The education of Spartans was designed, as has been said, to fit youth for citizens that could defend the State. That of Athens was for free individuality. The laws of Solon enjoined upon each father in Athens to teach his son a trade, whereby he could earn his living. If the father neglected this the son was absolved from the duty of supporting him in old age. The law of Solon decreed that the boy, before all else, should learn how to read and how to swim. It was a maritime State, and the Greek lived much upon the water. The son of poor parents should be taught music, horsemanship, and gymnastics, hunting and philosophy. It was left to the father to decide whether these higher studies should be undertaken or not. But public opinion was so strong that no father dared to refuse a higher education to his son if his means allowed it. For the first seven years the Athenian boy was under the care of the women. During this period he played with rattles, balls, wooden horses, dice and tops, the skipping of stones in the water, etc. The games and plays of Greek children are interesting, when we study the development of his individuality,—interesting also in hints as to the modern experiment of the kindergarten. At seven years began the school time of the Athenian boy. An old superannuated slave was assigned to the work, and called in the Greek language _pædagogos_, pedagogue, (_boy-driver_) who accompanied him everywhere as supervisor. In the _pedagogium_ the boy learned to read and write. Later came the music teacher, who taught him to play the Cithæra and sing. At last he took up gymnastics and continued it till his eighteenth year. Then he took up his trade selected by the father, and at the age of twenty his education was considered complete. In the famous funeral oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles he congratulates the Athenians on the fact that their fatherland was a great educational center, a sort of school for all Greece. Their temples and works of art were objects of study to all enterprising strangers. Their artists, and poets, and philosophers were sought for the education of all who aspired to culture. The Sophists formed a guild of professional teachers. After Plato and Aristotle, Athens remained a university for many hundred years, or until Justinian closed her schools because of their hostility to the State religion.