two roads before you now, and I give you the choice which one you want to take. Either kill Candaules and have me and the kingdom of Lydia, or you must die yourself, right here and now, so that you won’t go on obeying Candaules in everything and see what you shouldn’t.

When they had arranged the plot, and night had come (for Gyges was not let off, and there was no way out for him at all: either he or Candaules had to die), he followed the woman into the bedroom. She gave him a dagger and hid him behind that same door. 2 Then, while Candaules was asleep, Gyges slipped out and killed him, and so took both the wife and the kingdom. This is the Gyges whom Archilochus of Paros, who lived at the same time, mentioned in an iambic trimeter.note

He gained the kingdom and was confirmed in it by the oracle at Delphi. For when the Lydians took Candaules’ fate badly and were up in arms, Gyges’ supporters and the rest of the Lydians came to an agreement: if the oracle declared him king of the Lydians, he should be king; if not, he should give the rule back to the Heraclids. 2 The oracle did declare it, and so Gyges became king. But the Pythia added this much: vengeance for the Heraclids would come upon Gyges’ descendant in the fifth generation. Neither the Lydians nor their kings took any account of this saying until it was fulfilled.note

That is how the Mermnads took the tyranny, stripping it from the Heraclids. Once he was tyrant, Gyges sent offerings to Delphi, and not a few: of all the silver offerings at Delphi, most are his. Besides the silver, he dedicated a vast amount of gold, and among it the thing most worth remembering: six golden mixing bowls set up there as his offerings.

Once he was in power, Gyges too led an army into the territory of Miletus and of Smyrna, and he captured the town of Colophon. But since no other great deed came from him in a reign of thirty-eight years, we will pass him by with this much said. I will make mention instead of Ardys son of Gyges, who was king after Gyges. He captured Priene and invaded the territory of Miletus. While he was tyrant of Sardis, the Cimmerians, driven from their homes by the nomad Scythians, came into Asia and took Sardis, all except the acropolis.

Ardys reigned for forty-nine years and was succeeded by Sadyattes son of Ardys, who reigned for twelve years; Sadyattes was succeeded by Alyattes. 2 Alyattes made war on Cyaxares, the descendant of Deioces, and on the Medes. He drove the Cimmerians out of Asia, took Smyrna, which had been founded from Colophon, and invaded the territory of Clazomenae. He did not come away from there as he wished, but with a heavy defeat. During his reign, however, he accomplished other deeds, and these are the ones most worth telling.

He made war on the Milesians, having inherited the war from his father. He would march against Miletus and besiege it in this way. Whenever the crops in the fields were ripe, he would invade with his army, and his army marched to the music of panpipes, harps, and flutes, both women’s and men’s. 2 When he reached Milesian territory, he did not pull down the houses out in the countryside, or set fire to them, or tear off their doors, but let them stand where they were. Instead, he would destroy the trees and the crops in the fields and then go back home.

He waged war in this way for eleven years, and in that time the Milesians suffered two great disasters: one when they fought at Limeneium in their own territory, the other in the plain of the Maeander. 2 For six of the eleven years Sadyattes son of Ardys was still ruling the Lydians, and it was he who was invading Milesian territory with his army at that time, for this Sadyattes was also the one who had started the war. For the five years that followed those six, the war was waged by Alyattes son of Sadyattes, who, as I have already shown, inherited it from his father and pressed it hard. 3 None of the Ionians helped the Milesians bear the burden of this war, except only the Chians. They came to their aid to repay like for like, since the Milesians had earlier helped the Chians fight their war against the people of Erythrae.

In the twelfth year, while the army was burning the grain, something of this kind happened. As soon as the grain caught fire, the flames, driven by the wind, reached a temple of Athena known as Assesian, and the temple caught fire and burned down. 2 At the time no one took any notice, but after the army got back to Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. As his illness dragged on, he sent envoys to Delphi, either on someone’s advice or because he himself decided to send and ask the god about his illness. 3 When they reached Delphi, the Pythia said she would not give them an answer until they rebuilt the temple of Athena that they had burned at Assesus, in Milesian territory.

This is how I know it happened, as I heard it from the Delphians. But the Milesians add the following. Periander son of Cypselus, they say, who was a very close guest-friend of Thrasybulus, then tyrant of Miletus, learned of the answer the oracle had given Alyattes and sent a messenger to tell Thrasybulus, so that he would know in advance and could plan for the situation.note

That is how the Milesians say it happened. When this answer was reported to Alyattes, he immediately sent a herald to Miletus, wishing to make a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for as long as it took him to build the temple. While the envoy was on his way to Miletus, Thrasybulus, who had learned the whole story clearly in advance and knew what Alyattes meant to do, devised the following plan. 2 He gathered all the grain there was in the town, both his own and that of private citizens, into the marketplace, and gave the Milesians notice that when he gave the signal, they should all start drinking and reveling together.

Thrasybulus did this and gave these orders for one reason: so that the herald from Sardis would see a great heap of grain piled up and the people enjoying themselves, and report it to Alyattes. 2 And that is just what happened. When the herald had seen all this and delivered the Lydian’s message to Thrasybulus, he went back to Sardis, and, as I learn, it was for no other reason than this that peace was made.

They say that this Arion, who spent most of his time at Periander’s court, wanted to sail to Italy and Sicily, and that after earning a great deal of money there he wished to come back to Corinth. 2 He set out from Tarentum, they say, and since he trusted no one more than Corinthians, he hired a ship crewed by Corinthian men. But out on the open sea these men plotted to throw Arion overboard and keep his money. He realized this and begged them, offering them his money but pleading for his life. 3 He could not persuade them, however. The sailors ordered him either to kill himself, if he wanted burial on land, or to jump into the sea at once.

Alyattes the Lydian, after fighting the war against the Milesians to its end, died some time later, having reigned for fifty-seven years. 2 When he recovered from his illness he dedicated at Delphi—the second of his family to do so—a great silver mixing bowl and a stand of welded iron. Of all the offerings at Delphi it is the one most worth seeing. It is the work of Glaucus of Chios, the one man of all mankind who invented the welding of iron.

When Alyattes died, his son Croesus succeeded to the kingship at the age of thirty-five. The first Greeks he attacked were the Ephesians. 2 When he besieged them, the Ephesians dedicated their city to Artemis by tying a rope from her temple to the city wall. Between the old city, which was the one then under siege, and the temple is a distance of seven stades. 3 These were the first Croesus attacked; afterwards he attacked the Ionians and Aeolians, each in turn, bringing different charges against different peoples. Where he could find greater grounds he brought greater charges, and against some of them he brought even trivial ones.note

When the Greeks of Asia had been subdued and made to pay tribute, he next had the idea of building ships and attacking the islanders. 2 Everything was ready for the shipbuilding when a visitor came to Sardis: some say it was Bias of Priene, others Pittacus of Mytilene. Croesus asked him whether there was any news from Greece, and his answer, they say, put a stop to the shipbuilding. 3 “King,” he said, “the islanders are buying up ten thousand horses, intending to march against you and Sardis.” Croesus, hoping he was telling the truth, said: “If only the gods would put that idea into the islanders’ heads—to come against the sons of the Lydians with horses!”note

As time went on, nearly all the peoples living this side of the Halys river had been subdued; apart from the Cilicians and the Lycians, Croesus had conquered all the rest and held them under his rule. They are these: Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, the Thracians called Thynians and Bithynians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Pamphylians. When these had been subdued and Croesus was adding them to the Lydian realm,

there came to Sardis, then at the height of its wealth, all the sages of Greece who happened to be alive at that time, each arriving in his own time. Among them was Solon, an Athenian. He had made laws for the Athenians at their request and then gone abroad for ten years, sailing off on the pretext of seeing the world, so that he would not be forced to repeal any of the laws he had laid down. 2 The Athenians could not do that themselves, since they were bound by solemn oaths to live for ten years under whatever laws Solon made for them.note

When Solon had spurred Croesus on by telling him all about Tellus and his many blessings, Croesus asked whom he had seen next after him, fully expecting at least to carry off second prize. Solon said, “Cleobis and Biton. 2 They were Argives by birth, they had enough to live on, and on top of that they had such bodily strength as this: both alike were prize-winning athletes, and what is more, this story is told about them.

So Solon awarded these two second place in happiness. But Croesus, irritated, said: “My Athenian guest, is our happiness so utterly dismissed as nothing that you don’t even rank us with private citizens?” Solon said: “Croesus, you are asking about human affairs a man who knows that the divine is altogether jealous and troublesome. 2 In a long span of time one gets to see many things one would rather not, and to suffer many too. I set the limit of a human life at seventy years.

In saying this, Solon did not please Croesus in any way, and Croesus, thinking him of no account, sent him away. He considered him a thoroughly ignorant man, someone who disregarded the good things at hand and told people to look to the end of every matter.

After Solon had gone, a great retribution from the god overtook Croesus, presumably because he had considered himself the most blessed of all men. Soon afterwards, as he slept, a dream stood over him and revealed to him the truth of the misfortunes that were to come concerning his son. 2 Croesus had two sons. One of them was disabled, for he was deaf; the other was by far the first in every way among the young men of his age. His name was Atys. It was this Atys that the dream pointed out to Croesus: he would lose him, struck by an iron spear-point.

While he was busy with his son’s wedding, a man arrived at Sardis in the grip of misfortune, his hands unclean. He was a Phrygian by birth, of the royal family. He came to Croesus’ house and asked to receive purification according to the custom of the country, and Croesus purified him.note

So he lived in Croesus’ house. At this same time a monster of a boar appeared on Mysian Olympus. It would come rushing down from that mountain and ravage the Mysians’ fields. Often the Mysians went out against it, but they did it no harm and instead suffered harm from it. 2 At last messengers from the Mysians came to Croesus and said: “King, a huge monster of a boar has appeared in our country and is ravaging our fields. We are eager to kill it, but we can’t. So now we ask you to send your son with us, along with a picked band of young men and dogs, so that we can rid our country of it.”note

That was his answer. The Mysians were satisfied with this, but then Croesus’ son came in; he had heard what the Mysians were asking for. When Croesus refused to send his son, at any rate, with them, the young man said to him: 2 “Father, once the finest and noblest thing for us was to go to wars and to hunts and win a name for ourselves. But now you have shut me out of both, though you have seen no cowardice or lack of spirit in me. With what eyes am I to face people now, going to and from the marketplace?

Croesus answered: “My son, I am not doing this because I have seen cowardice or anything else unbecoming in you. A vision came to me in a dream while I slept and said that you would not live long, that you would die by an iron spear-point. 2 Because of this vision I hurried on this marriage of yours, and I do not send you out on the ventures that come up, but keep guard over you, in the hope that I can somehow smuggle you safely through my own lifetime. You are, as it happens, my one and only son; the other, whose hearing is ruined, I do not count as mine.”

The young man answered: “Father, it’s understandable, after seeing a vision like that, that you should keep guard over me. But there is something you don’t understand, something in the dream that has escaped you, and it’s right that I should explain it to you. 2 You say the dream told you I would die by an iron spear-point. But what hands does a boar have, what iron spear-point, for you to be afraid of? If it had told you I would die by a tusk, or by something else like that, then you would be right to do what you’re doing. But as it is, it said by a spear-point. So since our fight isn’t against men, let me go.”

Croesus answered: “My son, in a way you have beaten me by setting out your view of the dream. So, as one beaten by you, I change my mind and let you go on the hunt.”

Having said this, Croesus sent for the Phrygian Adrastus, and when he came, said to him: “Adrastus, when you were struck by a grievous misfortune, which I do not hold against you, I purified you, and I have taken you into my house and keep you there, providing for all your needs. 2 So now—since you owe me good in return for the good I did you first—I want you to be my son’s guardian as he sets out on the hunt, in case any thieving bandits appear on the road to do you harm. 3 Besides, you too ought to go where you can win distinction by your deeds. It runs in your family, and you have the strength besides.”

Adrastus answered: “King, otherwise I would not be going to a contest like this. It isn’t fitting for someone who has met with such misfortune to go among young men of his own age who are doing well; I have no wish for it, either, and for many reasons I would have held myself back. 2 But now, since you are pressing me and I must do what pleases you—for I owe you a return of good—I am ready to do this. As for your son, whom you bid me guard, you may expect him to come home unharmed, as far as his guardian can see to it.”

When Adrastus had answered Croesus in these words, they set out, equipped with picked young men and dogs. They reached Mount Olympus, searched for the beast and, when they found it, surrounded it in a ring and hurled javelins at it. 2 Then the guest—the very man who had been purified of the killing, Adrastus by name—threw his javelin at the boar, missed it, and hit Croesus’ son. 3 So he was struck by the spear-point and fulfilled what the dream had foretold. Someone ran to bring Croesus the news of what had happened, and when he reached Sardis, he told him of the fight and of his son’s fate.

Croesus was devastated by his son’s death, and he lamented all the more bitterly because the killer was the man he himself had purified of bloodshed. 2 In the terrible anguish of his misfortune he called on Zeus of Purification, calling him to witness what he had suffered at the hands of his guest. He called on him too as Zeus of the Hearth and Zeus of Comradeship, naming the same god each time: of the Hearth, because he had taken the guest into his house and, without knowing it, had been feeding his son’s killer; and of Comradeship, because he had sent him as a guardian and found him his worst enemy.

After this the Lydians arrived carrying the body, and behind it followed the killer. He stood in front of the corpse and gave himself up to Croesus, stretching out his hands and urging Croesus to slaughter him over the dead man. He told of his earlier misfortune and how on top of it he had ruined the man who had purified him, and said that his life was no longer worth living.

Croesus sat in deep mourning for two years, bereft of his son. But then the overthrow of the empire of Astyages son of Cyaxares by Cyrus son of Cambyses, and the growing power of the Persians, put an end to Croesus’ mourning. Instead they set him thinking whether he might somehow check the Persians’ growing power before they became great.note

He gave the Lydians the following instructions before sending them off to test the oracles. They were to count the days from the day they set out from Sardis, and on the hundredth day they were to consult the oracles, asking what the king of the Lydians, Croesus son of Alyattes, happened to be doing at that moment. Whatever each of the oracles prophesied, they were to write it down and bring it back to him.

The Lydians wrote down what the Pythia had prophesied and went off back to Sardis. When the others who had been sent around also arrived with their oracles, Croesus unfolded each of the writings and looked them over. None of them satisfied him. But when he heard the one from Delphi, he at once prayed to the god and accepted it, believing that the only real oracle was the one at Delphi, since it had found out what he himself had done. 2 For after sending the envoys to the oracles, he had waited for the appointed day and contrived the following. Thinking of something that would be impossible to discover or guess, he cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together himself in a bronze cauldron, with a bronze lid placed on top.

That, then, was the answer Croesus received from Delphi. As for the reply of the oracle of Amphiaraus, I cannot say what it told the Lydians after they had performed the customary rites at the shrine (for this is not reported either), except that Croesus believed he had found a truthful oracle in this one too.

After this he tried to win the favor of the god at Delphi with great sacrifices. He sacrificed three thousand animals of every kind fit for sacrifice; and he heaped up a great pyre and burned on it couches overlaid with gold and silver, golden bowls, and purple cloaks and tunics, hoping by these means to win the god over all the more. He also ordered all the Lydians, every one of them, to sacrifice to this god whatever each of them had.

When Croesus had finished these, he sent them to Delphi, and these other things along with them: two mixing bowls of great size, one of gold and one of silver. The gold one stood on the right as you entered the temple, the silver one on the left. 2 These too were moved when the temple burned down. The gold one now lies in the treasury of the Clazomenians, weighing eight and a half talents and twelve minas besides; the silver one stands in the corner of the temple’s forecourt and holds six hundred amphoras, for the Delphians mix wine in it at the Theophania.note

These were the things he sent to Delphi. To Amphiaraus, having learned of his excellence and his fate, he dedicated a shield made entirely of gold and a spear of solid gold throughout, the shaft as well as the head being of gold. Both of these were still lying in my own day at Thebes, in the Thebans’ temple of Ismenian Apollo.note

Croesus instructed those Lydians who were to take these gifts to the sanctuaries to ask the oracles whether Croesus should campaign against the Persians, and whether he should add some army of men to his own as friends. 2 When the Lydians arrived where they had been sent and had dedicated the offerings, they consulted the oracles, saying: “Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other peoples, believing these to be the only true oracles in the world, has given you gifts worthy of your discoveries. Now he asks you whether he should campaign against the Persians, and whether he should add some army of men to his own as allies.” 3 That was their question, and the judgments of both oracles came to the same thing. They foretold to Croesus that if he campaigned against the Persians he would destroy a great empire, and they advised him to find out who were the most powerful of the Greeks and make them his friends.

When the answers were brought back and Croesus learned of them, he was overjoyed with the oracles. Fully expecting to destroy the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent once again to Pytho, found out how many Delphians there were, and gave them two gold staters a head. 2 In return the Delphians gave Croesus and the Lydians the first right to consult the oracle, exemption from fees, and seats of honor, and granted that any of them who wished could become a Delphian for all time.note

After his gifts to the Delphians, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time; for once he had received proof of its truthfulness, he could not get enough of it. This time his question was whether his monarchy would last a long time. 2 The Pythia gave him this answer: But when a mule becomes king of the Medes, / then, tender-footed Lydian, by the pebbly Hermus / flee, and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.note

When these verses reached him, Croesus was far more pleased with them than with all the rest, expecting that a mule would never be king of the Medes instead of a man, and that therefore neither he nor his descendants would ever lose their rule. After this he took care to inquire who were the most powerful of the Greeks, so that he might win them over as friends. 2 By inquiry he found that the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians stood out, the former of Dorian stock, the latter of Ionian. These were the foremost peoples, and in ancient times the one was Pelasgian, the other Greek. The one has never yet moved anywhere; the other has wandered a great deal.note

What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say with certainty. But if one must speak from the evidence, one may judge from the Pelasgians who still exist today: those who live in the town of Creston above the Tyrrhenians, who were once neighbors of the people now called Dorians (at that time they lived in the land now called Thessaliotis); 2 those Pelasgians who settled Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who had once lived alongside the Athenians; and all the other towns that were Pelasgian but changed their name. Judging from these, the Pelasgians spoke a non-Greek language.note

The Greek people, on the other hand, has always used the same language ever since it came into being, as it seems clear to me. After it split off from the Pelasgians it was weak, but from a small beginning it has grown into a multitude of peoples, chiefly because Pelasgians and many other non-Greek peoples joined it. So it is my opinion that before this the Pelasgian people too, being non-Greek, never grew to any great size.

Of these peoples, then, Croesus learned that the Attic one was held down and torn apart by Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, who at that time was tyrant of the Athenians. For when Hippocrates was still a private citizen and was attending the Olympic games as a spectator, a great portent happened to him. He had offered sacrifice, and the cauldrons standing there, full of meat and water, boiled without fire and overflowed. 2 Chilon the Lacedaemonian, who happened to be there and saw the portent, advised Hippocrates, first, not to bring into his house a wife who could bear him children; second, if he happened to have one already, to send the woman away; and if he happened to have a son, to disown him.note

Not long afterward the partisans of Megacles and those of Lycurgus made common cause and drove him out. That was how Pisistratus first held Athens, and how he lost his tyranny, which was not yet firmly rooted. But those who had driven Pisistratus out began quarreling with each other all over again. 2 Megacles, hard pressed by the factional strife, sent a herald to Pisistratus, asking whether he would be willing to take his daughter as his wife in return for the tyranny.

Having recovered his tyranny in the way described, Pisistratus married Megacles’ daughter in accordance with his agreement with Megacles. But since he already had sons who were young men, and since the Alcmaeonids were said to be under a curse, he did not want to have children by his new wife, and so he had intercourse with her, but not in the normal way. 2 At first the woman kept this hidden. Later, whether in answer to her questions or not, she told her mother, and her mother told her husband. Angry as he was, he made up his quarrel with his opponents in the faction struggle. When Pisistratus learned what was being done against him, he left the country altogether. He went to Eretria, and there he took counsel with his sons.note

Setting out from Eretria, they came back in the eleventh year, and the first place in Attica they seized was Marathon. While they were encamped there, their partisans from the city came to join them, and others streamed in from the demes, people to whom tyranny was more welcome than freedom. 2 So these gathered together. The Athenians in the city, as long as Pisistratus was collecting money, and later too when he took Marathon, paid no attention. But when they learned that he was marching from Marathon on the city, then at last they went out to meet him.

This was the prophecy he gave him, in a state of divine inspiration. Pisistratus grasped its meaning, declared that he accepted the oracle, and led his army forward. The Athenians from the city had just then turned to their meal, and after the meal some of them had turned to dice and others to sleep. Pisistratus’ men fell upon the Athenians and put them to flight. 2 As they fled, Pisistratus devised a very clever plan, so that the Athenians would not rally again but would stay scattered. He mounted his sons on horseback and sent them on ahead. Catching up with the fugitives, they repeated what Pisistratus had told them to say, urging them to take heart and each go home to his own affairs.

The Athenians did as they were told, and so Pisistratus held Athens for the third time. He rooted his tyranny firmly with many mercenaries and with revenues of money, some coming from Attica itself and some from the river Strymon. He also took as hostages the sons of those Athenians who had stood their ground and not fled at once, and settled them on Naxos 2 (for Pisistratus had conquered this island too in war and handed it over to Lygdamis). Besides this, he purified the island of Delos as the oracles required, and he purified it in this way: from all the ground within sight of the sanctuary he dug up the dead and moved them to another part of Delos. 3 So Pisistratus was tyrant of the Athenians; and of the Athenians, some had fallen in the battle, while others had gone into exile from their homeland with the Alcmaeonids.note

This, then, was the situation in which Croesus learned the Athenians were held at that time. He learned, too, that the Lacedaemonians had escaped from great troubles and were by now getting the upper hand over the Tegeans in war. For in the reign of Leon and Hegesicles at Sparta, the Lacedaemonians, though successful in their other wars, kept coming to grief against the Tegeans alone. 2 Even earlier than this they had been the worst-governed of almost all the Greeks, both in their dealings with one another and in having no contact with foreigners. Their change to good government came about like this. Lycurgus, a man of standing among the Spartans, went to the oracle at Delphi, and as he entered the hall the Pythia at once spoke these words:

That was how they changed and came to be well governed; and when Lycurgus died they built a shrine to him, and they hold him in great reverence. With good land and no small number of men, they shot up at once and flourished. And then it was no longer enough for them to live in peace: looking down on the Arcadians as weaker than themselves, they consulted the oracle at Delphi about the whole of the Arcadians’ land. 2 The Pythia gave them this answer: You ask me for Arcadia; you ask for much; I will not give it to you. / There are many acorn-eating men in Arcadia, / who will hold you back. But I do not grudge you: / I will give you Tegea, to dance in with stamping feet, / and its fine plain, to measure out with a line.

In the earlier war, then, they had continually fared badly against the Tegeans. But by the time of Croesus and the reign of Anaxandridas and Ariston in Lacedaemon, the Spartans had already gained the upper hand in the war. This is how it came about. 2 Since they were always being beaten in the war by the Tegeans, they sent envoys to Delphi to ask which of the gods they should propitiate in order to prevail over the Tegeans in war. The Pythia answered that they should bring home the bones of Orestes son of Agamemnon. 3 When they were unable to find Orestes’ tomb, they sent once more to the god to ask where Orestes lay. When the envoys asked this, the Pythia gave this answer:

It was one of these men, Lichas, who found it in Tegea, partly by luck and partly by wisdom. There was free contact with the Tegeans at that time, and he went into a smithy and watched iron being forged, and was amazed as he looked at what was being done. 2 The smith, seeing his amazement, stopped work and said, “Stranger from Laconia, if you’d seen what I saw, you’d really be amazed, given that you find iron-working such a marvel now.

