If systems of education are to be classified according to their results--and these are perhaps the fairest test--then the "Old Education" of Athens must be assigned a very high place. The character which she displayed, and the exploits which she performed, in the early decades of the fifth century B.C., bear unequivocal testimony to the value of the training to which her citizens had previously been subjected. This training could perhaps hardly be better characterized than by the word "puritanical." The men who fought at Marathon, Salamis, and Platææ were puritans, trained, in a hard school, to fear the gods, to respect the laws, their neighbors, and themselves, to reverence the wisdom of experience, to despise comfort and vice, and to do honest work. They were not enfeebled by æsthetic culture, paralyzed by abstract thinking, or hardened by professional training. They were educated to be men, friends, and citizens, not to be mere thinkers, critics, soldiers, or money-makers. It was against a small band of such men that the hosts of Persia fought in vain. It is natural that this "Old Education" of Athens should have a special interest for us, inasmuch as it seems, in great measure, to have solved the problem that must be uppermost with every true educator and friend of education, viz. How can strong, wise, and good men be produced? For this reason, as also because we are the better informed regarding the educational system of Athens than that of any other Greek state, it seems proper to devote special attention to it, treating it as preëminently Greek education. Indeed, whatever is permanently valuable in Greek education is to be found in that of Athens, other systems having mainly but an historical interest for us.