"To give a clearer notion of the polity of the Persians as a whole, I will retrace my steps a little. After what has been said, this may be done in a very few words: The Persians, then, are said to number about one hundred and twenty thousand. Of these, none is excluded by law from honors or offices; but all Persians are allowed to send their sons to the public schools of justice. However, it is only those who are able to maintain their sons without employment that send them there: the rest do not. On the other hand, those that are educated by the public teachers are permitted to spend their youth among the _ephēboi_, while those who have not completed this education are not. Again those that pass their youth among the _ephēboi_, and come up to the legal requirements, are allowed to graduate into the class of mature men, and to participate in honors and offices; whereas those who do not pass through the grade of the _ephēboi_ do not rise to the class of mature men. Finally, those who complete the curriculum of the mature men without reproach, pass into the class of elders. Thus it is that this class of elders is composed of men who have passed through all the grades of culture. Such is the polity of the Persians, and such is the system of training whereby they endeavor to secure the highest worth." This Utopian scheme of education has a peculiar interest, because it is nothing more or less than the old ideal of Greek education become fully conscious of itself, under the influence of the new ideal. Let us call attention to the main points of it. (1) The education here set forth is purely political: men are regarded simply and solely as citizens; all honors are civic honors. (2) No provision is made for the education of women, their range of activity being entirely confined to the family. (3) Distinction is made to rest upon education and conduct. (4) The poorer classes of the population, though not legally excluded from education, position, and power, are virtually excluded by their poverty, so that the government is altogether in the hands of the rich, and is, in fact, an aristocracy, while pretending to be a democracy: hence, (5) Social distinctions are distinctions of worth, which is just the Greek ideal. There is, however, one point in the scheme which shows that it is reactionary, directed against prevailing tendencies. Not one word is said of the intellectual side of education, of music or letters. It is evident that Xenophon, himself a man of no mean literary attainments, clearly saw the dangers to Greek life and liberty involved in that exaggerated devotion to literary and intellectual pursuits which followed the teaching of the sophists and Socrates, and that, in order to check this perilous tendency, he drew up a scheme of education from which intellectual and literary pursuits are altogether excluded, in which justice takes the place of letters, and music is not mentioned.