2. From the twelfth year(1426) upwards, the education of boys was much more strict. About the age of sixteen or seventeen they were called σιδεῦναι.(1427) At the expiration of his eighteenth year, the youth emerged from childhood, the first years of this new rank being distinguished by separate terms.(1428) During the progress from the condition of an ephebus to manhood, the young Spartans were called _Sphæreis_,(1429) probably because their chief exercise was foot-ball, which game was carried on with great emulation, and indeed resembled a battle rather than a diversion.(1430) In their nineteenth year they were sent out on the crypteia,(1431) at twenty they served in the ranks, their duties resembling those of the περίπολοι at Athens. Still the youths, although they were now admitted to the public banquets,(1432) remained in the divisions, which were called ἀγέλαι, or in the Spartan dialect βοῦαι,(1433) and distributed into smaller troops (called ἴλαι).(1434) The last name was also applied to a troop of horse,(1435) and is one amongst several other proofs,(1436) that, in early times at least, the exercise of riding was one of the principal occupations of the youths of Sparta. In these divisions all distinction of age was lost, the leaders of them were taken from among the Irenes,(1437) and exercised great powers over the younger members; for the use of which they were in their turn responsible to every citizen of a more advanced age,(1438) and particularly to the paidonomus, a magistrate of very extensive authority.(1439) His assistants were the floggers, or mastigophori, who were selected from the young men,(1440) the buagi or managers of the buæ;(1441) besides which, there were certain officers appointed to manage the boys, called ampaides.(1442) A similar arrangement was adopted in the societies of the girls and young women.(1443) Theocritus, in his Epithalamium of Helen, represents 240 young women of the same age, as joining in the daily exercises and games.(1444) And whilst Doric customs prevailed at Croton, the daughter of Pythagoras (according to Timæus)(1445) was several times appointed leader of the young women and matrons.