All the people of the valley bore names which, like his own, would be recognised easily enough as Grecian by any student of classical antiquity. Kalliboas was headman of a ward of the city, and as such wielded considerable power. He was responsible to the rulers--Poyning told me he used a plural here, but omitted to specify who the rulers were--for the education of all children and for the administration of the laws. It was astonishing to us to hear him describe this legal system. No copy of the statutes, said Kalliboas, existed in writing. They were carried in the memories of the people--not only of the rulers and headmen of wards, but also of the common people, being taught to children as soon as they came to a comprehending age, so that most citizens could repeat the laws of the city by heart. It seemed incredible that any state, however small, could be run on such lines, but Kalliboas assured us the system worked smoothly and well. The laws, he said, were not a whit the less existent for being unwritten, and they were backed by a very strong public opinion; each child received such education and training in matters of conduct that when he grew up he knew better than to transgress against what the general sense held to be fitting behaviour. If he did, officers were detailed to remonstrate with him, and Kalliboas told us that on more than one occasion in the history of the community the delinquent had been able to bring forward such valid reasons for his unorthodox act as to cause the law to be altered. From a sort of grim horror the old fellow betrayed when he spoke of wrong-doing I inferred that crime in our sense of the word was very rare; and he left on our minds a vague, fearful impression as to what happened when the state was driven, in the last resort, to enforce its will. I had at first been inclined to picture Kalliboas as a priest, but I soon found that was a misconception. In this community there was no priesthood strictly on all fours with that of the outer world, for the very simple reason that there was no religion--or at least nothing in the way of religious dogma imposed upon the people. Absolute free thought regarding the position of man in the universe was enjoyed and encouraged, and though, as we found when we were able to go into the subject more deeply, the great mass of the people held unanimous views on such matters, it was only because the wonderful knowledge possessed by their scientists and commonly shared by the whole community tended to lead them in the one direction. I shall write more about that scientific knowledge later on. Kalliboas startled us a good deal when he told us he was ninety-seven years old, but there could be no doubt about the figure, for Poyning got him to repeat it. Though grey-haired, he stood as straight and moved as supply as an active man of middle age.