Croesus, then, learning all this, sent messengers to Sparta carrying gifts and asking for an alliance, having instructed them what they were to say. They came and said: 2 “Croesus, king of the Lydians and of other peoples, has sent us with this message: ‘Lacedaemonians, the god has told me in an oracle to make the Greek my friend; and since I learn that you are the leaders of Greece, I invite you, in accordance with the oracle, wishing to become your friend and ally without trickery or deceit.’”

For these reasons, then, the Lacedaemonians accepted the alliance, and also because he had chosen them as friends in preference to all the other Greeks. They themselves stood ready whenever he sent word; and besides, they had a bronze mixing bowl made, covered on the outside around the rim with figures and large enough to hold three hundred amphoras, and set off with it, wanting to give Croesus a gift in return.

Croesus, mistaking the meaning of the oracle, made an expedition into Cappadocia, hoping to bring down Cyrus and the power of the Persians. 2 While Croesus was preparing to march against the Persians, one of the Lydians, who was already thought to be wise and who from this advice won a very great name among the Lydians, counseled Croesus as follows; his name was Sandanis. “King, you’re preparing to march against men of this sort: they wear trousers of leather and the rest of their clothing of leather too, and they eat not as much as they want but as much as they have, since the land they live in is rugged.

The Cappadocians are called Syrians by the Greeks. These Syrians, before the Persians came to power, were subjects of the Medes, and at this time of Cyrus. 2 For the boundary between the Median empire and the Lydian was the river Halys, which flows from a mountain in Armenia through Cilicia, and after that has the Matieni on its right as it flows and the Phrygians on the other side. Passing these and flowing on northward, it divides the Syrian Cappadocians on the right from the Paphlagonians on the left. 3 In this way the river Halys cuts off almost all of lower Asia, from the sea opposite Cyprus to the Black Sea. This is the neck of the whole of this land; the journey across takes an unencumbered man five days.

Croesus marched against Cappadocia for these reasons: because he longed for land and wanted to add it to his own portion, but above all because he trusted the oracle and wanted to punish Cyrus for what he had done to Astyages. 2 For Cyrus son of Cambyses had subdued Astyages son of Cyaxares, Croesus’ brother-in-law and king of the Medes, and held him in his power. Astyages had become Croesus’ brother-in-law in this way. 3 A band of nomadic Scythians, after a falling-out at home, slipped away into Median territory. At that time the tyrant of the Medes was Cyaxares, son of Phraortes son of Deioces. At first he treated these Scythians well, as suppliants; and he valued them so highly that he entrusted boys to them to learn their language and the art of archery.

After this, since Alyattes would not hand over the Scythians when Cyaxares demanded them, there was war between the Lydians and the Medes for five years. In it the Medes often defeated the Lydians, and the Lydians often defeated the Medes; and they even fought a kind of night battle. 2 They were still carrying on the war on equal terms when, in the sixth year, an engagement took place in which it happened that, in the thick of the battle, the day suddenly became night. Thales of Miletus had foretold to the Ionians that this change of day would happen, setting as its limit the very year in which the change actually took place.note

It was this Astyages, then, his own grandfather on his mother’s side, whom Cyrus had subdued and held in his power, for a reason I will make clear later in my account. 2 Croesus held this against Cyrus, and he sent to the oracles to ask whether he should march against the Persians; and when a deceptive oracle came, he took it to be in his favor and marched into the Persians’ territory. 3 When Croesus reached the river Halys, he then—so I maintain—took his army across by the bridges that were there; but according to the common story among the Greeks, it was Thales of Miletus who took it across for him.

When Croesus had crossed with his army and come to the place in Cappadocia called Pteria (Pteria is the strongest part of this country, lying roughly level with the city of Sinope on the Black Sea), he encamped there and laid waste the Syrians’ farmlands. 2 He took the city of the Pterians and enslaved its people, took all the towns around it, and drove the Syrians, who had done nothing wrong, from their homes. Cyrus, for his part, gathered his own army, took along all the peoples living in between, and came to meet Croesus.

Croesus found fault with the size of his own army (the force he had engaged with was much smaller than Cyrus’), and because of this, when on the next day Cyrus made no attempt to attack, he marched back to Sardis. He intended to call on the Egyptians under their sworn agreement 2 (for he had made an alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, even before the one with the Lacedaemonians), and to send for the Babylonians as well (for he had made an alliance with them too, and at that time the tyrant of the Babylonians was Labynetus), 3 and to summon the Lacedaemonians to come at a stated time. Once he had assembled these and collected his own army, he meant to let the winter go by and march against the Persians at the start of spring.

While Croesus was turning these plans over, the whole area outside the city filled with snakes; and when they appeared, the horses left their pastures, went to them and ate them. When Croesus saw this, he thought it was a portent, as in fact it was. 2 At once he sent envoys to the interpreters at Telmessus. The envoys arrived and learned from the Telmessians what the portent meant, but they never managed to report it to Croesus: before they sailed back to Sardis, Croesus had been captured. 3 The Telmessians, however, judged as follows: that Croesus must expect an army speaking a foreign tongue to come against his country, and that when it came it would subdue the inhabitants; for the snake, they said, is the child of the earth, and the horse is an enemy and an incomer. This was the answer the Telmessians gave Croesus when he had already been captured, knowing nothing as yet of what had happened at Sardis and to Croesus himself.note

Cyrus, as soon as Croesus marched off after the battle at Pteria, learned that Croesus intended, once he had marched away, to disband his army. On deliberating, he found that the thing to do was to march as fast as he could on Sardis, before the forces of the Lydians could be gathered a second time.

They met on the plain that lies before the city of Sardis, which is large and bare (rivers flow through it, the Hyllus among others, and rush together into the largest, called the Hermus, which flows from the mountain sacred to Mother Dindymene and empties into the sea near the city of Phocaea). 2 There, when Cyrus saw the Lydians drawing up for battle, he was alarmed by their cavalry, and on the suggestion of Harpagus, a Mede, he did the following:note

So a siege had begun for them. Croesus, thinking the siege would last a long time, sent more messengers out from the walls to his allies. The earlier ones had been sent round giving notice to assemble at Sardis in the fifth month; these he sent out to ask them to come to his aid as quickly as possible, since Croesus was under siege.

So he sent to his other allies, and in particular to Lacedaemon. Now at this very time the Spartans themselves happened to be caught up in a quarrel with the Argives over a place called Thyrea. 2 This Thyrea had been part of Argive territory, and the Lacedaemonians had cut it off and taken it for themselves. The whole region westward as far as Malea also belonged to the Argives, both the land on the mainland and the island of Cythera and the rest of the islands.

This was the situation the Spartans were in when the herald from Sardis arrived, asking them to come to the help of Croesus, who was under siege. Even so, once they had heard the herald, they were eager to help. They had already made their preparations, and their ships were ready, when another message came: the Lydians’ fortress had fallen, and Croesus had been taken alive. At that, deeply distressed by the disaster, they gave it up.

This is how Sardis was taken. On the fourteenth day of Croesus’ siege, Cyrus sent horsemen around his army to announce that he would give gifts to the first man to climb the wall. 2 After this the army made an attempt, without success. Then, when the rest had given up, a Mardian named Hyroeades tried to climb up at a part of the acropolis where no guard had been posted, since there was no fear that it would ever be taken from that side. 3 At that point the acropolis is sheer and cannot be attacked. It was the one place around which Meles, an earlier king of Sardis, had not carried the lion that his concubine bore him, when the Telmessians had ruled that if the lion were carried around the wall, Sardis would never be taken.note

As for Croesus himself, this is what happened. He had a son, whom I mentioned earlier, a decent boy in every other respect but unable to speak. In the days of his prosperity Croesus had done everything he could for him. Among the other measures he thought of, he had sent men to Delphi to consult the oracle about him. 2 The Pythia gave him this answer: Lydian by birth, king over many, Croesus, great fool, / do not wish to hear in your halls the much-prayed-for voice / of your son speaking. Far better for you that this stay / apart from you; for he will first speak on a day without blessing.

So the Persians took Sardis and captured Croesus himself alive. He had reigned fourteen years and been besieged fourteen days, and, just as the oracle said, he had brought his own great empire to an end. The Persians who had taken him brought him to Cyrus. 2 Cyrus had a great pyre heaped up and set Croesus on it, bound in chains, with twice seven sons of the Lydians beside him. Perhaps he meant to sacrifice them to some god or other as the first fruits of his spoils; perhaps he wished to fulfill a vow; or perhaps, having learned that Croesus was god-fearing, he put him on the pyre for this reason, wanting to know whether some divine power would save him from being burned alive.

Then, the Lydians say, Croesus learned that Cyrus had changed his mind. When he saw every man trying to put out the fire and unable now to master it, he cried aloud to Apollo, calling on him, if any gift of his had ever pleased the god, to stand by him and save him from his present plight. 2 As he called on the god in tears, out of a clear and windless sky clouds suddenly gathered, a storm broke, rain came pouring down in torrents, and the pyre was put out. At that, they say, Cyrus understood that Croesus was dear to the gods and a good man. He brought him down from the pyre and asked him this:

That is what he said. Cyrus had him released, seated him close by, and treated him with great consideration; he and all those around him gazed at him in wonder. Croesus, lost in thought, kept silent. 2 Then, turning and seeing the Persians plundering the Lydians’ city, he said, “King, should I tell you what is on my mind, or is it better to keep silent for now?” Cyrus told him not to be afraid and to say whatever he wished.

What Croesus said caught Cyrus’ attention. He sent the others away and asked Croesus what he saw in what was being done. Croesus said, “Since the gods have given me to you as your slave, I think it right, if I see something further, to point it out to you. 2 The Persians are arrogant by nature, and they are poor. If you let them plunder and keep great wealth, here is what you can expect from them: whichever of them gets hold of the most, count on him to rise up against you.

Cyrus was overjoyed to hear this, since he thought it good advice. He praised it warmly, ordered his bodyguards to carry out what Croesus had suggested, and said to Croesus, “Croesus, since you, a king, are ready to do good deeds and speak good words, ask for whatever gift you would like to have at once.” 2 Croesus said, “Master, you will please me most if you let me send these fetters to the god of the Greeks, whom I honored most of all the gods, and ask him whether it is his custom to deceive those who treat him well.” Cyrus asked him what complaint against the god made him ask this.

When the Lydians arrived and delivered their message, the Pythia, it is said, gave this reply: “What is fated not even a god can escape. Croesus has paid for the crime of his ancestor five generations back, who was a bodyguard of the Heraclids, went along with a woman’s treachery, murdered his master, and took his royal office, to which he had no claim at all. 2 Loxias was eager that the disaster of Sardis should come in the time of Croesus’ sons and not in Croesus’ own, but it was not possible to divert the Fates.note

Croesus has many other offerings in Greece, not only the ones I have mentioned. At Thebes in Boeotia there is a golden tripod, which he dedicated to Ismenian Apollo; at Ephesus there are the golden cows and most of the columns; and in the temple of Pronaia at Delphi there is a great golden shield. These were still in existence in my own time, while others of his offerings have been lost. 2 Croesus’ offerings at Branchidae in the territory of Miletus are, as I learn, equal in weight and similar to the ones at Delphi … The ones he dedicated at Delphi and at the shrine of Amphiaraus were his own property, the first fruits of the wealth he inherited from his father;note

The land of Lydia does not have many marvels worth writing about, as other countries do, apart from the gold dust washed down from Tmolus. 2 But it does offer one work by far the greatest of all, apart from the works of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The tomb of Alyattes, Croesus’ father, is there. Its base is made of great stones, and the rest of the tomb is a mound of earth. It was built by the market traders, the craftsmen, and the girls who work there as prostitutes.

The Lydians’ customs are much like those of the Greeks, except that they prostitute their daughters. They were the first people we know of to strike and use coins of gold and silver, and the first to become retail traders. 2 The Lydians themselves say that the games now played both by them and by the Greeks were their own invention. They say that these were invented among them at the same time as they sent a colony to Tyrrhenia, and this is the account they give of it.note

From here on my account has to look into who Cyrus was, the man who destroyed Croesus’ empire, and how the Persians came to lead Asia. I shall write according to what some of the Persians say: those who do not wish to glorify the story of Cyrus but to tell it as it really happened. I do know of three other ways the story of Cyrus could be told. 2 The Assyrians had ruled upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years when the Medes became the first to begin revolting from them. Somehow they fought the Assyrians for their freedom, proved themselves brave men, threw off their slavery and became free. After them the other peoples did the same as the Medes.

All the peoples of the mainland were now independent, and this is how they came back under tyranny again. There was a wise man among the Medes named Deioces, the son of Phraortes. 2 This Deioces fell in love with tyranny, and this is what he did. The Medes lived in villages. In his own village he was already well regarded, and he now devoted himself to practicing justice more than before and with greater zeal. He did this at a time when there was a great deal of lawlessness throughout Media, because he knew that injustice is the enemy of justice. The Medes of his village saw how he conducted himself and chose him as their judge.

The number of people coming to him kept growing, because they heard that cases turned out according to the truth. Deioces realized that everything now depended on him. He would no longer sit in the seat where he used to sit to judge, and he said he would judge no more. It did him no good, he said, to neglect his own affairs and spend the whole day judging his neighbors’ disputes.

They at once began proposing who should be made king. Deioces was the name every man put forward and praised most, until they agreed that he should be their king. 2 He told them to build him a house worthy of a king and to strengthen him with a bodyguard. The Medes did so. They built him a large, strong house at the place in the country that he pointed out, and they allowed him to choose his bodyguards from among all the Medes.

Deioces built these walls for himself and around his own house, and he ordered the rest of the people to live outside the wall, all around it. When everything had been built, Deioces was the first to establish the following ceremonial: no one was to come into the king’s presence, all business was to be done through messengers, and the king was to be seen by no one. Beyond this, it was to be shameful for anyone at all to laugh or spit in his presence. 2 He surrounded himself with this solemnity for the following reason. His peers had been brought up with him, were of no meaner family and were no less brave. He did not want them to see him, resent him and plot against him; if they did not see him, they would think he was a being of a different kind.

Once he had arranged all this and made himself secure in his tyranny, he was a harsh guardian of justice. People would write down their cases and send them in to him, and he would decide the cases brought in and send them back out. 2 That was how he handled lawsuits, and he had other arrangements as well. If he learned that someone was behaving outrageously, he would summon him and punish him as each offense deserved; and he had spies and eavesdroppers throughout all the country he ruled.

Deioces, then, united the Median nation alone and ruled it. The Medes consist of these tribes: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii and the Magi. These are the tribes of the Medes.

Deioces had a son, Phraortes, who took over the rule when Deioces died after reigning fifty-three years. Once he had it, he was not content to rule the Medes alone. He marched against the Persians, attacked them before any others and made them the first subjects of the Medes. 2 After that, holding these two nations, both of them strong, he set about subduing Asia, going from one people to the next. At last he marched against the Assyrians, those Assyrians who held Nineveh and had once ruled everyone. At that time they had been left without allies, since these had revolted from them, but otherwise they were in good shape. Phraortes marched against them and was killed, after ruling twenty-two years, and most of his army with him.

When Phraortes died, he was succeeded by Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes son of Deioces. He is said to have been far more warlike even than his ancestors. He was the first to organize the peoples of Asia into units, and the first to arrange each kind separately: spearmen, archers and cavalry. Before that they had all been mixed together in a jumble.

From Lake Maeotis to the river Phasis and the land of the Colchians is a thirty days’ journey for a man traveling light. From Colchis it is not a long crossing into Media: there is only one people in between, the Saspeires, and once past them you are in Media. 2 The Scythians, however, did not invade by this route. They turned off onto the upper road, which is much longer, keeping the Caucasus range on their right. There the Medes clashed with the Scythians, were defeated in battle and lost their empire, and the Scythians took over the whole of Asia.note

From there they went on toward Egypt. When they were in Palestinian Syria, Psammetichus, king of Egypt, came to meet them and with gifts and entreaties turned them back from going any farther. 2 On their way back they came to the Syrian city of Ascalon. Most of the Scythians passed by without doing any harm, but a few who stayed behind plundered the temple of Heavenly Aphrodite.

For twenty-eight years the Scythians ruled Asia, and their arrogance and contempt turned everything upside down. Apart from exacting from each people the tribute they had imposed on it, they also rode around and seized whatever each people had. 2 Cyaxares and the Medes invited most of them to a feast, got them drunk and slaughtered them. In this way the Medes recovered their empire and ruled over the same peoples as before. They also took Nineveh (how they took it I shall show in another account) and brought the Assyrians under their control, except for the territory of Babylon.

After this Cyaxares died, having reigned forty years including the years of Scythian rule, and his son Astyages succeeded to the kingship. Astyages had a daughter whom he named Mandane. He dreamed that she urinated so much that she filled his city and flooded the whole of Asia besides. He laid the dream before those of the Magi who interpreted dreams, and when he learned from them what each detail meant, he was frightened. 2 Later, when this Mandane was old enough for marriage, he would not give her as wife to any of the Medes worthy of him, because he feared the vision. Instead he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses, whom he found to be of a good family and a quiet temperament, and whom he considered much lower than a Mede of middle rank.

In the first year that Mandane was living with Cambyses, Astyages saw another vision. He dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter’s genitals and that the vine covered all Asia. 2 After seeing this and laying it before the dream interpreters, he sent for his daughter from Persia, since she was about to give birth. When she arrived he kept her under guard, intending to destroy whatever she bore; for the dream interpreters of the Magi had told him that the vision meant his daughter’s offspring would reign in his place.

After giving this answer, Harpagus was handed the child, dressed for death, and went home weeping. When he got there he told his wife everything Astyages had said. 2 She said to him, “So what do you intend to do now?” He answered, “Not what Astyages ordered. Even if he loses his mind and raves worse than he’s raving now, I won’t go along with his plan or serve him in a murder like this.

So he spoke, and at once he sent a messenger to one of Astyages’ cowherds, the one he knew grazed his herds on the most suitable pastures and in the mountains most full of wild beasts. His name was Mitradates, and he lived with a woman who was a slave like himself. The name of the woman he lived with was Cyno in the Greek language and Spaco in Median, for the Medes call a dog spax. 2 The foothills where this cowherd had his pastures lie north of Ecbatana, toward the Black Sea. In this direction, toward the Saspeires, Media is very mountainous, high and thickly wooded; the rest of Media is all flat.

When the cowherd heard this, he picked up the baby, went back the way he had come and reached his homestead. Now his own wife, as it happened, had been in labor the whole day, and somehow, as heaven would have it, she gave birth just then, while the cowherd was away in the city. Each was anxious about the other: he was afraid about his wife’s delivery, and she was wondering why Harpagus had sent for her husband, which he did not usually do.

As he spoke, the cowherd uncovered the baby and showed it to her. When she saw how big and handsome the child was, she burst into tears, clasped her husband’s knees and begged him not to expose it on any account. 2 He said he could not do otherwise: spies would come from Harpagus to check, and he would die a terrible death if he did not do it. Since she could not persuade her husband, the woman spoke again, as follows. “Since I can’t persuade you not to expose it, then do this, if it absolutely must be seen lying exposed. I’ve given birth too—but I gave birth to a dead child.

The cowherd thought his wife was quite right, in the circumstances, and he did it at once. The child he had been carrying off to put to death he handed over to his wife; his own child, the dead one, he took and placed in the basket in which he had carried the other. 2 He dressed it in all the other child’s finery, carried it to the most deserted part of the mountains and laid it there. When the baby had been lying out for three days, the cowherd went to the city, leaving one of his herdsmen behind to watch it. He went to Harpagus’ house and said he was ready to show him the baby’s body.

When the boy was ten years old, something of the following kind happened to him and revealed who he was. He was playing in the village where these herds were kept, playing in the road with other boys his age. In their game the boys chose as their king this boy, the one known as the cowherd’s son. 2 He assigned some of them to build houses and others to be bodyguards; one of them, I suppose, was to be the King’s Eye, and to another he gave the honor of carrying messages, assigning each his task.note

When Astyages had heard and seen this, he wanted to avenge the boy for the sake of Artembares’ rank, and he sent for the cowherd and the boy. When both were there, Astyages looked at Cyrus and said, 2 “So you, the son of a man like this, dared to treat the son of this man, the first man at my court, so shamefully?” The boy answered as follows. “Master, I did this to him justly.

As the boy said this, Astyages began to recognize him. The cast of his features seemed to resemble his own, his answer seemed too much like a free man’s, and the time of the exposure seemed to match the boy’s age. 2 Stunned by all this, he was speechless for a while. When at last, with difficulty, he recovered himself, he wanted to send Artembares away so that he could get the herdsman alone and question him under pressure, and so he said, “Artembares, I’ll deal with this in such a way that neither you nor your son will have any cause for complaint.”

Now that the herdsman had revealed the truth, Astyages paid less attention to him. But he was deeply angry with Harpagus, and he ordered his bodyguards to summon him. 2 When Harpagus was there, Astyages asked him, “Harpagus, by what death did you dispose of the child I handed over to you, the son of my daughter?” Harpagus saw the herdsman there inside, and so he did not take the path of lies, for fear of being cross-examined and caught out. Instead he said this: 3 “My king, when I took the baby, I considered carefully how I could do what you wanted and stay blameless toward you, without being a murderer in the eyes of your daughter or of you yourself.

So Harpagus told the story straight. Astyages hid the anger he felt toward him over what had happened. First he repeated the whole affair to Harpagus, just as he had heard it himself from the herdsman; then, once he had gone over it all again, he finished by saying that the boy was alive and that all had turned out well. 2 “What had been done to this boy,” he said, “distressed me greatly, and being at odds with my daughter was no light thing to me. So, since fortune has taken a good turn, first send your own son to join the newcomer; and second—since I intend to offer sacrifices for the boy’s deliverance to those gods to whom this honor belongs—come and have dinner with me.”

When Harpagus heard this, he bowed down before the king and went home, making much of the fact that his offense had turned out for the best and that he had been invited to dinner on so happy an occasion. 2 He went in as quickly as he could. He had one son, an only child, about thirteen years old; he sent him off, telling him to go to Astyages’ palace and do whatever the king told him. He himself, overjoyed, told his wife what had happened. 3 When Harpagus’ son arrived, Astyages slaughtered him and cut him up limb by limb. Some of the flesh he roasted and some he boiled, and when he had it all well prepared he kept it ready.

That was the punishment Astyages imposed on Harpagus. To decide about Cyrus, he summoned the same Magi who had interpreted his dream in the way I described. When they came, Astyages asked them how they had interpreted the vision. They gave the same answer as before, saying that the boy was bound to become king if he had lived on and not died first. 2 He replied to them as follows: “The boy is alive and well. While he was living in the countryside, the boys of the village made him their king. And he carried out everything that real kings do: he assigned bodyguards, doorkeepers, messengers and all the rest, and ruled over them.note

When Astyages heard this, he was glad. He called Cyrus and said to him, “My boy, I wronged you because of a dream that has not come true, but by your own destiny you have survived. So now go happily to Persia; I’ll send escorts with you. When you get there you’ll find a father and a mother very different from Mitradates the herdsman and his wife.”

