Darius answered, “Unfeeling man, you give a pretty name to an ugly act if you say that it was on account of those besieged that you did for yourself past cure. Why, you poor fool, will the enemy surrender sooner because you mutilated yourself? How could you not have been out of your mind to disfigure yourself?”

“Had I told you,” said Zopyrus, “what I intended to do, you would not have let me; but now I have done it on my own. Now, then, if you do your part we shall take Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, AsiaBabylon. I shall desert to the city as I am, and I shall say to them that I suffered this at your hands; and I think that I shall persuade them, and thus gain a command.