Summary: Persia’s wars with Greeks and Egyptians caused revolts and deaths.
Some Greeks were captured or rescued and then won favor at the Persian court by skill or gifts.
Others fled with treasure or sought exile, showing how war changed people’s fortunes.
But the fact is that they pervert history in order to claim relationship with the house of Cyrus. (View Highlight)
The Arabs keep such pledges more re- ligiously than almost any other people. They plight faith with the forms following. When two men would swear a friendship, they stand on each side of a third: he with a sharp stone makes a cut on the inside of the hand of each near the middle finger, and, taking a piece from their dress, dips it in the blood of each, and moistens therewith seven stones lying in the midst, calling the while on Bacchus and Urania. (View Highlight)
If, then, you strike the Persian skulls, even with a pebble, they are so weak, that you break a hole in them; but the Egyptian skulls are so strong, that you may smite them with a stone and you will scarcely break them in. (View Highlight)
For the Persian wont is to treat the sons of kings with honour, and even to give their fathers’ kingdoms to the children of such as revolt from them. (View Highlight)
This was truly an impious command to give, for the Persians hold fire to be a god, and never by any chance burn their dead. (View Highlight)
When a man falls from splendour and plenty into beggary at the thres- hold of old age, one may well weep for him. (View Highlight)
they deem it wrong to give the corpse of a man to a god; and with the Egyptians, because they be- lieve fire to be a live animal, which eats what- ever it can seize, and then, glutted with the food, dies with the matter which it feeds upon. (View Highlight)
The Ethiopians to whom this embassy was sent are said to be the tallest and handsomest men in the whole world. I (View Highlight)
Like a senseless madman as he was, no sooner did he receive the report of the Icthyophagi than he began his march, bidding the Greeks who were with his army remain where they were, and taking only his land force with him. (View Highlight)
most of them lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, while some even went beyond that age —they ate boiled flesh, and had for their drink nothing but milk. (View Highlight)
When the priests returned bringing Apis with them, Cambyses, like the harebrained person that he was, drew his dagger, and aimed at the belly of the animal, but missed his mark, and stabbed him in the thigh. (View Highlight)
Now the royal judges are certain picked men among the Persians, who hold their office for life, or until they are found guilty of some mis- conduct. (View Highlight)
It would be by no means strange, therefore, if his mind were af- fected in some degree, seeing that his body la- boured under so sore a malady. (View Highlight)
“Oh! king, allow not thyself to give way entirely to thy youth, and the heat of thy temper, but check and con- trol thyself. It is well to look to consequences, and in forethought is true wisdom. (View Highlight)
For if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own us- ages far surpass those of all others. Unless, therefore, a man was mad, it is not likely that he would make sport of such matters. (View Highlight)
Pindar was right, in my judgment, when he said, “Law is the king o’er all.” (View Highlight)
It is a pleasure to hear of a friend and ally pros- pering, but thy exceeding prosperity does not cause me joy, forasmuch as I know that the gods are envious. (View Highlight)
My wish for myself and for those
whom
I love is to be now successful, and now
to meet with a check; thus passing through life
amid alternate good and ill, rather than with
perpetual good fortune. (View Highlight)
how much better a thing it is to be envied than pitied, and how dangerous it is to indulge anger against parents and su- periors, (View Highlight)
Power is a slippery thing — it has many suitors; (View Highlight)
I have dwelt the longer on the affairs of the Samians, because three of the greatest works in all Greece were made by them. (View Highlight)
I charge you all, and specially such of you as are Achaemenids, that ye do not tame- ly allow the kingdom to go back to the Medes. Recover it one way or another, by force or fraud; by fraud, if it is by fraud that they have seized on it; by force, if force has helped them in their enterprise. (View Highlight)
He had reigned in all seven years and five months, and left no issue behind him, male or female. (View Highlight)
there are many things easy enough in act, which by speech it is hard to explain. There are also things con- cerning which speech is easy, but no noble ac- tion follows when the speech is done. (View Highlight)
An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the same ob- ject.
Men lie, because they think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is alike. (View Highlight)
it seems advisable, that we should no longer have a single man to rule over us —the rule of one is neither good nor pleasant. (View Highlight)
Give a person this power, and straightway his manifold good things puff him up with pride, while envy is so natural to human kind that it cannot but arise in him. But pride and envy together in- clude all wickedness —both of them leading on to deeds of savage violence. (View Highlight)
The rule of the many, on the other hand, has, in the first place, the fairest of names, to wit, isonomy; and further it is free from all those outrages which a king is wont to commit. (View Highlight)
The Persians ob- serve this day with one accord, and keep it more strictly than any other in the whole year. It is then that they hold the great festival, which they call the Magophonia. (View Highlight)
For there is nothing so void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. (View Highlight)
The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what is he about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. (View Highlight)
Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democra- cies; but let us choose out from the citizens a certain number of the worthiest, and put the government into their hands. (View Highlight)
for take these three forms of government —democ- racy, oligarchy, and monarchy —and let them each be at their best, I maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two. What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state? (View Highlight)
The Arabians were never subject as slaves to the Persians, but had a league of friendship with them from the time when they brought Cambyses on his way as he went into Egypt; (View Highlight)
Just at the same time, though the sky was clear and bright, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a thunder- clap. It seemed as if the heavens conspired with Darius, and hereby inaugurated him king: so the five other nobles leaped with one accord from their steeds, and bowed down before him and owned him for their king. (View Highlight)
the Persians say that Darius was a huckster, Cambyses a master, and Cyrus a father; for Darius looked to making a gain in everything; Cambyses was harsh and reckless; while Cyrus was gentle, and pro- cured them all manner of goods. (View Highlight)
The Indians, who are more numerous than any other nation with which we are acquaint- ed, paid a tribute exceeding that of every other people, to wit, three hundred and sixty talents of gold-dust. This was the twentieth satrapy. (View Highlight)
The Great King stores away the tribute which he receives after this fashion —he melts it down, and, while it is in a liquid state, runs it into earthen vessels, which are afterwards removed, leaving the metal in a solid mass. When money is wanted, he coins as much of this bullion as the occasion requires. (View Highlight)
There is another set of Indians whose customs are very different. They refuse to put any live animal to death, they sow no corn, and have no dwelling-houses. Vegetables are their only food. (View Highlight)
All the tribes which I have mentioned live together like the brute beasts: they have also all the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the Ethiopians. (View Highlight)
The tribes of Indians are numerous, and do not all speak the same language —some are wandering tribes, others not. (View Highlight)
It seems as if the extreme regions of the earth were blessed by nature with the most ex- cellent productions, just in the same way that Greece enjoys a climate more excellently tem- pered than any other country. (View Highlight)
For timid ani- mals which are a prey to others are all made to produce young abundantly, that so the spe- cies may not be entirely eaten up and lost; while savage and noxious creatures are made very unfruitful. (View Highlight)