Let us now look into one of the gymnasia at Athens, the Akademeia or Lukeion. We will suppose that it is late in the afternoon, for this was a favourite time for taking exercise: the Athenians liked to get a good appetite for their evening meal. Outside, a troop of young men who intend to be enrolled in the State-cavalry are practising their evolutions, mounting, in the absence of stirrups, by a leaping-pole, and charging in squadrons. On another side a body of heavy infantry with spear and shield are assembling for a night march into the Megarid;[406] they are packing their supplies, onions and dried fish, perhaps, into their knapsacks as they fall in, and are grumbling at having to leave Athens just when a festival is coming; a burly countryman is complaining to his general that it is not his turn to serve, as he took part in the raid into Boiotia last week, and his general is threatening him with a prosecution for insubordination if he becomes abusive. After paying our respects to the patron deities, Herakles and Hermes and Eros,[407] and having muttered a curse on all tyrants suggested by the statue of Eros which Charmos the father-in-law of Hippias the Peisistratid set up,[408] we enter the gymnasium. The first room which we come to is the undressing-room.[409] On the benches round the walls a row of men are sitting discussing the exact nature of Self-control: an extremely ugly person, to whom they all pay great respect, is stating that it is an exact science, and, if only they can discover this science, the whole world will become virtuous. Lads and men are stripping all about the room, and passing off to take their exercises elsewhere; others keep coming in and dressing and listening to the discussion for a minute or two. A handsome young fellow comes in: the ugly man makes room for him with great energy, and his friends who are sitting at the end of the bench are pushed off suddenly on to the floor. A shout of laughter, mingled with some strong Attic abuse, arises. Not wishing to be involved as witnesses in an interminable lawsuit, we hurry out through the further door into a great cloister.[410] In the centre of this is a large open space, with no roof. Here we meet a well-known mathematician from Kurene,[411] who is walking round the cloister with a crowd of pupils: he is explaining to them that famous theorem about right-angled triangles, whose proof is so neat that Pythagoras the vegetarian sacrificed a hundred oxen when he discovered it. At intervals the mathematician stops and draws a diagram in the dust with his stick. As we follow him, we can look into the rooms which surround the cloister. In one, a crowd of men are anointing themselves with oil.[412] The rubbing, which is so good for all bodily ills, and the oil, even if not followed by any further exercise, are regarded as an excellent thing. An Athenian gentleman is expected to carry about a certain fragrance of this oil,[413] and his