head, subverted the constitution, and set on foot a cruel persecution against all who had adhered to it. He may have felt the ground insecure under his feet in the city; the fall of Egypt deprived him of the support which he had had in that country, and if he had really sent a contingent to aid Psammenitus he had to fear the vengeance of Cambyses. These were reasons enough for seeking the protection of the Persian king. He recognised the sovereignty of Cambyses, and sent that sum of money as the first proof of his submission. "Cambyses now proposed to himself a threefold expedition," so Herodotus relates; "one against the Carthaginians, a second against the Ammonians, and a third against the long-lived Ethiopians, who inhabit Libya on the southern sea. It seemed best to send the fleet against the Carthaginians, and a part of the land army against the Ammonians, but to the Ethiopians envoys were first sent. When he had given this command he ordered fish-eaters to be brought from Elephantine (the island on the Nile on the border of Egypt) who were acquainted with the language of the Ethiopians. While these were being brought he ordered the fleet to set out against Carthage. But the Phenicians refused; they were bound by great oaths, and they would be guilty of a crime if they went against their own children. As the Phenicians refused, the rest (_i.e._ the Greeks) were not strong enough, and so the Carthaginians escaped slavery under the Persians. For Cambyses could not do violence to the Phenicians, because they had voluntarily submitted to the Persians (p. 90), and the whole naval power rested on the Phenicians. When the fish-eaters had come, they were told what they had to say to the Ethiopians, and received the presents which they had to take--a purple robe, a golden necklace and bracelets, a box of alabaster filled with ointment, and a jar of palm-wine. The Ethiopians to whom they were sent were said to be the tallest and most beautiful of men, and as they live under laws which are different from those of other men, they were said to regard the man who is the tallest and strongest among them as the most worthy of the throne."