The offspring of citizens thus bequeathed to the care of the state were at one time exceedingly numerous, and highly exemplary and honourable was the attention they received.[293] To the females a maintenance, education, and a portion, were given; and the males having also been supported and educated until manhood, received in the public theatre a complete suit of armour, as a memento of their fathers’ valour, to incite them to follow their example. The whole audience being assembled, the herald introduced the orphan youths clothed in panoply of “complete steel,” and then, with a loud voice, proclaimed what Æschines rightly regarded as a most glorious and valour-inspiring proclamation, viz., that the fathers of those youths, like brave and good men, had fallen in their country’s battles, on which account the state had undertaken the charge of their bringing up, and now, on the verge of manhood, having adorned them with an entire suit of armour, dismissed them under happy auspices to watch over their own affairs, granting them, likewise, for the day, the most honourable seats in the theatre.[294] ----- Footnote 293: Isocrat. de Pac. § 29. To complete the humanity of the laws, the parents, also, of such as fell in war were placed under the special protection of the Archons. Petit, Legg. Att. p. 559. Footnote 294: Æschin. cont. Ctesiph. § 48, with the notes of the Scholiast, p. 395. Conf. Plat. Menex. § 21. p. 61. ed. Gœttlieb. The προεδρία which the Scholiast to Æschines supposes them to have enjoyed during the day on which they received the panoply, Lesbonax seems to have regarded as perpetual. They were honoured, moreover, with particular marks of public favour in the sacred choruses and in the gymnasia. Protrept. i. § 5. Conf. Menag. in D. Laert. t. ii. p. 20. c. d. ----- Petit[295] supposes this to have taken place on their attaining the age of twenty, before which they could not legally assume the management of their inheritance, or encounter the fatigue and peril of regular warfare; but, others, perhaps, with more probability, fix upon the age of eighteen. ----- Footnote 295: Legg. Att. p. 560. -----