afterward his unjust dominion with more moderation than I think the
other would have done. Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted
with them both and with many such-like gentlemen of his time, says,
"That it is the nature of ambition" (Ambitio multos mortales falsos
fieri coegit, etc.) "to make men liars and cheaters; to hide the
truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in
their mouths; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of
their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help
of good will." And can there be freedom with this perpetual
constraint? What is it but a kind of rack that forces men to say
what they have no mind to? I have wondered at the extravagant and
barbarous stratagem of Zopirus, and more at the praises which I find
of so deformed an action; who, though he was one of the seven
grandees of Persia, and the son of Megabises, who had freed before
his country from an ignoble servitude, slit his own nose and lips,
cut off his own ears, scourged and wounded his whole body, that he
might, under pretence of having been mangled so inhumanly by Darius,
be received into Babylon (then besieged by the Persians) and get
into the command of it by the recommendation of so cruel a
sufferance, and their hopes of his endeavouring to revenge it. It
is a great pity the Babylonians suspected not his falsehood, that
they might have cut off his hands too, and whipped him back again.
But the design succeeded; he betrayed the city, and was made
governor of it. What brutish master ever punished his offending
slave with so little mercy as ambition did this Zopirus? and yet how
many are there in all nations who imitate him in some degree for a
less reward; who, though they endure not so much corporal pain for a
small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to
commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly
stigmatised? But you may say, "Though these be the most ordinary