§ 45. The small size and narrow bounds of Greek states made the support of a professional army seldom possible, and accordingly we find expedients now suddenly again become fashionable from very different causes--a citizen army, and general liability to military service. No Greek boy was allowed to pass from his school-days into citizen life without some preliminary training and practice in the use of arms and in military discipline. This is the discipline of the _ephebi_, or grown-up boys, concerning which so much has been written of late years by the learned. A number of inscriptions regarding the duties and ceremonies to be performed by them have been lately discovered, and we seem to see in them a sort of general agreement throughout Greece, rather differing in the time allotted, and in other details, than in principles.[48] There were actual masters in the art of using arms, so far as this was not included in the gymnastic exercises of the palæstra; we do not hear, however, of much drilling, and probably the drill of Greek armies, if we except the Spartans, was very imperfect in the best period. It was not until the growth of mercenary armies, and (almost simultaneously) the great military outburst at Thebes under Epaminondas, that war became a science in our sense. On the other hand, all the patrol duty of the frontier was done by these _ephebi_, who, at about the age of sixteen, were brought into the rank of citizens by a solemn service and sacrifice, at which they swore oaths of fidelity and patriotism, and undertook their military duties as a preliminary to their full life of political burgesses. The orphans of citizens killed in battle had their arms and military dress presented to them (at Athens) by the State. The youths assumed the short dark-gray cloak (χλαμύς), and the broad-brimmed soft hat (πέτασος), suitable for marching duty, and then, as περίπολοι, or patrolling police, they looked to the safety of the country, the condition of the roads, and occupied the frontier forts, of which we see such striking remains still in Attica. The mountain fort of Phylæ, that of Dekelea, of Œnoe (or Eleutheræ), of Sunium, of Thorikos, of Oropos, and others, were the stations from which the frontiers were patrolled.