e would allow food to be brought for
the servants, but not for the free men; on a march he would lead the
slaves to the water-springs as he led the beasts of burden. Or when it
was the hour of breakfast he would wait himself till they had taken a
snatch of food and stayed their wolfish hunger; and the end of it was
they called him their father even as the nobles did, because he cared
for them, but the object of his care was to keep them slaves for ever.

[45] Thus he secured the safety of the Persian empire. He himself, he
felt sure, ran no danger from the massages of the conquered people; he
saw they had no courage, no unity, and no discipline, and, moreover, not
one of them could ever come near him, day or night. [46] But there were
others whom he knew to be true warriors, who carried arms, and who
held by one another, commanders of horse and foot, many of them men of
spirit, confident, as he could plainly see, of their own power to rule,
men who were in close touch with his own guards, and many of them in
constant intercourse with himself; as indeed was essential if he was
to make any use of them at all. It was from them that danger was to be
feared; and that in a thousand ways. [47] How was he to guard against
it? He rejected the idea of disarming them; he thought this unjust,
and that it would lead to the dissolution of the empire. To refuse them
admission into his presence, to show them his distrust, would be, he
considered, a declaration of war. [48] But there was one method, he
felt, worth all the rest, an honourable method and one that would secure
his safety absolutely; to win their friendship if he could, and make
them more devoted to himself than to each other. I will now endeavour
to set forth the methods, so far as I conceive them, by which he gained
their love.

[C.2] In the first place he never lost an opportunity of showing
kindliness wherever he could, convinced that just as it is not easy to
love those who hate us, so it is scarcely possible to feel enmity for
those who love us and wish us well. [2] So long as he had lacked the
power to confer benefits by wealth, all he could do then was to show
his personal care for his comrades and his soldiers, to labour in their
behalf, manifest his joy in their good fortune and his sympathy in their
sorrows, and try to win them in that way. But when the time came for the
gifts of wealth, he realised that of all the kindnesses between man
and man none come with a