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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

decision. When Cambyses, therefore, put his question to these judges, they gave him an answer which was at once true and safe:—'They did not find any law,' they said, 'allowing a brother to take his sister to wife, but they found a law that the king of the Persians might do whatever he pleased.' And so they neither warped the law through fear of Cambyses, nor ruined themselves by over stiffly maintaining the law; but they brought another quite distinct law to the king's help, which allowed him to have his wish. Cambyses, therefore, married the object of his love, and no longer time afterwards he took to wife another sister. It was the younger of these who went with him into Egypt, and there suffered death at his hands." . . . . . . "The story," concerning the manner of her death, "which the Greeks tell, is, that Cambyses had set a young dog to fight the cub of a lioness—his wife looking on at the time. Now the dog was getting the worse, when a pup of the same litter broke his chain and came to his brother's aid; then the two dogs together

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