At the end of their first year of training, the epheboi appeared in the theatre at the great Dionusia to show off their military evolutions and the drill which they had learned. After the review they received a spear and shield from the State.[629] The sons of those who had fallen in battle, being the wards of the State,[630] received a complete outfit of armour. These arms, which the epheboi received from the State, were considered to be sacred: consequently to throw away the shield in flight was regarded as a serious offence, almost an act of sacrilege.[631] [Illustration: PLATE IX. A RIDING LESSON――MOUNTING _Archaeologische Zeitung_, 1885, Plate 11. From a Kulix at Munich, attributed to Euphronios.] After receiving their arms from the State, the epheboi were marched out of Athens, and spent most of the next year patrolling the country and frontiers, and garrisoning the forts.[632] Attica was studded with these περιπόλια [peripolia], or patrol-stations, from Oinoé and Phulé on the north-western frontier to Anaphlustos and Thorikos in the south. The epheboi, like the κρυπτοί [kryptoi] in Plato’s _Laws_ and at Sparta, were shifted about from district to district, in order that they might acquire a thorough knowledge of their country’s geographical peculiarities. The tribal companies, into which they were divided, relieved one another in various stations. Thus in the course of 334-333 we know that both the Hippothontid and the Kekropid tribes were successively stationed at Eleusis, for the people of that district pass two separate votes of thanks to them for the excellent discipline which they had preserved.[633] There may also have been open-air camps: the Eleusinian inscriptions talk of ὑπαίθριοι [hypaithrioi]. The epheboi seem to have been assisted in their patrol-duties by a mercenary force of foreigners. Thucydides[634] declares that Phrunichos was assassinated by a peripolos: the Athenian people, according to Lusias, rewarded Thrasuboulos of Kaludon as the slayer and recorded his name on a pillar.[635] If the historian had meant to dispute this award, he must have referred to it, for it was clearly the accepted version. He also states that the plot was arranged at the house of the captain of the peripoloi, and mentions an Argive as one of the accomplices: Lusias mentions a Megarian. Both these foreigners were probably peripoloi. But foreign youths cannot at this period have been permitted to serve with the tribal companies of epheboi. A legend, it is true, asserts that this privilege was granted to the young men of Kos, in honour of the great doctor Hippokrates; but even this only shows that all other states were excluded. Indeed, foreigners were not enrolled among the Athenian epheboi until a much later epoch, when the system was no longer military.