by Tigranes’ speech that describes how his father had his son’s wise companion
(sophistēs) killed because he thought the companion was corrupting Tigranes, the
absence of philosophy and liberal education and the probable Persian resistance to it may
be inferred from the text by considering the Persian view of markets and trade. There
was a connection in Persia between economic insularity and the insularity of the Persian
mind. The fact that the merchants were excluded from the Free Square reveals much
about the Persian’s view of economics and their economic insularity. The fact that Persia
excludes merchants from the Free Square suggests that the educated Persians looked
down on the marketplace, trade, and the exchange of goods. Though Xenophon does not
elaborate directly on why the Persians disapprove of the marketplace, the reason may be
inferred from the fact that the Persian education in justice consists in adjudicating cases
and disputes according to law, rather than in reading and writing, which the Athenians
learn (1.2.6). The Persian education consists not in reading works produced by the finest
minds ―almost all of which were not Persian― but rather by memorizing the Persian
law and learning how to stringently apply it to solve disputes between individuals.
Compared to the comparatively cosmopolitan Athenian practice Xenophon mentions of
learning letters, the Persians are not concerned with book learning
and the life of the
mind so much as trying to absorb the Persian notion of justice. There is no suggestion in
the text that the Persians saw anything to be gained by troubling themselves to compare
their notion of justice with that of other nations. Thus, the Persian suspicion of the
economic exchange of goods with other cultures mirrors their attempt to insulate
themselves from other non-Persian notions of justice. In economics as in letters and the
life of the mind, the Persians are decidedly insular. Nor is this symmetry necessarily
mere happenstance. Societies that trade with foreigners cannot always separate or isolate
41
Bruell, "Xenophon's Education of Cyrus,",, 12.
29
Convention