"He remembered how the captains of ten supervised the squads of ten, and were supervised themselves by the company-captains, and they by the captains of the thousands, and these by the captains of ten thousand, and thus even with hundreds of thousands not a man was left without supervision" "by conferring with a few officers he could keep the whole system under his control, and actually have more leisure for himself than the manager of a single household or the master of a single ship."

— In our words · Source: Cyropaedia (Xenophon)