Two things still remain to be considered with regard to Athenian schools, (1) grading, (2) holidays. With respect to the former, the practice probably differed at different times; but we seem to be justified in assuming that, at the time of which I am speaking, there were but two grades, boys (παῖδες) and youths (νεανίσκοι). These are mentioned by Plato, in the _Lysis_, as celebrating the Hermæa together in a palæstra. The first grade would include the boys from seven to eleven years of age; the second, those from eleven to fifteen. As to holidays, they seem to have been simply the feast-days of the greater gods, when business of every sort was suspended. Such days amounted to about ninety annually. (3) COLLEGE EDUCATION. About the time when he was blossoming into manhood, that is, some time between his fourteenth and his sixteenth year, the Athenian boy of the olden time was transferred from the private school and palæstra, which belonged to the family side of life, to the gymnasium, which belonged to the State, and in which he received the education calculated to fit him for the duties of a citizen. Having, in the family and the school, been trained to be a gentleman (καλοκἀγαθός), he must now be trained to be a citizen, capable of exercising legislative, judicial, and military functions. The State saw to it that he received this training, if his parents chose and could afford it. In the time of Solon, about B.C. 590, two great gymnasia, the Academy and Cynosarges, were erected in the midst of extensive groves outside the city walls. These groves were afterwards surrounded with high walls, furnished with seats and other conveniences, and turned into city parks. The Academy, which lay to the northwest of the city, in the valley of the Cephisus, and was under the patronage of Athena, was the resort of the full-blooded citizens, while Cynosarges, situated to the east of the city, near the foot of Lycabettus, was assigned to those who had foreign blood in their veins, that is, who had only one parent of pure Athenian stock. This gymnasium was under the patronage of Heracles, whose worship always implies the presence of a foreign and vanquished element. These were the only two gymnasia belonging to Athens before the time of Pericles. They were, probably, destroyed by the Persians in 480, and had afterwards to be rebuilt, and the groves replanted. While the children of nearly all the free citizens of Athens attended the school and the palæstra, it is clear that only the youth of the wealthier classes attended the gymnasium. One result of this was that the government and offices of the State fell exclusively into the hands of those classes; and it was perhaps just in order to make this division, without introducing any class-law, that the shrewd Solon established the gymnasia, which thus became a bulwark against democracy.