Games of ball are going on in the ball-court yonder.[432] We may remember that the poet Sophocles was a famous player.[433] But the shadow on the great sun-dial has nearly reached the ten-foot mark which announces dinner-time to the Athenian world. The crowds who have been exercising themselves are scraping off the sweat and dirt with the στλεγγίς [stlengis] or scraper,[434] or else hurrying to the bath-rooms. After the bath comes another anointing, with oil and water this time.[435] Then away through the nearest gate into the city, while the great buildings on the Akropolis grow misty in the twilight and Athena’s guardian Spear catches the last rays of the setting sun. All this was open to the poorest Athenian: there was no fee for entrance. The only expenses were those incurred in buying an oil-flask and scraper, which the State did not as a rule provide, and any fees that might be paid to a trainer for special “coaching.” The poor could learn as much as they required from watching those who were proficient. It was usual to tip the man in the public baths who poured cold water over the bathers and assisted them generally: but this probably did not apply to the bath-rooms in the gymnasia. The State certainly made it easy for every citizen to take as much exercise as he pleased. Women were wholly excluded from athletics at Athens. In Sparta girls exercised themselves as much as the boys. In other Dorian States feminine athletics were encouraged to a less degree. At Argos there were foot-races for girls. In Chios they could be seen wrestling in the gymnasia.[436] * * * * * But the gymnasia and palaistrai, though they provided so many different kinds of exercises, did not supply the Hellenes with their sole opportunities for keeping the body in good condition. Hunting was a popular employment at Sparta and no doubt elsewhere: Xenophon, who was devoted to it, would have liked to make it more popular in Attica,[437] where it languished, perhaps from lack of game. Swimming and rowing were usual accomplishments. Riding was compulsory for rich citizens at Athens, for they had to serve in the cavalry; it was also popular in Thessaly, the land of horses. Military service provided both an incentive to physical exercise and a frequent means of obtaining it. Dancing was universal throughout the Hellenic world and played a larger part in Hellenic education than is usually recognised. At Sparta it was of paramount importance. At Athens it was taught free to large numbers of boys under the system of leitourgiai. Plato divides physical education into dancing and wrestling.[438] Aristophanes[439] brackets dancing between the palaistra and music, when he wishes to give the three elements of a gentleman’s education. Choral dancing to a Hellene was at once the ritual of religion, the ordinary accompaniment of a festival or public holiday, the highest form of music, and the most perfect system of physical exercise then discovered.