[33] See Dodwell's "Tour through Greece," Gell's "Itinerary." [34] "Called by some Laurion Oros, or Mount Laurion." Gell's Itinerary. [35] Boeckh's Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium. [36] Boeckh's Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium. [37] On this point, see Boeckh. Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurion, in reference to the account of Diodorus. [38] If we except the death of his brother, in the Cambyses of Ctesias, we find none of the crimes of the Cambyses of Herodotus--and even that fratricide loses its harsher aspect in the account of Ctesias, and Cambyses is represented as betrayed into the crime by a sincere belief in his brother's treason. [39] The account of this conspiracy in Ctesias seems more improbable than that afforded to us by Herodotus. But in both the most extraordinary features of the plot are the same, viz., the striking likeness between the impostor and the dead prince, and the complete success which, for a time, attended the fraud. In both narrations, too, we can perceive, behind the main personages ostensibly brought forward, the outline of a profound device of the magi to win back from the Persian conquerors, and to secure to a Mede, the empire of the East. [40] Herodotus says it was resolved that the king could only marry into the family of one of the conspirators; but Darius married two daughters and one grand-daughter of Cyrus. It is more consonant with eastern manners to suppose that it was arranged that the king should give his own daughters in marriage to members of these six houses. It would have been scarcely possible to claim the monopoly of the royal seraglio, whether its tenants were wives or concubines, and in all probability the king's choice was only limited (nor that very rigidly) to the family of Cyrus, and the numerous and privileged race of the Achaemenids. [41] Besides the regular subsidies, we gather from Herodotus, I. c. 92, that the general population was obliged to find subsistence for the king and his armies. Babylon raised a supply for four months, the resources of that satrapy being adequate to a third part of Asia. [42] That comparatively small and frontier part of India known to Darius. [43] Forming a revenue of more than 100,000l. sterling.--Heeren's Persians, chap. ii. [44] Such are the expressions of Herodotus. His testimony is corroborated by the anecdotes in his own history, and, indeed, by all other ancient authorities. [45] Dinon. (Apud Athen., lib. xiii.) observes, that the Persian queen tolerated the multitude of concubines common to the royal seraglio, because they worshipped her, like a divinity. [46] See, in addition to more familiar authorities, the curious remarks and anecdotes relative to the luxury of the Persian kings, in the citations from Dinon, Heraclides, Agathocles, and Chares of Mitylene, scattered throughout Athenaeus, lib. xii., xiii., xiv.; but especially lib. xii. [47] Strabo, lib. xv, Herod., lib. i., c. cxxxi., etc.