With these words Astyages sent Cyrus away. When he came home to the house of Cambyses, his parents received him; and when they learned who he was, they welcomed him with great affection, since they had believed he had died back then, just after his birth. They asked him how he had survived. 2 He told them that before this he had not known, but had been entirely mistaken; on the way he had learned everything that had happened to him. He had thought he was the son of Astyages’ herdsman, but on the journey from there he had heard the whole story from his escorts.

That is where this story came from. When Cyrus grew to manhood and was the bravest and best liked of his generation, Harpagus courted him, sending him gifts, because he longed to take revenge on Astyages. He could not see how he himself, a private man, could punish Astyages; but seeing Cyrus growing up, he tried to make him his ally, likening Cyrus’ sufferings to his own. 2 Even before this he had brought about the following. Since Astyages was harsh toward the Medes, Harpagus met with each of the leading Medes, one by one, and persuaded them that they ought to put Cyrus at their head and depose Astyages from the kingship.

All this was carried out, and Cyrus took the hare and cut it open. Finding the letter inside, he took it and read it. The writing said this: “Son of Cambyses, the gods are watching over you; otherwise you would never have come to such good fortune. Now take vengeance on Astyages, your murderer. 2 As far as his intentions go, you are dead; it is thanks to the gods and to me that you are alive. I think you learned all this long ago: both what was done about you yourself and what I have suffered at Astyages’ hands because I did not kill you but gave you to the herdsman.

When Cyrus heard this, he considered what would be the cleverest way to persuade the Persians to revolt. Considering it, he found the following to be best suited to the moment, and this is what he did. 2 He wrote what he wished in a letter and called an assembly of the Persians; then, unfolding the letter and reading it out, he said that Astyages was appointing him general of the Persians. “And now, Persians,” he said, “I order each of you to report here with a sickle.” That was Cyrus’ order. There are many Persian tribes; some of them Cyrus gathered together and persuaded to revolt from the Medes.

When they had all arrived with what they had been told to bring, Cyrus gave them an order. There was a stretch of Persian territory overgrown with thorns, about eighteen or twenty stades across in every direction, and he ordered them to clear this ground in a single day. 2 When the Persians had accomplished the task set before them, he ordered them next to come back the following day, having bathed. Meanwhile Cyrus collected all his father’s herds of goats, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle in one place, slaughtered them, and made preparations to entertain the Persian army, with wine as well and the most suitable food.

The Persians, now that they had found a leader, gladly set about freeing themselves; they had long resented being ruled by the Medes. When Astyages learned what Cyrus was doing, he sent a messenger and summoned him. 2 Cyrus told the messenger to report back that he would come to him sooner than Astyages himself would like. On hearing this, Astyages armed all the Medes, and, like a man whose wits a god had damaged, he appointed Harpagus as their general, forgetting what he had done to him. 3 When the Medes took the field and engaged the Persians, some of them—those who had no part in the plot—fought; others deserted to the Persians; but most of them deliberately played the coward and fled.

The Median army had disgracefully broken up. As soon as Astyages heard of it, he said, threatening Cyrus, “Even so, Cyrus won’t have cause to rejoice.” 2 With that, he first impaled the dream-interpreters among the Magi, who had persuaded him to let Cyrus go; then he armed the Medes who were left in the city, young men and old. 3 He led them out, engaged the Persians and was defeated. Astyages himself was taken alive, and he lost the Medes he had led out.

As Astyages stood there a prisoner, Harpagus came up to him and gloated over him and mocked him. Among the other wounding things he said to him, he asked him in particular—referring to his own dinner, at which Astyages had feasted him on his son’s flesh—what it was like to be a slave instead of a king. 2 Astyages looked at him and asked in return whether he regarded Cyrus’ work as his own. Harpagus said that since he had written the letter himself, the achievement was rightly his.

So Astyages, after reigning for thirty-five years, was deposed from his kingship in this way, and because of his harshness the Medes bowed beneath the Persians. They had ruled Asia beyond the river Halys for a hundred and twenty-eight years, apart from the time during which the Scythians ruled. 2 Later on, however, they regretted what they had done and revolted from Darius; but after revolting they were subdued again, defeated in battle. At this time, though, in the reign of Astyages, the Persians and Cyrus rose up against the Medes, and from then on they ruled Asia.

As for the Persians, I know that they observe the following customs. It is not their custom to set up statues, temples or altars; in fact they call those who do so fools—because, in my opinion, they have never believed, as the Greeks do, that the gods are of human form. 2 Their custom is to go up to the highest mountain peaks and offer sacrifices to Zeus, and they call the whole circle of the sky Zeus. They also sacrifice to the sun and the moon, to earth, fire and water, and to the winds. 3 These are the only gods they have sacrificed to from the beginning, but they have also learned to sacrifice to the Heavenly Goddess, learning it from the Assyrians and the Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians Alilat, and the Persians Mitra.note

This is the established form of sacrifice among the Persians for the gods I have named. They build no altars and light no fire when they are about to sacrifice; they use no libation, no flute music, no garlands, no barley grains. When any of them wishes to sacrifice to one of these gods, he leads the animal to a clean place and calls on the god, with a wreath, usually of myrtle, around his tiara.note

Of all days, the one each of them is accustomed to honor most is his own birthday. On that day they think it right to serve a larger meal than on other days. The wealthy among them serve an ox, a horse, a camel and a donkey, roasted whole in ovens; the poor among them serve the smaller kinds of livestock. 2 They eat few main dishes but many extra courses, which are not served all at once. For this reason the Persians say that the Greeks are still hungry when they stop eating, because after the main meal nothing worth mentioning is brought to them; if something were brought, they say, they would not stop eating.

When they meet one another in the street, you can tell by this whether the two are equals. Instead of greeting each other with words, they kiss each other on the mouth. If one is slightly lower in rank, they kiss each other on the cheek. If one is of much humbler birth, he falls down and prostrates himself before the other. 2 Of all peoples they honor most those who live nearest to them (after themselves, of course), next those who are next nearest, and so on, honoring them in proportion as they go outward. They hold in least esteem those who live farthest from them. They consider themselves by far the best of mankind in every respect, others to have a claim to excellence in proportion to their nearness, and those who live farthest from them to be the worst.

The Persians are more ready than any other people to adopt foreign customs. They wear Median dress, thinking it finer than their own, and in war they wear Egyptian breastplates. They take up all sorts of pleasures when they hear of them. In particular, they have learned from the Greeks to have sexual relations with boys. Each of them marries many lawful wives, and acquires a great many more concubines besides.

After prowess in battle, it is held to be the chief proof of manly excellence for a man to show many sons. To the man who shows the most the King sends gifts every year, for they think that numbers are strength. 2 They educate their sons, from the age of five to twenty, in three things only: riding, archery and telling the truth. Before the age of five a boy does not come into his father’s sight but lives with the women. The reason for this is that if he dies while still being raised, he may cause his father no grief.

I approve of this custom, and I also approve of the following. Not even the King himself puts anyone to death for a single offense, nor does any other Persian inflict irreparable harm on any of his household for a single offense. Instead he weighs the matter up, and only if he finds that the wrongs outnumber and outweigh the services does he give way to his anger. 2 They say that no one has ever yet killed his own father or mother. Whenever such a thing has happened, they say, inquiry has inevitably shown that the child was either one passed off as theirs or born of adultery. For it is not likely, they say, that a true parent should die at the hands of his own child.

What they may not do, they may not even speak of. They consider lying the most shameful thing of all, and after that owing debts. There are many other reasons for this, but chiefly, they say, it is because a man in debt is bound to tell lies as well. Any citizen who has leprosy or the white skin disease does not come into the town or mix with the other Persians. They say he has it because he has committed some offense against the sun. 2 Many of them drive out of the country any foreigner who catches these diseases, and white doves too, on the same charge. They do not urinate or spit into a river, or wash their hands in one, or allow anyone else to do so. They revere rivers above all.

Here is another thing that happens to be true of them. The Persians themselves have not noticed it, but we have. Their names, which reflect their persons and their grandeur, all end in the same letter, the one the Dorians call san and the Ionians sigma. If you look into it, you will find that Persian names end in this letter, not some of them and not others, but all alike.note

These things I can state with certainty from my own knowledge. What follows, though, about the dead is told as something secret and not openly. It is said that the corpse of a Persian man is not buried until it has been torn by a bird or a dog. 2 I know for certain that the Magi do this, since they do it openly. The Persians, at any rate, coat the corpse in wax and then bury it in the earth. The Magi are very different both from other men and from the priests in Egypt.

As soon as the Lydians had been subdued by the Persians, the Ionians and Aeolians sent messengers to Cyrus at Sardis. They wished to be his subjects on the same terms on which they had been subjects of Croesus. When Cyrus heard their proposal, he told them a story. A piper, he said, saw some fish in the sea and piped to them, thinking that they would come out onto the land. 2 When he was disappointed in his hope, he took a net, cast it around a great number of the fish and hauled them out. Seeing them leaping about, he said to the fish, “You can stop dancing for me now, since you wouldn’t come out and dance when I was piping.”

These Ionians, to whom the Panionium belongs, happened to have founded their cities in the place with the finest sky and climate of all the peoples we know. 2 No other region is like Ionia, neither the lands above it nor those below, neither those to the east nor those to the west. Some are oppressed by cold and wet, others by heat and drought. 3 They do not all speak the same language, but four different varieties of it. Miletus is the first of their cities toward the south, and after it come Myus and Priene.

Of these Ionians, then, the Milesians were sheltered from fear, having made their treaty, and the islanders among them had nothing to dread. The Phoenicians were not yet subject to the Persians, and the Persians themselves were not seafarers. 2 These Ionians had split off from the other Ionians for no other reason than this. At that time the whole Greek race was weak, and by far the weakest of its peoples, and the least regarded, was the Ionian. Apart from Athens, there was no city of any note.

just as the Dorians of what is now the territory of the Five Cities (the same region was formerly called that of the Six Cities) take care to admit none of the neighboring Dorians into the Triopian sanctuary. They have even excluded from participation those of their own number who broke the sanctuary’s law. 2 In the games of Triopian Apollo, long ago, they used to give bronze tripods as prizes to the winners, and those who received them were not to take them out of the sanctuary but to dedicate them there to the god.note

In my opinion the Ionians made twelve cities and refused to admit more for this reason. When they lived in the Peloponnese, they were also in twelve divisions, just as there are now twelve divisions of the Achaeans, who drove the Ionians out. First, next to Sicyon, comes Pellene. Then come Aegira and Aegae, where the ever-flowing river Crathis is (the river in Italy got its name from it), and Bura, and Helice, where the Ionians took refuge when they were defeated in battle by the Achaeans. Then Aegium, Rhypes, Patrae, Pharae and Olenus, where the great river Peirus is, and Dyme, and Tritaea, whose people alone of these live inland. These twelve divisions now belong to the Achaeans, and in those days belonged to the Ionians.

That is why the Ionians, too, made twelve cities. It would be great folly to say that these are any more Ionian than the other Ionians, or of any finer descent. No small part of them are Abantes from Euboea, who have nothing to do with Ionia, not even the name. Mixed in with them are Minyans of Orchomenus, Cadmeans, Dryopians, a breakaway group of Phocians, Molossians, Pelasgian Arcadians, Dorians of Epidaurus and many other peoples. 2 And those of them who set out from the Prytaneum of Athens and think themselves the most nobly born of the Ionians did not bring wives with them to the colony. Instead they took Carian women, whose parents they had killed.note

This took place at Miletus. As kings, some of them set up Lycians descended from Glaucus son of Hippolochus, others Pylian Caucones descended from Codrus son of Melanthus, and others both together. But since they cling to the name somewhat more than the other Ionians, well then, let them be the Ionians of pure descent. 2 In fact all are Ionians who are descended from Athens and celebrate the festival of the Apaturia. All of them celebrate it except the Ephesians and Colophonians. These alone of the Ionians do not celebrate the Apaturia, and that on the grounds of some murder.note

The Panionium is a sacred place on Mycale, facing north, set apart by the Ionians in common for Heliconian Poseidon. Mycale is a promontory of the mainland that runs out westward opposite Samos. There the Ionians used to gather from their cities and hold a festival to which they gave the name Panionia. 2 [It is not only the Ionians’ festivals that have this feature. The festivals of all the Greeks alike end in the same letter, just as the names of the Persians do.]

These are the Ionian cities, and these are the Aeolian ones: Cyme, called Phriconis, Larisa, Neon Teichos, Temnus, Cilla, Notium, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegaeae, Myrina and Gryneia. These are the eleven ancient cities of the Aeolians. One of them, Smyrna, was taken from them by the Ionians, for these cities on the mainland too had once been twelve. 2 These Aeolians happened to settle a better country than the Ionians, but one less favored in its climate.

This is how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. They took in some men of Colophon who had been defeated in civil strife and driven out of their homeland. Later, the Colophonian exiles waited until the Smyrnaeans were holding a festival to Dionysus outside the walls, then shut the gates and seized the city. 2 When all the Aeolians came to help, they made an agreement: the Ionians would give back the movable property, and the Aeolians would leave Smyrna. When the Smyrnaeans had done this, the eleven cities divided them among themselves and made them their own citizens.

These, then, are the Aeolian cities on the mainland, apart from those settled on Mount Ida, which are separate. 2 Of the cities that hold the islands, five occupy Lesbos. (The sixth city on Lesbos, Arisba, was enslaved by the Methymnaeans, although its people were of the same blood.) One city is settled on Tenedos, and another on the so-called Hundred Isles. 3 Now the Lesbians and Tenedians, like the Ionians who held the islands, had nothing to fear. The remaining cities, however, decided by common agreement to follow the Ionians wherever they led.

When the messengers of the Ionians and Aeolians arrived at Sparta (all this was being done in haste), they chose the Phocaean, whose name was Pythermus, to speak for them all. He put on a purple cloak, so that as many Spartans as possible would hear of it and gather, then came forward and spoke at length, asking them to help his people. 2 The Lacedaemonians would not listen at all and decided not to help the Ionians. So the messengers left. But the Lacedaemonians, though they had sent the Ionian messengers away, nevertheless dispatched men in a fifty-oared ship, in my opinion to spy on the situation of Cyrus and of Ionia. 3 When these men arrived at Phocaea, they sent the most distinguished of their number, whose name was Lacrines, to Sardis to deliver a message to Cyrus from the Lacedaemonians: he was to harm no city of Greek land, since they would not stand by and let it happen.

When the herald had said this, Cyrus is said to have asked the Greeks who were with him who these Lacedaemonians were and how many of them there were, to make such a proclamation to him. On learning the answer, he is said to have told the Spartan herald, “I’ve never yet been afraid of men like these, who have a place set aside in the middle of their city where they gather and cheat one another under oath. If I stay healthy, it won’t be the troubles of the Ionians they’ll be chattering about, but their own.” 2 Cyrus flung these words at all the Greeks, because they set up marketplaces and buy and sell in them. The Persians themselves are not accustomed to use marketplaces, and in fact they have no marketplace at all.

When Cyrus had marched away from Sardis, Pactyes led the Lydians in revolt against Tabalus and Cyrus. He went down to the coast and, since he had all the gold from Sardis, hired mercenaries and persuaded the people of the coast to join his campaign. Then he marched on Sardis and besieged Tabalus, who was shut up in the acropolis.

When Cyrus heard of this on the road, he said to Croesus, “Croesus, where will all this end for me? It seems the Lydians will never stop making trouble for others and having it themselves. I’m wondering whether it might be best to enslave them all. As things stand, I seem to have acted like a man who killed the father and spared the children. 2 That’s what I’ve done: I’ve taken you, who were more than a father to the Lydians, and I’m carrying you off, while I handed their city over to the Lydians themselves. And then I’m surprised that they’ve revolted from me!” So Cyrus spoke what was on his mind. Croesus, afraid that he would uproot the people of Sardis entirely, answered him as follows.

This was the advice Croesus gave him, judging it better for the Lydians than being enslaved and sold. He knew that unless he offered a weighty enough reason, he would not persuade Cyrus to change his mind. He was also afraid that even if the Lydians escaped their present danger, they might some day revolt from the Persians and be destroyed. 2 Cyrus was pleased with the advice, relented in his anger and said he would follow it. He summoned a Mede named Mazares and ordered him to announce to the Lydians what Croesus had advised. Besides this, Mazares was to enslave all the others who had joined the Lydians in the attack on Sardis, and at all costs to bring Pactyes himself to him alive.

Having given these orders on the road, Cyrus marched on to the Persian homeland. Pactyes, learning that an army coming against him was close at hand, took fright and fled to Cyme. 2 Mazares the Mede marched on Sardis with whatever portion of Cyrus’ army he had. Finding that Pactyes and his followers were no longer in Sardis, he first compelled the Lydians to carry out Cyrus’ orders. As a result of these orders, the Lydians changed their whole way of life.

So the Cymaeans sent envoys to Branchidae and asked what they should do about Pactyes in order to please the gods. When they asked this, the oracle’s answer was that they should hand Pactyes over to the Persians. When the Cymaeans heard this answer brought back, they set about handing him over. 2 But while the majority were bent on this, Aristodicus son of Heraclides, a citizen of high standing, stopped the Cymaeans from doing it. He distrusted the oracle and thought that the envoys were not reporting truthfully. He held them back until other envoys went to ask a second time about Pactyes, and Aristodicus was one of them.

When they reached Branchidae, Aristodicus consulted the oracle on behalf of them all, and asked this: “Lord, Pactyes the Lydian has come to us as a suppliant, fleeing a violent death at the hands of the Persians. They are demanding him, and telling the Cymaeans to give him up. 2 We fear the power of the Persians, but we haven’t yet dared to hand over the suppliant until you make it plain to us which of the two we should do.” That was his question, and the god again gave them the same answer, telling them to hand Pactyes over to the Persians.

When the Cymaeans heard the answer that had been brought back, they did not want to perish by handing him over, nor to be besieged by keeping him among themselves, so they sent him away to Mytilene. 2 When Mazares sent messages demanding Pactyes, the Mytilenaeans began preparing to hand him over for a price—how much, I cannot say for certain, because the deal was never completed.

So the Chians handed over Pactyes. After this Mazares marched against those who had joined in besieging Tabalus. He enslaved the people of Priene, and he overran the whole plain of the Maeander, letting his army plunder it, and Magnesia likewise. Soon after this he fell ill and died.

When he died, Harpagus came down to succeed him in the command. He too was a Mede by birth—the man whom Astyages, king of the Medes, had served that lawless feast, and who had helped Cyrus win the kingship. 2 This man, appointed general by Cyrus at that time, came to Ionia and began taking the cities with earthworks. Whenever he had shut people up inside their walls, he would pile up mounds against the walls and so take the cities by storm.

The first city in Ionia he attacked was Phocaea. These Phocaeans were the first Greeks to make long voyages, and it was they who discovered the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia and Tartessus. 2 They sailed not in round-hulled merchant ships but in fifty-oared ships. When they came to Tartessus, they became friends of the king of the Tartessians, whose name was Arganthonius. He was tyrant of Tartessus for eighty years, and lived a hundred and twenty years in all.note

That, then, was how the Phocaeans came to have their wall. Harpagus marched his army up and besieged them, putting forward the proposal that he would be satisfied if the Phocaeans would agree to pull down just one battlement of the wall and dedicate a single house. 2 The Phocaeans, bitterly resenting slavery, said they wanted one day to deliberate, and would then give their answer; 3 and they asked him to withdraw his army from the wall while they deliberated. Harpagus said he knew very well what they meant to do, but he would let them deliberate all the same.

The Phocaeans wanted to buy the islands called the Oenussae, but the Chians would not sell them, fearing that the islands would become a trading center and their own island would be shut out because of it. So the Phocaeans set off for Cyrnus. Twenty years before this, at the bidding of an oracle, they had founded a city on Cyrnus called Alalia.note

When they reached Cyrnus, they lived together with those who had come earlier for five years, and they set up temples. But because they kept raiding and plundering all their neighbors, the Tyrrhenians and the Carthaginians made common cause and sailed against them, each with sixty ships.

As for the men from the destroyed ships, the Carthaginians and the Tyrrhenians [divided them by lot, and of the Tyrrhenians the Agyllaeans] got by far the greatest number of them; they led them out and stoned them to death. Afterward, everything of the Agyllaeans’ that passed the place where the stoned Phocaeans lay became twisted, crippled or paralyzed—sheep, draft animals and people alike. 2 The Agyllaeans sent to Delphi, wanting to make amends for their offense. The Pythia told them to do what the Agyllaeans still perform even now: they make great offerings to the dead men, and hold athletic and horse-racing contests in their honor.note

That is how things went with Phocaea in Ionia. The people of Teos did much the same. When Harpagus took their wall with an earthwork, they all boarded their ships and sailed off to Thrace, and there they founded the city of Abdera. Timesius of Clazomenae had founded it before them, but got no good of it; he was driven out by the Thracians, and now he receives honors as a hero from the Teians in Abdera.

These were the only Ionians who would not endure slavery and left their homelands. The other Ionians, except the Milesians, met Harpagus in battle just as those who left had done, and they proved themselves brave men, each fighting for his own city. But they were defeated and captured, and they stayed where they were, each people in its own place, and did what they were ordered. 2 The Milesians, as I have said before, had made a sworn agreement with Cyrus himself and kept quiet. So Ionia was enslaved for the second time. And when Harpagus had subdued the Ionians on the mainland, the Ionians who held the islands took fright at this and surrendered to Cyrus.

The Ionians were in a bad way, but they went on meeting at the Panionium all the same, and I am told that Bias of Priene put a proposal to them that was most useful. Had they followed it, it would have allowed them to be the happiest of the Greeks. 2 He urged the Ionians to set sail together in a common fleet to Sardinia and then found a single city for all Ionians. In this way, he said, they would be free of slavery and be happy, inhabiting the largest of all islands and ruling others; but if they stayed in Ionia, he said, he could see no prospect of freedom for them any longer.

After subduing Ionia, Harpagus made war on the Carians, the Caunians and the Lycians, taking Ionians and Aeolians along with him. 2 Of these, the Carians came to the mainland from the islands. In ancient times they were subjects of Minos, were called Leleges, and held the islands. They paid no tribute, as far back as I am able to reach by hearsay, but whenever Minos needed them, they manned his ships. 3 Since Minos had conquered a great deal of territory and was successful in war, the Carian people were at that time by far the most renowned of all peoples.

The Caunians, in my opinion, are native to the place, though they themselves say they come from Crete. In language they have come to resemble the Carian people, or the Carians the Caunian—I cannot determine this for certain—but their customs differ greatly from those of the rest of mankind, the Carians included. For them the finest thing is to gather in groups for drinking according to age and friendship, men, women and children alike. 2 They had once set up foreign cults, but afterward they changed their minds and decided to worship only their ancestral gods. So all the Caunians of military age put on their armor and, striking the air with their spears, marched as far as the borders of Calynda, saying that they were driving out the foreign gods.

