Cyropaedia

And the institutions which Cyrus inaugurated as a means of securing the kingdom permanently to himself and the Persians, as has been set forth in the foregoing narrative, these the succeeding kings have preserved unchanged even to this day.

And it is the same with these as with everything else: whenever the officer in charge is better, the administration of the institution is purer; but when he is worse, the administration is more corrupt. Accordingly, the nobles came to Cyrus’s court with their horses and their spears, for so it had been decreed by the best of those who with him had made the conquest of the kingdom.

Cyrus next appointed officers to have charge of[*](Cyrus appoints many officers) the various departments; for example, tax-collectors, paymasters, boards of public works, keepers of his estates, and stewards of his commissary department. He appointed also as superintendents of his horses and hounds those who he thought would keep these creatures in a condition most efficient for his use.

But he did not in the same way leave to others the precaution of seeing that those whom he thought he ought to have as his associates in establishing the permanence of his success should be the ablest men available, but he considered that this responsibility was his own. For he knew that if ever there should be occasion for fighting, he would then have to select from their number men to stand beside and behind him, men in whose company also he would have to meet the greatest dangers; from their number likewise he knew that he would have to appoint his captains both of foot and of horse.

Besides, if generals should be needed where he himself could not be, he knew that they would have to be commissioned from among that same number. And he knew that he must employ some of these to be governors and satraps of cities or of whole nations, and that he must send others on embassies—an office which he considered of the very first importance for obtaining without war whatever he might want.

If, therefore, those by whom the most[*](The importance of wise appointments) numerous and most important affairs of state were to be transacted were not what they ought to be, he thought that his government would be a failure. But if they were all that they ought to be, he believed that everything would succeed. In this conviction, therefore, he took upon himself this charge; and he determined that the same practice of virtue should be his as well. For he thought that it was not possible for him to incite others to good and noble deeds, if he were not himself such as he ought to be.