CHAPTER X
XENOPHON: “THE EDUCATION OF KUROS”
The central figure in many parishes in England is a retired Major-General or Colonel. He constitutes the chief pillar of the neighbouring church, reads the Lessons on Sundays, teaches in the Sunday School, gives away the prizes at School-treats held in his own grounds, and heads every subscription list; while his leisure is given to the compilation of a military memoir or two, and perhaps, if he is very literary, of a few short stories. Just such a man was Xenophon. On retiring from active service, he withdrew to the little village of Skillous in Elis, where he owned a house and a park. The whole country swarmed with fish and game, so that he and his sons could have as much hunting as they pleased. Guests were numerous, for past his gates ran the great high-road from Lakedaimon to Olympia. In his grounds he built a chapel to Artemis, the expenses being defrayed from a tithe of the spoils he had taken in the heart of the Persian Empire. The tenth of the produce of his land was paid to the goddess, and once a year he gave a great sacrificial feast in her honour, to which all the neighbours were invited. In this way the retired General lived for twenty years, devoted to his religion, his hunting, and the composition of his books. Having two sons of his own, he naturally gave some attention to the problems of education. His treatise on the constitution of Lakedaimon is simply a sketch of the Spartan school system, no doubt intended for his boys, who were brought up at Sparta. A curious passage in his Economics[716] shows that he considered the most effective mode of teaching to be a series of appeals, by means of question and answer, to personal observation and common-sense. Ischomachos asks Sokrates whether he knows how to plant trees. Sokrates at first replies “No,” but when he is questioned point by point, whether on his excursions to Lukabettos, he has noticed the depth of the trenches in the orchards, and some similar details, and when his common-sense has shown him that plants grow quicker through soft than through hard soil, he finds that he is an expert nurseryman, and decides that questioning must be the way to teach.
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.”
Besides “Justice,” the children were taught the properties of plants, in order that they might avoid those that were harmful and use those which were good.[719] This seems a curious anticipation of “Nature-study,” with a strictly utilitarian object, and Xenophon deserves credit for an original suggestion.
The boys are assisted in the formation of good habits by the sight of their elders in the adjacent quarter of the Free Agora, setting them an example in temperance and obedience and self-restraint. They also learn not to be greedy, by taking their meals, when ordered, in the school, under supervision, off the very simple fare of bread, water, and a sort of seed resembling the modern mustard, which is all that they are allowed to bring with them from home for the purpose. What is more, this probably constituted the only meal which the children had on such days. It must have been a pretty stiff lesson in abstinence! How they would have hated a master who ordered it too often! For games and exercise they had shooting with the bow and hurling the javelin—that is, military training.
The other three ages are also organised each under twelve masters in its own quarter of the Agora of Education. The epheboi, who in Utopia include all from sixteen to twenty-six, even sleep there, acting as a standing army and a police force to guard the palace and the State buildings. Xenophon thinks it well that the men of this age, who need more attention, in his opinion, than even the boys, should be always under the eye of the authorities. They are organised into twelve companies, one from each of the Persian tribes. Their time is largely occupied in police-work, such as catching brigands, and in hunting. Xenophon attaches great importance to hunting of all sorts, as being the best training for war.[720] For it involves exposure to heat and cold and other hardships, training in marching and running, and skill with bow and javelin;[721] it also requires courage, to meet the sudden charge of a panther; and long and patient strategy, to catch birds and hares.[722] So, several times a month, the king goes out hunting and takes six companies of the epheboi with him, armed with bows and arrows, a dagger, a light shield, and two spears—one for throwing and one for stabbing. When not engaged in hunting or in police-work, the epheboi revise what they learned as boys, and practise shooting, competing with one another; there are also public contests, with prizes. Prizes are also given to the officer in charge of the company which shows itself the most intelligent, courageous, and trustworthy; the master who taught this company in its school-days is also commended.
