Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. 67
Ochus soon after advanced against Sidon, with a
large army, and having
butchered 600 of the inhabit-
ants, who came out to make terms with him, ap-
proached the city, with the intention of investing it.
It is said that the Sidonians, perceiving
further resist-
ance hopeless, then retired each to his own house,
and setting it on fire, left nothing but its ashes for
the Persian invaders : these, however, fetched a con-
siderable sum, the purchasers hoping to recover from
the ruins a large quantity of gold and silver. On the
destruction of Sidon, Mentor readily transferred him-
self and his Greek mercenaries to Artaxerxes, and took
the chief command of the Greek contingents, in the
second expedition of Ochus against Egypt. The
chief general of the Persians was Bagoas, an eunuch.
It might have been supposed that as Nectanebo
had the advantage of a country
intersected with
canals, with many strongholds, held by nearly 20,000
more Greeks, he would have made a prolonged
resistance. Without, however, making one firm stand
anywhere, he fell back on Memphis, leaving his
garrisons, half Greek and half Egyptian, to be cajoled
or slaughtered, as happened to suit the Persians ; nay
more, on the approach of Ochus to Memphis, he fled
precipitately southwards into Ethiopia. Ochus then re-
enacted the scenes attributed to Cambyses ; but with a
bloodthirstiness and cruelty his own, and having com-
pletely crushed out the last seeds of rebellion, returned
to Susa, with an enormous booty. Bagoas remained
till the death of Ochus the chief administrator of the
internal affairs of the empire ; while Mentor, on the
other hand, received and secured the complete com-