Such are the ways of the Caunians. The Lycians came originally from Crete (in ancient times all of Crete was held by non-Greeks). 2 When Europa’s sons, Sarpedon and Minos, quarreled in Crete over the kingship, and Minos got the upper hand in the strife, he drove out Sarpedon himself and his partisans. Driven out, they came to the land of Milyas in Asia; for the land the Lycians now inhabit was in ancient times Milyas, and the Milyans were then called Solymi. 3 While Sarpedon ruled them, they were called by the name they had brought with them, the name by which the Lycians are still called today by their neighbors: Termilae.

So the Carians were enslaved by Harpagus without having done any brilliant deed—neither the Carians themselves nor any of the Greeks who live in that country. 2 Among others who live there are the Cnidians, colonists of the Lacedaemonians. Their land faces the sea—it is called Triopium—and begins from the Bybassian peninsula, and all of Cnidia except a small strip is surrounded by water 3 (on the north it is bounded by the Ceramic Gulf, on the south by the sea off Syme and Rhodes). This small strip, then, about five stades wide, the Cnidians set about digging through while Harpagus was subduing Ionia, wanting to make their land an island.

There were the Pedasians, who lived inland above Halicarnassus. Whenever some misfortune was about to befall them or their neighbors, the priestess of Athena grew a great beard. This happened to them three times. They were the only men around Caria who held out against Harpagus for some time and gave him the most trouble, having fortified a mountain called Lida.

In time the Pedasians were wiped out. The Lycians, when Harpagus drove his army into the plain of Xanthus, came out to meet him and fought, few against many, and showed great valor. But they were defeated and penned into their town, and they gathered their wives, children, property and servants into the citadel, and then set fire to the whole citadel so that it burned. 2 Having done this and sworn terrible oaths together, they went out against the enemy, and all the Xanthians died fighting.

So while Harpagus was turning the lower part of Asia upside down, Cyrus himself was doing the same to the upper part, subduing every people and passing over none. Most of these we will pass over; but I will recall those that gave him the most trouble and are most worth telling about.

When Cyrus had brought the whole mainland under his control, he attacked the Assyrians. Assyria has many other great cities, I suppose, but the most famous and the strongest, and the place where their royal seat had been established after Nineveh was destroyed, was Babylon, a city of the following sort.

Besides this I must also explain where the earth from the moat was used up, and how the wall was built. As they dug the moat, they made bricks from the earth carried out of the excavation, and when they had molded enough bricks, they baked them in kilns. 2 Then, using hot bitumen for mortar and inserting mats of reeds every thirty courses of brick, they built first the sides of the moat and then the wall itself in the same way.

This, then, is how Babylon was walled. The city has two sections, because a river divides it down the middle. Its name is the Euphrates; it flows from Armenia, large, deep and swift, and empties into the Red Sea. 2 Each of the two walls has its arms carried down to the river. From there the return walls run along both banks of the river as a rampart of baked brick.

This wall is the city’s breastplate. Another wall runs around inside it, not much weaker than the first, but narrower. 2 In the middle of each section of the city a walled compound was built: in one, the royal palace, within a great and strong enclosure; in the other, the sanctuary of Zeus Belus, with bronze gates, which still existed in my day. It is square, two stades each way. 3 In the middle of the sanctuary a solid tower has been built, a stade long and a stade wide. On this tower stands another tower, and yet another on top of that, up to eight towers.note

These same men also say, though I do not believe them, that the god himself visits the temple and rests on the couch. According to the Egyptians, the same thing happens in the same way at Egyptian Thebes. 2 There too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, and both these women are said to have intercourse with no man. It is the same at Patara in Lycia with the prophetess of the god, whenever there is one. There is not always an oracle there, but whenever there is, she is shut in at night inside the temple with the god.

The sanctuary in Babylon also has another temple lower down. In it there is a great seated statue of Zeus in gold, and beside it stands a great golden table. The footstool and the throne are of gold too. According to the Chaldaeans, eight hundred talents of gold went into making these things. 2 Outside the temple is a golden altar, and there is also another, large altar, on which full-grown sheep are sacrificed, since on the golden altar only sucklings may be sacrificed. On the larger altar the Chaldaeans also burn a thousand talents of frankincense every year, at the time when they celebrate this god’s festival.

Babylon no doubt had many other kings too, whom I shall mention in my Assyrian history, and they adorned its walls and its sanctuaries. Among them were two women. The first to rule lived five generations before the later one, and her name was Semiramis. She built embankments across the plain that are well worth seeing; before that, the river used to flood the whole plain like a sea.note

The second queen after her was named Nitocris, and she was more intelligent than the one who had ruled before her. She left monuments, which I shall describe. She also saw that the empire of the Medes was great and restless, and that they had taken many cities, Nineveh among them, so she took every precaution she could in advance. 2 First, the Euphrates, which flows through the middle of their city, used to run straight. By digging channels upstream she made it so winding that it now comes three times to one of the villages in Assyria as it flows. The name of the village the Euphrates comes to is Ardericca.

These were the defenses she dug deep around the city, and from them she made the following addition. The city was in two sections with the river in the middle, and under the earlier kings anyone who wanted to cross from one section to the other had to cross by boat. In my opinion this was a nuisance. But she foresaw this too.

This same queen also devised the following trick. Over the busiest gate of the town she built herself a tomb, high up above the gate itself, and on the tomb she carved letters that said this: 2 “If any of the kings of Babylon who come after me is short of money, let him open the tomb and take as much money as he wants. But he is not to open it for any other reason, unless he really is short of money; it will not be the better for him.”

It was against this woman’s son that Cyrus marched. He bore his father’s name, Labynetus, and held the rule of Assyria. When the Great King goes on campaign, he is well supplied from home with food and livestock, and he also takes with him water from the Choaspes, the river that flows past Susa. That is the only river the King drinks from, and no other. 2 This water from the Choaspes is boiled, and a great many four-wheeled wagons drawn by mules carry it in silver vessels and follow him wherever he travels.note

On his way to Babylon, Cyrus came to the river Gyndes. Its sources are in the Matienian mountains, and it flows through the land of the Dardanians and empties into another river, the Tigris, which flows past the city of Opis and empties into the Red Sea. This river Gyndes can be crossed only by boat. When Cyrus was trying to cross it, one of his sacred white horses, in a fit of high spirits, plunged into the river and tried to cross, and the river swept it under and carried it away.

When Cyrus had punished the river Gyndes by splitting it into three hundred and sixty channels, and the next spring was beginning to dawn, he finally marched on Babylon. The Babylonians had marched out and were waiting for him. When he came near the city, the Babylonians engaged him, were defeated in the battle, and were driven back into the town. 2 They had long known well that Cyrus was not one to rest, and they saw him attacking every nation alike, so they had laid in provisions for a great many years beforehand. So they took no notice of the siege, while Cyrus was at a loss, since a great deal of time was passing and he was making no headway at all.

Whether someone else suggested it to him in his difficulty, or he worked out for himself what he had to do, this is what he did. 2 He posted his whole army at the point where the river enters the city, and posted others again behind the city, where the river leaves it. He ordered his men to enter the city that way as soon as they saw that the stream had become fordable. Having stationed them like this and given them these instructions, he himself marched off with the part of his army that was unfit for fighting.

That is how Babylon was taken for the first time. How great the resources of the Babylonians are I shall show by many other things, and in particular by this. The whole land the Great King rules is assessed, on top of its tribute, to supply food for him and his army. Of the twelve months in the year, the Babylonian territory feeds him for four, and all the rest of Asia for the other eight.

The land of the Assyrians gets little rain, and that little is what nourishes the root of the grain. It is by irrigation from the river, though, that the crop grows to ripeness and the grain comes to harvest. Here the river does not rise over the fields by itself as it does in Egypt; the land is watered by hand and with swing-beams. 2 The whole Babylonian territory, like the Egyptian, is cut through with channels. The largest of the channels is navigable. It faces the winter sunrise and runs from the Euphrates into another river, the Tigris, on which the city of Nineveh stood.

I am now going to describe what I consider the greatest wonder of all in that country, after the city itself. Their boats that travel down the river to Babylon are round and made entirely of hide. 2 In Armenia, which lies upstream of Assyria, they cut willow to make the frames, and around these they stretch hides as a waterproof covering on the outside, like a hull. They do not mark off a stern or narrow it into a prow, but make it round like a shield. They line the whole boat with straw, load it with cargo and let it be carried down the river. Mostly they carry palm-wood casks full of wine.

Such are their boats. Their clothing is this: a linen tunic reaching to the feet, and over it a man puts on another tunic of wool and wraps himself in a small white cloak. He wears shoes of the local kind, much like Boeotian slippers. They wear their hair long and bind their heads with turbans, and they perfume their whole bodies. 2 Each man has a seal and a hand-carved staff. On top of each staff is carved an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle or something else, since it is not their custom to carry a staff without an emblem.

This, then, is how they dress and adorn their bodies. Their customs are as follows. The wisest of them, in my judgment, is this one, which I learn the Eneti in Illyria also practice. In every village, once a year, the following was done. When girls reached marriageable age, they would gather them all together and bring them in a body to one place, and a crowd of men would stand around them. 2 A herald would make each girl stand up in turn and offer her for sale, starting with the best-looking of them all. Then, once she had been sold for a great deal of gold, he would put up the one who was next best-looking after her. They were sold as wives.note

Their second wisest custom is this. They carry their sick out into the marketplace, since they do not use doctors. People come up to the sick man and give him advice about his illness. Anyone who has himself suffered something like what the sick man has, or has seen someone else suffer it, comes up and advises him, urging him to do whatever he himself did to get over a similar illness, or saw someone else do to get over it. They are not allowed to pass a sick man by in silence without asking what illness he has.

They bury their dead in honey, and their laments for the dead are much like those in Egypt. Whenever a Babylonian man has had intercourse with his wife, he sits beside burning incense, and the woman does the same somewhere else. At daybreak they both wash, for they will not touch any vessel until they have washed. The Arabians do the same.

The most shameful of the Babylonians’ customs is this. Every woman of the country must once in her life sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with a stranger. Many women who think it beneath them to mix with the rest, being proud of their wealth, drive to the temple in covered carriages and wait there, with a large retinue following behind them.

These, then, are the customs established among the Babylonians. There are also three clans among them that eat nothing but fish. When they have caught the fish and dried them in the sun, they do this: they throw them into a mortar, pound them with pestles and sift them through linen. Then anyone who likes kneads the meal into a cake and eats it that way, while another bakes it like bread.

When Cyrus had subdued this nation too, he conceived a desire to bring the Massagetae under his rule. This nation is said to be both large and warlike. They live toward the dawn and the sunrise, beyond the river Araxes, opposite the Issedones. Some say that this nation is Scythian.note

The Araxes is said to be both larger and smaller than the Ister. There are many islands in it, they say, about the size of Lesbos, and on them live people who in summer eat roots of every kind that they dig up. They have also found, it is said, fruits on trees that they store up for food when ripe and eat during the winter. 2 They have found other trees too, they say, that bear a fruit of this sort: when they gather in groups and light a fire, they sit around it in a circle and throw the fruit onto it. As they breathe in the smell of the burning fruit, they become intoxicated by it, just as the Greeks do with wine, and the more fruit is thrown on, the more intoxicated they become, until they get up to dance and break into song.note

The Caspian is a sea on its own and does not connect with the other sea. For the sea the Greeks sail, the sea beyond the Pillars that is called the Atlantic, and the Red Sea are in fact all one sea. But the Caspian is separate, a sea on its own. In length it is a voyage of fifteen days for a rowed ship, and in breadth, at its widest point, eight days. Along its western side stretch the Caucasus mountains, the most extensive and the highest of all mountain ranges.note

So on the west of this sea called the Caspian the Caucasus forms the barrier, while to the east, toward the rising sun, there follows a plain that stretches beyond the reach of the eye. Of this great plain the Massagetae hold no small share—the people Cyrus was so eager to march against. 2 For there were many weighty reasons urging and spurring him on. First was his birth, the belief that he was something more than human; second was the good fortune he had enjoyed in his wars. For wherever Cyrus chose to march, it was impossible for that people to escape him.

The Massagetae were ruled by a woman, a queen whose husband had died. Her name was Tomyris. Cyrus sent to her and wooed her, claiming that he wanted her as his wife. But Tomyris understood that what he was wooing was not her but the kingdom of the Massagetae, and she refused his approach. 2 After this, since trickery was getting him nowhere, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and openly made war on the Massagetae, bridging the river so that his army could cross and building towers on the boats that were to ferry it over.

While he was busy with this work, Tomyris sent a herald with this message: “King of the Medes, stop pressing on with what you are so eager to do. You can’t know whether it will turn out well for you once it’s done. Stop, rule your own people, and put up with seeing us rule the people we rule.

But Croesus the Lydian, who was present, found fault with this opinion and set out the opposite view, saying: “King, I told you once before that since Zeus has given me to you, I would do all I could to avert any mistake I saw threatening your house. My sufferings, bitter as they were, have been my lessons. 2 If you think you’re immortal and command an army of immortals, there’d be no point in my giving you my opinion. But if you recognize that you too are a man, and that those you command are men as well, then learn this first: human affairs are a wheel, and as it turns it never lets the same people prosper forever.

These were the opposing opinions. Cyrus let go of the first and chose Croesus’ plan, and he sent word to Tomyris to withdraw, since he would cross over to attack her. She withdrew, as she had first promised. Cyrus then placed Croesus in the hands of his own son Cambyses, to whom he was handing over the kingship, and gave him strict instructions to honor Croesus and treat him well if the crossing against the Massagetae should go wrong. Having given these instructions and sent the two of them off to Persia, he crossed the river himself, and his army with him.

When he had crossed the Araxes and night came on, he had a vision as he slept in the land of the Massagetae. It was this: in his sleep Cyrus seemed to see the eldest of Hystaspes’ sons with wings on his shoulders, overshadowing Asia with one wing and Europe with the other. 2 Now Hystaspes son of Arsames, a man of the Achaemenid family, had Darius as his eldest son. He was then about twenty years old, and he had been left behind in Persia, since he was not yet old enough to serve in the army. 3 So when Cyrus woke up, he thought the vision over.note

Cyrus said this believing that Darius was plotting against him. But in fact a divine power was showing him in advance that he himself was going to die right there, and that his kingship would pass to Darius. 2 Hystaspes answered as follows: “King, may there never be a Persian born who would plot against you—and if there is, may he die as quickly as possible! You made the Persians free instead of slaves, and rulers of everyone instead of being ruled by others. 3 If a vision tells you that my son is plotting rebellion against you, I hand him over to you to do with as you wish.”

With this answer Hystaspes crossed the Araxes and went to Persia to keep his son Darius under guard for Cyrus, while Cyrus advanced a day’s journey from the Araxes and carried out Croesus’ advice. 2 After this Cyrus and the sound part of the Persian army marched back to the Araxes, leaving the useless part behind. A third of the Massagetae’s army then attacked and killed those of Cyrus’ army who had been left behind, though they fought back. Then, seeing the feast laid out, once they had overcome their opponents they lay down and feasted, and when they were full of food and wine they fell asleep. 3 The Persians attacked, killed many of them, and took many more alive, among them the son of Queen Tomyris, who was commanding the Massagetae. His name was Spargapises.

When she learned what had happened to her army and to her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus with this message: 2 “Cyrus, you who can never have enough blood, don’t be puffed up by what has happened. It was with the fruit of the vine—which you people fill yourselves with until you go so mad that, as the wine sinks into your bodies, foul words float up to your lips—it was with a drug like that that you tricked my son and overcame him, not by strength in battle. 3 So now take my word, for my advice is good: give me back my son and leave this country unpunished, though you’ve done outrage to a third of the Massagetae’s army. If you won’t do this, I swear by the sun, the lord of the Massagetae, that I will give you your fill of blood, for all your thirst for it.”

Cyrus paid no attention to any of these words when they were reported to him. But Spargapises, the son of Queen Tomyris, when the wine wore off and he realized what a plight he was in, begged Cyrus to have him released from his bonds, and his request was granted. As soon as he was freed and had the use of his hands, he killed himself.

That, then, is how he died. Tomyris, since Cyrus had not listened to her, gathered all her forces and engaged him in battle. I judge this battle to have been the fiercest of all the battles ever fought by non-Greeks, and my inquiries tell me that it really was. 2 First, it is said, they stood apart and shot arrows at each other; then, when their arrows were used up, they fell on each other and fought hand to hand with spears and daggers. They kept on fighting for a long time, it is said, and neither side was willing to run. In the end the Massagetae won. 3 Most of the Persian army was destroyed there, and Cyrus himself died, after a reign of twenty-nine years in all.

The Massagetae wear clothing like the Scythians’ and live in a similar way. They fight both on horseback and on foot (they do both), as archers and as spearmen, and their custom is to carry battle-axes. They use gold and bronze for everything. For spearheads, arrowheads and battle-axes they use bronze throughout, while for headgear, belts and shoulder-straps they adorn themselves with gold. 2 In the same way they put bronze breastplates around the chests of their horses, but use gold for the reins, bits and cheek-pieces. They use no iron or silver at all, for there is none in their country, whereas gold and bronze are there in vast quantities.

Their customs are as follows. Each man marries a wife, but they use the wives in common. What the Greeks say the Scythians do is done not by the Scythians but by the Massagetae: when a Massagetan man desires a woman, he hangs his quiver in front of her wagon and has intercourse with her without fear. 2 No limit is set on their lifespan except this: when a man grows very old, all his kinsmen gather and sacrifice him, along with livestock, then boil the meat and feast on it.

When Cyrus died, Cambyses took over the kingship. He was the son of Cyrus and of Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes. She had died before Cyrus, and he had mourned her deeply himself and ordered all his other subjects to mourn her as well. 2 Cambyses, then, the son of this woman and of Cyrus, regarded the Ionians and Aeolians as slaves inherited from his father. He made an expedition against Egypt, taking with him others of his subjects, and the Greeks under his control among them.

Before Psammetichus became their king, the Egyptians believed that they had been the first of all people. But ever since Psammetichus became king and wanted to know who the first people had been, they have believed that the Phrygians came before them, and that they came before everyone else. 2 Psammetichus could find no way of discovering by inquiry who the first people had been, so he devised the following plan.note

That is what they told me about the raising of the children; but I heard other things too at Memphis when I talked with the priests of Hephaestus. I even went to Thebes and to Heliopolis for this very reason, wanting to know whether they would agree with the accounts given at Memphis, since the people of Heliopolis are said to be the most learned in their traditions of all the Egyptians. 2 As for the stories about the gods that I heard, I am not eager to relate them, except only their names, since I believe that all people know equally much about such matters. Whatever I do mention of them, I will mention only because my account compels me.

But as for human affairs, this is what they told me, all in agreement with one another. The Egyptians, they said, were the first of all people to discover the year, dividing it into twelve parts according to the seasons; and they said they had discovered this from the stars. In my opinion their reckoning is wiser than the Greeks’, inasmuch as the Greeks insert an extra month every other year to keep the seasons in line, while the Egyptians make their twelve months thirty days each and add five days every year beyond that number, and so the cycle of the seasons comes around to the same point.

And I thought what they said about the land was right. For it is plain to anyone with sense who sees it, even if he has not been told beforehand, that the Egypt to which the Greeks sail is land the Egyptians have gained, the gift of the river. The same is true of the region still farther up from this lake, as far as three days’ voyage. They said nothing of the kind about it, but it is another case of the same sort. 2 For the nature of the land of Egypt is this. First, when you are still sailing toward it and are a day’s run from land, if you let down a sounding line you will bring up mud, and you will be in eleven fathoms of water. This shows that the silt carried out from the land reaches that far.note

Next, the length of Egypt itself along the sea is sixty schoeni, according to our definition of Egypt as running from the Gulf of Plinthine to Lake Serbonis, along which Mount Casius stretches; it is from this point, then, that the sixty schoeni are reckoned. 2 For people who are short of land measure their country in fathoms; those less short of it, in stades; those who have a lot, in parasangs; and those who have a very great abundance, in schoeni. 3 A parasang equals thirty stades, and the schoenus, which is an Egyptian measure, sixty stades.note

So the coast of Egypt would be three thousand six hundred stades long. From there inland as far as Heliopolis, Egypt is broad, all of it flat, well watered and muddy. The road from the sea up to Heliopolis is about the same length as the road from Athens that runs from the altar of the Twelve Gods to Pisa and the temple of Olympian Zeus. 2 If you worked it out, you would find only a small difference in length between these roads, no more than fifteen stades. The road from Athens to Pisa is fifteen stades short of fifteen hundred, while the road from the sea to Heliopolis comes to exactly that number.note

But going upriver from Heliopolis, Egypt is narrow. On one side a range of the Arabian mountains stretches along it, running from north toward the south and southwest and continuing all the way up toward the sea called the Red Sea. In this range are the quarries where the stone for the pyramids at Memphis was cut. Here the range ends and bends away toward the regions I have mentioned. Where it is at its longest, I was told, it is a journey of two months from east to west, and its eastern edges produce frankincense.

From Heliopolis to Thebes is a voyage of nine days upriver, and the distance is four thousand eight hundred and sixty stades, which is eighty-one schoeni. 2 Putting together these figures for Egypt: I have already shown that the coastline is three thousand six hundred stades; how far it is from the sea inland as far as Thebes I will now indicate, namely six thousand one hundred and twenty stades. And from Thebes to the city called Elephantine is one thousand eight hundred stades.note

Most of this land I have described seemed to me too, just as the priests said, to be land gained by the Egyptians. For it was evident to me that the space between the ranges I have mentioned, which lie above the city of Memphis, was once a gulf of the sea, just like the regions around Ilium, Teuthrania, Ephesus and the plain of the Maeander—if one may compare small things with great. 2 For of the rivers that silted up those places, not one deserves to be compared in volume with even a single mouth of the Nile, which has five.note

In Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a gulf of the sea running in from the sea called the Red Sea, as long and narrow as I am about to describe. 2 In length, if you set out from its inner end to sail through to the open sea, the voyage takes forty days under oars; in breadth, where the gulf is widest, it is half a day’s sail. And there is an ebb and flow of the tide in it every day.note

So as regards Egypt, I believe those who tell these things, and I am also firmly convinced myself that it is so. For I have seen that Egypt juts out beyond the neighboring land, that shells are found on the mountains, that salt forms on the surface, so much that it even eats away at the pyramids, and that the only sandy mountain in Egypt is this one above Memphis. 2 Besides, the soil of Egypt is not like that of Arabia, which borders it, nor of Libya, nor even of Syria (for Syrians inhabit the coast of Arabia). It is black and crumbly, being mud and silt carried down from Ethiopia by the river. 3 Libya, we know, has redder and somewhat sandier soil, and Arabia and Syria have soil that is more clayey and stony.

The priests also gave me this strong piece of evidence about this land. In the reign of King Moeris, they said, whenever the river rose at least eight cubits, it watered Egypt below Memphis; and Moeris had not yet been dead nine hundred years when I heard this from the priests. But now, unless the river rises at least sixteen or fifteen cubits, it does not overflow onto the land.

That is what the Egyptians have rightly said about the Greeks. But now let me explain how things stand for the Egyptians themselves. If, as I said before, the land below Memphis (for this is the land that is rising) should keep rising in height at the same rate as in time past, what else can happen but that the Egyptians who live there will go hungry—if their land gets no rain and the river is no longer able to overflow onto their fields?

