If Sparta took little part in the great competitions, she had her own games and her own competitions. One of these, the Leonidaea, was celebrated in honour of those who fell at Thermopylae. Two inscriptions have been discovered containing regulations for this festival which it appears must have been reorganized about the time of Nerva.[277] It was a yearly festival, and only Spartans were allowed to compete. This is perhaps the reason why the programme contained the pankration, an event for which no Spartan might enter at other festivals. The most interesting inscriptions are those referring to certain games in which teams of Spartan boys competed. The late Mr. Kenneth Freeman, in his book, _The Schools of Hellas_, maintained that the prototype of the English public school system was to be found in the Spartan system of education. Certainly the Spartan games resemble our English games more closely than any other games of which we know in the ancient world. The game of Platanistas was played on an island surrounded by a ditch, between two teams of boys who, entering the ground by bridges at either end, strove by fighting, hitting, kicking, and biting, to drive their opponents into the water. But for the absence of the ball, this game bears considerable resemblance to the primitive football scrimmage before any of the existing rules were introduced, and, as we shall see, ball games were of considerable importance at Sparta. The game of Platanistas, like the scourging, may have had its origin in some ritual practice denoted by the sacrifice of a boar, but in the time of Pausanias it was certainly played in the form described. A series of inscriptions, all with one exception dating from the time of the Antonines, commemorate victories won by teams of ball-players at some yearly competition.[278] The name σφαιρεῖς was given to Spartan youths in their first year of manhood. The competitions took place in the Dromos under the direction of the Bideoi, a board of five officials responsible for the management of the Platanistas and other ephebic games. The teams represented the local districts of Sparta called the Obes, and it seems probable that the expenses connected with the team were provided by a local obe official, the διαβετής, who is mentioned in the inscriptions. Each team was under a captain called the πρέσβυς, but the number of members in a team cannot be decided owing to the mutilation of the inscriptions. It seems not to have been less than fifteen. The competition was arranged on the tournament system, for several inscriptions record the fact that the winning team had not drawn a bye. Unfortunately, we have no clue to the manner of playing the game.