course; and for this reason the Persians say that
the Hellenes leave off dinner hungry, because after dinner they have
nothing worth mentioning served up as dessert, whereas if any
good dessert were served up they would not stop eating so soon. To
wine-drinking they are very much given, and it is not permitted for
a man to vomit or to make water in presence of another. Thus do they
provide against these things; and they are wont to deliberate when
drinking hard about the most important of their affairs, and whatsoever
conclusion has pleased them in their deliberation, this on the next day,
when they are sober, the master of the house in which they happen to be
when they deliberate lays before them for discussion: and if it pleases
them when they are sober also, they adopt it, but if it does not
please them, they let it go: and that on which they have had the first
deliberation when they are sober, they consider again when they are
drinking.

134. When they meet one another in the roads, by this you may discern
whether those who meet are of equal rank,--for instead of greeting by
words they kiss one another on the mouth; but if one of them is a little
inferior to the other, they kiss one another on the cheeks, and if one
is of much less noble rank than the other, he falls down before him and
does worship to him. 140 And they honour of all most after themselves
those nations which dwell nearest to them, and next those which dwell
next nearest, and so they go on giving honour in proportion to distance;
and they hold least in honour those who dwell furthest off from
themselves, esteeming themselves to be by far the best of all the human
race on every point, and thinking that others possess merit according
to the proportion which is here stated, 141 and that those who dwell
furthest from themselves are the worst. And under the supremacy of the
Medes the various nations used also to govern one another according to
the same rule as the Persians observe in giving honour, 142 the Medes
governing the whole and in particular those who dwelt nearest to
themselves, and these having rule over those who bordered upon them, and
those again over the nations that were next to them: for the race went
forward thus ever from government by themselves to government through
others.

135. The Persians more than any other men admit foreign usages; for they
both wear the Median dress judging it to be more comely than their own,
and also for fig