Selecta capita ex scriptoribus Graecis in usum classis quintae Carolinae

12.

And Cyrus said, "Who among you, then, would mention it to Astyages?" "Who," they said, "could be more capable of persuading him than you?" "But by Hera," he said, "I do not know what kind of person I have become; for I am not able to speak, nor am I even able to look my grandfather in the eye as an equal anymore; if I grow this much more, I fear," he said, "that I shall become a complete fool and idiot." And yet, being a small child, I was considered very clever at speaking. The boys said, "The situation is bad if you are not able to act for us if something is needed, but we are forced to ask someone else, when it depends on you."

13.

Having heard these things, Cyrus was stung, and having gone away in silence, urging himself to be brave, he entered. And having plotted how he might speak to his grandfather most agreeably, and accomplish for himself and the boys what they needed, he began thus: "Tell me," he said, "grandfather, if someone runs away from his own household and you catch him, what do you do to him?" "What else," he said, "than to chain him and force him to work?" "But if he comes back to you of his own accord, how do you act?" "Why," he said, "if not by whipping him so that he does not do this again, then I take him back and use him from the beginning." "It would be time," said Cyrus, "for you to prepare something with which to whip me, for I am planning how to run away from you, taking my peers out to hunt." And Astyages said, "You have done well to warn me in advance. For I forbid you from moving from within; it would be a fine thing," he said, "if for the sake of a little meat, I were to let the boy be stolen from my daughter."