an expert in running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, discus hurling, and javelin casting.  They are not expected to become professional athletes, but their parents will be vexed if they do not develop a healthy tan all over their naked bodies,[*] and if they do not learn at least moderate proficiency in the sports and a certain amount of familiarity with elementary military maneuvers.  Of course boys of marked physical ability will be encouraged to think of training for the various great “games” which culminate at Olympia, although enlightened opinion is against the promoting of professional athletics; and certain extreme philosophers question the wisdom of any extensive physical culture at all, “for (say they) is not the human mind the real thing worth developing?"[+]

[*]To have a pale, untanned skin was “womanish” and unworthy of a free Athenian citizen.

[+]The details of the boys’ athletic games, being much of a kind with those followed by adults at the regular public gymnasia, are here omitted.  See Chap.  XVII.

Weary at length and ready for a hearty meal and sleep, the boys are conducted homeward by their pedagogues.

As they grow older the lads with ambitious parents will be given a more varied education.  Some will be put under such teachers of the new rhetoric and oratory, now in vogue, as the famous socrates, and be taught to play the orator as an aid to inducing their fellow citizens to bestow political advancement.  Certain will be allowed to become pupils of Plato, who has been teaching his philosophy out at the groves of the Academy, or to join some of his rivals in theoretical wisdom.  Into these fields, however, we cannot follow them.

61.  The Habits and Ambitions of Schoolboys.—­It is a clear fact, that by the age say of thirteen, the Athenian education has had a marked effect upon the average schoolboy.  Instead of being “the most ferocious of animals,” as Plato, speaking of his untutored state describes him, he is now “the most amiable and divine of living beings.”  The well-trained lad goes now to school with his eyes cast upon the ground, his hands and arms wrapped in his chiton, making way dutifully for all his elders.  If he is addressed by an older man, he stands modestly, looking downward and blushing in a manner worthy of a girl.  He has been taught to avoid the Agora, and if he must pass it, never to linger.  The world is full of evil and ugly things, but he is taught to hear and see as little of them as possible.  When men talk of his healthy color, increasing beauty, and admire the graceful curves of his form at the wrestling school, he must not grow proud.  He is being taught to learn relatively little from books, but a great deal from hearing the conversation of grave and well-informed men.  As he grows older his father will take him to all kinds of public gatherings and teach him the working details of the “Democratic Government” of Athens.  He becomes intensely proud of his