The result of specialization is professionalism. There is a point in any sport or game where it becomes over-developed, and competition too severe, for it to serve its true purpose of providing exercise or recreation for the many. It becomes the monopoly of the few who can afford the time or money to acquire excellence, while the rest, despairing of any measure of success, prefer the role of spectators. When the rewards of success are sufficient there arises a professional class, and when professionalism is once established the amateur can no longer compete with the professional. Before the close of the fifth century the word ἀθλητής had already come to denote the professional athlete as opposed to the amateur or ἰδιωτής. Xenophon relates a conversation between Socrates and an ill-developed youth, in which the philosopher taunts the latter with his very “unprofessional” condition of body.[165] Athletics were out of fashion at that time among the smart young men of Athens, who, like Alcibiades, disdained to compete with their inferiors. “Of course,” replies the youth indignantly, “for I am not a professional, I am an amateur.” Whereupon the philosopher reads him a lecture on the duty of developing the body to its utmost. “No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training: it is part of his profession as a citizen to keep himself in good condition, ready to serve his state at a moment’s notice. The instinct of self-preservation demands it likewise: for how helpless is the state of the ill-trained youth in war or danger! Finally what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable!” The ideal of Socrates is the earlier ideal which was already passing away, while the reply of Epigenes illustrates the change which had taken place in the character of the athlete and in the popular attitude towards athletics.