"Cambyses," so Herodotus tells us, "sent to Egypt and asked the daughter of Amasis in marriage. Both hating and dreading the power of the Persians, Amasis was uncertain whether to send or refuse her, for he well knew that Cambyses did not intend to take her as his legitimate wife, but as a concubine. So he devised the following plan:--Nitetis, the daughter of the preceding king Hophra was the only member of her family remaining. She was tall and beautiful, and Amasis adorned her with garments and gold and sent her as his own daughter to Persia. But some time after, when Cambyses was embracing Nitetis and calling her by the name of her father, she said: 'O king, thou art deceived by Amasis, who has sent me to thee thus adorned as his daughter, whereas in truth I am the daughter of Hophra, whom, though his lord, Amasis slew together with the Egyptians.' This speech put Cambyses into a violent rage, and for this reason he marched against Egypt. This is the account which the Persians give; but the Egyptians claim Cambyses as their own, maintaining that he was the son of this daughter of Hophra. It was not Cambyses, but Cyrus, who desired the daughter of Hophra. But in this they are wrong. The law of the Persians is not unknown to them (for the Egyptians know the laws of the Persians better than any one else), that the son of the concubine is not made king if there are sons of the queen, and that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, and not of the Egyptian woman. They invert the transaction because they wish to give themselves out as allied to the house of Amasis. Among the auxiliary troops of Amasis there was a man of Halicarnassus, Phanes by name, of good understanding and mighty in war. Injured by Amasis in some way, he fled by ship out of Egypt, in order to join Cambyses. As he was a man of importance among the auxiliary troops, and most accurately acquainted with Egypt, Amasis was anxious to take him, and sent his most trusty eunuch after him in a trireme. The eunuch caught him up in Lycia, but he did not bring him back to Egypt. Phanes outwitted him, by making his guards intoxicated, and so escaped to Persia. When he came to Cambyses, who, though intending to invade Egypt, was uncertain how to pass through the waterless region, Phanes told him all the affairs of Amasis, and how the march was to be arranged. He advised him to send to the king of the Arabians, and ask him to give him a safe passage. The approach to Egypt is open on this side only. From Phoenicia to the borders of the city of Gaza,[142] which, as it seems to me, is not much smaller than Sardis, the land belongs to the Syrians, who are called Palaestinians (Pelishtim), but from this city to Jenysus the harbours of the sea are subject to the Arabians; from Jenysus to the Serbonian Lake they again belong to the Syrians, and at the Serbonian Lake Egypt begins. The strip between the city of Jenysus and the