Thalia   

went over to the enemy. To do this seeming to him a light matter, he
mutilated himself in a way that was utterly without remedy. For he cut
off his own nose and ears, and then, clipping his hair close and
flogging himself with a scourge, he came in this plight before Darius.
Wrath stirred within the king at the sight of a man of his lofty
rank in such a condition; leaping down from his throne, he exclaimed
aloud, and asked Zopyrus who it was that had disfigured him, and
what he had done to be so treated. Zopyrus answered, "There is not a
man in the world, but thou, O king, that could reduce me to such a
plight- no stranger's hands have wrought this work on me, but my own
only. I maimed myself I could not endure that the Assyrians should
laugh at the Persians." "Wretched man," said Darius, "thou coverest
the foulest deed with the fairest possible name, when thou sayest
thy maiming is to help our siege forward. How will thy
disfigurement, thou simpleton, induce the enemy to yield one day the
sooner? Surely thou hadst gone out of thy mind when thou didst so
misuse thyself." "Had I told thee," rejoined the other, "what I was
bent on doing, thou wouldest not have suffered it; as it is, I kept my
own counsel, and so accomplished my plans. Now, therefore, if there be
no failure on thy part, we shall take Babylon. I will desert to the
enemy as I am, and when I get into their city I will tell them that it
is by thee I have been thus treated. I think they will believe my
words, and entrust me with a command of troops. Thou, on thy part,
must wait till the tenth day after I am entered within the town, and
then place near to the gates of Semiramis a detachment of thy army,
troops for whose loss thou wilt care little, a thousand men. Wait,
after that, seven days, and post me another detachment, two thousand
strong, at the Nineveh gates; then let twenty days pass, and at the
end of that time station near the Chaldaean gates a body of four
thousand. Let neither these nor the former troops be armed with any
weapons but their swords- those thou mayest leave them. After the
twenty days are over, bid thy whole army attack the city on every
side, and put me two bodies of Persians, one at the Belian, the
other at the Cissian gates; for I expect, that, on account of my
successes, the Babylonians will entrust everything, even the keys of
their gates, to me. Then it will be for me and my Persians to do the
rest."
Having left these instructions, Zopyrus fled towards the gates
of the town, often looking back, to give himself the air of a
deserter. The men upon the towers, whose business it was to keep a
lookout, observing him, hastened down, and setting one of the gates
slightly ajar, questioned him who he was, and on what errand he had
come. He replied that he was Zopyrus, and had deserted to them from
the Persians. Then the doorkeepers, when they heard this, carried
him at once before the Magistrates. Introduced into the assembly, he
began to bewail his misfortunes, telling them that Darius had
maltreated him in the way they could see, only because he had given
advice that the siege should be raised, since there seemed no hope
of taking the city. "And now," he went on to say, "my coming to you,
Babylonians, will prove the greatest gain that you could possibly
receive, while to Darius and the Persians it will be the severest
loss. Verily he by whom I have been so mutilated shall not escape
unpunished. And truly all the paths of his counsels are known to
me." Thus did Zopyrus speak.
The Babylonians, seeing a Persian of such exalted rank in so
grievous a plight, his nose and ears cut off, his body red with
marks of scourging and with blood, had no suspicion but that he
spoke the truth, and was really come to be their friend and helper.
They were ready, therefore, to grant him anything that he asked; and
on his suing for a command, they entrusted to him a body of troops,
with the help of which he proceeded to do as he had arranged with
Darius. On the tenth day after his flight he led out his detachment,
and surrounding the thousand men, whom Darius according to agreement
had sent first, he fell upon them and slew them all. Then the