“Our fathers, and the fathers of these men deceased, and they themselves, being honourably born, and nurtured in all freedom, have individually and as a people done many noble deeds in sight of all men, conceiving that in the cause of freedom it was their duty to fight with Greeks in behalf of Greeks, and with barbarians in behalf of the whole Grecian race. The time would fail me to relate as the subject merits, how they repelled Eumolpus, and the Amazons, and other invaders earlier than those, and how they supported the Argives against the Thebans, and the Heraclidæ against the Argives; and the poets who have hymned their valour in verse, have already made it known to all men. Were I then to attempt to set forth the same things in prose, I should but prove my own inferiority. I will therefore pass these matters, for they already have their due. Those deeds on which, worthy as they are, no poet has yet founded a worthy name, those yet uncelebrated are the theme on which it befits me to dwell, praising them myself, and wooing others to weave them into songs and other poetry, in a manner honourable to the men who acted them. First then of the things which I refer to, the children of this land, our ancestors, checked the Persian, when, at the head of Asia, he was in the act of enslaving Europe; wherefore it is just and fit that we should call them first to mind, and celebrate their valour. He, however, who would praise it fitly, must carry back his mind to that time when all Asia bowed before the third of the Persian kings: the first of whom, Cyrus, having liberated the Persians, his countrymen, by his own high spirit, enslaved their masters, the Medes, and ruled the rest of Asia as far as Egypt. His son, Cambyses, reduced such parts of Egypt and of Libya as were accessible; and the third, Darius, by land extended the boundary of his empire to Scythia, and with his fleet commanded both the sea and the islands, so that no man deemed himself equal to contend with him. The very minds of all men were enslaved, so many, so great, and so warlike nations had the Persian empire subdued.