The Madness of Cambyses

An engaging account detailing the brutal final 7 years of the rule of Egyptian Tyrant Cambyses from Herodotus.

It’s an engaging multi-character profile of empire in the 6th century BC, but most valuably, the book shows how the house-of-cards-esque hierarchical governance of the age, at the whim of erratic and unpredictable behavior from rulers, affected the fate of the Mediterranean. Its unclear whether Cambyses was legitimately mentally ill, but his decision making as a profile of madness and isolation is also of interest.