"First, then, the boys, when they go to school, spend their time in learning justice. They say they go for that purpose, just as our boys go to learn letters. Their governors spend the greater part of the day in acting as judges among them. It is needless to say that boys, as well as men, bring charges against each other of theft and robbery and violence and deceit and slander, and similar things, and those whom the judges find guilty of any of these they punish. But they also punish those whom they find bringing false charges. They pronounce judgment likewise on a charge which, more than anything else, makes men hate each other, and for which they are judged less than for any other, namely, ingratitude. If the judges find a boy in a position to return a favor and not doing it, they punish him severely, believing that persons who are ungrateful will, more than any others, be undutiful to the gods, to parents, country, and friends. It is generally held that ingratitude, more than aught else, leads to irreverence, and we need not add that _it_ is the prime mover in every form of baseness. They teach the boys also self-denial, and these are greatly aided in learning this virtue from seeing it daily practised by their elders. Another thing they teach them is obedience to those placed in authority over them; and they are greatly aided in learning this, by seeing their elders strictly obeying their governors. Another thing yet which they teach them is self-discipline in matters of eating and drinking; and they are greatly aided in this by seeing that their elders never absent themselves for the purpose of eating, until they are permitted to do so by their governors, as well as by the fact that they (the boys) do not eat with their mothers, but with their teachers, and at a signal from their governors. As food, they bring with them from home bread, as a relish, nasturtium, and in order to drink, if they are thirsty, they bring an earthen cup to draw water from the river with. In addition to all these things, the boys learn to shoot with the bow and to throw the javelin. Up to the age of sixteen or seventeen years, these are the studies in which the boys engage; after that they are transferred to the class of cadets (ἔφηβοι).