tribe and people. The same is true of the Thracians and the Illyrians,
and indeed of all other nations within our ken; in Europe, at any
rate, their condition is even now one of independence, and of such
separation as would seem to be permanent. Now this was the state in
which Cyrus found the tribes and peoples of Asia when, at the head of
a small Persian force, he started on his career. The Medes and the
Hyrcanians accepted his leadership willingly, but it was through
conquest that he won Syria, Assyria, Arabia, Cappadocia, the two
Phrygias, Lydia, Caria, Phoenicia, and Babylonia. Then he established
his rule over the Bactrians, Indians, and Cilicians, over the Sakians,
Paphlagonians, and Magadidians, over a host of other tribes the very
names of which defy the memory of the chronicler; and last of all he
brought the Hellenes in Asia beneath his sway, and by a descent on the
seaboard Cyprus and Egypt also.

[5] It is obvious that among this congeries of nations few, if any,
could have spoken the same language as himself, or understood one
another, but none the less Cyrus was able so to penetrate that vast
extent of country by the sheer terror of his personality that the
inhabitants were prostrate before him: not one of them dared lift hand
against him. And yet he was able, at the same time, to inspire them
all with so deep a desire to please him and win his favour that all
they asked was to be guided by his judgment and his alone. Thus he
knit to himself a complex of nationalities so vast that it would have
taxed a man's endurance merely to traverse his empire in any one
direction, east or west or south or north, from the palace which was
its centre. For ourselves, considering his title to our admiration
proved, we set ourselves to inquire what his parentage might have been
and his natural parts, and how he was trained and brought up to attain
so high a pitch of excellence in the government of men. And all we