This organised stealing was a feature of Spartan education. At an early age, as we have seen, the small boys were sent out to steal firewood and vegetables for the Eiren who had charge of them. Later they were driven out into the country, to forage for themselves at the expense of the farms. There was a definite age at which it was customary to begin stealing.[34] The articles which might be stolen were fixed by law, and the legal limits might not be transgressed.[35] It must be remembered that much property in Laconia was held in common. Any one, for instance, who was belated while hunting might take what food he pleased from a country house, and even break open seals to get at provisions. The Spartans also used one another’s dogs and horses freely, without permission. It is therefore absurd to say that the system taught the boys to be dishonest. If the State agrees to declare certain articles to be common property, it is no longer stealing if one citizen removes them from the house of another: he is no more dishonest than a man who picks blackberries or buttercups in England. At one of the English public schools, tooth-mugs used to be a recognised article of plunder. The small fags were expected to keep their particular dormitory supplied with them, at the expense of others. They were punished by the wronged dormitory if caught in the act of removing them: but ingenuity in such thefts was regarded as praiseworthy. There was a certain number of these mugs belonging to the whole house; they were common property, and could therefore be purloined without dishonesty. Moreover, this system of legalised robbery had a valuable educational object at Sparta. It was excellent training in scouting, laying ambushes, and foraging, all of which it is very important that a future soldier should learn. Xenophon, a soldier himself, notices this, and in the _Anabasis_, when he needs a clever strategist, he selects a Spartan because he has been educated in this way. Since this was the object of the system, the boys, if caught, were flogged, not for stealing, but for stealing clumsily. Isokrates declares that skill in robbery was the road to the highest offices at Sparta. “If any one can show that this is not the branch of education which the Lacedaemonians regard as the most important,” he adds, “I admit that I have not spoken a word of truth in my life.”[36]