But an even more signal proof of the reaction against the selfish policy of the previous fifty years is to be found in the effort made to rid Athens of the mercenary system which was sapping the military strength of the state. After Chæronea the youth of Athens was once more trained to arms. Young men had to serve the state for at least two years. These Epheboi, under the direction of a marshal and ten masters of discipline, wore a common uniform, lived together and dined frugally at a common mess. The system was almost Spartan in its simple temperance. The Epheboi were trained in the exercises of the hoplite. At the end of the first half of their training they gave a public exhibition of athletic and military skill in the Athenian theatre. The ministry of Lycurgus between 338 and 326 B.C. was not a second golden age for Athens. But it was a faithful copy. There was, at least, a partial return to the good old times when Athenian lads ran races under the sacred olives, redolent of convolvulus and whitening poplar, “rejoicing in the sweet o’ the year when the plane-tree whispers to the elm.” It was in a world dominated by these ideals that Lysippus (roughly 375 B.C. to 300 B.C.), the last of the great Greek sculptors, worked. In place of the less virile type favoured by the age of Praxiteles he aimed at the expression of natural manly beauty. Lysippus moulded his style upon that of Polyclitus. Like Polyclitus, he preferred to work in bronze. The preference is typical of his departure from the style of the Athenian artists who had dominated sculpture during the forty years before Chæronea. Marble had proved the very medium for the portrayal of the softer graces of the human form and the delicate expression of emotion. But it was inadequate for the representation of the more vigorous human forms which Lysippus sought to portray. Lysippus, however, was no blind follower of Polyclitus. It is narrated that he once said, “Polyclitus made men as they were, but I make them as they appear to the eye.” Lysippus added the truth of expression which the beautifully symmetrical but impassive figures of Polyclitus lacked. He aimed at imparting to his figures a lightness that those of the Argive sculptor wanted. The Vatican “Apoxyomenus” is without doubt the finest statue extant embodying these tendencies. This fine marble was excavated in April 1849 from among the ruins of a large private house in the Vicolo delle Palme in Transtevere. It is doubtless a marble copy of the bronze which was one of the most popular works of art in Rome during the Empire. In the bronze original the supports which are necessary for the marble copy were absent. [Illustration: MELEAGER Vatican, Rome] [Illustration: APOXYOMENUS (SCHOOL OF LYSIPPUS) Vatican, Rome]