But the most important of Xenophon’s educational works is the _Education of Kuros_. In this he becomes the classical Miss Edgeworth and Henty combined. The book is really an historical novel, mostly fiction, embodying a moral story for the young, an ideal system of education, and a practical treatise on the whole duty of a general. The ideal system comes first, as a sort of preface, and presents a curious parallel to the rival schemes of his contemporary Plato. Xenophon makes the reader suppose that his system was practised in Persia in the time of Kuros’ boyhood, but there is no authority for his statement. Persia is in this case a convenient title for Utopia.
The ordinary State, according to Xenophon, leaves its citizens to form their own characters; but the Persian system definitely aims at producing virtue. In every Persian city there is what is called the “Free Agora.”[717] This is an open square, like the ordinary market-place, but unlike it in being without shops or booths, for the vulgar bustle and clamour of buying and selling is forbidden here, as likely to disturb the peace and calm of the educated. Round it lie the royal palace and the State buildings, so that it would be a place of some architectural pretensions and not unlike the quadrangle of a College at an English University. The square is divided into four parts――one for the children, one for the epheboi, one for full-grown men, and one for the old; for men of all ages have their place in this College. Any Persian is at liberty to send his son to school here, but only the rich can afford to support their sons while they attend the classes: the poor man’s children, in Utopian Persia as in modern England, must needs work for their living at an early age. The schools are apparently only for boys: Xenophon has nothing to say here about feminine education, although he approves of the Spartan system.
All boys under sixteen are ranged together in twelve companies, according to the number of Persian tribes; of arrangement in classes by age or intelligence nothing is said. They have to be in their quarter of the Free Agora at daybreak. Their education is under the control of twelve masters chosen from the elder men. What they learn in school is _Justice_, as boys elsewhere learn letters. The system is as curious as the subject. A sort of miniature law-court is constituted, where the masters act as judges and the boys accuse one another before them. The accusations must not be concocted for the occasion, for any one found guilty of bringing a false charge against a schoolfellow is severely punished. Smith Major has stolen Brown’s bow and arrows, or Jones has called Robinson various opprobrious names; the offenders are hauled up before the tribunal, duly tried, and, if convicted, flogged.[718] Ingratitude is regarded as a particularly heinous crime. It appears that promising pupils were allowed to act as judges sometimes. The boy Kuros tells his mother how he received this honour and once gave a wrong verdict, to his own discomfiture. “The case was like this, mother,” he is made to say. “A big boy wearing a small coat met a small boy wearing a big coat, and compelled him to exchange. I was told to decide the case, and said that it was best that each should have the coat which fitted him. Then the master flogged me. For the point was, To whom did the big coat belong? not, Whom did it fit best? It belonged to the boy who bought or made it, not to the boy who took it by force, breaking the law.”