(_b_) BOYHOOD.--On completing his seventh year, the Spartan boy was transferred from his mother's house and care to a public barracks and the direct tuition of the State. Although the boys were in charge of a special officer (παιδονόμος), who divided them into squads and companies, and arranged their exercises for them, they were nevertheless taught to regard every grown man as a teacher, and every such man was expected to correct them promptly and rigorously, whenever he saw them doing wrong. At the same time, every boy was expected to form an intimate connection with some one man, who then, to a large extent, became responsible for his conduct; and, though the choice in this matter rested with the parties concerned, it was considered a disgrace in a man, no less than in a boy, to be without such connection. Though this arrangement, it is said, often led to lamentable abuses, there can be no doubt that it admirably served the purposes of Sparta. It furnished every boy with a tutor, who, under the circumstances, could hardly fail to treat him kindly, and who was interested in making him surpass all other boys in courage and endurance. This friendly influence of teacher on pupil was something in which the Greeks at all times strongly believed, and which formed an important force in all their education. In Sparta, as in Crete and Thebes, it was legally recognized. One of the duties of Spartan "inspirer" (εἰσπνήλας or εἴσπνηλος), as he was called, was to teach his young friend (ἀΐτας) to demean himself properly on all occasions, and to hold his tongue except when he had something very important to say. In this way it was that the young Spartans received their moral education, and acquired that effective brevity of speech which to this day we call "laconic." The formal education of Spartan boys consisted mainly of gymnastics, music, choric dancing, and larceny. Their literary education was confined to a little reading, writing, and finger-arithmetic; everything beyond this was proscribed. And the reasons for this proscription are not difficult to discover. Sparta staked everything upon her political strength, and this involved two things, (1) equality among her free citizens, and (2) absolute devotion on their part to her interest, both of which the higher education would have rendered impossible. Education establishes among men distinctions of worth quite other than military, and gives them individual interests distinct from those of the State. It was the same reason that induced Rome, during the best period of her history, to exclude her citizens from all higher education, which is essentially individual and cosmopolitan.