Quote from Andrew Marshall on 20/01/2021, 07:15

“No speech of admonition can be so fine that it will at once make those who hear it good men if they are not good already; it would surely not make archers good if they had not had practice in shooting, neither could it make lancers good, nor horsemen; it cannot even make men able to endure bodily labour, unless they had been trained to it before.”

Cyrus the Great (590/580 to 529 BCE)

Cyrus the Great, also called Cyrus II, a conqueror who founded the Achaemenian empire, centred on Persia and comprising the Near East from the Aegean Sea eastward to the Indus River. He is also remembered in the Cyrus legend - first recorded by Xenophon, Greek soldier and author, in his Cyropaedia - as a tolerant and ideal monarch who was called the father of his people by the ancient Persians. In the Bible he is the liberator of the Jews who were captive in Babylonia.