persuaded of my own superiority and the power of my troops,
the more I should be inclined to stand on my guard, just as we put our
greatest treasures in the safest place we have." [27] "But how can a man
make sure that he will gain?" "Ah, there you come," said the father,
"to a most weighty matter. This is no easy task, I can tell you. If your
general is to succeed he must prove himself an arch-plotter, a king of
craft, full of deceits and stratagems, a cheat, a thief, and a robber,
defrauding and overreaching his opponent at every turn."

"Heavens!" said Cyrus, and burst out laughing, "is this the kind of man
you want your son to be!" "I want him to be," said the father, "as just
and upright and law-abiding as any man who ever lived." [28] "But how
comes it," said his son, "that the lessons you taught us in boyhood and
youth were exactly opposed to what you teach me now?" "Ah," said the
father, "those lessons were for friends and fellow-citizens, and for
them they still hold good, but for your enemies--do you not remember
that you were also taught to do much harm?"

"No, father," he answered, "I should say certainly not."

"Then why were you taught to shoot? Or to hurl the javelin? Or to trap
wild-boars? Or to snare stags with cords and caltrops? And why did you
never meet the lion or the bear or the leopard in fair fight on equal
terms, but were always trying to steal some advantage over them? Can you
deny that all that was craft and deceit and fraud and greed?"

[29] "Why, of course," answered the young man, "in dealing with animals,
but with human beings it was different; if I was ever suspected of a
wish to cheat another, I was punished, I know, with many stripes."

"True," said the father, "and for the matter of that we did not permit
you to draw bow or hurl javelin against human beings; we taught you
merely to aim at a mark. But why did we teach you that? Not so that you
might injure your friends, either then or now, but that in war you might
have the skill to make the bodies of living men your targets. So also we
taught you the arts of deceit and craft and greed and covetousness, not
among men it is true, but among beasts; we did not mean you ever to turn
these accomplishments against your friends, but in war we wished you to
be something better than raw recruits."

[30] "But, father," Cyrus answered, "if to do men good and to do men
harm were both of them things we ought to learn, surely it would have
been