Now suppose we want to follow the Ionians’ views about Egypt. They say that the Delta alone is Egypt: its coastline, they say, runs from the place called the Watchtower of Perseus to the Fish-Salteries of Pelusium, a distance of forty schoeni, and inland from the sea it extends as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile divides and flows to Pelusium and to Canopus; the rest of Egypt, they say, belongs partly to Libya and partly to Arabia. If we used this account, we could show that the Egyptians formerly had no country at all.

If, then, our view of these matters is right, the Ionians are mistaken about Egypt. But if the Ionians’ opinion is right, I can show that the Greeks, and the Ionians themselves, do not know how to count, since they say that the whole earth consists of three parts: Europe, Asia and Libya. 2 They really must count the Delta of Egypt as a fourth, if it belongs neither to Asia nor to Libya. For by this account it is not the Nile that divides Asia from Libya: the Nile splits around the point of this Delta, so that the Delta would lie between Asia and Libya.

So let us set aside the Ionians’ opinion. Our own view on these matters is this: Egypt is all the land inhabited by Egyptians, just as Cilicia is the land inhabited by Cilicians and Assyria the land inhabited by Assyrians; and we know of no boundary between Asia and Libya, properly speaking, except the borders of Egypt.

My opinion that Egypt is as large as I have shown it to be in my account is also borne out by an oracle given by Ammon, which I learned of after I had formed my own opinion about Egypt. 2 The people of the cities of Marea and Apis, who live in the part of Egypt bordering Libya, considered themselves Libyans and not Egyptians. They were annoyed by the religious rules about sacrifice, because they did not want to be barred from eating cows. So they sent to Ammon, saying that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians: they lived outside the Delta, they agreed with them in nothing, and they wanted to be allowed to eat everything.note

When the Nile floods, it covers not only the Delta but also parts of the land said to be Libyan and Arabian, in some places as far as two days’ journey on either side, sometimes more than that and sometimes less. About the nature of the river I could learn nothing, either from the priests or from anyone else.

Some Greeks, however, wanting to be famous for their wisdom, have offered three explanations of this water. Two of them I do not think worth mentioning, except to indicate what they are. 2 One of these says that the Etesian winds make the river rise by preventing the Nile from flowing out into the sea. But the Etesian winds have often failed to blow, and the Nile does the same thing all the same.note

The second explanation is less scientific than the one just mentioned, but more marvelous to tell. It says that the Nile does these things because it flows from Ocean, and that Ocean flows around the whole earth.

The third explanation is by far the most plausible, and the most mistaken. It too says nothing at all, claiming that the Nile flows from melting snow. But the Nile flows out of Libya through the middle of Ethiopia and comes out into Egypt. 2 How, then, could it flow from snow, when it flows from the hottest regions into regions that are mostly cooler? For a man capable of reasoning about such things, the first and strongest evidence that it is not even likely to flow from snow is provided by the winds, which blow hot from those regions;

As for the man who spoke of Ocean, he has carried his tale off into the unknown, and so there is no refuting him. For my part, I know of no river Ocean; I think Homer or one of the poets before him invented the name and brought it into his poetry.

But if, having found fault with the opinions put forward, I must declare my own opinion about these obscure matters, I will say why I think the Nile floods in summer. In the winter season the sun is driven from its old course by the winter storms and goes to the upper parts of Libya. 2 To put it as briefly as possible, that is the whole of it: whatever country this god is nearest to and most directly over is likely to be most thirsty for water, and the rivers that are native to it are likely to shrink.

To explain it at greater length, it is like this. As the sun passes over the upper parts of Libya, it does the following. Since the air in those regions is always clear, the land is warm and there are no cold winds, the sun, as it passes over, does just what it usually does in summer when it travels through the middle of the sky:

That is why I have come to believe that the sun is the cause of these things. In my judgment this same sun is also the cause of the air in that region being dry, since it scorches its path; and so summer always prevails in the upper parts of Libya.

As for the breeze, and why none blows from the river, my opinion is that it is not at all likely that anything should blow from very hot places; a breeze generally blows from something cold.

Let these things be as they are and as they were from the beginning. As for the sources of the Nile, none of the Egyptians, Libyans or Greeks I talked with professed to know them, except the scribe of Athena’s sacred treasury in the city of Sais in Egypt. 2 He, to my mind, was joking when he claimed to know exactly. What he said was this: that there are two mountains with sharply pointed peaks, lying between the city of Syene in the Thebaid and Elephantine, and that the mountains are called, one Crophi and the other Mophi;note

From no one else could I learn anything at all. But this much more I did learn, going as far as was possible: up to the city of Elephantine I went and saw for myself, and beyond that my inquiry rests on hearsay. 2 As you travel up from the city of Elephantine, the country rises steeply. Here you must rope the boat on both sides, as one does an ox, and so make your way; and if the rope breaks, the boat is gone, swept away by the force of the current.

Sailing on from this city, you will reach the Deserters in the same length of time again as it took you to come from Elephantine to the Ethiopians’ mother city. These Deserters are called Asmach, a word that in the Greek language means “those who stand at the king’s left hand.” 2 These two hundred and forty thousand Egyptians of the warrior class revolted and went over to these Ethiopians for the following reason. In the reign of King Psammetichus garrisons were stationed in the city of Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another at Daphnae of Pelusium against the Arabians and Assyrians, and another at Marea against Libya.

So the Nile is known for a four months’ journey by water and land, beyond its course in Egypt; for that, when you add it up, is how many months you find are spent traveling from Elephantine to these Deserters. It flows from the west, from where the sun sets. Beyond this no one can say anything for certain, for this country is desert because of the heat.

But here is what I heard from some men of Cyrene. They said that they had gone to the oracle of Ammon and had come to talk with Etearchus, king of the Ammonians, and that somehow, from other topics, they got to chatting about the Nile, and how no one knows its sources; and Etearchus said that some Nasamonian men had once come to him. 2 This people is Libyan, and lives in the Syrtis and in the country a short way east of the Syrtis.note

Let me take the account of Etearchus the Ammonian only this far, except to add that, as the Cyrenaeans told it, he said the Nasamonians returned home, and that the people they had come to were all sorcerers. 2 As for this river flowing past the city, Etearchus too conjectured that it was the Nile, and reason points that way. For the Nile flows out of Libya, cutting through the middle of it; and, as I conjecture, inferring what is unknown from what is plain to see, it sets out on a course of the same measure as the Ister’s.

The Ister, since it flows through inhabited country, is known to many; but about the sources of the Nile no one can say anything, for the part of Libya it flows through is uninhabited desert. About its course, I have told as much as my inquiries could reach. It comes out into Egypt. Egypt lies roughly opposite mountainous Cilicia; 2 from there to Sinope on the Black Sea is a five days’ journey in a straight line for a man traveling light; and Sinope lies opposite the place where the Ister comes out into the sea. So I think that the Nile, crossing the whole of Libya, matches the Ister.

So much, then, for the Nile. I am going to extend my account of Egypt, because it has more marvels than any other country, and in comparison with every other country it offers works beyond the power of words; for this reason more will be said about it. 2 Just as the Egyptians have a climate of their own and a river that behaves differently from other rivers, so in almost everything they have established customs and laws that are the reverse of those of other people. Among them the women go to market and trade, while the men stay at home and weave; and whereas everyone else weaves by pushing the weft upward, the Egyptians push it downward.

Elsewhere, priests of the gods wear their hair long; in Egypt they shave. Among other people it is the custom for those most closely touched by a death to have their heads shorn in mourning; the Egyptians, when there is a death, let the hair grow on their heads and chins, though until then they have been shaven. 2 Other people live apart from animals; the Egyptians live together with them. Other people live on wheat and barley, but for an Egyptian it is the greatest disgrace to live on these; they make their bread from olyra, which some call zeia. 3 They knead dough with their feet but clay with their hands, and they pick up dung with them too.note

They are religious to excess, more than any other people, and these are some of their customs. They drink from bronze cups, which they scour every day; not just some of them do this, but all. 2 They wear linen clothes, always freshly washed, and take particular care over this. They circumcise themselves for the sake of cleanliness, preferring to be clean rather than more comely. The priests shave their whole bodies every other day, so that no louse or any other unclean thing may be found on them while they serve the gods. 3 The priests wear only linen clothing and sandals of papyrus; they are not permitted to wear any other clothing or any other footwear. They wash in cold water twice every day and twice every night, and they perform other rites that are, one might say, countless.

They believe that bulls belong to Epaphus, and for this reason they test them as follows. If the priest sees even a single black hair on the animal, he considers it unclean. 2 One of the priests, appointed for this purpose, searches for these signs, with the animal both standing up and lying on its back. He also pulls out its tongue to see whether it is clean of the prescribed marks, which I will describe in another part of my account, and he examines the hairs of its tail to see whether they have grown naturally. 3 If the animal is clean in all these respects, he marks it by winding papyrus around its horns, then smearing sealing-clay on it and pressing his signet ring into it; and so they lead it away. Anyone who sacrifices an unmarked animal is liable to the penalty of death. This, then, is how the animal is tested, and their sacrifice is established as follows.note

They bring the marked animal to the altar where they are going to sacrifice and light a fire. Then, at the altar, they pour wine over the victim, call upon the god and cut its throat; once they have cut its throat, they cut off its head. 2 They flay the body of the animal, but the head they load with many curses and carry away. Where there is a market and there are Greek traders living among them, they take it to the market and sell it; where there are no Greeks present, they throw it into the river. 3 The curses they pronounce over the heads are these: that if any evil is about to befall either themselves, the sacrificers, or Egypt as a whole, it may be turned onto this head.

The removal of the entrails and the burning, however, are done differently for different sacrifices. But I am now going to speak of the one they regard as the greatest goddess, in whose honor they hold their greatest festival … 2 When they have flayed the bull, they pray and take out the whole of its belly, leaving the vital organs and the fat in the body; then they cut off the legs, the end of the loin, the shoulders and the neck.

All Egyptians sacrifice clean bulls and bull calves, but they are not permitted to sacrifice cows, which are sacred to Isis. 2 For the image of Isis is a woman with cow’s horns, just as the Greeks depict Io, and all Egyptians alike revere cows far more than any other livestock. 3 For this reason no Egyptian, man or woman, would kiss a Greek man on the mouth, or use a Greek man’s knife, spits or cauldron, or taste the meat of a clean bull that has been cut up with a Greek knife.note

All those who have a temple of Theban Zeus or belong to the Theban district abstain from sheep and sacrifice goats. 2 For the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods alike, except for Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus; these two they all worship alike. Those who have a temple of Mendes or belong to the Mendesian district abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep.note

About Heracles I heard this account: that he was one of the twelve gods. About the other Heracles, the one the Greeks know, I could hear nothing anywhere in Egypt. 2 Now, that the Egyptians did not take the name of Heracles from the Greeks, but rather the Greeks from the Egyptians—specifically, those Greeks who gave the name Heracles to the son of Amphitryon—I have many proofs, and among them is this. Both parents of this Heracles, Amphitryon and Alcmene, were of Egyptian descent. Moreover, the Egyptians say they do not know the names of Poseidon and the Dioscuri, and these gods have not been accepted among their other gods.

Wanting to get clear knowledge about these matters from whatever source I could, I also sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia, having learned that there was a holy temple of Heracles there. 2 I saw that it was richly furnished with many offerings, and in it were two pillars, one of refined gold, the other of emerald, shining brilliantly at night. I talked with the priests of the god and asked how long it had been since their temple was founded. 3 I found that they too disagreed with the Greeks. They said that the god’s temple had been founded at the same time as Tyre itself, and that it was two thousand three hundred years since they had been living in Tyre.

The Greeks say many other things without having looked into them, and among their foolish tales is this one they tell about Heracles: that when he came to Egypt, the Egyptians crowned him with a garland and led him out in procession to sacrifice him to Zeus. For a while, the story goes, he kept quiet, but when they began the preliminary rites on him at the altar, he turned to defend himself and slaughtered them all.

The Egyptians I mentioned do not sacrifice goats, female or male, for the following reason. The Mendesians count Pan among the eight gods, and they say these eight gods came into being before the twelve. 2 Their painters and sculptors paint and carve the image of Pan just as the Greeks do, with a goat’s face and goat’s legs. They do not believe he really looks like that; they think he is like the other gods. But why they represent him this way, I would rather not say.

The Egyptians consider the pig an unclean animal. For one thing, if any of them brushes against a pig in passing, he goes to the river and dips himself in it, clothes and all. For another, swineherds, though native Egyptians, are the only people of all who do not enter any temple in Egypt. Nobody is willing to give his daughter in marriage to one of them or to take a wife from among them, so swineherds give their daughters to one another and take their wives from one another. 2 The Egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice pigs to the other gods; only to the Moon and to Dionysus do they sacrifice pigs, at the same time, at the same full moon, and then they eat the meat.

For Dionysus, on the eve of the festival, each person slaughters a piglet in front of his door and then gives it to the very swineherd who sold it to him, to take away. 2 The rest of the festival of Dionysus the Egyptians celebrate in almost exactly the same way as the Greeks, except for the choral dances. Instead of phalluses they have invented something else: figures about a cubit high, worked by strings, which women carry around the villages, with a member that nods up and down and is not much smaller than the rest of the body. A pipe leads the way, and the women follow, singing in honor of Dionysus. 3 Why the figure has such a large member and moves only that part of its body, there is a sacred story told about it.

Now, in my opinion, Melampus son of Amytheon was not ignorant of this sacrifice but well acquainted with it. For it was Melampus who introduced to the Greeks the name of Dionysus, his sacrifice and the procession of the phallus. He did not grasp the whole account precisely when he revealed it, but the wise teachers who came after him revealed it more fully. Still, it was Melampus who instituted the phallus that is carried in procession for Dionysus, and it is from him that the Greeks learned to do what they do.note

In fact, the names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. That they came from non-Greeks I find, on inquiry, to be the case; and I think they came above all from Egypt. 2 For except for Poseidon and the Dioscuri, as I said earlier, and Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Graces and the Nereids, the Egyptians have always had the names of the other gods in their country. I am repeating what the Egyptians themselves say.

These customs, then, and others besides, which I shall describe, the Greeks adopted from the Egyptians. But making statues of Hermes with an erect phallus is something they did not learn from the Egyptians. They took it from the Pelasgians—the Athenians first of all the Greeks, and the others from them.

In earlier times the Pelasgians offered all their sacrifices with prayers to gods, as I know from what I heard at Dodona. But they gave none of them a title or a name, because they had not yet heard of any. They called them gods, theoi, because the gods had set (thentes) all things in order and held every allotment in their hands.note

But where each of the gods came from, whether they had all always existed, and what they looked like, they did not know until the day before yesterday, so to speak. 2 For I think that Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years before my time, and no more. It was they who composed a theogony for the Greeks, gave the gods their titles, divided up their honors and their skills, and showed what they looked like. 3 The poets who are said to have lived before these men were, in my opinion at least, born after them. Of all this, the first part is what the priestesses of Dodona say. The later part, concerning Hesiod and Homer, is what I say.

About the oracles, the one in Greece and the one in Libya, the Egyptians tell the following story. The priests of Theban Zeus said that two women, priestesses, were carried off from Thebes by Phoenicians. They had learned, they said, that one of them was sold into Libya and the other to the Greeks, and these women were the first to found oracles among the peoples I have named. 2 When I asked them how they could speak with such exact knowledge, they answered that they had made a great search for these women. They had not been able to find them, but they had later learned what they were telling me about them.

This is what I heard from the priests at Thebes. But the prophetesses of Dodona tell it this way. Two black doves flew up from Thebes in Egypt; one of them went to Libya and the other came to them. 2 It perched on an oak tree and announced in a human voice that an oracle of Zeus must be established there. They understood that what was being announced to them was divine, and so they established one. 3 The dove that went to the Libyans, they say, told the Libyans to establish the oracle of Ammon, which also belongs to Zeus. This was what the priestesses of Dodona told me—the eldest was named Promeneia, the next Timarete, and the youngest Nicandra—and the other people of Dodona who serve at the temple agreed with them.

My own view of this is as follows. If the Phoenicians really did carry off the sacred women and sell one of them into Libya and the other into Greece, then I think this woman was sold to the Thesprotians, in the land now called Greece and earlier called Pelasgia—the same land. 2 Then, while she was a slave there, she founded a shrine of Zeus under an oak that grew there; it was natural that a woman who had served in a temple of Zeus at Thebes should remember it in the place where she ended up. 3 After that, once she had learned the Greek language, she established an oracle. And she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who had sold her.note

I think the women were called doves by the people of Dodona because they were non-Greeks, and their speech sounded to them like birds’ cries. 2 After a while, they say, the dove spoke in a human voice—that is, when the woman spoke in a way they could understand. As long as she spoke her foreign tongue, she seemed to them to be uttering sounds like a bird. How, after all, could a dove speak with a human voice? And by saying that the dove was black, they indicate that the woman was Egyptian. 3 The forms of divination at Thebes in Egypt and at Dodona do in fact closely resemble each other. Divination from sacrificial victims, too, came from Egypt.

It was the Egyptians, it seems, who were also the first people to hold public festivals, processions and ceremonies of approach to the gods, and the Greeks learned these from them. My evidence for this is that the Egyptian ones have clearly been held for a very long time, whereas the Greek ones were introduced recently.

The Egyptians hold festivals not once a year but many times. The chief one, and the most eagerly kept, is at the city of Bubastis, in honor of Artemis; the second is at the city of Busiris, in honor of Isis. 2 In this city is the greatest temple of Isis, and the city lies in the middle of the Egyptian Delta. Isis, in the Greek language, is Demeter. 3 Third, they hold a festival at the city of Sais for Athena; fourth, at Heliopolis for the Sun; fifth, at the city of Buto for Leto; and sixth, at the city of Papremis for Ares.note

When they travel to the city of Bubastis, this is what they do. Men and women sail together, a great crowd of both in every boat. Some of the women have castanets and rattle them, some of the men play the pipes the whole way, and the rest of the women and men sing and clap their hands.

That is how things are done there. How they hold the festival of Isis at the city of Busiris I have already told. After the sacrifice they all beat their breasts, men and women alike, very many tens of thousands of people; but for whom they beat themselves it would not be holy for me to say. 2 The Carians who live in Egypt go even further than this: they also cut their foreheads with knives, and this shows that they are foreigners and not Egyptians.note

When they gather at the city of Sais, on the night of the sacrifice they all burn many lamps in the open air around their houses. The lamps are saucers full of salt and oil, with the wick floating on top, and they burn all night long. The festival is called the Lamp-Lighting. 2 Those Egyptians who do not come to this festival also keep the night of the sacrifice and themselves all light lamps, so that lamps burn not only in Sais but throughout Egypt. Why this night has received light and honor, there is a sacred story that is told about it.

At Heliopolis and Buto they only perform sacrifices when they gather. At Papremis they perform sacrifices and rites just as elsewhere; but when the sun is going down, a few of the priests busy themselves around the image, while most of them stand at the entrance of the temple with wooden clubs. Others, more than a thousand men who are fulfilling vows, each also carrying a club, stand in a crowd on the opposite side.

It was also the Egyptians who first made it a religious rule not to have intercourse with women in temples, and not to enter temples unwashed after being with a woman. Nearly all other people, except the Egyptians and the Greeks, have intercourse in temples and go into a temple unwashed after rising from a woman, believing that human beings are no different from the other animals. 2 For they see, they say, the other animals and every kind of bird mating in the temples of the gods and in their sacred precincts; and if this were not pleasing to the god, the animals would not do it either. These are the reasons they give for what they do, but I, for one, do not find it acceptable.

The Egyptians are extraordinarily scrupulous in all their religious practices, and in particular in the following. 2 Although Egypt borders on Libya, it does not have many wild animals; but all that it has are considered sacred, both those that live alongside people and those that do not. If I were to say why the animals are dedicated as sacred, my account would descend into divine matters, which I am especially reluctant to relate; what I have said touching on them, I said because I was compelled to. 3 Their custom concerning the animals is as follows. Keepers, both men and women, are appointed from among the Egyptians to feed each kind separately, and son takes over this office from father.

There are many animals that live alongside people, and there would be many more still if it were not for what happens to the cats. When the females have given birth, they no longer go to the males, and the males, though they try to mate with them, cannot. 2 So they have devised a trick. They snatch the kittens from the females or steal them away and kill them—though having killed them, they do not eat them. The females, robbed of their young and wanting more, then come to the males; for it is an animal that loves its young.

Cats that have died are taken to sacred buildings in the city of Bubastis, where they are embalmed and buried. Dogs are buried by the people of each city in sacred tombs in their own city, and ichneumons are buried in the same way as dogs. Shrews and hawks are taken to the city of Buto, and ibises to Hermopolis. 2 Bears, which are rare, and wolves, which are not much bigger than foxes, they bury wherever they are found lying.note

The nature of crocodiles is as follows. During the four most wintry months the crocodile eats nothing. It has four feet and lives both on land and in water. It lays its eggs on land and hatches them there, and it spends most of the day on dry ground but the whole night in the river, since the water is warmer than the night air and the dew.

To some of the Egyptians crocodiles are sacred; to others they are not, and they treat them as enemies. Those who live around Thebes and Lake Moeris consider them very sacred indeed. 2 Each of these peoples keeps one crocodile, chosen from all the rest and trained to be tame. They put earrings of glass and gold in its ears and bracelets around its forefeet, give it special food and sacrificial victims, and treat these crocodiles as well as they possibly can while they live; when they die, they embalm them and bury them in sacred tombs. 3 But those who live around the city of Elephantine even eat them, since they do not consider them sacred. They are not called crocodiles but champsae. It was the Ionians who named them crocodiles, because they thought they looked like the “crocodiles” found in their own country, in stone walls.note

There are many ways of hunting them, of every kind; I describe the one that seems to me most worth telling. The hunter baits a hook with a pig’s back and lets it down into the middle of the river, while he himself stands on the river bank with a live piglet, which he beats. 2 Hearing its squeals, the crocodile makes for the sound, comes upon the pig’s back and swallows it; then they haul it in. When it has been dragged out onto land, the very first thing the hunter does is plaster its eyes with mud. Once he has done this he masters the rest very easily; if he does not, only with great effort.

Hippopotamuses are sacred in the district of Papremis, but not to the rest of the Egyptians. In appearance the animal is like this: it has four feet, with cloven hooves like an ox’s; it is snub-nosed, has a horse’s mane, shows tusks, and has a horse’s tail and voice; and it is as big as the biggest ox. Its hide is so thick that, once dried, it is made into smooth javelin shafts.

There are also otters in the river, which they consider sacred. Among fish, too, they regard the one called the lepidotus and the eel as sacred; these, they say, are sacred to the Nile. And among birds, the fox-goose.

There is another sacred bird, whose name is the phoenix. I have not seen it myself, except in paintings; for it rarely visits them—once every five hundred years, as the people of Heliopolis say. 2 They say it comes when its father has died. If it is like the paintings, this is its size and appearance: some of its feathers are golden and others bright red, and in outline and size it is very like an eagle.

Around Thebes there are sacred snakes, not at all harmful to people. They are small, and they have two horns growing from the top of the head. When they die they are buried in the temple of Zeus, for they say they are sacred to this god.

