With you he knows that design and fulfilment went hand in hand; when you wished to outwit him, outwit him you did, as though he had been blind and deaf and dazed; when stealth was needed, your stealth was such that the fortresses he thought his own you turned into traps for him; and your speed was such that you were upon him from miles away with all your armament before he found time to muster the forces at his command." [20] "So you think," said Cyrus, "that merely to learn another is stronger than himself is defeat enough to bring a man to his senses ?" "I do," answered Tigranes, "and far more truly than mere defeat in battle.

For he who is conquered by force may fancy that if he trains he can renew the war, and captured cities dream that with the help of allies they will fight again one day, but if we meet with men who are better than ourselves and whom we recognise to be so, we are ready to obey them of our own free will." [21] "You imagine then," said Cyrus, "that the bully and the tyrant cannot recognise the man of self-restraint, nor the thief the honest man, nor the liar the truth-speaker, nor the unjust man the upright?
Has not your own father lied even now and broken his word with us, although he knew that we had faithfully observed every jot and tittle of the compact Astyages made ?" [22] "Ah, but," replied the prince, "I do not pretend that the bare knowledge alone will bring a man to his senses, it cannot cure him unless he pays the penalty as my father pays it to-day." "But," answered Cyrus, "your father has suffered nothing at all so far: although he fears, I know, that the worst suffering may be his." [23] "Do you suppose then," asked Tigranes, "that anything can enslave a man more utterly than fear?
Do you not know that even the men who are beaten with the iron rod of war, the heaviest rod in all the world, may still be ready to fight again, while the victims of terror cannot be brought to look their conquerors in the face, even when they try to comfort them ?" "Then, you maintain," said Cyrus, "that fear will subdue a man more than suffering ?" [24] "Yes," he answered, "and you of all men know that what I say is true: you know the despondency men feel in dread of banishment, or on the eve of battle facing defeat, or sailing the sea in peril of shipwreck--they cannot touch their food or take their rest because of their alarm: while it may often be that the exiles themselves, the conquered, or the enslaved, can eat and sleep better than men who have not known adversity.

[25] Think of those panic-stricken creatures who through fear of capture and death have died before their day, have hurled themselves from cliffs, hanged themselves, or set the knife to their throats; so cruelly can fear, the prince of horrors, bind and subjugate the souls of men.

And what, think you, does my father feel at this moment?
He, whose fears are not for himself alone, but for us all, for his wife, and for his children." [26] And Cyrus said, "To-day and at this time, it may be with him as you say: but I still think that the same man may well be insolent in good fortune and cringing in defeat: let such an one go free again, and he will return to his arrogance and trouble us once more." [27] "I do not deny it, Cyrus," said the prince.
"Our offences are such that you may well mistrust us: but you have it in your power to set garrisons in our land and hold our strong places and take what pledges you think best.

And even so," he added, "you will not find that we fret against our chains, for we shall remember we have only ourselves to blame.