Arkesilaus the Third, to whom this prophecy purports to have been addressed, returned with his mother Pheretimê and his army of new colonists to Kyrênê. He was strong enough to carry all before him,—to expel some of his chief opponents and seize upon others, whom he sent to Cyprus to be destroyed; though the vessels were driven out of their course by storms to the peninsula of Knidus, where the inhabitants rescued the prisoners and sent them to Thêra. Other Kyrenæans, opposed to the Battiads, took refuge in a lofty private tower, the property of Aglômachus, wherein Arkesilaus caused them all to be burned, heaping wood around and setting it on fire. But after this career of triumph and revenge, he became conscious that he had departed from the mildness enjoined to him by the oracle, and sought to avoid the punishment which it had threatened by retiring from Kyrênê. At any rate, he departed from Kyrênê to Barka, to the residence of the Barkæan prince, his kinsman Alazir, whose daughter he had married. But he found in Barka some of the unfortunate men who had fled from Kyrênê to escape him: these exiles, aided by a few Barkæans, watched for a suitable moment to assail him in the market-place, and slew him, together with his kinsman the prince Alazir.[96] [96] Herodot. iv, 163-164. The victory of Arkesilaus at Kyrênê, and his assassination at Barka, are doubtless real facts; but they seem to have been compressed together and incorrectly colored, in order to give to the death of the Kyrenæan prince the appearance of a divine judgment. For the reign of Arkesilaus cannot have been very short, since events of the utmost importance occurred within it. The Persians under Kambysês conquered Egypt, and both the Kyrenæan and the Barkæan prince sent to Memphis to make their submission to the conqueror,—offering presents and imposing upon themselves an annual tribute. The presents of the Kyrenæans, five hundred minæ of silver, were considered by Kambysês so contemptibly small, that he took hold of them at once and threw them among his soldiers. And at the moment when Arkesilaus died, Aryandes, the Persian satrap after the death of Kambysês, is found established in Egypt.[97] [97] Herodot. iii, 13; iv, 165-166.