to those of the Erechtheid tribe who fell in the year 459, after the hoplites four archers are mentioned.[642] But they were a small force: there were only 1600 of them in 431 B.C. The majority of the Thetes served in the ships. In the _Birds_ of Aristophanes, which appeared in 414, when it was a question of repelling a sudden raid, just after the peripoloi have been mentioned, Peisthetairos bids his immediate attendants arm themselves with slings and bows: these are clearly the weapons for a flying column despatched in pursuit of raiders.[643] The passage of Xenophon makes it clear that there were peltasts in the ephebic force in the fourth century; that of Aristophanes suggests the probability of archers and slingers among them in the fifth. But whether these light-armed troops consisted of enterprising Zeugitai who added this training to their hoplite drill, or were a small detachment of Thetes, cannot be fixed. Thetes must, at any rate, not have been numerous in the ephebic force, for they could not have spared the time necessary for such lengthy training.[644] As a rule, the epheboi were not expected to do more than guard the frontier and repel an occasional foray: even this, however, must have given them plenty of employment in war-time. But they shared in Muronides’ great victory in the Megarid in 458, when Athens had to use her reserves.[645] Either they or the “foreign legion” joined in a later invasion of Megara.[646] But as a rule they served for home defence only. Their recruit-course ended with their twentieth year: henceforth they were ordinary Athenian citizens and soldiers. In about 332 B.C., when Lukourgos delivered his speech against Leokrates, the old ephebic system seems still to have been in force. The suggestion that Leokrates might have evaded the ephebic oath is only rhetorical, for the orator immediately goes on to assume that he took it.[647] In 328, the probable date of Aristotle’s _Athenian Constitution_, it seems still to have been in existence, for the philosopher records it as part of the contemporary regime. The inscriptions support these authorities. A list of epheboi of the Kekropid tribe enrolled in 334 is given under the vote of thanks: the upper part of the list is gone, but the numbers were apparently large.[648] Some forty-four names can be inferred from the fragments, belonging to six or seven demes out of the twelve which composed the tribe; but apparently the smallest contingents are at the bottom, so there may well have been a hundred names in the tribe, and 1000 epheboi altogether. Considering the impoverishment of Attica and the consequent decrease in the hoplite classes, this is probably a fair proportion of epheboi.[649] A tribal contingent is still large enough to serve as a garrison for Eleusis, and to act by itself.