Or when it was the hour of breakfast he would wait himself till they had taken a snatch of food and stayed their wolfish hunger; and the end of it was they called him their father even as the nobles did, because he cared for them, but the object of his care was to keep them slaves for ever.
[45] Thus he secured the safety of the Persian empire.

He himself, he felt sure, ran no danger from the massages of the conquered people; he saw they had no courage, no unity, and no discipline, and, moreover, not one of them could ever come near him, day or night.

[46] But there were others whom he knew to be true warriors, who carried arms, and who held by one another, commanders of horse and foot, many of them men of spirit, confident, as he could plainly see, of their own power to rule, men who were in close touch with his own guards, and many of them in constant intercourse with himself; as indeed was essential if he was to make any use of them at all.

It was from them that danger was to be feared; and that in a thousand ways.

[47] How was he to guard against it?
He rejected the idea of disarming them; he thought this unjust, and that it would lead to the dissolution of the empire.