Then Cyrus spoke: "Now heaven be praised! A fine set they are, these new friends of ours, a most rare race! So grateful are they for any little act of courtesy, you may win a hundred hearts by a dish of meat! And so docile, some of them must needs obey an order before they have understood it! For my part I can only pray to be blest with an army like them all." [11] Thus he joined in the mirth, but he turned the laughter to the praise of his new recruits.
Then one of the company, a brigadier called Aglaitadas, a somewhat sour-tempered man, turned to him and said: "Cyrus, do you really think the tales they tell are true ?" "Certainly," he answered, "why should they say what is false ?" "Why," repeated the other, "simply to raise a laugh, and make a brag like the impostors that they are." [12] But Cyrus cut him short, "Hush! hush! You must not use such ugly names.

Let me tell you what an impostor is.

He is a man who claims to be wealthier or braver than he is in fact, and who undertakes what he can never carry out, and all this for the sake of gain.

But he who contrives mirth for his friends, not for his own profit, or his hearers' loss, or to injure any man, surely, if we must needs give him a name, we ought to call him a man of taste and breeding and a messenger of wit." [13] Such was the defence of Cyrus in behalf of the merrymakers.

And the officer who had begun the jest turned to Aglaitadas and said: "Just think, my dear sir, if we had tried to make you weep! What fault you would have found with us! Suppose we had been like the ballad-singers and story-tellers who put in lamentable tales in the hope of reducing their audience to tears! What would you have said about us then?
Why, even now, when you know we only wish to amuse you, not to make you suffer, you must needs hold us up to shame." [14] "And is not the shame justified ?" Aglaitadas replied.