The men from twenty-six to fifty occupy the third, and the elders the fourth, quarter of the Agora. The former act as a standing army of heavy infantry; the latter as a reserve force for home defence, as Judges, as the electors to the offices of State, and as the teachers of the children. The other offices are filled by the third age. Any freeborn Persian can climb this four-runged Ladder of Education to the very top; but no one may enter a higher class without having served his full time in those below it. To Xenophon, it appears, belongs the credit of being the first theorist to recognise the merits of this Thessalian custom of the “Free Agora,” the State-provided centre of culture, afterwards adopted so extensively in Alexandria, where the educated classes of all ages might meet in an intellectual atmosphere and amid beautiful surroundings, and provide that exchange and mart of ideas by personal intercourse which Newman considered to be the essence of a University. In the Free Agora of Utopian Persia all the educated spend their days, influencing one another by talk and example, exchanging and criticising ideas, competing in warlike exercises—and all in an atmosphere untainted by the vulgarity of money-making. On the other hand, culture there does not mean idleness; to Xenophon, as to Plato, education seemed to entail great responsibilities, and the educated classes provide the sole standing army of the State and have to give their countrymen the benefit of their intelligence by serving as Rulers and Judges.
But Xenophon’s University provides only legal and military instruction; intellectual culture is not recognised in his “Persia.” The boys learn the principles of their national law; for, as Xenophon is careful to proclaim, the Justice which they are taught is no Platonic elaboration, but simple conformity to the law of the land.[723] Their other lessons aim solely at the soldier’s life: this is the object of their severe diet, their botany, and their training in arms. General morality is to be imbibed from contact in the Agora with their exemplary seniors, not by ethical contemplation. The system has the merit of being extremely practical, as would be expected from a man of Xenophon’s stamp. The boys are to be soldiers all their lives, and Rulers and Judges in their old age. Consequently they are to be taught only what is essential to this calling. The soldier must be well versed in the use of arms and capable of enduring hardships; so the boys are taught to use the bow and javelin and lead a sternly simple life. The chief essential to the Ruler and Judge is a sound knowledge of the national law: the boys are taught law from the first, in a highly practical way, and even learn to administer it, acting as judges to their schoolfellows. No better means could be devised for teaching boys the legal procedure of their native land than this of constituting them into a miniature Court.[724] It is a scheme, however, which would be repugnant to the whole idea of an English public school, where the boys are expected to fight their own battles and set their own tone without calling in the master’s assistance except in grave cases. But the Hellenic boy was never left without supervision: the paidagogos, or some elder, was always in attendance.[725] Probably the chief criticism which it would have occurred to an Athenian of that age to urge against Xenophon’s system would be, not that it encouraged tale-bearing, nor that it failed to teach self-reliance, but that his countrymen were quite sufficiently litigious already without any teaching. The absence of literature and music would also have seemed a fatal objection.
The “Persian” schools are apparently open, free of charge, to any boy whose father chooses to send him. For the only expense which the parents are mentioned as incurring is the loss of any wages which their son might have been earning if set to a trade instead of being sent to school. Xenophon thus institutes free education without compulsion. Pupils may be withdrawn at any age; if they or their families have enough private means to enable them to live in leisure all their lives they can rise through the various stages to the highest offices of the State, provided that they are not rejected as unfit during their upward passage. Theoretically the educational ladder is open to all; practically it is closed to all but those who are well-to-do and fairly capable to boot. But the education provided is not a general culture, intellectually and morally good for all children, nor yet utilitarian knowledge, such as arithmetic or writing, which will serve as a useful, or even necessary, basis for a trade or profession: it is a strictly technical education in the work of War and Government. Few parents, therefore, would send their boys to Xenophon’s schools, at any rate for a longer period than would be required for learning just the rudiments of national law and morality, unless they designed them for a public career.
Thus Xenophon, like his beloved Spartans, has made war the main object of education, and, like the Romans, uses law as the chief instrument of instruction. But he has seen the demerits of the Spartan “Mess-clubs,” and his boys take their meals and sleep, as a rule, at home; only the epheboi, as in Crete, dine and sleep always in the agora. His chief merit is that he recognised that an educational atmosphere, εὐκοσμία τῶν πεπαιδευμένων, free from the associations of money-making, is essential to an educational establishment.
