better to teach them in actual practice?"

[31] Then the father said, "My son, we are told that in the days of our
forefathers there was such a teacher once. This man did actually teach
his boys righteousness in the way you suggest, to lie and not to lie,
to cheat and not to cheat, to calumniate and not to calumniate, to be
grasping and not grasping. He drew the distinction between our duty to
friends and our duty to enemies; and he went further still; he taught
men that it was just and right to deceive even a friend for his own
good, or steal his property. [32] And with this he must needs teach
his pupils to practise on one another what he taught them, just as the
people of Hellas, we are told, teach lads in the wrestling-school to
fence and to feint, and train them by their practice with one another.
Now some of his scholars showed such excellent aptitudes for deception
and overreaching, and perhaps no lack of taste for common money-making,
that they did not even spare their friends, but used their arts on them.
[33] And so an unwritten law was framed by which we still abide, bidding
us teach our children as we teach our servants, simply and solely not to
lie, and not to cheat, and not to covert, and if they did otherwise to
punish them, hoping to make them humane and law-abiding citizens. [34]
But when they came to manhood, as you have come, then, it seemed, the
risk was over, and it would be time to teach them what is lawful against
our enemies. For at your age we do not believe you will break out into
savagery against your fellows with whom you have been knit together
since childhood in ties of friendship and respect. In the same way we do
not talk to the young about the mysteries of love, for if lightness were
added to desire, their passion might sweep them beyond all bounds."

[35] "Then in heaven's name, father," said Cyrus, "remember that
your son is but a backward scholar and a late learner in this lore of
selfishness, and teach me all you can that may help me to overreach the
foe."

"Well," said the father, "you must plot and you must plan, whatever the
size of his force and your own, to catch his men in disorder when yours
are all arrayed, unarmed when yours are armed, asleep when yours are
awake, or you must wait till he is visible to you and you invisible
to him, or till he is labouring over heavy ground and you are in your
fortress and can give him welcome there."

[36] "But how," asked Cyrus, "can I