The children slept at home till they were seven; but at an early age were taken by their fathers to the “Pheiditia” or clubs where the grown men spent those hours during which they stayed indoors and took their meals. About fifty men attended each of these clubs. The children sat on the floor near their fathers. Each member contributed monthly a “medimnos” of barley-meal, eight “choes” of wine, five “mnai” of cheese, two and a half “mnai” of figs,[6] and some very cheap relish; if he sacrificed to a god, he gave part of the victim to his “mess,” and if he was successful in hunting (which was a frequent occupation), he brought his spoils to the common table. There was also the famous black broth, made by the hereditary guild of State cooks, which only a life of Spartan training and cold baths in the Eurotas could make appetising; yet elderly Spartans preferred it to meat. Perhaps a fragment of Alkman represents a high-day at one of these clubs: “Seven couches and as many tables, brimming full of poppy-flavoured loaves, and linseed and sesamum, and in bowls honey and linseed for the children.”[7] A Spartan who became too poor to pay his contribution to his club lost his rights as a citizen, and so could not have his children educated in the State-system. But as long as the allotments were not alienated, such cases were not common. The contribution was κατὰ κεφαλήν [kata kephalên],[8] that is, the fixed quantity of provisions had to be supplied for every member of the family who attended a club, _i.e._ for every male, since the women took their meals at home. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the boys, either before or after they went to the boarding-schools, were fed at the expense of the State. It is expressly stated that the number of foster-children, who accompanied their benefactors’ sons to school, varied according to the extent of their patron’s means.[9] Parents must therefore have paid something for their boys while they were at school. The teaching involved no expenses; hence it must have been the food for which they paid. Thus, only those boys could attend the Spartan schools whose parents could afford to pay the customary subscription in kind for their own and their children’s food at the common meals. Xenophon, the admirer of all things Spartan, adopts the same system in his State, since he makes the children of the poor drop out automatically from the public schools. It must be remembered that at Sparta families were always small, and the population tended to decrease steadily; the number of males for whom subscriptions had to be paid by the head of the family can rarely have been large.