After this deeply interesting sketch of Xenophon’s educational ideals, the Education of Kuros becomes a historical novel with a purpose, an idealised Kuros acting as example throughout. In Book i. there is the description of him as the model boy, courteous to his elders, quick and eager to learn, brave, impetuous, loved by all, but rather a prig. The description is full of improving anecdotes and little sermons. The book concludes with a lecture on the duties of a general, dealing with tactics and the best means of training the army and providing supplies. Xenophon puts all his personal experience into this, and there is plenty of adventure to make the book palatable to his young readers.
A few extracts will make the characteristics of this curious work plain.
When quite young, Kuros went with his mother Mandané to stay with his grandfather Astuages, King of Media. The old man, thinking that the boy would be homesick and wishing to comfort him, sent for him at dinner the first evening and set all sorts of rich meats and sauces before him. Then Kuros said, “Grandfather, you must find it a great nuisance, if you have to help yourself to so many courses and taste so many kinds of food.” His grandfather replied, “Why, don’t you think this a much finer dinner than what you get at home?” “No, grandfather,” replied Kuros; “at home we satisfy our appetites by a short-cut, just bread and meat, but here, although your object is the same, you wind in and out so much on the way that it takes you ever so much longer to reach it.” “But, my boy, the delay is only so much pleasure, as you will see if you try.” Kuros, however, persisted in refusing the unwholesome dainties, so his grandfather compensated him by giving him an enormous help of meat. “Is all this meant for me,” asked Kuros, “to do what I like with?” “Yes, my boy.” Then Kuros took the meat and distributed it to the servants who were waiting at table, saying to one, “This is because you taught me to ride”; to another, “This is because you gave me a javelin”; to a third, “This is for waiting on my grandfather so nicely.” From this example the young reader doubtless learned not to desire too many courses or too rich sweets at table, and perhaps also to be grateful to every one, even servants. After this Kuros remained in Media, while his mother returned home. “He soon won the love of his schoolfellows, and quite charmed their parents when invited to their houses by the affection which he showed for their sons.” A good moral, this, for little boys who go out to parties.
This model boy does not die young, but grows up. He had been rather a chatterbox when small (a warning to the young readers), but only owing to his desire for knowledge and his readiness to answer questions; besides, he chattered in such a nice way that it was a pleasure to hear him. But as he grew older, he grew more bashful. “He always blushed when he met his elders, and he talked in a quieter tone. When he played with his schoolfellows, he chose the games where he expected to be beaten, not those in which he expected to win; and he was always ready to lead the laugh against himself when beaten.” Model youth! Of course, he soon became the champion at every form of sport, just as in a modern book of the kind he would have won at least five “Blues.”
Kuros next appears as a mighty hunter, and then at the age of fifteen takes a leading part in a battle against the Assyrians; in fact, it is his strategy and prowess that decide the day. What more could be wanted in a book for boys? The modern author would give him a grizzly bear, a lion, and a V.C.: Xenophon gives him the Persian equivalents.
After this, little more is said of Kuros’ boyhood. He is next introduced as a man of twenty-six, just put into command of a Persian expedition to help Media against the Assyrians.[726] Henceforth Xenophon’s object is no longer to point a moral, but to instruct budding generals and princes in strategy and government. The remaining books are a “Handbook of Tactics, with hints on the proper treatment of inferiors”; so they fitly begin with a long lecture by Kuros’ father on the whole duty of a general.[727] There is, however, a good deal of moral advice and occasional allegory interspersed amid the tactics. For instance, a certain Gobruas came to dine with the Persian army. “Seeing how plain the food was, he regarded the Persians as rather bourgeois. But then he observed what good manners the guests had. No educated Persian would allow himself to be seen staring at a dish, or helping himself hurriedly, or acting at table without proper deliberation. For they think it piggish to be excited by the presence of food or drink. He noticed, too, that they never asked one another questions which might cause pain, that their jests were never malicious nor their wit rude, that everything that they did was in the best taste, and that they never lost their tempers with one another.” And so on. “Manners for men,” we might call it, by Xenophon.
