Persians

Such is the Persian account;

The Persian learned men say that the Phoenicians were the cause of the dispute.

” For the Persians claim Asia for their own, and the foreign peoples that inhabit it;

They provide for such hunting out of the public treasury;

Of the Persians, mother, my father is much the handsomest;

but he was educated in conformity with the laws of the Persians;

So Homer is plainly no praiser of wearing gold, and that into battle—of bracelets and torques, and besides of golden frontlets and bits, such as they say the Persians affect;

And he says this teaching and exhorting that good men ought to take care also of the table, since he was not inexperienced in food of every kind and in extravagance, so that the Persians and Syrians who are now agog over such things, and among the Greeks the Italiote Greeks and the Ionians, do not even come close to the abundance and luxury found in Homer.

For he wished to know all the affairs of the Persians.

In the same manner, in the time of Cimon, the Persians were bound by a treaty, made with the Athenians, not to sail with any ship of war between the Cyanean rocks and the Chelidonian islands;

thus among the Persians giving the right hand was considered the firmest tie.

The Lacedaemonians, who had murdered the heralds of the Persians, were said by that act to have confounded every distinction between right and wrong, as it is acknowledged by all nations.

for you have no learning grown grey with time.

The Brahmans all, and the Odrysae and the Getae and the race of the Egyptians, treated their own matters as theology with exactness;

We have heard, too, that the Persians were the first to make the carriage and the couch and the footstool, and the Sidonians to build the three-banked ship.

For all the sons of the noblest Persians are educated at the King’s court.

The boys have before their eyes the spectacle of men honoured by the King and of others dishonoured;

[In fact, it is said of the Persians in general that they venture all the perils of war with their heads unprotected.

the Persians even smear them with wax before burying, that the bodies may last as long as possible.

The diet of the Persians is set forth by Xenophon, who says they apply nothing to their bread beyond cress.

What in our world is not hateful to them who did not shrink in the earlier war from rifling even the images and temples of the gods, and burning them to the ground?

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.

So it is that those of the Persians who come down to the sea, whom they term satraps, do not dishonor the training which they receive at home, but cling steadfastly to the same habits:

and, sending word to the generals of the Persian king, he promised that he would do this.

For example, if at the present moment one were to say that the King of Asia was plotting against the Hellenes, and had made preparations to send an expedition against us, he would not he saying anything disparaging of him;

Then again, Cyrus (that we may take account of the barbarians also), not withstanding the fact that as a child he was exposed by his mother on the public highway and was picked up by a Persian woman, so completely reversed his fortunes that he became master of all Asia.

If they thought it right to exact vengeance for a speech, are we to believe that they would not have visited with severe punishment a man who in fact delivered his country into the hands of the enemy?

not content with erecting the trophy in Salamis, they fixed for the Persian the boundaries necessary for Greek freedom and prevented his overstepping them, making an agreement that he should not sail his warships between the Cyaneae and Phaselis and that the Greeks should be free not only if they lived in Europe but in Asia too.

Our ancestors, though they were being deserted by all the Greeks, forcibly liberated themselves and the others too by making them assist at Salamis in the naval battle against the Persians, and so triumphed unaided over both enemy and ally, in a way appropriate to each, conferring a favor upon one and defeating the other in battle.

Courage and industry and a spirit ready for war are found among the Persians as well as among the high-girt.

Not the Persians, nor the far reaches of the Medes, nor whatever warlike thing lies beyond the Dahae, but greed, but ambition, but the fear of death, which has conquered the conquerors of nations.

Plainly the Persians, as Ctesias relates, live freely with their mothers, as knowing as they are unshuddering.

A kingdom all nations have had, each in its own times, as the Assyrians, as the Medes, as the Persians, as the Egyptians;

Ctesias relates that the Persians have intercourse with their own mothers.

We shall be reckoned among the Persians, if anything — though we do not adore the sun painted on linen, having him everywhere in his own disk.

After passing this decree, and exchanging solemn pledges and oaths, they fearlessly took up their stand as the protectors of the whole of Greece, and met the Persians at Marathon;

It's in memory of his reign that he is called the Persian bird.

For this reason also, even to-day, he alone of all the birds wears his tiara straight on his head, like the Great King.

First of all, I will point you to the cock, who governed the Persians before all other monarchs, before Darius and Megabazus.

Among the Persians paternal rule is tyrannical, for the Persians use their sons as slaves.

But with a serene mind I decree that ten hundred pounds of gold be sent to me by you on my passage by Caesarea, while I am still upon the highway, coming with great speed to the Persian war;

Nor is it in this alone that I am drawn on, but I must with great speed overtake the land of the Persians and put to flight that Sapor, who has become the descendant of Darius, until he becomes tributary and subject to me;

especially when assisted by the passions.

let there be no less pleasure in that cress on which Xenophon writes the Persians were wont to feed, than at Syracusan tables, which are gravely censured by Plato;

then, in Greece, as among ourselves, magnificent shrines consecrated with human images, which the Persians held abominable;

But afterward both Philip, who planned it, and Alexander, who waged it, brought this cause of war against the Persians, that he wished to punish them for the shrines of Greece;

After many cycles of years, however, they too came to reverence statues of human form, as Berossus shows in the third book of his Chaldaic Affairs, this having been introduced by Artaxerxes son of Darius son of Ochus, who first set up the statue of Aphrodite Anaïtis in Babylon and Susa and Ecbatana, and showed the Persians and Bactrians and Damascus and Sardis to reverence it.

When they caught Themistocles presumptuously setting himself above the people, they banished him from Athens, and found him guilty of siding with the Medes.

Or take Perdiccas, who was reigning in Macedonia at the time of the Persian invasion, and who destroyed the Persians on their retreat from Plataea, and made the defeat of the King irreparable.

No one, for instance, is so foolish as to assert that what has befallen either the Spartans, whom I never advised, or the Persians, whom I never even visited, is preferable to your present lot.

I believe, then, that the cause of justice and those who defend it will prove stronger than the traitors and the barbarian against all opposition.

For the objects at stake in a war against the barbarian are nothing less than our country, our life, our habits, our freedom, and all such blessings.

If indeed there were one kind of force suitable for defence against Persians and another for defence against Greeks, then we might reasonably be suspected of marshalling ourselves against the King;