Kambathet, marched against Egypt, all nations of the earth were with him. He became lord of the whole land and settled there."[151] In a war of a few months Cambyses had overthrown a kingdom which reckoned by millenniums, and had been the wonder of the world. What Herodotus tells us of the fate of Psammenitus and the death of his son reminds us in a striking manner of the legend of the Greeks about the distress and the rescue of Croesus, who also reappears in this narrative. In both Herodotus becomes uncertain towards the end, and changes from direct to indirect narration, from assertion to supposition. When Cyrus commanded Croesus to be burned, he intended, according to Herodotus, to prove whether a god would come to his aid; Cambyses intends to put the endurance of Psammenitus to the test. Two trials are made with this object; and a third trial also takes place; and if Croesus calls on Solon three times on the pyre, Psammenitus remains dumb "with horror," as Aristotle says, at the sight of his daughter at her slavish task, and of his son when led out to execution; it is only at the sight of his friend who has become a beggar that he breaks forth into lamentation. Like Cyrus at Sardis, Cambyses at Memphis inquires into the reason of such conduct. But if Cyrus weeps at the pyre, and desires to save Croesus, who is finally rescued by a god, so in this place, all the Persians who are present weep, and Croesus weeps, and Cambyses himself is touched by compassion; he wishes to save the son of Psammenitus; and though he cannot do this he releases the father out of captivity and receives him at his court. There is a difference in the stories in the fact that though Cambyses is putting Psammenitus to the test, the son is actually executed, and that the compassion of Cambyses is not aroused by the danger impending over the Egyptian king, but by his conduct. As in the story of Croesus and Cyrus, so in this, we have obviously a legend of the Greeks--the Greeks in Egypt. The first story has arisen out of the intention of Croesus not to survive the fall of his kingdom, to offer himself as a sacrifice to the angry god of the Lydians; and the second has no other foundation than the punishment exacted by Cambyses in accordance with the sentence of the seven judges (p. 105), for the murder of his herald who had demanded the surrender of Memphis, and for the massacre of the crew of the ship in which the herald had gone to the city. If the seven judges demand ten Egyptians for every man slain, this sentence, though it fell on the most distinguished families of Egypt, would seem mild enough according to the scale of oriental punishments; as 2000 men were brought out for execution, the ship must have had the usual crew of a Greek trireme. Whether the son of Psammenitus was really put to death for the herald, we must leave to the legend; Ctesias tells us only of the deportation of Psammenitus and 6000 Egyptians to Susa.