As soon as his pupils knew how to play, the master taught them the works of the great lyric poets,[292] which were not taught in the school of letters. These were set to music, and the boys sang them and played the accompaniment. Every gentleman at Athens was expected to be able to sing and play in this manner when he went out to a dinner-party. The custom, however, began to become unfashionable during the Peloponnesian War. When old Strepsiades, in the _Clouds_,[293] asked Pheidippides to take the lyre and sing a song of Simonides, his new-fashioned son replies that playing the lyre was quite out of date, and singing over the wine was only fit for a slave-woman at the grindstone. Whether this state of feeling continued and whether it had a prejudicial effect on the music-schools cannot be decided. Sometimes the guests brought their boys to sing to the company: in the _Peace_ the son of the hero Lamachos is going to sing Homer, while the coward Kleonumos’ boy has a song of Archilochos ready. Alkaios and Anakreon were also favourites;[294] the lyric portions of Kratinos’ comedies, too, are mentioned as sung at banquets:[295] no doubt, the same was true of the other great comedians. As the iambic parts of Aeschylus and Euripides were recited at the dinner-table, it is natural to suppose that their songs were also sung. The aged Dikasts in the _Wasps_ sing the choruses from Phrunichos’ _Sidonians_. Old songs like Lamprokles’ “Pallas, dread sacker of cities” and Kudides’ “A cry that echoes afar” were popular in earlier times. No doubt there was plenty of variety in accordance with the master’s taste. At the music school, too, may have been taught the metrical version, set to music, of the Athenian laws, which was ascribed to Solon,[296] and that of the legislation of Charondas, which Athenian gentlemen sang over their wine.[297] Athenian boys were expected to know the laws by the time that they were epheboi, and may well have been taught them in this convenient and attractive way at the lyre-master’s. To know how to play the lyre became the mark of a liberal education, since every one learned letters, but the poorest did not enter the music-school. “He doesn’t know the way to play the lyre,” became a proverb for an uneducated person, who had not had so many opportunities in life as his wealthier fellow-citizens. So, as a plea for a defendant we find―― He may have stolen. But acquit him, for He doesn’t know the way to play the lyre.[298] To this the Dikast retorts that he has not learnt the lyre either, so he must be forgiven if he is so stupid as to condemn the accused.[299]