tells
that--

"in his days, when justice flourished and self-control was held in
honour, a boy's voice was never heard. He walked in order with his
comrades of the same quarter, lightly clad even in winter, down to
the school of the harp-player. There he learned old-fashioned hymns
to the gods, and patriotic songs. While he sat, he took care to
cover his person decently; and when he rose, he never forgot to rub
out the marks which he might have left upon the dust lest any man
should view them after he was gone. At meals he ate what was put
before him, and refrained from idle chattering. Walking through the
streets, he never tried to catch a passer's eye or to attract a
lover. He avoided the shops, the baths,[101] the Agora, the houses
of Hetairai.[102] He reverenced old age and formed within his soul
the image of modesty. In the gymnasium he indulged in fair and
noble exercise, or ran races with his comrades among the
olive-trees of the Academy."

The Adikos Logos replies by pleading that this temperate sort of life is
quite old-fashioned; boys had better learn to use their tongues and
bully. In the last resort he uses a clinching _argumentum ad
juvenem_.[103]

Were it not for the beautiful and highly-finished portraits in Plato, to
which I have already alluded, the description of Aristophanes might be
thought a mere ideal; and, indeed, it is probable that the actual life
of the average Athenian boy lay mid-way between the courses prescribed
by the Dikaios and the Adikos Logos.

Meanwhile, since Euripides, together with the whole school of studious
and philosophic speculators, are aimed at in the speeches of the Adikos
Logos, it will be fair to adduce a companion picture of the young Greek
educated on the athletic system, as these men had learned to know him. I
quote from the _Autolycus_, a satyric drama of Euripides:--

"There are a myriad bad things in Hellas, but nothing is worse than
the athletes. To begin with, they do not know how to live like
gentlemen, nor could they if they did; for how can a man, the slave
of his jaws and his belly, increase the fortune left him by his
father? Poverty and ill-luck find them equally incompetent. Having
acquired no habits of good living, they are badly off when they
come to roughing it. In youth they shine like statues stuck about
the town, and take their walk