noted and resented the interference with territories which he had some
right to consider his own; whether he took any steps to revenge himself
is doubtful. According to some, he required Amasis to send him one of
his daughters as a concubine, an insult which the Egyptian king escaped
by _finesse_ while he appeared to submit to it.

It can only have been on account of the other wars which pressed upon
him and occupied him during his remaining years, that Cyrus did not
march in person against Amasis. First, the conquest of the nations
between the Caspian and the Indian Ocean detained him; and after this, a
danger showed itself on his north-eastern frontier which required all
his attention, and in meeting which he lost his life. The independent
tribes beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes have through all history been an
annoyance and a peril to the power which rules over the Iranian plateau,
and it was in repelling an attack in this quarter that Cyrus fell.
Amasis, perhaps, congratulated himself on the defeat and death of the
great warrior king; but Egypt would, perhaps, have suffered less had the
invasion, which was sure to come, been conducted by the noble,
magnanimous, and merciful Cyrus, than she actually endured at the hands
of the impulsive tyrannical, and half-mad Cambyses.

The first step taken by Cambyses, who succeeded his father Cyrus in B.C.
529, was to reduce Phœnicia under his power. The support of a fleet was
of immense importance to an army about to attack Egypt, both for the
purpose of conveying water and stores, and of giving command over the
mouths of the Nile, so that the great cities, Pelusium, Tanis, Saïs,
Bubastis, Memphis, might be blockaded both by land and water. Persia, up
to the accession of Cambyses, had (so to speak) no fleet. Cambyses, by
threatening the Phœnician cities on the land side, succeeded in inducing
them to submit to him; he then, with their aid, detached Cyprus from her