[3]
On the other hand, one must not omit a reference to the dignity that he showed on appropriate occasions. Thus, when the Persian envoy who came with Calleas, the Lacedaemonian, handed him a letter from the Great King containing offers of friendship and hospitality, he declined to accept it. “Tell his Majesty,” he said to the bearer, “that there is no need for him to send me private letters, but, if he gives proof of friendship for Lacedaemon, and goodwill towards Greece, I on my part will be his friend with all my heart. But if he is found plotting against them, let him not hope to have a friend in me, however many letters I may receive.”
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. E. C. Marchant, G. W. Bowersock, tr. Constitution of the Athenians. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1925.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.