A curiously interesting case of allegory, which well shows how imaginary most of the history is, may be found in the third book.[728] The son of the king of Armenia had had for a companion and tutor a certain Sophist, of whose wisdom he was very proud. But his father condemned the Sophist for corrupting[729] the boy. When he was being led to execution, the man showed what a saint and hero he was by calling the boy and saying, “Do not be angry with your father for putting me to death. For it is no wicked purpose which makes him do it, but only ignorance. All sins which men commit in ignorance I rank as involuntary errors.” Later, the father confesses that he put the Sophist to death for stealing away his son’s affections, “for I feared that my boy might love him more than he loved me.” Kuros admits that such jealousy is an explanation and regards it as pardonable.
The analogy to Sokrates is obvious to any one. The half-apology for the Athenian people is very interesting in the mouth of the old Socratic companion Xenophon.
But the object of the Education of Kuros is, after all, to teach generalship. A couple of examples of the way in which this is done will suffice. On one occasion[730] Kuros orders the foot-cuirassiers to lead the way in a forced march, and kindly explains the object of such a manœuvre. “This command I give,” he says, “because they are the heaviest part of the army. When the heaviest part is in the van, obviously it is quite easy for the other arms, being lighter, to keep up. But if the quickest detachment is in front on a night march, it is not surprising if the army straggles, for the vanguard goes faster than the rest.” Again, Kuros could call all his officers by name, to their great surprise.[731] “For he thought it very absurd that tradesmen should know the names of all their tools, and yet a general should be so stupid as not to know the names of his officers whom he must use as his tools in the most serious emergencies. Soldiers who thought that their general knew their names would, he considered, be more eager to do heroic deeds in his presence, and less eager to play the coward. It seemed also to be foolish to be obliged to give orders, when he wanted something done, in the way some masters do in their households, ‘Fetch me some water, Somebody’; or ‘Cut some firewood, Someone.’ For when the order is addressed to no one in particular, each stands looking at his neighbour and expecting him to carry it out.”
The military part is exceedingly well done. Xenophon was one of the few good strategists whom Hellas produced, and his remarks on tactics, the hygiene of an army, and discipline are sound and useful. What is more, his novel is interesting and occasionally witty: it is distinctly good reading. He has disguised his powder in the most appetising jam, and so has achieved with success the difficult task of writing a novel with a purpose. Had books been common then, his work would have been both popular and useful in Boys’ Libraries, and have done good service as a school prize. But from Plato it only provoked the malicious and not very deep criticism that it was unhistorical and unsound.[732] “Of Kuros,” he says, “I conjecture that, though he was a good general and a patriot, he had not come across the merest scrap of sound education, and never applied his mind to the art of managing a household.[733] For, being absent on campaigns all his life, he allowed the women to bring up his children. The women spoilt the boys, letting no one gainsay them, and made them effeminate, not teaching them the Persian habits or their father’s profession, but Median luxury. Hence the collapse of Persia under Kambuses.”
[716] Xen. Econ. 19.
[717] Aristotle (Pol. vii. 12) says that “Free Agoras” were customary in Thessaly. He adopts the system for his ideal state—a clear compliment to Xenophon.
[718] Floggings were apparently to be frequent. “Tears are a master’s instruments of instruction” (ii. 2. 14).
[719] viii. 8. 14.
[720] Hence his treatise on hunting.
[721] i. 2. 10.
[722] i. 6. 39-40.
[723] i. 3. 17.
[724] Cp. the experiment which was, I believe, tried in an American school, where the boys learned the national constitution by themselves electing in due form a President, Congress, etc.
[725] “The perpetual presence of masters,” according to Xenophon, “best inculcates proper modesty and discipline.”
[726] i. 5. 5.
[727] i. 6. 1-46.
[728] iii. 1. 38.
[729] διαφθείρειν, the word used in Sokrates’ accusation.
[730] v. 3. 37.
[731] v. 3. 46. Notice the Socratic comparison.
[732] Plato, Laws, 694 C-D.
[733] A hit at Xenophon’s Economics.