[6] The arts of the household must follow the same law.
If one and the same servant makes the bed, spreads the table, kneads the dough, and cooks the various dishes, the master must take things as they come, there is no help for it.

But when there is work enough for one man to boil the pot, and another to roast the meat, and a third to stew the fish, and a fourth to fry it, while some one else must bake the bread, and not all of it either, for the loaves must be of different kinds, and it will be quite enough if the baker can serve up one kind to perfection--it is obvious, I think, that in this way a far higher standard of excellence will be attained in every branch of the work.
[7] Thus it is easy to see how Cyrus could outdo all competitors in the grace of hospitality, and I will now explain how he came to triumph in all other services.

Far as he excelled mankind in the scale of his revenues, he excelled them even more in the grandeur of his gifts.

It was Cyrus who set the fashion; and we are familiar to this day with the open-handedness of Oriental kings.

[8] There is no one, indeed, in all the world whose friends are seen to be as wealthy as the friends of the Persian monarch: no one adorns his followers in such splendour of rich attire, no gifts are so well known as his, the bracelets, and the necklaces, and the chargers with the golden bridles.