§ 49. In these later days, when the seven subjects of knowledge, including rhetoric, philosophy, etc., were formally adopted, the ephebic training assumed the character of a university course. There were, indeed, masters appointed for fencing, the use of arms, dancing, and wrestling, as of old; but the leading philosophical schools did not then carry off the youths from the ephebic training; they rather supplied it with formal professors. In the better and strictly classical days, before we hear of the technical term _ephebi_, the practical training of the youths for patrols, and then as incipient citizens, rather corresponded to what we call the sixth form at a public school, and did not embrace really philosophic teaching, such as is supposed to be found at our universities. It had the same mixture of the physical and intellectual, the same attention to mere accomplishments, the same careful surveillance which we practise in schools, but which are not a complete introduction to full citizen life. This was the summit of Spartan training, where the object was not to train really political men able to discuss public affairs and assist in the government of the State, but brave soldiers, and fine men, physically able to endure hardship and submit to strict discipline. Something quite different and intellectually higher was needful for a really democratic life, for an intelligent understanding of State functions, and the proper discussion of them. It was all very well to dance complicated figures with grace, to play the lyre and sing sweetly with it, to wrestle and run with force and ease. This was the old training, which made fine soldiers, but good citizens only in the sense of stupidly ignorant, and therefore obedient, hearers of the orders of their superiors. The necessity of a change came with the rise of democracy in Greece, and the Greeks provided themselves, when the need arose, with teachers suited to their wants. These men, the Sophists, were the first who gave any education corresponding to our university courses, and to these we now turn. FOOTNOTES: [48] Cf. the list in Grasberger, iii. 65. [49] “N. L.,” p. 233. [50] Cf. for the text of his oath _Philol._ for 1854, p. 694, or Grasberger, iii. 61. [51] Especially in his “Education of Cyrus.” CHAPTER VIII. HIGHER EDUCATION--THE SOPHISTS AND SOCRATES.