For educational purposes, besides the dithuramboi already mentioned, the two most important classes were the War-dance and the Naked-dance (γυμνοπαιδία [gymnopaidia]).[446] In the War-dance the performers, clad in arms, imitated all the ways in which blows and spears might be avoided, now bending to one side, now drawing back, now leaping in the air, now crouching down: then, again, they acted as though they were hurling javelins and spears and dealing all manner of blows at close quarters.[447] The Kuretic dance in Crete was very similar; the dancers “in full armour beat their swords against their shields and leaped in an inspired and warlike manner.”[448] The field-days, when teams of boys and “packs” of epheboi fought one another to the sound of music, were only a more warlike sort of dance. In fact, war and the war-dance were as closely connected in Hellas as war and drill in Modern Europe. The Thessalians called their heroes “dancers”; Lucian quotes an inscription that “the people set up this statue to Eilation, who danced the battle well”: “chief dancer” (προορχηστήρ [proorchêstêr])[449] was a dignified title. The same author observes that in warlike Sparta the young men learn to dance as much as to fight, and that their military and gymnastic exercises alike were inextricably mixed up with dancing.[449] The “Naked-dance” was to gymnastics what the war-dance was to war.[450] It represented the movements of the palaistra set to music, accompanied by some singing.[451] The style was solemn, like that of the ἐμμέλεια [emmeleia], or dance of Tragedy. It was performed in the main by boys, as the name γυμνοπαιδία [gymnopaidia] implies; but grown men also took part, as at Sparta, where practically the whole male population danced it at once. Plato seems to mean a similar type by his “peace-dance” (in the _Laws_), which is to be a thanksgiving for past mercies or a prayer for continued prosperity. In the regular system of education at Athens, it is true, the boys learned only to sing and play, not to dance. But owing to the perpetual demand for boys from each of the ten tribes to compete at the great festivals in war-dances and dithyrambs, dancing must have been a common accomplishment. These competitors also attracted and encouraged a large number of dancing-masters. Any boy who showed promise as a dancer, or perhaps even as a singer only, would be singled out by the agents who collected choroi for the choregoi.