By eighteen the young Athenian’s days of study will usually come to a close. At that age he will be given a simple festival by his father and be formally enrolled in his paternal _deme_.[*] His hair, which has hitherto grown down toward his shoulders, will be clipped short. He will allow his beard to grow. At the temple of Aglaurus he will (with the other youths of his age) take solemn oath of loyalty to Athens and her laws. For the next year he will serve as a military guard at the Peiræus, and receive a certain training in soldiering. The next year the state will present him with a new shield and spear, and he will have a taste of the rougher garrison duty at one of the frontier forts towards Bœtia or Megara.[+] Then he is mustered out. He is an ephebus no longer, but a full-fledged citizen, and all the vicissitudes of Athenian life are before him. [*] One of the hundred or more petty townships or precincts into which Attica was divided. [+] These two years which the _ephebi_ of Athens had to serve under arms have been aptly likened to the military service now required of young men in European countries. Chapter X. The Physicians of Athens. 63. The Beginnings of Greek Medical Science.—As we move about the city we cannot but be impressed by the high average of fine physiques and handsome faces. Your typical Greek is fair in color and has very regular features. The youths do not mature rapidly, but thanks to the gymnasia and the regular lives, they develop not merely admirable, but healthy, bodies. The proportion of hale and hearty _old_ men is great; and probably the number of invalids is considerably smaller than in later times and in more artificially reared communities.[*] Nevertheless, the Athenians are certainly mortal, and subject to bodily ills, and the physician is no unimportant member of society, although his exact status is much less clearly determined than it will be in subsequent ages. [*] A slight but significant witness to the general healthiness of the Greeks is found in the very rare mention in their literature of such a common ill as _toothache_.