Varying degrees of tragic stylization are also visible in other stories of Persian and Hellenic monarchs. Tragic effects cluster at the beginning and end of Herodotus’ “biography” of Cyrus. The story of his birth has folktale roots enhanced by various tragic features (intra-familial violence, fated doom precipitated by preventive measures, a variation on the Atreusmahl myth); the story of his last campaign includes tragic vocabulary and a corrective reference to the Aeschylean law of “learning through suffering.” His successor Cambyses is portrayed as a tragic protagonist on his deathbed, when he learns “too late” the true meaning of divine communications he had previously misinterpreted, with disastrous personal and political consequences. Among Greek tyrants, Herodotus portrays the Samian Polycrates and the Corinthian Periander in tragic fashion, the latter in a narrative that bears several hallmarks of Sophoclean tragedy, including sibling conflict over devotion to a dead parent (cf. the playwright’s Electra).