Note 57 — Chapter XX · FROM TYRE TO THE TIGRIS

Democedes was a physician of Crotona, whose services were engaged by the cities of Ægina and Athens and by Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, in succession, at increasing salaries (£344, £406, £487 10s.). He was taken prisoner in company with Polycrates and sent up to Susa. Here he remained for a time unnoticed among the king’s slaves. Darius chanced to sprain his ankle, in leaping from his horse, and the Egyptian physicians who were called in failed to effect a cure. Some courtier had chanced to hear that Polycrates had had a famous physician in attendance on him, and suggested that his advice should be asked. He was brought as he was, “clothed in rags and clanking his chains,” into the king’s presence. It was only under threat of torture that he confessed his knowledge of medicine. But he treated the injury with success, and was amply rewarded, the king giving him two pairs of golden chains, and each of the royal wives dipping a saucer into a chest of gold coins and pouring the contents into his hands so bountifully that the slave who followed him was enriched by the stray pieces. He afterwards healed Atossa, Darius’s principal queen, of a dangerous carbuncle. By a stratagem which I have not space here to describe he got back to his native city, where he married the daughter of the great athlete Milo, and finally settled.