Cyropaedia

And after dinner, as the party was breaking up,[*](A Socrates in Armenia)Cyrus asked: Tell me, Tigranes, where is the man who used to hunt with us? You seemed to admire him very much.Ah, he replied, did not my father here have him put to death? What wrong did he find him doing? He said that he was corrupting me. And yet, Cyrus, said he, he was so noble and so good that when he was about to be put to death, he called me to him and said: Be not angry with your father, Tigranes, for putting me to death; for he does it, not from any spirit of malice, but from ignorance, and when men do wrong from ignorance, I believe they do it quite against their will.

Poor man!Cyrus exclaimed on hearing this.Here the Armenian king interrupted: Do not men who discover strangers in intercourse with their wives kill them, not on the ground that they make their wives more inclined to folly, but in the belief that they alienate from them their wives’ affections—for this reason they treat them as enemies. So I was jealous of him because I thought that he made my son regard him more highly than he did me.

Well, by the gods, king of Armenia, said Cyrus, your sin seems human; and you, Tigranes, must forgive your father.Then when they had thus conversed and showed their friendly feelings toward one another, as was natural after a reconciliation, they entered their carriages and drove away with their wives, happy.