that he, when he was judge, had pronounced an unjust sentence, after receiving a bribe. And he was already hung up; when Darius, taking an account with himself of the things done by him, discovered that his deserving actions towards the royal house were much more numerous than his misdeeds. On finding this, acknowledging that he had acted with more haste than wisdom, he ordered the man to be cut down. Thus he escaped the punishment decreed by Darius, and survived.
VI.OROETES AND POLYCRATES.
The cause of Oroetes’ jealotisy of Polycrates.
154.Oroetes the Persian, being appointed by Cyrus governor of Sardis, planned in his mind a wicked deed; for he desired to seize and kill Polycrates the Samian, by whom he had been injured neither in any deed nor word, and whom he had never seen before; and this, as most relate, for some such cause as this. When this Oroetes was sitting at the king’s gate, and (with him) another Persian, whose name was Mitrobates, they both are said to have commenced (lit. fallen into) a dispute in words. Now they say that Mitrobates, when they were disputing about their courage, said this to Oroetes: ‘Art thou the man who hast not reduced the island of Samos, (though) so close to thy government, under the power of the Great Bang, though it is so easy to be subdued that some one of the inhabitants, revolting with fifteen armed men, has got possession of it, and even now rules in it?’ They say, therefore, that Oroetes, on hearing this, (while) taking the rebuke ill, did not so much desire to take vengeance on the man who had said this to him, as to destroy utterly Polycrates, on whose account he had been upbraided badly.
Another account.
155.There are some, (but) not so many, who tell us that Oroetes sent a herald to Samos, to ask for something or other (for neither is this handed down to recollection); but that Polycrates then happened to have laid down in the hall, and that Anacreon of Ters was with him: and when the herald of Oroetes, approaching him, had spoken, that Polycrates then
