The sons of rich parents apparently went to school earliest: their poorer fellow-citizens went later.[124] This was natural. The poor could not keep their sons at school for a long time, for they wanted their services in the shop or on the farm, and the fees were a burden: so they did not send them till they were old enough to pick up instruction quickly. The rich, on the other hand, to whom money was no object, sent their boys to school at an early age, when they could do little more than look on, while their elders worked. Aristotle commends this custom, and imposes two years of such “playing at school” upon the boys of his ideal State.[125] The ordinary system of primary education at Athens consisted of three parts, presided over respectively by the “grammatistes,” “kitharistes,” and “paidotribes.”[126] The grammatistes taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic, and made his pupils read and learn by heart the great poets, Homer and Hesiod and others. The kitharistes taught the boys how to play the seven-stringed lyre and sing to it the works of the lyric poets, which they would incidentally have to learn. The paidotribes presided over their physical development in a scientific way; he taught them wrestling, boxing, the pankration, running, jumping, throwing the diskos and javelin, and various other exercises; his school-room was the palaistra. To this triple system some boys added drawing and painting;[127] but this subject seems to have been an extra till late in the fourth century. Literature, music, and athletics composed the ordinary course at Athens. Which of the three branches of education began first? Probably they were all taught simultaneously. The order in which they are usually mentioned does not point to a fixed sequence. Letters were naturally mentioned first, because all citizens alike learned this subject. Gymnastics were put last, because, owing to the public gymnasia, these exercises were carried on long after the other schooling had ceased. Moreover, most of the recognised exercises of the palaistra were not taught to small boys; from the nature of the exercises and from the pictures on the vases it may be deduced that the average boy did not learn them till his twelfth year at the earliest. But physical training of an easier sort of course commenced much earlier, and boys seem to have attended a palaistra from their sixth year onwards to receive it. Both Plato and Aristotle demand that it should begin several years before any intellectual instruction; and Plato, making athletics such as shooting and riding begin at six, defers letters till ten and lyre-playing till thirteen. Gymnastics would naturally occupy a part of the day for a healthy young Hellene during the whole time from his sixth year till manhood. It is thus that the _Charmides_ mentions “quite tiny boys” as present in the palaistra, as well as older lads and young men.