(_c_) YOUTH.--About the age of eighteen, Spartan boys passed into the class of _epheboi_, or cadets, and began their professional training for war. This was their business for the next twelve years, and no light business it was. For the first two years they were called _melleirenes_, and devoted themselves to learning the use of arms, and to light skirmishing. They were under the charge of special officers called _bideoi_, but had to undergo a rigid examination before the ephors every ten days (see p. 41). Their endurance was put to severe tests. Speaking of the altar of Artemis Orthia, Pausanias says: "An oracle commanded the people to imbrue the altar with human blood, and hence arose the custom of sacrificing on it a man chosen by lot. Lycurgus did away with this practice, and ordained that, instead, the cadets should be scourged before the altar, and thus the altar is covered with blood. While this is going on, a priestess stands by, holding, in her arms the wooden image (of Artemis). This image, being small, is, under ordinary circumstances, light; but, if at any time the scourgers deal too lightly with any youth, on account of his beauty or his rank, then the image becomes so heavy that the priestess cannot support it; whereupon she reproves the scourgers, and declares that she is burdened on their account. Thus the image that came from the sacrifices in the Crimea has always continued to enjoy human blood." This Artemis appears, with a bundle of twigs in her arm, next to Ares, among the Spartan divinities, on the frieze of the Parthenon. At twenty years of age, the young men became _eirenes_, and entered upon a course of study closely resembling actual warfare. They lived on the coarsest food, slept on reeds, and rarely bathed or walked. They exercised themselves in heavy arms, in shooting, riding, swimming, ball-playing, and in conflicts of the most brutal kind. They took part in complicated and exhausting dances, the most famous of which was the Pyrrhic, danced under arms. They manned fortresses, assassinated Helots, and, in cases of need, even took the field against an enemy. (_d_) MANHOOD.--At the age of thirty, being supposed to have reached their majority, they fell into the ranks of full citizens, and took their share in all political functions. They were compelled to marry, but were allowed to visit their wives only rarely and by stealth. They sometimes had two or three children before they had ever seen their wives by daylight. When not engaged in actual war, they spent much of their time in watching the exercises of their juniors, and the rest in hunting wild boars and similar game in the mountains. Like Xenophon, they thought hunting the nearest approach to war.