There is a place in Arabia lying roughly opposite the city of Buto, and I went there to find out about the winged snakes. When I arrived I saw snake bones and spines in quantities impossible to describe. There were heaps of spines, some large, some smaller, and some smaller still, and there were many of these heaps. 2 The place where the spines lie scattered is something like this: a pass leading out of narrow mountains into a great plain, and this plain adjoins the plain of Egypt.note

The ibis looks like this. It is a deep black all over, it has the legs of a crane and a strongly hooked beak, and it is about the size of a corncrake. That is what the black ones look like, the ones that fight the snakes. But the ones that crowd more around people’s feet (for there are two kinds of ibis) 2 are bare on the head and the whole neck, with white feathers except on the head, the neck, the wingtips and the tip of the rump (all these parts I have named are a deep black), while in legs and beak they resemble the other kind. The snake is shaped like a water snake, 3 and its wings are not feathered but are most like a bat’s wings. Let that be enough said about sacred animals.

As for the Egyptians themselves, those who live in the cultivated part of Egypt train their memories more than anyone else in the world, and they are by far the most learned in history of all the peoples I have put to the test. 2 Their way of life is as follows. For three days in a row each month they purge themselves, pursuing health with emetics and enemas, because they believe that all diseases come to people from the food that nourishes them. 3 And in any case the Egyptians are, after the Libyans, the healthiest people in the world—because of the seasons, in my opinion, since their seasons do not change. For it is at times of change that diseases most often strike people: changes of every kind, but above all changes of season.

At the gatherings of the wealthy, when dinner is over, a man carries round a wooden corpse in a coffin, carved and painted to look as lifelike as possible, about one or two cubits long. He shows it to each of the drinkers and says, “Look at this as you drink and enjoy yourself, because this is what you’ll be like when you’re dead.” That is what they do at their drinking parties.

They keep to their ancestral customs and adopt no others. Among their customs, which are remarkable in other ways too, there is in particular one song, the Linus, which is sung in Phoenicia and in Cyprus and elsewhere, though it has a different name in each nation. 2 It turns out to be the same song that the Greeks sing and call the Linus. So among the many things in Egypt that astonish me, one is this: where did they get the Linus? They have clearly been singing it forever. In Egyptian the Linus is called Maneros. 3 The Egyptians told me that Maneros was the only son of the first king of Egypt, and that when he died before his time the Egyptians honored him with these laments, and that this was their first and only song.note

There is another point on which the Egyptians agree with the Lacedaemonians, and with them alone among the Greeks: their young men, when they meet their elders, give way and step aside, and they rise from their seats when their elders approach. 2 But in this they agree with no Greeks at all: instead of greeting each other in the streets, they bow, lowering a hand to the knee.

They wear linen tunics with fringes about the legs, which they call calasiris, and over these they throw white woolen cloaks. But nothing woolen is brought into temples, nor is anyone buried in wool, for that is not lawful. 2 In this they agree with the practices called Orphic and Bacchic, which are really Egyptian and Pythagorean: for anyone who shares in these rites, too, it is not lawful to be buried in woolen clothes. There is a sacred story told about this.note

The Egyptians have also discovered these other things: which god each month and each day belongs to, and what a person born on a given day will meet with in life, how he will die and what sort of person he will be. Those Greeks who have practiced poetry have made use of these things. 2 They have also identified more portents than all the rest of mankind put together. When a portent occurs, they watch for the outcome and write it down, and if anything like it ever happens later, they believe it will turn out the same way.

Divination among them is arranged like this. The art belongs to no human being, but to certain of the gods. There is an oracle of Heracles there, and of Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Ares and Zeus, and the one they hold in the greatest honor of all is the oracle of Leto in the city of Buto. Their methods of divination, however, are not all the same, but differ from one another.

Medicine is divided up among them in this way: each doctor is a doctor of one disease and no more. The whole country is full of doctors. Some are set up as doctors of the eyes, others of the head, others of the teeth, others of the belly, and others of diseases that cannot be seen.

Their mourning and burials are as follows. When a household loses someone of any account, all the women of that house smear their heads, or even their faces, with mud. Then they leave the body in the house and roam through the city beating their breasts, with their clothes girt up and their breasts bared, and all their female relatives with them. 2 The men, separately, beat their breasts too, with their clothes girt up as well. When they have done this, they take the body to be embalmed.

There are men appointed for this very task who practice it as their craft. 2 When a body is brought to them, they show those who brought it wooden models of corpses, painted to look real …, and the most elaborate of these, they say, is the method of one whose name I do not think it right to mention in such a matter. The second they show is inferior to this and cheaper, and the third is the cheapest. After explaining, they ask the relatives which method they want used for preparing the body.note

That is how they prepare the bodies of those who choose the most expensive method. For those who want the middle method and wish to avoid great expense, they prepare them like this. 2 They fill syringes with the oil that comes from the cedar and fill the abdomen of the corpse with it, without cutting it open or removing the intestines. They inject it through the anus, stop it up so that the liquid cannot run back out, and embalm the body for the prescribed number of days. On the last day they let out of the abdomen the cedar oil they put in earlier. 3 This has such power that it brings the intestines and internal organs out with it, dissolved, while the natron dissolves the flesh, so that nothing is left of the body but the skin and bones. When they have done this, they give the body back as it is, without doing anything more to it.

The third method of embalming, which is used for those of more limited means, is this: they rinse out the abdomen with a purgative, embalm the body for the seventy days, and then give it back to be taken away.

When the wives of distinguished men die, they are not handed over for embalming right away, nor are women who are very beautiful or of greater standing. Only when they have been dead for three or four days are they handed over to the embalmers. 2 They do this for the following reason: so that the embalmers will not have intercourse with the women. For they say that one of them was caught having intercourse with the fresh corpse of a woman, and that a fellow craftsman denounced him.

If anyone, whether an Egyptian or a foreigner alike, is found dead, seized by a crocodile or taken by the river itself, the people of whatever city he is washed up at are strictly required to embalm him, lay him out as finely as possible and bury him in a sacred tomb. 2 No one else may touch him, neither his relatives nor his friends; the priests of the Nile handle him with their own hands and bury him, as though he were something more than a human corpse.

They avoid using Greek customs, and, to put it in general terms, the customs of any other people whatsoever. The rest of the Egyptians hold to this, but there is a large city called Chemmis in the Theban nome, near Neapolis. 2 In this city there is a square sanctuary of Perseus the son of Danae, with palm trees growing all around it. The gateway of the sanctuary is of stone and very large, and on it stand two great stone statues. Inside this enclosure there is a temple, and in it stands a statue of Perseus.note

All these are the customs of the Egyptians who live above the marshes. Those who live in the marshes follow the same customs as the other Egyptians—among other things, each of them lives with one wife, just as the Greeks do—but to keep their food cheap they have discovered these further things. 2 When the river is full and has turned the plains into a sea, many lilies grow in the water, which the Egyptians call lotus. They pick these and dry them in the sun, and then they pound the center of the lotus, which looks like a poppy-head, and make loaves from it, baked over a fire.

Fish that swim in shoals are not often found in the rivers; they are bred in the lakes and behave like this. When the urge to breed comes over them, they swim out to the sea in shoals. The males lead the way, scattering their milt, and the females, following, gulp it up and conceive from it. 2 When they have become full in the sea, they swim back up, each to their own haunts. This time, however, it is no longer the same ones who lead: the leadership passes to the females. Leading the shoals, they do just what the males did: they scatter their eggs, a few grains at a time, and the males, following, swallow them. These grains are fish.

That is how it is with the fish. The Egyptians who live around the marshes use an oil made from the fruit of the castor-oil plant, which the Egyptians call kiki. They make it like this. Along the banks of the rivers and lakes they sow these castor plants, 2 which in Greece grow wild of their own accord. Sown in Egypt, they bear plenty of fruit, but it smells foul. When they have gathered it, some crush it and press it, while others roast it and boil it down, and they collect what runs off. It is greasy and no less suitable for lamps than olive oil, but it gives off a heavy smell.

Against the gnats, which are plentiful, they have devised the following. Those who live above the marshes are helped by towers, which they climb up to sleep in, because the wind keeps the gnats from flying high. 2 Those who live around the marshes have devised something else instead of towers. Every man owns a net, with which he catches fish by day, and at night he uses it like this: he sets the net up around the bed where he rests, then crawls in under it and sleeps. 3 If he sleeps wrapped in a cloak or a linen sheet, the gnats bite through these, but through the net they do not even try.

Their boats, the ones they use for carrying cargo, are made of acacia, a tree very like the Cyrenaic lotus in shape, whose sap is gum. From this acacia they cut planks about two cubits long and lay them together like bricks, building the boat in the following way. 2 They fasten the two-cubit planks around long, close-set pegs. When they have built the hull this way, they stretch crossbeams over the top. They use no ribs, and they caulk the seams from the inside with papyrus. 3 They make a single steering oar, and this is thrust down through the keel. They use a mast of acacia and sails of papyrus.

When the Nile floods the land, only the towns can be seen standing out above the water, very much like the islands in the Aegean Sea. All the rest of Egypt becomes open sea, and only the towns stand out. So when this happens, people no longer ferry themselves along the channels of the river but straight across the middle of the plain. 2 Anyone sailing up from Naucratis to Memphis, at any rate, travels right past the pyramids. This is not the usual route either; that goes past the point of the Delta and the town of Cercasorus. And if you sail across the plain to Naucratis from the sea and Canopus, you will pass the town of Anthylla and the one called Archandrus’ Town.note

Of these, Anthylla, a notable town, is assigned as a special grant to supply shoes for the wife of whoever is king of Egypt at the time. This has been the practice ever since Egypt came under the Persians. 2 The other town, in my opinion, takes its name from Archandrus, son of Phthius son of Achaeus, the son-in-law of Danaus; for it is called Archandrus’ Town. There could be some other Archandrus, of course, but at any rate the name is not Egyptian.

Up to this point, what I have said comes from what I saw, my own judgment and my inquiries. From here on I am going to tell the Egyptians’ accounts as I heard them, though something of what I saw myself will be added to them as well. 2 Min, the first king of Egypt, the priests said, protected Memphis with a dike. The whole river used to flow along the sandy mountains on the Libyan side, but Min, upstream about a hundred stades from Memphis, built up the bend to the south with earth, dried up the old channel, and channeled the river to flow midway between the mountains.

After him the priests read out from a papyrus roll the names of three hundred and thirty other kings. In all these generations of men there were eighteen Ethiopians and one native woman; the rest were Egyptian men. 2 The woman who reigned had the same name as the Babylonian queen, Nitocris. They said that she took vengeance for her brother. The Egyptians had killed him while he was their king, and after killing him they handed the kingship over to her. To avenge him, she destroyed many Egyptians by a trick.

Of the other kings, they said, there were no achievements to show and nothing of any distinction, except for one, the last of them, Moeris. 2 As his memorial he produced the gateway of Hephaestus’ temple that faces the north wind; he dug a lake, whose circumference in stades I shall show later, and built pyramids in it, whose size I shall mention together with the lake itself. All this, they said, was his work; the others did nothing at all.

So I shall pass over them and make mention of the king who came after them, whose name was Sesostris. 2 The priests said that first he set out from the Arabian Gulf with warships and subdued the peoples living along the Red Sea, until, sailing on, he reached a sea that could no longer be navigated because of shoals. 3 When he had come back from there to Egypt, according to the priests’ account, he took a large army and marched across the mainland, subduing every nation that stood in his way.

Doing this, he went right through the mainland, until he crossed from Asia into Europe and subdued the Scythians and the Thracians. These, in my opinion, are the farthest the Egyptian army reached; for in their country the pillars can be seen standing, but beyond it there are none. 2 From there he turned and went back. When he reached the river Phasis, I cannot say for certain what happened next: whether King Sesostris himself detached some part of his army and left it there to settle the land, or whether some of the soldiers, tired of his wandering, stayed behind around the river Phasis.

For it is evident that the Colchians are Egyptians. I say this having noticed it myself before I heard it from others. When it occurred to me, I asked both peoples, and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Colchians. 2 The Egyptians said they thought the Colchians were descended from Sesostris’ army. I myself guessed as much, partly because they are dark-skinned and curly-haired. That in itself proves nothing, since there are other peoples like that too. But I guessed it more from this: the Colchians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world who have practiced circumcision from the beginning.

Come now, let me mention another way in which the Colchians resemble the Egyptians. They and the Egyptians are the only peoples who work linen, and they do it the same way; and their whole way of life and their language are similar. The Greeks call Colchian linen “Sardinian,” but the linen that comes from Egypt is called Egyptian.

Most of the pillars that Sesostris, king of Egypt, set up in the various lands no longer appear to survive, but in Palestinian Syria I saw them myself, still standing, with the inscription I have mentioned and the woman’s genitals. 2 There are also two figures of this man carved in the rock in Ionia, one on the road that leads from the territory of Ephesus to Phocaea, and one on the road from Sardis to Smyrna.note

This Egyptian Sesostris, the priests said, was returning home, bringing back many people from the nations whose lands he had subdued, and when on his way back he reached Daphnae near Pelusium, his own brother, to whom Sesostris had entrusted Egypt, invited him and his sons to a feast, then piled wood all around the outside of the house and set it on fire. 2 When Sesostris learned of this, they said, he immediately consulted his wife, for he had brought his wife along with him too. She advised him to lay two of their six sons across the fire, making a bridge over the burning part, so that the rest of them could walk over their bodies and escape. Sesostris did this, and two of the sons were burned to death in this way, but the rest were saved together with their father.

When Sesostris had returned to Egypt and taken vengeance on his brother, he put the crowds he had brought from the lands he had subdued to the following use. 2 It was they who dragged the stones that were brought to the temple of Hephaestus in this king’s reign, stones of enormous size; and it was they who were forced to dig all the canals that exist in Egypt today. And so, against their will, they made Egypt, which before had been passable everywhere for horses and wagons, lacking in both.

That, then, is why Egypt was cut up. This king, they said, also divided the land among all the Egyptians, giving each of them an equal square plot, and he made this the source of his revenue, imposing a tax to be paid every year. 2 If the river carried away part of anyone’s plot, the man would come to him and report what had happened, and the king would send men to inspect it and measure how much smaller the land had become, so that from then on the owner would pay in proportion to the tax assessed. 3 In my opinion this is how geometry was discovered, and it came from here to Greece; for the Greeks learned of the sundial, the gnomon and the twelve parts of the day from the Babylonians.note

This king was the only Egyptian who ruled over Ethiopia. As memorials he left stone statues in front of the temple of Hephaestus: two of thirty cubits, of himself and his wife, and of his four sons, each of twenty cubits. 2 Long afterward, the priest of Hephaestus would not allow Darius the Persian to set up a statue in front of them. He said that Darius had not achieved deeds like those of Sesostris the Egyptian: Sesostris had subdued as many other nations as Darius had, and the Scythians besides, while Darius had not been able to conquer the Scythians. 3 So it was not right, he said, for Darius to set up a statue in front of that king’s offerings unless he surpassed him in his deeds. They say that Darius forgave him for this.

When Sesostris died, they said, his son Pheros succeeded to the kingship. He undertook no military campaigns, and it was his lot to go blind, for the following reason. The river had come down in its greatest flood ever up to that time, to eighteen cubits, and when it had risen over the fields a wind struck it, and the river became full of waves. 2 They say that this king, in an act of reckless arrogance, took a spear and hurled it into the middle of the river’s eddies, and immediately afterward his eyes became diseased and he went blind. He was blind for ten years, they say, and in the eleventh year an oracle came to him from the city of Buto, saying that the time of his punishment was over and that he would see again if he washed his eyes in the urine of a woman who had had intercourse with her own husband only and had known no other men.

After him, they said, the kingship passed to a man of Memphis whose name in the Greek language is Proteus. His precinct is in Memphis today, very beautiful and well appointed, lying to the south of the temple of Hephaestus. 2 Phoenicians from Tyre live around this precinct, and the whole area is called the Camp of the Tyrians. In Proteus’ precinct there is a temple called the temple of the Foreign Aphrodite. I conjecture that this temple belongs to Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, both because I have heard the story that Helen stayed with Proteus, and especially because it is named after the Foreign Aphrodite; for none of the other temples of Aphrodite anywhere are called temples of the foreign one.

When I inquired, the priests told me that the story of Helen went like this. Alexander, after carrying Helen off from Sparta, was sailing away to his own country. When he was in the Aegean, contrary winds drove him off course into the Egyptian sea, and from there, since the gales did not let up, he came to Egypt, to what is now called the Canopic mouth of the Nile and to Taricheae. 2 On the shore there was a temple of Heracles, which is still there today. If anyone’s servant takes refuge in it and has the sacred marks put on him, giving himself to the god, no one may lay a hand on him.

When Thonis heard this, he sent a message with all speed to Proteus at Memphis, which said: 2 “A stranger has come here, a Teucrian by birth, who has committed an unholy deed in Greece. He beguiled the wife of his own host and has come here bringing her with him, and a great deal of property too, driven to this land by the winds. Are we to let him sail away unharmed, or should we take away what he came with?” 3 Proteus sent back an answer, which said: “Seize this man, whoever he is, who has committed unholy acts against his own host, and bring him to me, so that I may find out what he has to say for himself.”note

When Thonis heard this, he arrested Alexander and detained his ships, and afterward brought the man himself up to Memphis, along with Helen and the property, and the suppliants as well. 2 When they had all been brought up, Proteus asked Alexander who he was and where he was sailing from. He told him his lineage and named his homeland, and also described his voyage and where he was sailing from.

This, the priests said, was how Helen came to Proteus. I think Homer also knew this story. But it was not as well suited to epic poetry as the other one, which he used, so he deliberately set it aside, while still making it clear that he knew this story too. 2 [For] it is plain from the way he describes Alexander’s wanderings in the Iliad (and nowhere else did he go back on what he had said): how, as he was bringing Helen home, he was driven off course and wandered to various places, and how he reached Sidon in Phoenicia. 3 He mentions it in the Exploits of Diomedes, and the lines go like this: There were the robes, richly embroidered, the work of women / of Sidon, whom godlike Alexander himself / had brought from Sidon, sailing over the broad sea, / on the voyage on which he carried off Helen, daughter of a noble father.note

In the light of these lines, this passage too shows—not least, but most of all—that the Cypria is not by Homer but by someone else. For in the Cypria it is said that Alexander reached Ilium with Helen on the third day out of Sparta, with a favorable wind and a smooth sea; but in the Iliad Homer says that he wandered off course with her.note

So much, then, for Homer and the Cypria. When I asked the priests whether what the Greeks say happened at Ilium is an idle tale or not, they gave me this answer, saying that they knew it from inquiries made of Menelaus himself. 2 After the abduction of Helen, they said, a great Greek army came to the land of the Teucrians to help Menelaus. When it had landed and set up camp, the army sent messengers to Ilium, and Menelaus himself went with them. 3 Once they were inside the walls, they demanded back Helen and the property that Alexander had stolen from Menelaus and made off with, and they demanded satisfaction for the wrongs done;

Menelaus came to Egypt and sailed up to Memphis. He told the truth about what had happened, was received with great hospitality, and got Helen back unharmed, and all his own property besides. 2 Yet even after receiving all this, Menelaus behaved unjustly toward the Egyptians. When he was eager to sail away, he was held back by a lack of sailing winds; and when this went on for a long time, he devised an unholy deed: 3 he took two children of local men and made sacrificial victims of them. Afterward, when it became known that he had done this, he was hated and pursued, and he fled with his ships toward Libya. Where he went from there the Egyptians could not say. Of these things, they said, they knew some through inquiry, while what had happened in their own country they spoke of with exact knowledge.

This is what the Egyptian priests said. I myself accept the story told about Helen, reasoning as follows: if Helen had been in Ilium, she would have been given back to the Greeks, whether Alexander was willing or not. 2 For surely Priam was not so out of his mind, nor the rest of his kin, that they were willing to risk their own lives, their children and their city just so that Alexander could live with Helen.

After Proteus, they said, Rhampsinitus took over the kingship. As his memorial he left the gateway of the temple of Hephaestus that faces west, and opposite the gateway he set up two statues twenty-five cubits tall. The Egyptians call the one standing on the north side Summer and the one on the south Winter; the one they call Summer they worship and treat well, and to the one called Winter they do the opposite.

This king, they said, possessed great wealth in silver, which none of the kings who came after him could surpass or even come close to. Wanting to store his treasure safely, he had a stone chamber built, one of whose walls was part of the outer wall of his palace. But the builder, plotting against him, contrived this: he fixed one of the stones so that it could easily be taken out of the wall by two men, or even by one.

When the king, the story goes, happened to open the chamber, he was amazed to see that the vessels were short of treasure, but he could not tell whom to blame, since the seals were unbroken and the chamber was locked. When he opened it a second and a third time and each time the treasure seemed smaller (for the thieves did not stop plundering), he did this: he ordered traps to be made and set them around the vessels that held the treasure.

When day came, the king went into the chamber and was astounded to see the thief’s body in the trap without its head, while the chamber was undamaged and had no way in or out. At a loss, he did this: he hung the thief’s corpse from the wall, set guards over it, and ordered them to seize and bring to him anyone they saw weeping or lamenting. 2 With the corpse hanging there, the mother, they say, took it terribly hard. She spoke to her surviving son and ordered him to find some way, however he could, to take down his brother’s body and bring it home; and if he neglected to do this, she threatened to go to the king and inform him that her son had the treasure.

His mother kept pressing him hard, and for all he said he could not persuade her, so he devised this scheme. He got some donkeys ready, filled skins with wine, loaded them on the donkeys, and then drove them along. When he came near the men guarding the hanging corpse, he pulled at the necks of two or three of the skins and undid their ties. 2 As the wine poured out, he beat his head and shouted loudly, as though he did not know which donkey to turn to first.

When the king was told that the thief’s corpse had been stolen, he was furious. Determined at all costs to discover whoever it was that was contriving these things, he did the following—which I, for one, do not believe. 2 He set his own daughter up in a brothel, with orders to receive every man alike, and before having sex with them, to make each tell her the cleverest and the most unholy thing he had done in his life; and whoever told her the story of the thief, she was to seize him and not let him get away. 3 The girl did what her father had ordered. The thief, learning why this was being done and wanting to outdo the king in cunning, did this:

When this too was reported to the king, he was astounded at the man’s resourcefulness and daring. In the end he sent word around to all the cities, offering him immunity and promising a great reward if he would come into his presence. 2 The thief trusted him and came, and Rhampsinitus admired him greatly and gave him this daughter in marriage, as the cleverest of all men: for the Egyptians, he said, surpass all other people, and this man surpassed the Egyptians.

After this, they said, this king went down alive to the place the Greeks believe to be Hades, and there played dice with Demeter, sometimes beating her and sometimes losing to her; and he came back again bringing a gift from her, a golden napkin. 2 Because of Rhampsinitus’ descent, they said, the Egyptians celebrate a festival dating from his return. I know that they still celebrate it in my own day, but I cannot say whether this is the reason for the festival.note

Let anyone who finds such things credible make use of what the Egyptians say; my principle throughout this whole account is to write down what each people tells me, as I heard it. The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus rule the world below. 2 The Egyptians were also the first to put forward this doctrine: that the human soul is immortal, and that when the body perishes it enters another living creature as it is being born; and when it has made the round of all creatures of the land, the sea and the air, it enters a human body again as it is being born; and this cycle takes three thousand years. 3 There are Greeks who have adopted this doctrine, some earlier and some later, as if it were their own; I know their names, but I do not write them down.

