during the whole campaign (in battle the unarmed were protected by a religious awe(1157)); and, lastly, those who had conquered in crowned contests were in the king’s train(1158); a train indeed of sufficient importance, and fit in so simple a state of society to surround the descendant of Hercules with an appearance of dignity. The Thirty about the king’s person are not identical with the damosia; for these were always Spartans, which we cannot say of flute-players, &c.; they were assigned to the king, even when the rest of the army (as was frequently the case in expeditions in Asia) consisted exclusively of neodamodes,(1159) and were probably at the same time the body-guard and council of the king. They may therefore be considered as the 300 contracted into a small body, which accompanied the king only on expeditions to a small distance from home. These 300 were the picked regiment of Sparta, the flower of the youth, as the gerontes were of the old men, and also chosen on aristocratic principles. For the ephors appointed three hippagretæ, each of whom chose one hundred young men, with a statement of the grounds of his selection; from the number of those discharged from this body the five agathoergi were taken, who for the space of a year served the state in missions.(1160) 6. A similar body in the Cretan states really consisted of horsemen; the Spartans were called horsemen, and were in fact heavy-armed infantry(1161); the cause of which was, the low estimation of the cavalry-service among the Lacedæmonians. The country was fitted rather for the production of men than of horses; and although the citizens furnished both the horse and accoutrements, they were ridden only by weak and inferior persons.(1162) Thus the horsemen of Sparta, the number of whom in the Peloponnesian war was at first 400, and afterwards rose to 600,(1163) effected nothing against the better mounted and practised cavalry of Bœotia, which as the light-armed riders sometimes mounted behind, sometimes vaulted off rapidly, was doubly formidable to the enemy.(1164) Among the other Doric states, Tarentum in particular had a numerous(1165) and very excellent light cavalry.(1166) The preference for a force of this description is a proof, according to the principles of antiquity, of an unstable and effeminate character, exactly the reverse of that exhibited by the heavy-armed soldiery of the Lacedæmonians.