He remembered how the captains of ten supervised the squads of ten, and were supervised themselves by the company-captains, and they by the captains of the thousands, and these by the captains of ten thousand, and thus even with hundreds of thousands not a man was left without supervision, and when the general wished to employ his troops one order to the captains of ten thousand was enough.

[15] On this principle Cyrus arranged his finances and held his departments together; in this way, by conferring with a few officers he could keep the whole system under his control, and actually have more leisure for himself than the manager of a single household or the master of a single ship.

Finally, having thus ordered his own affairs, he taught those about him to adopt the same system.
[16] Accordingly, having gained the leisure he needed for himself and his friends, he could devote himself to his work of training his partners and colleagues.

In the first place he dealt with those who, enabled as they were to live on the labour of others, yet failed to present themselves at the palace; he would send for them and seek them out, convinced that attendance would be wholesome for them; they would be unwilling to do anything base or evil in the presence of their king and under the eye of their noblest men; those who were absent were so through self-indulgence or wrong-doing or carelessness.

[17] And I will now set forth how he brought them to attend.