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Do not, however, endeavour to fill up their 1 places in the ranks with your own countrymen only; but, just as in selecting a team you seek out not horses that are home-bred but those which are best, so also in the case of men, take them from all sources—whoever you think will be most likely to contribute to your strength and to your honour. And I have the following illustrations to prove the worth of my suggestion: a chariot would never go fast, I am sure, if slow horses were attached to it, nor would it be serviceable if horses unfit for service were harnessed to it; nor yet could a house be well managed if it employed vicious servants, but it would suffer less from having no servants at all than from being kept in confusion by incapable servants.
Do not, however, endeavour to fill up their 1 places in the ranks with your own countrymen only; but, just as in selecting a team you seek out not horses that are home-bred but those which are best, so also in the case of men, take them from all sources—whoever you think will be most likely to contribute to your strength and to your honour. And I have the following illustrations to prove the worth of my suggestion: a chariot would never go fast, I am sure, if slow horses were attached to it, nor would it be serviceable if horses unfit for service were harnessed to it; nor yet could a house be well managed if it employed vicious servants, but it would suffer less from having no servants at all than from being kept in confusion by incapable servants.
Cyropaedia. Xenophon. Walter Miller (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1914.
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