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While the seven were thus taking counsel together, it so chanced that
the following events were happening: The Magi had been thinking what
they had best do, and had resolved for many reasons to make a friend of
Prexaspes. They knew how cruelly he had been outraged by Cambyses,
who slew his son with an arrow; they were also aware that it was by his
hand that Smerdis the son of Cyrus fell, and that he was the only
person privy to that prince's death; and they further found him to be
held in the highest esteem by all the Persians. So they called him to
them, made him their friend, and bound him by a promise and by oaths
to keep silence about the fraud which they were practising upon the
Persians, and not discover it to any one; and they pledged themselves
that in this case they would give him thousands of gifts of every sort
and kind. So Prexaspes agreed, and the Magi, when they found that
they had persuaded him so far, went on to another proposal, and said
they would assemble the Persians at the foot of the palace wall, and
he should mount one of the towers and harangue them from it, assuring
them that Smerdis the son of Cyrus, and none but he, ruled the
land. This they bade him do, because Prexaspes was a man of great
weight with his countrymen, and had often declared in public that
Smerdis the son of Cyrus was still alive, and denied being his murderer.
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