When they saw moderation and self-control in the man who above all others had licence to be insolent, lesser men were the more ready to abjure all insolence of their own.

[31] But there was this difference, Cyrus held, between modesty and self-control: the modest man will do nothing shameful in the light of day, but the man of self-control nothing base, not even in secret.

[32] Self-restrain, he believed, would best be cultivated if he made men see in himself one who could not be dragged from the pursuit of virtue by the pleasure of the moment, one who chose to toil first for the happy-hearted joys that go hand-in-hand with beauty and nobleness.

[33] Thus, being the man he was, he established at his gates a stately company, where the lower gave place to the higher, and they in their turn showed reverence to each other, and courtesy, and perfect harmony.

Among them all there was never a cry of anger to be heard, nor a burst of insolent laughter; to look at them was to know that they lived for honour and loveliness.
[34] Such was the life at the palace-gates, and to practise his nobles in martial exercises he would lead them out to the hunt whenever he thought it well, holding the chase to be the best training for war and the surest way to excellence in horsemanship.