Note 93 — Chapter LXIX · CYRUS THE YOUNGER AND THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS.

Xen. Anab. i, 10, 3. The accomplishments and fascinations of this Phokæan lady, and the great esteem in which she was held first by Cyrus and afterwards by Artaxerxes, have been exaggerated into a romantic story, in which we cannot tell what may be the proportion of truth (see Ælian, V. H. xii, 1; Plutarch, Artaxerx. c. 26, 27; Justin, x, 2). Both Plutarch and Justin state that the subsequent enmity between Artaxerxes and his son Darius, which led to the conspiracy of the latter against his father, and to his destruction when the conspiracy was discovered, arose out of the passion of Darius for her. But as that transaction certainly happened at the close of the long life and reign of Artaxerxes, who reigned forty-six years—and as she must have been then sixty years old, if not more—we may fairly presume that the cause of the family tragedy must have been something different.

Compare the description of the fate of Berenikê of Chios, and Monimê of Miletus, wives of Mithridates king of Pontus, during the last misfortunes of that prince (Plutarch, Lucullus, c. 18).