She, however, finally submitted to the hard necessity and went away, bidding her husband farewell with many tears. Very soon after her departure her husband died. The story that is told of the manner of his death is this: There was in his court a man named Mænon, whom Agathocles had taken captive when a youth, and ever since retained in his court. Though originally a captive, taken in war, Mænon had been made a favorite with Agathocles, and had been raised to a high position in his service. The indulgence however, and the favoritism with which he had been regarded, were not such as to awaken any sentiments of gratitude in Mænon's mind, or to establish any true and faithful friendship between him and his master; and Archagathus, the grandson, found means of inducing him to undertake to poison the king. As all the ordinary modes of administering poison were precluded by the vigilance and strictness with which the usual avenues of approach to the king were guarded, Mænon contrived to accomplish his end by poisoning a quill which the king was subsequently to use as a tooth-pick. The poison was insinuated thus into the teeth and gums of the victim, where it soon took effect, producing dreadful ulceration and intolerable pain. The infection of the venom after a short time pervaded the whole system of the sufferer, and brought him to the brink of the grave; and at last, finding that he was speechless, and apparently insensible, his ruthless murderers, fearing, perhaps, that he might revive again, hurried him to the funeral pile before life was extinct, and the fire finished the work that the poison had begun. The declaration of Scripture, "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword," is illustrated and confirmed by the history of almost every ancient tyrant. We find that they almost all come at last to some terrible end. The man who usurps a throne by violence seems, in all ages and among all nations, very sure to be expelled from it by greater violence, after a brief period of power; and he who poisons or assassinates a precedent rival whom he wishes to supplant, is almost invariably cut off by the poison or the dagger of a following one, who wishes to supplant him.