Megabyzus, the son of Daduhya, who aided Darius in putting the Magian to death, and his descendants, were only too well known to the Greeks, and more especially to the Athenians. Megabyzus conquered Perinthus, and reduced Thracia and Macedonia beneath the Persian rule. The son of this Megabyzus was Zopyrus, to whom Darius, according to the narrative of Herodotus, owed the capture of Babylon; the son of Zopyrus was Megabyzus the younger, who in the year 455 B.C. inflicted on the Athenians in Egypt one of the heaviest defeats which they ever experienced; they lost more than 200 triremes, and nearly the whole of the crews, for those who escaped to Cyrene were few in number.[225] From the marriage of this Megabyzus with the daughter of Xerxes and Amestris, the granddaughter of Otanes, sprang the younger Zopyrus, who broke with Artaxerxes I. after the death of his parents, retired to Athens after 440 B.C., and afterwards, when attacking the city of Caunus in Caria with Attic troops--the city belonged to the Attic league but had withdrawn from it, and it was necessary to reduce it--was killed by a stone thrown from the walls.[226] Hence the achievements of the princely family, who were the forefathers of the deserter--of his father Megabyzus, his grandfather, the elder Zopyrus, and his great-grandfather--were peculiarly interesting to the Greeks. The minute account which Herodotus gives of the greatest act of the older Zopyrus must be derived from information which he obtained in Athens either from the younger Zopyrus or from his retinue, and these would relate what the minstrels of the Persians had sung of the sacrifice made by the elder Zopyrus for the great king and the kingdom. We can trace a poetical source in the mocking of the besiegers, and the saying connected with it. A Babylonian cries to the Persians, "Why do you sit there? Why do you not retire? Ye will take the city when mules bring forth." A mule belonging to Zopyrus does bring forth; this sign, showing that Babylon can be taken, determines Zopyrus to mutilate himself, when he had previously ascertained from Darius that the king attached the greatest importance to the capture of the city. The massacre of the women of the Babylonians must also be poetical. Herodotus himself tells us that the Babylonians had prepared their rebellion for a long time, ever since the Magian had ascended the throne. Thus they had at least a year before the investment of the city in which to furnish it with provisions, and the adjacent country was most fruitful; moreover, the walls of Babylon enclosed a very large extent of arable and pasture land (III. 382). We may conceive of such wholesale massacre as an act of desperation in consequence of a long siege; but in the account of Herodotus it took place before the city was invested, and is one of the preparations of the Babylonians. It is not until he has heard of the massacre of the women that Darius sets out against Babylon.