And if there should be anything more I need to know, why, I have my grandfather beside me, and he will always give me lessons." [18] "But," rejoined his mother, "what everyone takes to be just and righteous at your grandfather's court is not thought to be so in Persia.

For instance, your own grandfather has made himself master over all and sundry among the Medes, but with the Persians equality is held to be an essential part of justice: and first and foremost, your father himself must perform his appointed services to the state and receive his appointed dues: and the measure of these is not his own caprice but the law.

Have a care then, or you may be scourged to death when you come home to Persia, if you learn in your grandfather's school to love not kingship but tyranny, and hold the tyrant's belief that he and he alone should have more than all the rest." "Ah, but, mother," said the boy, "my grandfather is better at teaching people to have less than their share, not more.

Cannot you see," he cried, "how he has taught all the Medes to have less than himself?
So set your mind at rest, mother, my grandfather will never make me, or any one else, an adept in the art of getting too much." [C.4] So the boy's tongue ran on.

But at last his mother went home, and Cyrus stayed behind and was brought up in Media.