Down to the reign of Rhampsinitus, they said, Egypt enjoyed complete good order and great prosperity; but Cheops, who became king after him, drove them into every kind of misery. He closed all the temples, first barring the Egyptians from sacrificing there, and then ordered all of them to work for him.

This pyramid was built in the following way: in the form of steps, which some call “battlements” and others “altar-steps.” 2 When they had first built it in this form, they raised the remaining stones with devices made of short pieces of timber, lifting them from the ground onto the first tier of steps. 3 Whenever a stone reached that tier, it was placed on another device standing on the first tier, and from there it was hauled up to the second tier on another device. 4 For there were as many devices as there were tiers of steps—or else they moved the same device, a single one and easy to carry, up to each tier in turn, once they had taken the stone off. Let both versions be given, as both are told.

Cheops sank to such wickedness, they said, that when he was short of money he set his own daughter up in a brothel and ordered her to raise a certain sum—how much, they did not tell me. She raised what her father had ordered, but she also had the idea of leaving a memorial of her own, and she asked each man who came to her to give her one stone for the works. 2 From these stones, they said, was built the pyramid that stands in the middle of the three, in front of the great pyramid; each of its sides measures one and a half plethra.

This Cheops, the Egyptians said, reigned for fifty years. When he died, his brother Chephren took over the kingship. He treated the people in the same way as his brother, and among other things he too built a pyramid, though it does not reach the dimensions of the other’s;

They reckon this as one hundred and six years, during which the Egyptians suffered every kind of misery, and for all that time the temples were shut and never opened. Out of hatred the Egyptians are not very willing to name these kings. They even call the pyramids after the shepherd Philitis, who grazed his flocks in that region at that time.

After him, they said, Mycerinus, the son of Cheops, became king of Egypt. He disapproved of what his father had done. He opened the temples and released the people, who had been worn down to the last extremity of misery, to go about their own work and their sacrifices, and he judged their lawsuits more justly than any other king. 2 For this, of all the kings who have ever ruled Egypt, they praise him most. Besides judging well in general, whenever someone complained about his verdict, he would give the man something from his own property and so satisfy his anger.

This cow was never buried in the earth. It could still be seen in my own time, in the city of Sais, lying in the palace in a richly decorated chamber. Every day they burn all kinds of incense beside it, and every night a lamp is kept burning beside it until morning. 2 Near this cow, in another chamber, stand images of Mycerinus’ concubines, as the priests in the city of Sais told me. Wooden colossi do stand there, about twenty of them, carved naked. Who they are, however, I cannot say, beyond what is said.

Some people, though, tell this story about the cow and the colossi. Mycerinus, they say, fell in love with his own daughter and then lay with her against her will. 2 Afterward, they say, the girl hanged herself in grief, and he buried her in this cow. Her mother cut off the hands of the maids who had betrayed her daughter to her father, and so now their images have suffered what the living women suffered. 3 In my opinion they are talking nonsense when they say this, about everything else and especially about the colossi’s hands. I saw for myself that these figures had lost their hands through age; the hands could still be seen lying at their feet even in my time.

The cow is covered all over with a purple cloth, except for the neck and head, which are left showing and are gilded with a very thick layer of gold. Between the horns there is a golden representation of the disk of the sun. 2 The cow is not standing but kneeling, and it is the size of a large live cow. Every year it is carried out of its chamber, at the time when the Egyptians beat their breasts for the god whom I will not name in a matter of this kind. 3 That is when they bring the cow out into the light. They say the girl, as she was dying, begged her father Mycerinus to let her see the sun once a year.

After his daughter’s death, the second thing that befell this king was this. An oracle came to him from the city of Buto saying that he would live only six more years and die in the seventh. 2 He took this very hard and sent a reproach to the god at the oracle. He complained in return that his father and his uncle, who had shut the temples, paid no regard to the gods and even ruined their people, had lived a long time, while he, a pious man, was to die so soon.

This king left a pyramid much smaller than his father’s. It is square, each side twenty feet short of three plethra, and half of it is built of Ethiopian stone. Some Greeks say it belongs to Rhodopis, a courtesan, but they are wrong. 2 In fact, it seems to me that the people who say this do not even know who Rhodopis was. Otherwise they would not have credited her with building such a pyramid, on which countless thousands of talents, so to speak, have been spent. Besides, Rhodopis was in her prime in the reign of Amasis, not of this king.

Rhodopis came to Egypt brought by Xanthes of Samos. She came to ply her trade, and there she was freed for a large sum by a man of Mytilene, Charaxus son of Scamandronymus and brother of Sappho the poet. 2 So Rhodopis was set free. She stayed on in Egypt, and being very alluring, she made a great fortune—great for a Rhodopis, that is, but not enough to stretch to a pyramid like that. 3 Since a tenth of her fortune can still be seen to this day by anyone who wants to look, there is no need to credit her with great wealth. Rhodopis wanted to leave a memorial of herself in Greece: to have something made that no one else happened to have thought of and dedicated in a temple, and to dedicate it at Delphi in remembrance of herself.

That is all I have to say about Rhodopis. After Mycerinus, the priests said, Asychis became king of Egypt. He built the eastern gateway for Hephaestus, which is by far the most beautiful and by far the largest. All the gateways have carved figures and a countless variety of architectural features, but this one has them far more than any other.

That, they said, was what he accomplished. After him a blind man from the city of Anysis reigned, whose name was Anysis. In his reign the Ethiopians and Sabacos, the king of the Ethiopians, invaded Egypt with a large force. 2 The blind man fled into the marshes, and the Ethiopian ruled Egypt for fifty years, during which he did the following. 3 Whenever any Egyptian committed an offense, he would not put any of them to death. Instead he sentenced each according to the seriousness of the wrong, ordering him to heap up earth by his own city, whichever city each offender came from.

Her sanctuary is like this. Apart from the entrance, the whole of it is an island. Two channels come in from the Nile, without joining each other: each runs in as far as the entrance to the sanctuary, one flowing around it on one side and the other on the other. Each is a hundred feet wide and shaded by trees. 2 The gateway is ten fathoms high and adorned with remarkable figures six cubits tall. Since the sanctuary is in the middle of the city, you can look down on it from every side as you walk around. The city has been built up high, while the sanctuary has been left undisturbed as it was made in the beginning, so one can see right into it.

In the end, they said, the Ethiopian departed in the following way. He saw a vision in his sleep and fled. It seemed to him that a man stood over him and advised him to gather together all the priests in Egypt and cut them in half. 2 After seeing this vision, he said that in his view the gods were holding this out to him as a pretext, so that he would commit sacrilege and suffer some harm from gods or men. He would not do it; besides, the time foretold for his rule over Egypt was over, and he would leave. 3 For while he was in Ethiopia, the oracles the Ethiopians consult had declared that he must reign over Egypt for fifty years. So, since this time was running out and the vision in his dream troubled him, Sabacos left Egypt of his own accord.

When the Ethiopian had gone from Egypt, they said, the blind man came back from the marshes and ruled again. He had lived there for fifty years on an island he had built up out of ash and earth. Whenever Egyptians came to him bringing food, as each had been assigned to do without the Ethiopian’s knowledge, he would tell them to bring ash as well with their gift. 2 No one before Amyrtaeus was able to find this island: for more than seven hundred years the kings before Amyrtaeus could not discover it. The island’s name is Elbo, and it measures ten stades in every direction.note

After him, they said, the priest of Hephaestus reigned, whose name was Sethos. He treated the warrior class of the Egyptians with contempt, as though he would never need them. Among other insults he heaped on them, he took away their fields; under the earlier kings each of them had been granted twelve choice arourae. 2 Afterward Sanacharibus, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched a great army against Egypt, and so the Egyptian warriors refused to come to the rescue.note

Up to this point in the account it was the Egyptians and the priests who told the story. They showed that from the first king down to this priest of Hephaestus, the last to reign, there had been three hundred and forty-one generations of men, and in that time there had been the same number of high priests and of kings. 2 Now three hundred generations of men come to ten thousand years, since three generations of men make a hundred years; and the forty-one further generations, over and above the three hundred, make one thousand three hundred and forty years.

Before my time, when Hecataeus the prose writer was in Thebes, he traced his own descent and linked his family to a god in the sixteenth generation. The priests of Zeus did to him what they also did to me, though I did not trace my own descent. 2 They took me into the inner hall, which is large, and counted out, pointing to each, as many wooden colossi as they had said; for every high priest sets up an image of himself there during his lifetime. 3 So, counting and pointing, the priests showed me that each one was the son of his own father, going through all of them, starting from the image of the one who had died most recently, until they had shown me every one.note

So they showed that all those whose images stood there were men of this kind, and far removed from gods. 2 Before these men, they said, the rulers of Egypt had been gods, who did not dwell among human beings, and one of them was always the one in power. The last of them to reign over the country was Horus son of Osiris, whom the Greeks call Apollo. He deposed Typhon and was the last to reign over Egypt. Osiris in the Greek language is Dionysus.note

Among the Greeks, Heracles, Dionysus and Pan are thought to be the youngest of the gods. Among the Egyptians, however, Pan is very ancient and is one of the eight gods who are said to be the first. Heracles belongs to the second generation, the so-called twelve, and Dionysus to the third, who were born from the twelve gods. 2 I have already shown how many years the Egyptians themselves say there were from Heracles to King Amasis. Pan is said to be older still, and Dionysus the youngest of the three. For him they reckon fifteen thousand years to King Amasis.

Anyone may adopt whichever of these two accounts he finds more convincing. My own opinion about them has already been stated. Heracles the son of Amphitryon appeared in Greece and grew old there. If Dionysus the son of Semele and Pan the son of Penelope had likewise appeared and grown old there, one might say that they too were men, born later, who bore the names of those earlier gods.

That, then, is what the Egyptians themselves say. Now I shall relate what other peoples say happened in this country, where the Egyptians agree with them. Something of what I saw myself will be added to it as well. 2 After the reign of the priest of Hephaestus, the Egyptians were free. Since they could not live for any length of time without a king, they set up twelve kings and divided the whole of Egypt into twelve parts.note

They also decided to leave a memorial in common. Having decided this, they built a labyrinth a little above Lake Moeris, roughly near the city called the City of Crocodiles. I have seen it myself, and it is beyond description. 2 If one added up all the walls and other works the Greeks have produced, they would turn out to have cost less labor and expense than this labyrinth. And yet the temple at Ephesus is remarkable, and so is the one at Samos. 3 The pyramids, too, were beyond description, and each of them was equal to many great Greek works. But the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids.note

Such is this labyrinth. Yet the lake called Moeris, beside which it is built, offers a still greater wonder. Its circumference is three thousand six hundred stades, or sixty schoeni, equal to the length of Egypt itself along the sea. The lake lies lengthwise from north to south, and at its deepest it is fifty fathoms deep. 2 The lake itself shows that it was made by hand and dug out. Roughly in the middle of it stand two pyramids, each rising fifty fathoms above the water and built as far again below it. On top of each is a colossal stone figure seated on a throne.

The local people also said that this lake has an underground outlet into the Syrtis in Libya, running westward into the interior along the hills above Memphis. 2 I could not see the earth from this excavation anywhere, and I was curious about it. So I asked the people living nearest the lake where the excavated earth was. They told me where it had been carried, and they easily convinced me, for I knew by report that something similar had happened at Ninus, the Assyrian city.

The twelve kings ruled justly. In time they sacrificed in the temple of Hephaestus, and on the last day of the festival, as they were about to pour libations, the high priest brought out the golden bowls they usually poured from. But he miscounted and brought eleven for the twelve of them. 2 Psammetichus, who was standing last in the row, had no bowl. So he took off his helmet, which was bronze, held it out and poured the libation from it. All the other kings wore helmets too, and they happened to be wearing them then.

This Psammetichus had once before been an exile. He had fled from the Ethiopian Sabacos, who had killed his father Necos, and had gone to Syria. When the Ethiopian left Egypt because of what he saw in his dream, the Egyptians of the nome of Sais brought him back. 2 Later, when he was king, it was his lot to be driven into exile a second time, into the marshes, by the eleven kings because of the helmet. 3 He knew that they had treated him with outrage, and he planned to take vengeance on those who had driven him out. He sent to the oracle of Leto in the city of Buto, which is the most truthful oracle the Egyptians have. The answer came that vengeance would come from the sea when men of bronze appeared.note

Once he was master of all Egypt, Psammetichus built for Hephaestus the gateway at Memphis that faces the south wind. Opposite the gateway he built a court for Apis, where Apis is kept whenever he appears. It has colonnades all around and is full of carved figures. Instead of columns, colossal statues twelve cubits high hold up the court. Apis in the Greek language is Epaphus.

Psammetichus gave the Ionians and Carians who had helped him win power places to live facing each other, with the Nile between them. These places were named the Camps. He gave them these places and paid them everything else he had promised. 2 He also placed Egyptian boys with them to be taught the Greek language. The interpreters in Egypt today are descended from these boys who learned the language.

That is how Psammetichus came to hold Egypt. I have already mentioned the oracle in Egypt many times, and now I shall give an account of it, since it deserves one. This oracle in Egypt is a sanctuary of Leto. It stands in a great city near what is called the Sebennytic mouth of the Nile, as one sails upstream from the sea.

So of the things I saw at this sanctuary, the temple is the most marvelous. Second to it is the island called Chemmis. 2 It lies in a deep, broad lake beside the sanctuary at Buto, and the Egyptians say that this island floats. I myself never saw it floating or moving, and when I hear it said, I wonder whether an island can really float. 3 At any rate, there is a great temple of Apollo on it, with three altars set up. Many palm trees grow there, and many other trees, some bearing fruit and some not.

Psammetichus reigned over Egypt for fifty-four years. For twenty-nine of those years he besieged Azotus, a great city of Syria, until he took it. Of all the cities we know of, this Azotus held out under siege the longest.note

Psammetichus had a son, Necos, who became king of Egypt. He was the first to attempt the canal leading to the Red Sea, which Darius the Persian later dug. Its length is a four days’ voyage, and it was dug wide enough for two triremes to row side by side.note

Once he had given up the canal, Necos turned to military campaigns. Triremes were built, some on the northern sea and some in the Arabian Gulf, on the Red Sea, and their slipways can still be seen. 2 He used these ships when he needed them. On land he met the Syrians at Magdolus and defeated them, and after the battle he took Kadytis, a great city of Syria. 3 He dedicated the clothes he had been wearing when he achieved these things to Apollo, sending them to Branchidae in Milesian territory. Afterward, having ruled sixteen years in all, he died and handed the throne to his son Psammis.note

While this Psammis was king of Egypt, envoys came to him from Elis. They boasted that they ran the games at Olympia more justly and finely than anyone in the world. They believed that not even the Egyptians, the wisest of men, could improve on their arrangements. 2 When the Eleans arrived in Egypt and explained why they had come, the king summoned the Egyptians who were reputed to be the wisest. The Egyptians assembled, and the Eleans told them everything they were required to do in running the games. When they had explained it all, the Eleans said they had come to learn whether the Egyptians could devise anything more just.note

Psammis reigned over Egypt for only six years. He made an expedition into Ethiopia and died soon afterward, and Apries son of Psammis succeeded him. 2 After his ancestor Psammetichus, Apries was the most prosperous of all the kings before him. He ruled for twenty-five years, and in that time he marched an army against Sidon and fought a sea battle with the king of Tyre.

When Apries learned of this, he sent Amasis to them to talk them out of it. Amasis came and was trying to stop the Egyptians from what they were doing, but as he was speaking, one of the Egyptians stood behind him and put a helmet on his head, saying as he did so that he was putting it on him to make him king. 2 And what was being done was by no means against his will, as he made plain: once the rebels had set him up as king of the Egyptians, he began preparing to march against Apries.note

When Apries learned this too, he armed his mercenaries and marched against the Egyptians. He had around him thirty thousand mercenaries, Carians and Ionians; and his palace was in the city of Sais, a large palace and well worth seeing. 2 So Apries’ forces advanced against the Egyptians, and Amasis’ forces against the foreigners. Both sides came to the city of Momemphis and were about to try their strength against each other.note

There are seven classes of Egyptians: some are called priests, others warriors, others cowherds, swineherds, traders, interpreters and pilots. These are the classes of Egyptians, and their names come from their occupations. 2 Their warriors are called Calasiries and Hermotybies, and they come from the following nomes, for all of Egypt is divided into nomes.

The nomes of the Hermotybies are these: the Busirite, the Saite, the Chemmite, the Papremite, the island called Prosopitis, and half of Natho. The Hermotybies come from these nomes, and at their most numerous they numbered one hundred and sixty thousand. None of them has learned any manual trade at all; they are set apart for war.

The Calasiries have these other nomes: the Theban, the Bubastite, the Aphthite, the Tanite, the Mendesian, the Sebennyte, the Athribite, the Pharbaethite, the Thmuite, the Onuphite, the Anytian and the Myecphorite; this last nome lies on an island opposite the city of Bubastis. 2 These are the nomes of the Calasiries, who at their most numerous numbered two hundred and fifty thousand men. They too are not allowed to practice any trade; they practice only the business of war, son taking it over from father.

Whether the Greeks learned this, too, from the Egyptians, I cannot judge with certainty. I see that the Thracians, Scythians, Persians, Lydians and nearly all non-Greeks hold those who learn trades, and their descendants, in lower esteem than the other citizens, and regard as noble those who are free of manual work, especially those set apart for war. 2 At any rate, all the Greeks have learned this, and the Lacedaemonians most of all. The Corinthians are the least contemptuous of craftsmen.

These were the privileges reserved for them alone of all the Egyptians apart from the priests: each man had twelve choice arourae of land, free of tax. The aroura is a square of a hundred Egyptian cubits on each side, and the Egyptian cubit happens to be equal to the Samian. 2 These were reserved for all of them; the following benefits they enjoyed in turn, never the same men. A thousand of the Calasiries and a thousand of the Hermotybies served for a year at a time as the king’s bodyguard. These men were given, besides their land, the following every day: five minas’ weight of baked bread for each man, two minas of beef, and four arysters of wine. These were given to whichever men were serving as bodyguard.note

When Apries with his mercenaries and Amasis with the whole Egyptian force met and reached the city of Momemphis, they joined battle. The foreign troops fought well, but they were far fewer in number, and for that reason they were defeated. 2 It is said that Apries believed that not even a god could put an end to his kingship, so securely established did he think himself. And yet he was defeated in that battle, taken alive, and brought to the city of Sais, to what had formerly been his own house but was by then the palace of Amasis.

At Sais, too, in the temple of Athena, is the burial place of one whose name I do not think it pious to utter in such a connection. It lies behind the shrine, running along the whole back wall of Athena’s temple. 2 In the sacred precinct stand great stone obelisks, and next to them is a lake, adorned with a stone border, well made all around, and in size, as it seemed to me, about equal to the one at Delos that is called the Round Lake.

On this lake they perform at night representations of his sufferings, which the Egyptians call mysteries. I know more about these matters, how each of them is done, but let my lips be sealed. 2 And about the rite of Demeter that the Greeks call the Thesmophoria, let my lips be sealed about this too, except for as much of it as may piously be told. 3 It was the daughters of Danaus who brought this rite out of Egypt and taught it to the Pelasgian women. Later, when the whole population of the Peloponnese was driven out by the Dorians, the rite died out, and only the Arcadians, the Peloponnesians who were left behind and not driven out, preserved it.note

With Apries brought down in this way, Amasis became king. He was from the Saite nome, and the town he came from is called Siuph. 2 At first the Egyptians looked down on Amasis and held him in no great regard, since he had formerly been a commoner and came from no distinguished family. But later Amasis won them over by wisdom, not by high-handedness. 3 Among countless other treasures he had a golden footbath, in which Amasis himself and all his dinner guests used to wash their feet on every occasion. He broke this up and made from it a statue of a god, and set it up in the most suitable place in the city; and the Egyptians kept going to the statue and worshipped it devoutly.

In this way he won the Egyptians over, so that they thought it right to serve him. The routine he kept was this: from dawn until the hour when the marketplace fills up, he eagerly dealt with whatever business was brought before him; after that he drank and made jokes at his drinking companions’ expense, and was frivolous and playful. 2 His friends were troubled by this and admonished him, saying something like this: “My king, you are not conducting yourself properly in lowering yourself to such levity. You ought to sit in dignity on a dignified throne all day and attend to business. That way the Egyptians would know that they are ruled by a great man, and you would be better spoken of. As it is, what you are doing is not at all kingly.”

It is said that Amasis, even when he was a private citizen, was fond of drinking and joking and not at all a serious man; and whenever his drinking and good living left him short of what he needed, he would go around stealing. Those who claimed he had their property would, when he denied it, take him to whatever oracle each of them had nearby. Many times he was convicted by the oracles, and many times he was acquitted. 2 When he became king, this is what he did. Those gods who had acquitted him of being a thief—he took no care of their temples, gave nothing for their repair, and did not go there to sacrifice, since they were worthless and had lying oracles. But those who had convicted him of being a thief he cared for above all, since they were true gods and gave truthful oracles.

For one thing, he built at Sais for Athena a marvelous gateway, far outdoing everyone in its height and size and in the size and quality of its stones. For another, he dedicated great colossal statues and huge man-headed sphinxes, and brought other stones of enormous size for repairs. 2 Some of these he brought from the quarries at Memphis, but the very largest from the city of Elephantine, which is a twenty days’ voyage from Sais. 3 But what I marvel at not least but most of all is this: he brought from Elephantine a chamber made of a single stone. They spent three years bringing it, and two thousand men were assigned to haul it, all of them pilots.

Amasis also dedicated in all the other notable temples works remarkable for their size. Among them is the colossus lying on its back in front of the temple of Hephaestus at Memphis, which is seventy-five feet long; on the same base stand two colossi of the same stone, each twenty feet tall, one on either side of the big one. 2 There is another stone colossus of the same size at Sais, lying in the same way as the one at Memphis. It was Amasis, too, who built the temple of Isis at Memphis, a large temple and very well worth seeing.

It is said that in the reign of King Amasis Egypt was more prosperous than ever before, both in what the river gave the land and in what the land gave its people, and that there were then twenty thousand inhabited cities in it in all. 2 It was Amasis who established this law for the Egyptians: every Egyptian must declare each year to the governor of his nome how he made his living, and anyone who failed to do so, or to show that he lived an honest life, was to be punished with death. Solon the Athenian took this law from Egypt and established it for the Athenians, and they have kept it always, since it is a law beyond reproach.

Amasis became a friend of the Greeks. Among other favors he showed to some of them, he gave those who came to Egypt the city of Naucratis to live in; and to those who did not want to settle there but traded there by sea he gave land on which to set up altars and sacred precincts for their gods. 2 The largest of these precincts, which is also the most famous and the most used, is called the Hellenion, and it was founded jointly by these cities: of the Ionians, Chios, Teos, Phocaea and Clazomenae; of the Dorians, Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus and Phaselis; and of the Aeolians, Mytilene alone.

In former times Naucratis was the only trading port in Egypt, and there was no other. If anyone came to any other mouth of the Nile, he had to swear that he had not come there willingly, and having sworn this, sail his ship on to the Canopic mouth. Or if he could not sail against contrary winds, he had to carry his cargo around the Delta in barges until he reached Naucratis. That was how highly Naucratis was privileged.

