In the period of juvenile emancipation and increasing luxury and indulgence for children which marked the closing decades of the fifth century, it became customary for conservative thinkers to look back with longing, and no doubt idealising, eyes to the “good old times.” The sixth and early fifth centuries came, probably unjustly, to be regarded as the ideal age of education, when children learned obedience and morality, and were not pampered and depraved; when they were beautiful and healthy, not pale-faced, stunted, and over-educated. Listen to Aristophanes,[193] yearning for “the good old style of education, in the days when Justice still prevailed over Rhetoric, and good morals were still in fashion. Then children were seen and not heard; then the boys of each hamlet and ward walked in orderly procession along the roads on their way to the lyre-school,――no overcoats, though it snowed cats and dogs. Then, while they stood up square――no lounging――the master taught them a fine old patriotic song like ‘Pallas, city-sacker dread,’[194] or ‘A cry that echoes afar,’[195] set to a good old-fashioned tune. If any one tried any vulgar trills and twiddles and odes where the metre varies, such as Phrunis and Co. use nowadays, he got a tremendous thrashing for disrespect to the Muses.” While being taught by the paidotribes, too, they behaved modestly, and did not spend their time ogling their admirers. “At meals children were not allowed to grab up the dainties or giggle or cross their feet.” “This was the education which produced the heroes of Marathon.… This taught the boys to avoid the Agora, keep away from the Baths, be ashamed at what is disgraceful, be courteous to elders, honour their parents, and be an impersonation of Modesty――instead of running after ballet-girls. They passed their days in the gymnasia, keeping their bodies in good condition, not mouthing quibbles in the Agora. Each spent his time with some well-mannered lad of his own age, running races in the Akademeia under the sacred olives, amid a fragrance of smilax and leisure and white poplar, rejoicing in the springtide when plane-tree and elm whisper together.” All the voices of generations of boys, bound down to indoor studies when wood and field and river are calling them, the complaint of ages of fevered hurry and bustle, looking back with regret on the days of “leisure” and “springtide,” seem to echo in Aristophanes’ lament for the ways that were no more. “This education,” he goes on, “produced a good chest, sound complexion, broad shoulders, small tongue; the new style produces pale faces, small shoulders, narrow chest, and long tongue, and makes the boy confuse Honour with Dishonour: it fills the Baths, empties the Palaistra.”