[67] The account of the revolt and its duration are taken from Thucydides I. 101-103. The date of its beginning is given by Pausanias IV. 24. 2 as being the seventy-ninth olympiad: i.e. seventy-eight times four years after 776 B.C.: i.e. 464 B.C. [68] Thucydides IV. 80. II. The singular regulations under which the Spartans lived were designed to discipline all the males among their scanty numbers into a formidable military brotherhood. Possibly some of these regulations had already been established before they left their original abodes in Doris to migrate to the Peloponnesus: they were attributed to Lycurgus, a wise lawgiver, who is placed by the legends after the migration and some generations before the first Spartans of whom we have any historical knowledge: but the extreme strictness of their enforcement may have dated from the end of the second Messenian war, which reduced a whole people to servitude. The earliest detailed account of the customs of the Spartans is given in a treatise on the Commonwealth of the Lacedæmonians, which has been attributed to Xenophon. Whoever the author may have been, it speaks of the Spartans as if they were almost irresistible in warfare: and hence it must be inferred that it was written before 371 B.C., when they suffered a severe and humiliating defeat at Leuctra in Bœotia. It gives a picture of Spartan customs whose chief outlines I shall try to reduce within the dimensions of a sketch. The aim of the Spartan discipline was to ensure the greatest possible efficiency in the little band of warriors who formed the Spartan army. To this end it was first necessary that the race should be healthy: and as strong parents were likely to have strong offspring, the women no less than the men were trained in gymnastic exercises and contests[69]. The boys ceased at an early age to be under the sole authority of their own parents and were placed under the command of an officer of state whose title was παιδονόμος or warden of the boys[70], and were also compelled to obey any Spartan who had children of his own[71]. The training of the boys under their warden is not described in detail: but there is no doubt it consisted in gymnastics and in marching and dancing to music. The moral qualities which were insisted on were firstly personal courage and endurance, and secondly a modest demeanour in the young. The boys had to go barefoot, were allowed only one garment to wear throughout the year in heat and cold alike, and were kept on short rations of food: they were encouraged to steal food, but, if they were caught, were severely beaten for not having stolen cleverly[72]; and, if one of them complained to his father that another boy had beaten him, the father was thought to have disgraced himself if he did not give him a sound thrashing in addition[73]. The young men always walked silent with their eyes modestly fixed on the ground before them; and from this behaviour you could no more seduce them