[12]
Moreover you are now calling on the Greeks to join
you; but if you refuse to do their bidding—and your relations with
some of them are not cordial—how can you expect any of them to answer
your call? “Because,” you say, “we shall warn them
that the King has designs on them.” But seriously, do you imagine that
they cannot detect that for themselves? I am sure they can. But as yet their
fear of Persia is subordinate to their
feuds with you and, in some cases, with one another. Therefore your ambassadors
will only go round repeating their heroics.1
1 The ambassadors are compared to rhapsodists, the wandering professional reciters of epic poetry, whose art was falling into contempt in an age of wider education.
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