Dialogi mortuorum

Lucian of Samosata

The Works of Lucian of Samosata, complete, with exceptions specified in thepreface, Vol. 1. Fowler, H. W. and Fowlere, F.G., translators. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1905.

Philip And whom did you ever conquer that was worth conquering? Your adversaries were ever timid creatures, with their bows and their targets and their wicker shields. It was other work conquering the Greeks: Boeotians, Phocians, Athenians; Arcadian hoplites, Thessalian cavalry, javelin-men from Elis, peltasts of Mantinea; Thracians, Illyrians, Paeonians; to subdue these was something. But for gold-laced womanish Medes and Persians and Chaldaeans,—why, it had been done before: did you never hear of the expedition of the Ten Thousand under Clearchus? and how the enemy would not even come to blows with them, but ran away before they were within bow-shot?