6. But all the exercises in the gymnasium of Sparta were esteemed of perhaps less importance to the education of the body, than another class, the object of which was to harden the frame by labour and fatigue. The body was obliged to undergo heat and cold (the extremes of which were felt in an immoderate degree throughout the narrow valley of Sparta),(1475) likewise hunger, thirst and privations of every description. To this they were trained by frequent hunting on the mountains, in which manner the youths of Crete were also exercised,(1476) as also in the agelæ, under the agelates.(1477) Next came the laborious service in the most distant parts of the Laconian territory, amidst which the young men of Sparta grew up from youth to manhood, obliged to administer to their own wants without the assistance of a servant.(1478) The boys were also inured to hardships, by being forced to obtain their daily nourishment by stealing; for this custom was also limited to a particular period in the education of the sons of the Equals.(1479) We should certainly afford at the best but a very partial representation of these peculiar customs, if we were to single out some striking peculiarity from a connected system, and attempt to examine in detail a subject which should be criticised generally, or not at all. According to the scattered fragments of our information, the state of the case was as follows:(1480) the boys at a certain period were generally banished from the town, and all communion with men, and were obliged to lead a wandering life in the fields and forests. When thus excluded, they were forced to obtain, by force or cunning the means of subsistence from the houses and court-yards, all access to which was at this time forbidden them; frequently obliged to keep watch for whole nights, and always exposed to the danger of being beaten, if detected. To judge this custom with fairness, it should only be regarded in the connexion which we have explained above. The possession of property was made to furnish a means of sharpening the intellect, and strengthening the courage of the citizens, by forcing the one party to hold and the other to obtain it by a sort of war. The loss of property which was thus occasioned, appeared of little importance to a state where personal rights were so little regarded; and the mischievous consequences were in some measure avoided by an exact definition of the goods permitted to be stolen,(1481) which were in fact those, that any Spartan who required them for the chase, might take from the stock of another. Such was the idea upon which this usage was kept up; it might possibly however have originated in the ancient mountain-life of the Dorians, when they inhabited mounts Œta and Olympus, cooped up within narrow boundaries, and engaged in perpetual contests with the more fortunate inhabitants of the plains: as a relic and memorial of those habits, it remained, contrasted