Kitap 2
2.12
Hush said Cyrus. don’t call these men humbugs. For to me, the name humbug seems to apply to those who pretend that they are richer than they are or braver than they are, and to those who promise to do what they cannot do, and that, too, when it is evident that they do this only for the sake of getting something or making some gain. But those who invent stories to amuse their companions and not for their own gain nor at the expense of their hearers nor to the injury of any one, why should these men not be called witty and entertaining rather than humbugs?
2.13
Thus Cyrus defended those who had furnishedIs it better to make men laugh than weep? the fun, and the captain himself who had told the anecdote about his platoon said: Verily, Aglaïtadas, you might find serious fault with us, if we tried to make you weep, like some authors who invent touching incidents in their poems and stories and try to move us to tears; but now, although you yourself know that we wish to entertain you and not to do you any harm at all, still you heap such reproaches upon us.
2.14
Aye, by Zeus, said Aglaïtadas, and justly, too, since he that makes his friends laugh seems to me to do them much less service than he who makes them weep; and if you will look at it rightly, you, too, will find that I speak the truth. At any rate, fathers develop self-control in their sons by making them weep, and teachers impress good lessons upon their pupils in the same way, and the laws, too, turn the citizens to justice by making them weep. But could you say that those who make us laugh either do good to our bodies or make our minds any more fitted for the management of our private business or of the affairs of state?
