And assuredly we have no greater reason to fear the army which wanders aboutContemptuous, recalling Aristoph. Ach. 81. with the King nor the valor of the Persians themselves; for they were clearly shown by the troops who marched inlandThe famous “ten thousand” led by Cleararchus, a Spartan, were employed by Cyrus, the younger son of Dareius, against his brother Artaxerxes, the Persian king, 401-399. The death of Cyrus, due to his rashness in the very moment of victory, deprived the rebellion of its leader and left the Greek army stranded in the heart of Asia. Xenophon, who has described this expedition in the , led the remnant of this army after many months of hardship back to the shore of the Black Sea. See Grote, viii. pp. 3O3 ff. The expedition, though unsuccessful in its purpose, was regarded as a triumph of courage and a demonstration of the superiority of the Greeks over the Persians in warfare. The episode is used in Isoc. 5.90-93 with the same point as here. with Cyrus to be no better than the King's soldiers who live on the coast. I refrain from speaking of all the other battles in which the Persians were worsted, and I am willing to grant that they were split with factions, and so where not inclined to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the struggle against the King's brother.

But after Cyrus had been killed, and all the people of Asia had joined forces, even under these favorable conditions they made such a disgraceful failure of the war as to leave for those who are in the habit of vaunting Persian valor not a word to say. For they had to deal with only six thousand HellenesXen. Anab. 5.3.3 gives the survivors of the battle of Cunaxa as 8600.—not picked troops, but men who, owing to stress of circumstances, were unable to live in their own cities.Cf. Isoc. 4.168; Isoc. 5.96, 120, 121; Isoc. Letter 9.9. These were, moreover, unfamiliar with the country; they had been deserted by their allies; they had been betrayed by those who made the expedition with them; they had been deprived of the general whom they had followed;

and yet the Persians were so inferior to these men that the King, finding himself in difficult straits and having no confidence in the force which was under his own command, did not scruple to arrest the captains of the auxiliaries in violation of the truce,Clearchus and four other captains were invited to a parley, under a truce, and treacherously slain (Xen. Anab. 2.5.31). Cf. Isoc. 5.91, where Isocrates uses the same language as here. hoping by this lawless act to throw their army into confusion, and preferring to offend against the gods rather than join issue openly with these soldiers.

But when he failed in this plot—for the soldiers not only stood together but bore their misfortune nobly,—then, as they set out on their journey home, he sent with them Tissaphernes and the Persian cavalry. But although these kept plotting against them throughout the entire journey,Tissaphernes, one of the four generals of Artaxerxes, engaged to furnish safe escort to the Greeks but, in fact, beset their march with treachery (Xen. Anab. 2.4.9). the Hellenes continued their march to the end as confidently as if they had been under friendly escort, dreading most of all the uninhabited regions of that country, and deeming it the best possible fortune to fall in with as many of the enemy as possible.

Let me sum up the whole matter: These men did not set out to get plunder or to capture a town, but took the field against the King himself, and yet they returned in greater security than ambassadors who go to him on a friendly mission. Therefore it seems to me that in every quarter the Persians have clearly exposed their degeneracy; for along the coast of Asia they have been defeated in many battles, and when they crossed to Europe they were duly punished, either perishing miserably or saving their lives with dishonor; and to crown all, they made themselves objects of derision under the very walls of their King's palace.See Xen. Anab. 2.4.4. Cf. Isoc. 9.58.

And none of these things has happened by accident, but all of them have been due to natural causes; for it is not possible for people who are reared and governed as are the Persians, either to have a part in any other form of virtue or to set up on the field of battle trophies of victory over their foes.For effeminacy of the Persians see Isoc. 5.124. For how could either an able general or a good soldier be produced amid such ways of life as theirs? Most of their population is a mob without discipline or experience of dangers, which has lost all stamina for war and has been trained more effectively for servitude than are the slaves in our country.

Those, on the other hand, who stand highest in repute among them have never governed their lives by dictates of equality or of common interest or of loyalty to the state; on the contrary, their whole existence consists of insolence toward some, and servility towards others—a manner of life than which nothing could be more demoralizing to human nature. Because they are rich, they pamper their bodies; but because they are subject to one man's power, they keep their souls in a state of abject and cringing fear, parading themselves at the door of the royal palace, prostrating themselves, and in every way schooling themselves to humility of spirit, falling on their knees before a mortal man, addressing him as a divinity, and thinking more lightly of the gods than of men.

So it is that those of the Persians who come down to the sea, whom they term satraps,Viceroys of the king—provincial governors. do not dishonor the training which they receive at home, but cling steadfastly to the same habits: they are faithless to their friends and cowardly to their foes; their lives are divided between servility on the one hand and arrogance on the other; they treat their allies with contempt and pay court to their enemies.

For example, they maintained the army under Agesilaus at their own expense for eight months,See Xen. Hell. 3.4.26; Grote, ix. p. 92. but they deprived the soldiers who were fighting in the Persian cause of their pay for double that length of time; they distributed an hundred talents among the captors of Cisthene,Cisthene was probably a town in Asia Minor captured by Agesilaus in the campaign. but treated more outrageously than their prisoners of war the troops who supported them in the campaign against Cyprus.