no consideration whatever. Then he asked a certain tribe of Indians what they would take not to eat the bodies of their fathers, but to burn them like the Greeks? They cried aloud, and begged him not to blaspheme. So Sir John Lubbock, in his 'Prehistoric Times,' relates that the Tahitians think it indecent to dine in company; and that as soon as a child is born he is accounted the head of his family, and takes precedence of his father. And the tyranny of public opinion in matters indifferent, of which we complain so often, finds its strongest exemplification among the semi-brutal savages of Australia.
The death of Smerdis had come to the knowledge of but few persons in Persia, and while Cambyses was absent in Egypt, the priest-caste of the Magi made a bold attempt at a revolution. It is probable that under Cyrus and Cambyses this caste, with their peculiar tenets, had been discouraged. A certain Magian, who was a kind of groom of the palace, had a brother who resembled greatly the dead Smerdis, and who (according to Herodotus) bore the same name.[1] Patizethes seated this brother on the throne, and sent out a proclamation that henceforth all men were to do homage to Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and no longer to Cambyses. When Cambyses heard of this, he thought that Prexaspes had not done his errand, and that it was really his brother Smerdis who had revolted against him; but Prexaspes satisfied him that his orders had been duly executed, and that this
- ↑ The Behistun inscription gives the name as Gomates, and does not speak of two brothers. Mr Rawlinson seems to prove clearly that the revolution was a religious one, though nothing to that effect appears in Herodotus.—See his Essay, iii. 548.
