The witnesses to this oath were, besides Zeus, a number of special Attic local deities of military or agrarian importance. When a boy attained to the condition of ephebus he discarded the himation and adopted the chlamys as his characteristic dress. The hair, which was worn long by boys, was cut short, and this act of cutting the hair was a kind of religious ceremony, since the hair cut off was often dedicated to some deity. This sacred rite, the importance of which we can better understand if we imagine our modern rite of Confirmation combined with the attainment of majority, was usually celebrated as a festival in the family circle. The new ephebi, after taking their oath and receiving their arms, were presented publicly to the people in the Theatre. This usually took place at the festival of Dionysus, immediately before the performance of a tragedy. It is, however, not quite certain whether this introduction was confined to the sons of those only who had fallen in battle, whose equipment was presented to them by the State. This, however, like most of the details which we have about the ephebeia in Ancient Greece, refers specially to Athens; at Sparta and other places there were customs, more or less different, of which we know little or nothing. Moreover, at Athens, as well as in the rest of Greece and Asia Minor, the usage concerning the ephebi underwent many changes during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire. The numerous inscriptions give us far more exact details of this later period than of the best time; but we refrain from discussing them, since this institution, which originally had an essentially warlike character, gradually became a mere matter of form, and was confined to the sons of rich citizens, who merely played with the customs without regarding their ethical or political importance. Most of the information which the inscriptions supply about the officers and teachers of the ephebi also belongs to the later period; a great many boards of management for the arrangements concerning the ephebi, which became more and more complicated, were either created fresh or transformed out of the older ones, but their importance and powers were entirely different. Moreover, our purpose is to confine our attention to the classical and Hellenistic period.