Xenophon, Cyropaedia
Walter Miller, Ed.

“Yes, my son,” said she; “but at your grandfather's¹ court they do not recognize the same principles of justice as they do in Persia. For he has made himself master of everything in Media, but in Persia equality of rights is considered justice. And your father is the first one to do what is ordered by the State and to accept what is decreed, and his standard is not his will but the law. Mind, therefore, that you be not flogged within an inch of your life, when you come home, if you return with a knowledge acquired from your grandfather here of the principles not of kingship but of tyranny, one principle of which is that it is right for one to have more than all.”

“But your father, at least,” said Cyrus, “is more shrewd at teaching people to have less than to have more, mother. Why, do you not see,” he went on, “that he has taught all the Medes to have less than himself? So never fear that your father, at any rate, will turn either me or anybody else out trained under him to have too much.”