Then, too, there was a distinction between the profession of arms and all other professions. Following republican Rome again, the education of no man aspiring to a public career was complete until he had served as a soldier. No one can truthfully charge the Spaniards of the sixteenth century with lack of courage. Military skill was the highest type of manhood. Of danger they made a plaything, not only in their wars but in their sports. Life was dull unless brightened by blood. In Aragon the barons were limited to a few great families who traced their descent from twelve peers, called _ricos homes de natura_. Although obliged to attend the king in his wars, in every other respect they were independent. They were themselves exempt from taxation and punishment, and held absolute authority over the lives and property of their vassals. The next lower order of nobility in Aragon was called _infanzones_, corresponding to the hidalgos of Castile. The _caballeros_, or knights, were the immediate followers of the _ricos homes_, and were possessed of important privileges. In La Mancha the peasantry were of a quality different from those sent by Castile and Estremadura to the New World. Quintana writes of them, "He who travels through La Mancha will see the scaffold before he sees the town. They are lazy, dirty, quarrelsome, and never suffer from hunger, for when they wish to become the owners of anything they take it;" and remarks another, "They live on parched _garbanzos_, and pass the winter lying on their bellies like reptiles in the sun." See Murillo's matchless pictures. [Sidenote: JEWS AND MOORS.]