Cleinias:  That certainly appears to have been the case.

Athenian:  How, then, was this advantage lost under Cambyses, and again recovered under Darius?  Shall I try to divine?

Cleinias:  The enquiry, no doubt, has a bearing upon our subject.

Athenian:  I imagine that Cyrus, though a great and patriotic general, had never given his mind to education, and never attended to the order of his household.

Cleinias:  What makes you say so?

Athenian:  I think that from his youth upwards he was a soldier, and entrusted the education of his children to the women; and they brought them up from their childhood as the favourites of fortune, who were blessed already, and needed no more blessings.  They thought that they were happy enough, and that no one should be allowed to oppose them in any way, and they compelled every one to praise all that they said or did.  This was how they brought them up.

Cleinias:  A splendid education truly!

Athenian:  Such an one as women were likely to give them, and especially princesses who had recently grown rich, and in the absence of the men, too, who were occupied in wars and dangers, and had no time to look after them.

Cleinias:  What would you expect?

Athenian:  Their father had possessions of cattle and sheep, and many herds of men and other animals, but he did not consider that those to whom he was about to make them over were not trained in his own calling, which was Persian; for the Persians are shepherds—­sons of a rugged land, which is a stern mother, and well fitted to produce a sturdy race able to live in the open air and go without sleep, and also to fight, if fighting is required (compare Arist.  Pol.).  He did not observe that his sons were trained differently; through the so-called blessing of being royal they were educated in the Median fashion by women and eunuchs, which led to their becoming such as people do become when they are brought up unreproved.  And so, after the death of Cyrus, his sons, in the fulness of luxury and licence, took the kingdom, and first one slew the other because he could not endure a rival; and, afterwards, the slayer himself, mad with wine and brutality, lost his kingdom through the Medes and the Eunuch, as they called him, who despised the folly of Cambyses.

Cleinias:  So runs the tale, and such probably were the facts.

Athenian:  Yes; and the tradition says, that the empire came back to the Persians, through Darius and the seven chiefs.

Cleinias:  True.