Shall we not gain ourselves by all they gain in valour ?" [14] So it came about that Cyrus had the new armour placed before him and summoned a general meeting of the Persian soldiery, and spoke to them as follows: [15] "Men of Persia, born and bred in the same land as ourselves, whose limbs are as stout and as strong as our own, your hearts should be as brave.

I know they are; and yet at home in the land of our fathers you did not share our rights; not that we drove you out ourselves, but you were banished by the compulsion that lay upon you to find your livelihood for yourselves.

Now from this day forward, with heaven's help, it shall be my care to provide it for you; and now, if so you will, you have it in your power to take the armour that we wear ourselves, face the same perils and win the same honours, if so be you make any glorious deed your own.

[16] In former days you were trained, like ourselves, in the use of bow and javelin, and if you were at all inferior to us in skill, that was not to be wondered at; you had not the same leisure for practice as we; but now in this new accoutrement we shall have no pre-eminence at all.

Each of us will wear a corslet fitted to his breast and carry a shield on his left arm of the type to which we are all accustomed, and in his right hand a sabre or a battle-axe.