[27] Further, he laid it down that in every matter needing arbitration, whether it were a suit-at-law or a trial of skill, the parties should concur in their choice of a judge.

Each would try to secure the most powerful man he knew and the one most friendly to himself, and if he lost he envied his successful rival and hated the judge who had declared against him, while the man who won claimed to win because his case was just and felt he owed no gratitude to anybody.
[28] Thus all who wished to be first in the affections of Cyrus, just as others in democratic states, were full of rancour against each other, in fact most of them would sooner have seen their rivals exterminated than join with them for any common good.

Such are some of the devices by which he made the ablest of his subjects more attached to himself than to one another.
[C.3] I will now describe the first public progress that Cyrus made.

For the very solemnity of the ceremony was one of the artifices by which he won reverence for his government.

The day before it he summoned the officers of state, the Persians and the others, and gave them all the splendid Median dress.