women," says one of the finest observers about the end of the first century,[169] "but beautiful men one sees no longer; the Olympian victors of more recent times appear, compared with the older, inferior and common, partly no doubt owing to the fault of the artists, but chiefly because they are just what they are." The bodily training of the youth had been carried in this promised land of ephebi and athletes to such an extent, as if the very aim of the communal constitution were to rear the boys as gymnasts and the men as boxers; but, if no province possessed so many artists for the ring, none supplied so few soldiers to the imperial army. Even from the instruction of the Athenian youth--which in the olden time embraced spear-throwing, shooting with the bow, the use of missiles, the marching out and pitching of the camp--this playing at soldiers on the part of the boys now disappears. The Greek towns of the empire were virtually not taken account of in the levy, whether because their recruits appeared physically incapable, or because this element appeared dangerous in the army; it was an imperial pleasantry that the caricature of Alexander, Severus Antoninus, reinforced the Roman army for the conflict with the Persians by some companies of Spartiates.[170] Whatever was done for internal order and security must have emanated from the individual communities, as Roman troops were not stationed in the province; Athens, for example, maintained a garrison in the island of Delos, and probably a division of militia lay also in the citadel.[171] In the crises of the third century the general levy of Elateia (p. 242) and that of Athens (p. 246) valiantly repulsed the Costoboci and the Goths; and, after a worthier fashion than the grandchildren of the combatants of Thermopylae in Caracalla's Persian war, in the Gothic the grandchildren of the victors of Marathon inscribed their names for the last time in the annals of ancient history. But, though such incidents must preclude us from treating the Greeks of this epoch absolutely as a decayed rabble, yet the decline of the population as regards number and vigour steadily continued even during the better imperial period, until, from the end of the second century, the diseases which severely visited these lands, likewise the inroads of land and sea pirates who particularly affected the east coast, and lastly, the collapse of the imperial power in the time of Gallienus, raised the chronic suffering into an acute catastrophe. [Sidenote: Greek tone of feeling.]