MERGE TO GYRENE.

561 Libyans, either fearing to meet him in the field, or wishing to draw the Cyreneans from their heights to attack them with more advantage in the plains, retreated to the eastward, and joined the native tribes which occupied the country between Gyrene and Egypt.

Here they were imprudently followed by the king, and an engagement took place, in which the Cyreneans were defeated, and seven thousand of their heavy-armed troops were left dead upon the field of battle. The consequences of this defeat were fatal to Arcesilaus ; for soon after his return to Gyrene he was strangled by his brother Learchus, when disabled by weakness resulting from indisposition ; the murderer, however, did not long survive him, for he was himself put to death by means of a stratagem, concerted, we are told, by Eryxo, the wife of Arcesilaus, who revenged in this manner tlie loss of her husband. To Arcesilaus succeeded another Battus, who is said by Herodotus to have been lame ; and in his reign ambassadors were sent to Mantinea (according to the advice of the Oracle), to entreat the mediation of the Arcadians, in the disputes which had already been the cause of so much bloodshed. Demonax was in consequence selected by the IMantineans, a person highly respected for his probity ; who, on arriving at Gyrene, divided the Greeks into three separate classes, according to the countries from which they originally came, and gave them a new form of government, which continued in force during Battus’ reign. The son of this Battus, however, Arcesilaus, refused to acknowledge the new constitution, by which many privileges of the former kings of Gyrene had been transferred to the body of the people. Insurrections of the populace