When the Amphictyons contracted to have the temple that now stands at Delphi built for three hundred talents (the one that had stood there before burned down by accident), it fell to the Delphians to provide a quarter of the cost. 2 So the Delphians went around the cities collecting gifts, and in doing so they brought back not the smallest share from Egypt: Amasis gave them a thousand talents of alum, and the Greeks living in Egypt twenty minas.note

Amasis made a pact of friendship and alliance with the Cyrenaeans. He also decided to take a wife from there, either because he wanted a Greek woman or simply for the sake of friendship with the Cyrenaeans. 2 He married, some say, a daughter of Battus, others say of Arcesilaus, and others of Critobulus, a respected citizen; her name was Ladice. Whenever Amasis went to bed with her, he was unable to have intercourse with her, though he managed it with his other wives. 3 When this had gone on for a long time, Amasis said to this Ladice, as she was called, “Woman, you have put a spell on me, and nothing can save you from dying the most miserable death of any woman.”note

Amasis also sent offerings to the Greek world. To Cyrene he sent a gilded statue of Athena and a painted portrait of himself; to Athena at Lindus, two stone statues and a remarkable linen corselet; and to Hera at Samos, two wooden images of himself, which still stood in the great temple, behind the doors, even in my day.note

It was against this Amasis that Cambyses son of Cyrus marched, taking with him others of his subjects and also Greeks, both Ionians and Aeolians. His reason was this. Cambyses sent a herald to Egypt and asked Amasis for his daughter. He asked on the advice of an Egyptian, who did this out of a grudge against Amasis. When Cyrus had sent to Amasis asking for the best eye doctor in Egypt, Amasis had picked this man out of all the doctors in Egypt, torn him away from his wife and children and handed him over to the Persians.note

That is what the Persians say. The Egyptians, though, claim Cambyses as one of their own, saying that he was born of this very daughter of Apries. It was Cyrus, they say, and not Cambyses, who sent to Amasis for his daughter. But in saying this they are wrong. 2 It cannot have escaped them (for if anyone knows Persian customs, the Egyptians do), first, that it is not the Persians’ custom for an illegitimate son to become king while there is a legitimate one, and second, that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes, an Achaemenid, and not of the Egyptian woman. They are twisting the story in order to claim kinship with the house of Cyrus.note

So much for that. Another story is also told, though I do not find it convincing. One of the Persian women, it is said, came to visit Cyrus’ wives, and when she saw the tall, handsome children standing beside Cassandane, she praised them lavishly, full of admiration. Then Cassandane, Cyrus’ wife, said this: 2 “And yet, though I am the mother of such children, Cyrus treats me with contempt, while that woman he got from Egypt he holds in honor.”

Something else also happened that contributed to this expedition. Among Amasis’ mercenaries was a man who was by birth from Halicarnassus, named Phanes, both sound in judgment and brave in war. 2 This Phanes, who presumably had some grievance against Amasis, escaped from Egypt by ship, wanting to get a hearing with Cambyses.note

This is the only known way into Egypt. From Phoenicia to the borders of the city of Cadytis the land belongs to the Syrians who are called Palestinians. 2 From Cadytis, a city which in my opinion is not much smaller than Sardis, the trading towns on the coast as far as the city of Ienysus belong to the Arabian king. From Ienysus it is Syrian again as far as Lake Serbonis, beside which Mount Casius stretches down to the sea. 3 From Lake Serbonis, in which Typhon is said to be hidden, Egypt begins. The land between the city of Ienysus on the one side and Mount Casius and Lake Serbonis on the other is no small stretch, but about three days’ journey, and it is terribly waterless.note

I am now going to describe something that few of those who sail to Egypt have noticed. Twice every year earthenware jars full of wine are brought into Egypt from all over Greece, and from Phoenicia besides, and yet you could not see, so to speak, a single empty wine jar anywhere. 2 Where on earth, someone might ask, do they all go? I will explain this too. Each headman must collect all the jars from his own town and bring them to Memphis, and the people of Memphis must fill them with water and carry them to these waterless parts of Syria. So the jars that keep arriving and are emptied in Egypt are carried off to Syria to join the old ones.

So it was the Persians who prepared this way into Egypt, stocking it with water in the way I have described, as soon as they had taken Egypt. 2 At that time, though, there was not yet any water ready. So Cambyses, having learned all this from his guest from Halicarnassus, sent messengers to the Arabian king and asked for safe passage, and he got it, giving and receiving pledges of good faith.

The Arabians respect pledges as much as any people in the world, and they make them in this way. When two men want to exchange pledges, a third man stands between them and with a sharp stone cuts the palms of the hands of those making the pledge, along the thumbs. Then he takes a tuft of wool from each man’s cloak and smears the blood on seven stones lying between them, and as he does this he calls on Dionysus and Urania.

So when the Arabian king had given his pledge to the messengers who had come from Cambyses, he devised this plan. He filled camel-skins with water and loaded them onto all his living camels, and having done this he drove into the waterless desert and waited there for Cambyses’ army.

Psammenitus son of Amasis was encamped at the mouth of the Nile called the Pelusian, waiting for Cambyses. 2 For Cambyses did not find Amasis alive when he marched on Egypt. Amasis had died after reigning forty-four years, in which no great misfortune befell him. When he died he was embalmed and buried in the tomb in the sanctuary, which he had built himself. 3 While Psammenitus son of Amasis was king of Egypt, the Egyptians saw a very great portent: rain fell at Egyptian Thebes, which had never been rained on before, nor since, up to my time, as the Thebans themselves say. For in the upper parts of Egypt it never rains at all; but on that occasion rain fell at Thebes in a drizzle.note

When the Persians had crossed the waterless desert and taken up position near the Egyptians to engage them, the Egyptian king’s mercenaries, who were Greeks and Carians, were angry with Phanes for bringing a foreign-speaking army against Egypt, and they devised the following against him. 2 Phanes had sons who had been left behind in Egypt. The mercenaries brought them to the camp, in sight of their father, set a mixing bowl between the two armies, and then led the boys up one by one and cut their throats over the bowl. 3 When they had gone through all the boys, they poured wine and water into the bowl, and only when all the mercenaries had drunk of the blood did they join battle. The fighting was fierce, and great numbers fell on both sides, until the Egyptians were routed.note

There I saw a great marvel, which I learned of from the local people. The bones of those who fell in this battle lay scattered about, each side apart (the bones of the Persians lay in one place, as they had been separated at the start, and those of the Egyptians in another). The skulls of the Persians are so weak that if you threw just a pebble at one you would pierce it, while those of the Egyptians are so tough that you could hardly crack one by striking it with a stone. 2 They told me the reason for this, and they easily convinced me: the Egyptians shave their heads starting in early childhood, and the bone thickens in the sun.

Once the Egyptians were routed in the battle, they fled in disorder. When they had been shut up in Memphis, Cambyses sent a ship from Mytilene up the river, carrying a Persian herald, to call on the Egyptians to come to terms. 2 But when they saw the ship come into Memphis, they poured out from the walls in a mass, destroyed the ship, tore the men limb from limb like butchers’ meat and carried them inside the walls.note

On the tenth day after he had taken the fortress at Memphis, Cambyses made the king of the Egyptians, Psammenitus, who had reigned six months, sit in the suburb to humiliate him. He made him sit there with other Egyptians and put his soul to the test by doing the following. 2 He dressed Psammenitus’ daughter in a slave’s clothing and sent her out with a pitcher to fetch water, and with her he sent other girls chosen from the daughters of the leading men, dressed like the king’s daughter.

Those who went for the son found him no longer alive; he had been the first to be cut down. But they raised Psammenitus himself and brought him to Cambyses. 2 There he lived from then on, suffering no violence. And if he had also had the sense not to meddle, he would have got Egypt back to govern, since the Persians are accustomed to honor the sons of kings. Even if the kings have rebelled against them, they still give the rule back to their sons.

From Memphis Cambyses went to the city of Sais, intending to do what he did in fact do. As soon as he entered Amasis’ palace, he ordered Amasis’ body to be carried out of its tomb, and when that was done, he ordered it to be whipped, to have its hair plucked out, to be stabbed with goads and to be abused in every other way. 2 When they had worn themselves out doing this (for the body, being embalmed, held out and did not fall apart at all), Cambyses ordered it burned, an impious order, for the Persians consider fire to be a god.note

After this Cambyses planned three expeditions: against the Carthaginians, against the Ammonians, and against the long-lived Ethiopians, who live in Libya by the southern sea. 2 On consideration he decided to send his navy against the Carthaginians and a detachment of his land army against the Ammonians. Against the Ethiopians he would send spies first, to see whether the Table of the Sun that is said to exist among these Ethiopians really exists, and besides that to spy out everything else; they were to bring gifts to the Ethiopians’ king as a pretext.note

The Table of the Sun is said to be something like this. There is a meadow in the outskirts of the city full of boiled meat of every kind of four-footed animal. At night, it is said, whichever citizens are in office at the time make a point of putting the meat there, and by day anyone who wants to comes and feasts. The local people, according to the story, say that the earth itself produces these things each time.

Such, then, is said to be the so-called Table of the Sun. When Cambyses had decided to send the spies, he at once sent to the city of Elephantine for those of the Fish-eaters who knew the Ethiopian language. 2 While they were being fetched, he ordered his fleet to sail against Carthage. But the Phoenicians said they would not do it: they were bound by solemn oaths, and it would be impious for them to make war on their own children. With the Phoenicians unwilling, the rest of the fleet was no match for the enemy. 3 So in this way the Carthaginians escaped slavery to the Persians. Cambyses did not think it right to use force against the Phoenicians, because they had given themselves up to the Persians of their own accord and the whole navy depended on them. The Cypriots too had given themselves up to the Persians and were taking part in the expedition against Egypt.note

When the Fish-eaters had come to Cambyses from Elephantine, he sent them to the Ethiopians. He instructed them what they were to say and had them carry gifts: a purple cloak, a twisted gold necklace, bracelets, an alabaster jar of perfume and a jar of palm wine. These Ethiopians, to whom Cambyses was sending them, are said to be the tallest and most beautiful of all people. 2 They are also said to have customs different from those of other peoples, and in particular this one concerning the kingship: whichever of the citizens they judge to be the tallest, and to have strength in proportion to his height, is the man they consider worthy to be king.

So when the Fish-eaters reached these people, they gave the gifts to their king and said this: “Cambyses, King of the Persians, wishes to become your friend and guest-friend. He has sent us with orders to speak with you, and he gives you these gifts, which are the things he himself most enjoys using.” 2 But the Ethiopian realized that they had come as spies, and he said to them: “The King of the Persians hasn’t sent you with gifts because he sets great store on becoming my guest-friend. Nor are you telling the truth, for you’ve come to spy on my realm. Nor is that man just.

With these words he unstrung the bow and handed it to the visitors. Then he took the purple cloak and asked what it was and how it had been made. When the Fish-eaters told him the truth about the purple dye and the dyeing, he said that the people were deceitful, and so were their clothes. 2 Next he asked about the gold, the twisted necklace and the bracelets. When the Fish-eaters explained that they were ornaments, the king laughed; thinking they were fetters, he said that his people had stronger fetters than these.

The Fish-eaters in turn asked the king about his people’s lifespan and way of life. He said that most of them reached a hundred and twenty years, and some even more, and that their food was boiled meat and their drink milk. 2 When the spies expressed amazement at the number of years, he led them, so they reported, to a spring. Washing in it made them sleeker, as though it were oil, and it gave off a scent like violets.

After this, last of all, they saw their coffins, which are said to be made of crystal in the following way. 2 When they have dried out the corpse, whether in the Egyptian manner or in some other way, they coat the whole of it with gypsum and decorate it with paint, making it as lifelike as they can. Then they set around it a hollow pillar made of crystal, which they dig up in large quantities and which is easy to work. 3 The corpse can be seen inside, in the middle of the pillar. It gives off no unpleasant smell and nothing else unseemly, and every part of it is as plainly visible as the dead body itself. 4 For a year the nearest relatives keep the pillar in their house, offering it the first portion of everything and bringing it sacrifices; after that they carry it out and set it up around the city.

When they had seen everything, the spies went back. As soon as they had made their report, Cambyses flew into a rage and marched against the Ethiopians. He gave no orders for any supply of food, and never stopped to consider that he was about to march to the ends of the earth. 2 Mad as he was and not in his right mind, he set out the moment he heard the Fish-eaters, ordering the Greeks who were with him to stay behind and taking his entire land army with him.

That is how the expedition against the Ethiopians fared. As for the part of the army sent to march against the Ammonians, they set out from Thebes and marched with guides, and it is known that they reached the city of Oasis. This place is held by Samians said to belong to the Aeschrionian tribe, and lies seven days’ journey from Thebes across the sand; in Greek it is called the Island of the Blessed. 2 So the army is said to have got this far. But from there on, nobody can say anything about them, except the Ammonians themselves and those who have heard it from them; for they never reached the Ammonians and never came back home.note

When Cambyses had arrived in Memphis, Apis appeared to the Egyptians—the god the Greeks call Epaphus. As soon as he had appeared, the Egyptians put on their finest clothes and held festivities. 2 When Cambyses saw the Egyptians doing this, he was quite certain that they were celebrating because he had fared badly, and he summoned the officials in charge of Memphis. When they came before him, he asked why the Egyptians had done nothing of the kind when he was in Memphis before, but were doing it now, when he had come back having lost a large part of his army. 3 They told him that a god had appeared to them, one who was accustomed to appear only at long intervals, and that whenever he appeared, all the Egyptians rejoiced and held a festival. Hearing this, Cambyses said they were lying, and as liars he punished them with death.note

When he had killed them, he next summoned the priests before him. When the priests said the same thing, he said that if some tame god had come to the Egyptians, he would soon know about it. With that, he ordered the priests to bring Apis to him, and they went off to fetch him. 2 This Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that can never afterward conceive any other offspring. The Egyptians say that a light comes down from the sky upon the cow, and that from this she gives birth to Apis. 3 The calf called Apis has the following markings: it is black, with a white triangle on its forehead, the likeness of an eagle on its back, double hairs in its tail and a scarab beetle under its tongue.

When the priests brought Apis, Cambyses, being somewhat deranged, drew his dagger. He meant to strike Apis in the belly, but hit the thigh. Then he laughed and said to the priests: 2 “You wretches, is that what gods are like—made of blood and flesh, and able to feel iron? This god is worthy of the Egyptians, to be sure. But you won’t make a laughingstock of me and get away with it.” With these words he ordered those whose task it was to flog the priests, and to kill any other Egyptian they caught celebrating. 3 So the Egyptians’ festival was broken up and the priests were punished, while Apis, wounded in the thigh, lay in the temple and wasted away. When he died of the wound, the priests buried him without Cambyses’ knowledge.

Because of this wrong, the Egyptians say, Cambyses went mad at once, though even before this he had not been in his right mind. The first of his crimes was to do away with his brother Smerdis, son of the same father and mother. He had sent him back from Egypt to Persia out of jealousy, because Smerdis alone of the Persians had drawn the bow that the Fish-eaters brought from the Ethiopian, by as much as about two fingers’ breadth, while none of the other Persians had been able to do it.

This, they say, was the first of Cambyses’ crimes. The second was that he did away with his sister, who had come with him to Egypt. He was married to her, and she was his full sister. 2 He married her in this way—for before this the Persians had never been in the habit of marrying their sisters. Cambyses fell in love with one of his sisters, and then he wanted to marry her. Since he was planning to do something contrary to custom, he summoned the royal judges and asked whether there was any law that allowed a man who wished to marry his sister. 3 The royal judges are men chosen from among the Persians, who hold office until they die or are found guilty of some wrongdoing. They judge cases for the Persians and interpret the ancestral ordinances, and everything is referred to them.

There are two stories about her death, as there are about Smerdis’. The Greeks say that Cambyses set a lion cub to fight a puppy, and that this wife of his was watching too. When the puppy was losing, another puppy, its brother, broke its leash and came to help it, and with two of them the puppies got the better of the cub. 2 Cambyses, they say, enjoyed the sight, but the woman sitting beside him wept. When Cambyses noticed this, he asked why she was crying, and she said that she had wept at seeing the puppy come to its brother’s help, because she remembered Smerdis and knew there was no one to avenge him.

These were the mad acts Cambyses committed against his own family, whether because of Apis or for some other reason, since many ills tend to befall human beings. Cambyses is said to have had a serious illness from birth, which some call the sacred disease. So it was not at all unlikely that, with his body suffering from a serious illness, his mind should not be sound either.note

And these were his mad acts against the other Persians. It is said that he spoke to Prexaspes, whom he honored above all and who carried his messages; Prexaspes’ son was Cambyses’ cupbearer, and that too was no small honor. This is what he is said to have said: 2 “Prexaspes, what sort of man do the Persians think I am? What do they say about me?” And Prexaspes said, “Master, in every other respect they praise you highly, but they say you’re overly fond of wine.” 3 So Prexaspes told him what the Persians said, and Cambyses answered in a rage: “So now the Persians say that I’m given to wine, out of my mind, not in my senses! Then what they said before wasn’t true either.”

Remembering this, then, he said angrily to Prexaspes, so the story goes: “Now find out for yourself whether the Persians are telling the truth, or whether they’re the ones out of their minds for saying it. 2 If I shoot your son standing there in the doorway and hit him right in the heart, it will be plain that the Persians are talking nonsense. But if I miss, you may say that the Persians are telling the truth and that I’m not in my right mind.” 3 With these words, they say, he drew his bow and shot the boy. When the boy fell, he ordered them to cut him open and examine the wound, and when the arrow was found lodged in the heart, he laughed and, overjoyed, said to the boy’s father: 4 “Prexaspes, you can see clearly now that I’m not mad, and that it’s the Persians who are out of their minds.

When he did these things, Croesus the Lydian thought it right to admonish him, with these words: “King, don’t give in to your youth and your temper in everything; restrain yourself and keep yourself in check. It’s a good thing to have forethought, and foresight is wise. But you are seizing men who are your own citizens on no charge worth mentioning and killing them, and you are killing boys. 2 If you do many things like this, be careful that the Persians don’t revolt against you. Your father Cyrus gave me many instructions, telling me to admonish you and to suggest whatever I find to be good.” So Croesus gave him this advice, showing his goodwill. But Cambyses answered as follows.

Many such mad acts he committed against the Persians and the allies while he stayed in Memphis, where he also opened ancient tombs and examined the dead. 2 In the same way he went into the temple of Hephaestus and mocked the statue at length. The statue of Hephaestus is very like the Phoenician Pataici, which the Phoenicians carry on the prows of their triremes. For anyone who has not seen these, I’ll describe it this way: it is the image of a pygmy man. 3 He also entered the temple of the Cabeiri, which no one but the priest is allowed to enter. These statues he even burned, after mocking them a great deal. These too are like the statues of Hephaestus; they say they are his sons.

While Cambyses was campaigning against Egypt, the Lacedaemonians also made an expedition against Samos and Polycrates son of Aeaces, who had risen up and seized Samos. 2 At first he divided the city into three … and gave shares to his brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson. Later he killed one of them, drove out the younger, Syloson, and held all of Samos. Once he held it, he made a pact of guest-friendship with Amasis king of Egypt, sending him gifts and receiving others from him in return.note

When Polycrates had read this and grasped that Amasis’ advice was good, he looked for the one treasure whose loss would most distress his soul, and in looking he found this. He had a seal ring that he wore, set in gold; the stone was an emerald, and it was the work of Theodorus son of Telecles, a Samian. 2 So, having decided to throw it away, he did the following. He manned a fifty-oared ship, went aboard, and ordered it to put out to sea. When he was far from the island, he took off the ring and, while all his shipmates watched, threw it into the sea. Having done this he sailed back, and when he reached his house he mourned his loss.note

Five or six days later, this is what happened to him. A fisherman caught a large, fine fish and thought it deserved to be given to Polycrates as a gift. He brought it to the palace doors and said that he wished to come into Polycrates’ presence. When this was granted, he handed over the fish and said: 2 “King, when I caught this, I didn’t think it right to take it to market, even though I live by the work of my hands. It seemed to me worthy of you and of your rule, so I’ve brought it and I’m giving it to you.” Polycrates was pleased with these words and answered: “You’ve done very well, and you have my thanks twice over, for your words and for your gift. We invite you to dinner.”

When Amasis read the letter that had come from Polycrates, he understood that it is impossible for one human being to rescue another from what is going to happen, and that Polycrates, who was fortunate in everything and even found what he threw away, was not going to come to a good end. 2 He sent a herald to Samos and declared that he was breaking off their guest-friendship. His reason was this: so that when some great and terrible calamity overtook Polycrates, he himself would not grieve in his soul as for a friend.

It was against this Polycrates, then, fortunate in everything, that the Lacedaemonians made war, at the invitation of those Samians who later founded Cydonia in Crete. Polycrates, without the Samians’ knowledge, sent a herald to Cambyses son of Cyrus, who was gathering an army against Egypt, and asked him to send to him at Samos as well and request troops. 2 When Cambyses heard this, he gladly sent to Samos, asking Polycrates to send a naval force with him against Egypt. Polycrates picked out those citizens he most suspected of plotting revolt and sent them off in forty triremes, instructing Cambyses not to send them back.

Some say that the Samians sent off by Polycrates never reached Egypt: when they had got as far as Carpathus on their voyage, they talked it over among themselves and decided to sail no farther. Others say that they did reach Egypt, and that, being kept under guard there, they escaped. 2 As they were sailing back to Samos, Polycrates met them with ships and gave battle. The returning Samians won and landed on the island, but they were beaten in a battle on land there, and so they sailed to Lacedaemon.note

When the Samians driven out by Polycrates reached Sparta, they came before the magistrates and made a long speech, as men in great need would. At this first hearing the magistrates answered that they had forgotten the beginning of what was said and could not understand the end. 2 After this the Samians came before them a second time. They said nothing else, but brought a sack and said that the sack needed barley meal. The magistrates answered that the word “sack” was superfluous; but they decided to help them all the same.

Then the Lacedaemonians made their preparations and marched against Samos. According to the Samians, they were repaying a kindness, because the Samians had earlier helped them with ships against the Messenians. According to the Lacedaemonians, though, they marched not so much to help the Samians who had asked them as because they wanted vengeance for the seizure of the mixing bowl they had been taking to Croesus, and of the breastplate that Amasis king of Egypt had sent them as a gift. 2 For the Samians had carried off the breastplate the year before the bowl. It was made of linen with many figures woven into it, and decorated with gold and with wool from trees. 3 What makes it worth marveling at is each thread of the breastplate: fine as it is, each one contains three hundred and sixty strands, all of them visible. There is another one like it, which Amasis dedicated to Athena at Lindus.note

The Corinthians too eagerly helped to bring about the expedition against Samos. They also had suffered an outrage at the hands of the Samians, a generation before this expedition, at about the same time as the seizure of the bowl. 2 Periander son of Cypselus had sent three hundred boys, sons of the leading men of Corcyra, to Alyattes at Sardis to be castrated. When the Corinthians who were taking the boys put in at Samos, the Samians learned why they were being taken to Sardis. First they told the boys to take hold of the temple of Artemis;note