defences and make preparations for a desperate resistance.  The approach, however, of Ochus, at the head of an army of 330,000 men, shook the resolution of the Phoenician monarch, who endeavored to purchase his own pardon by treacherously delivering up a hundred of the principal citizens of Sidon into the hands of the Persian king, and then admitting him within the defences of the town.  Ochus, with the savage cruelty which was his chief characteristic, caused the hundred citizens to be transfixed with javelins, and when 500 more came out as suppliants to entreat his mercy, relentlessly consigned them to the same fate.  Nor did the traitor Tennes derive any advantage from his guilty bargain.  Ochus, having obtained from him all he needed, instead of rewarding his desertion, punished his rebellion with death.  Hereupon the Sidonians, understanding that they had nothing to hope from submission, formed the dreadful resolution of destroying themselves and their town.  They had previously, to prevent the desertion of any of their number, burnt their ships.  Now they shut themselves up in their houses, and set fire each to his own dwelling.  Forty thousand persons lost their lives in the conflagration; and the city was reduced to a heap of ruins, which Ochus sold for a large sum.  Thus ended the Phoenician revolt.  Among its most important results was the transfer of his services to the Persian king on the part of Mentor the Rhodian, who appears to have been the ablest of the mercenary leaders of whom Greece at this time produced so many.

The reduction of Sidon was followed closely by the invasion of Egypt.  Ochus, besides his 330,000 Asiatics, had now a force of 14,000 Greeks—­6000 furnished by the Greek cities of Asia Minor; 4000 under Mentor, consisting of the troops which he had brought to the aid of Tennes from Egypt; 3000 sent by Argos; and 1000 from Thebes.  He divided his numerous armament into three bodies, and placed at the head of each two generals—­one Persian and one Greek.  The Greek commanders were Lacrates of Thebes, Mentor of Rhodes, and Nicostratus of Argos, a man of enormous strength, who regarded himself as a second Hercules, and adopted the traditional costume of that hero—­a club and a lion’s skin.  The Persians were Rhossaces, Aristazanes, and Bagoas, the chief of the eunuchs.  Nectanebo was only able to oppose to this vast array an army less than one third of the size.  Twenty thousand, however, out of the 100,000 troops at his disposal were Greeks; he occupied the Nile and its various branches with a numerous navy the character of the country, intersected by numerous canals, and full of strongly fortified towns, was in his favor; and he might have been expected to make a prolonged, if not even a successful, resistance.  But he was deficient in generals, and over-confident in his own powers of command:  the Greek captains out-manoeuvred him; and no sooner did he find one line of his defences forced than his ill-founded confidence