Cretan boys were always fighting either single combats or combined battles against the boys of another club-school. They were taught endurance by many hardships. They wore only a short coat in summer and winter alike. They learnt to despise heat and cold and mountain paths and the blows which they received in gymnasia and in fighting. They remained in the club-schools till their seventeenth year,[87] when they became epheboi and celebrated their escape from the garb of childhood by a special festival.[88] Like their contemporaries at Athens, the epheboi took a special oath of allegiance to the State and hatred towards its enemies. A fragment still survives of the oath taken by the epheboi of Dreros, near Knossos.[89] At seventeen the epheboi were collected into “packs” (ἀγέλαι [agelai]) by private enterprise. A rich and distinguished young ephebos would gather round him as large a pack of his contemporaries as he could; their numbers no doubt depended partly on his wealth, and still more on his personal popularity. The aristocratic element in this arrangement is very noticeable, as in all the institutions of Crete as contrasted with Sparta. The father of this young chief usually acted as leader of the pack (ἀγελάτης [agelatês]); he possessed full authority over them and could punish them as he pleased. He led them out on hunting expeditions and to the “Runs” (δρόμοι [dromoi]), that is, the gymnasia of the epheboi. Cretans who had not yet entered a pack of epheboi were excluded from these runs (ἀπόδρομοι [apodromoi]); when they entered, they were called “members of packs” (ἀγέλαστοι [agelastoi]).[90] The pack-leader could collect his followers where he pleased;[91] very possibly the epheboi did not attend the club dinners ordinarily, but fed or slept either at their patron’s house (whence the need of a rich pack-leader) or in some special room. They thus corresponded closely to the Spartan boys of a younger age under their Eiren. Their food was supplied, like that of all Cretans, largely out of the public revenues. On certain fixed days “pack” joined battle with “pack” to the sound of the lyre and flutes and in regular time, as was the custom in war; fists, clubs, and even weapons of iron might be used. It was a regular institution, half dance, half field-day, with fixed rules and imposed by law. These battles must have closely resembled the contests of the Spartan epheboi in the shady playing-fields. The life of the boys was surrounded with a military atmosphere throughout. They wore military dress and counted their weapons their most valuable possessions. Young Cretans remained in the packs till after marriage. Then they returned to their homes and the clubs.