Besides the Sophronistai and Kosmetes, the Council of the Areiopagos also kept a watch over the epheboi. Discipline seems to have been fairly strict: the Axiochos[626] talks of “rods and immensities of evils.” But there were plenty of amusements, and, apparently, plenty of vacations. There were a very large number of special festivals, in which the epheboi took part. There were also the torch-races at the feasts of Hephaistos and Prometheus, for teams of epheboi from each tribe, trained at the expense of a gumnasiarchos. The epheboi had also a special part of the theatre reserved for them.[627]
No doubt a large part of the time of these epheboi was spent in severe physical exercise in the gymnasia. The analogy of the epheboi in Plato’s Republic and Laws would suggest this. The Axiochos mentions, as consequent upon enrolment in the epheboi, “the Lukeion and Akademeia,” i.e. practices in these gymnasia. Xenophon,[628] just before mentioning the “peripoloi” or epheboi in their second year, talks of “those who are ordered to practise gymnastic exercises,” clearly referring to this period. He suggests that their duties would be better and more cheerfully performed if they received a larger supply of rations than those who were training for torch-races; to these latter no doubt a liberal gumnasiarchos might serve out meals costing much more than four obols a day. Probably those who were physically inferior alone were told off for these compulsory gymnastics: Xenophon’s phrase seems to distinguish them from the epheboi selected for the torch-race, who would naturally be the physically fittest in the tribal contingent.
At the end of their first year of training, the epheboi appeared in the theatre at the great Dionusia to show off their military evolutions and the drill which they had learned. After the review they received a spear and shield from the State.[629] The sons of those who had fallen in battle, being the wards of the State,[630] received a complete outfit of armour. These arms, which the epheboi received from the State, were considered to be sacred: consequently to throw away the shield in flight was regarded as a serious offence, almost an act of sacrilege.[631]
PLATE IX.
A RIDING LESSON—MOUNTING Archaeologische Zeitung, 1885, Plate 11.
From a Kulix at Munich, attributed to Euphronios.
After receiving their arms from the State, the epheboi were marched out of Athens, and spent most of the next year patrolling the country and frontiers, and garrisoning the forts.[632] Attica was studded with
these περιπόλια, or patrol-stations, from Oinoé and Phulé on the north-western frontier to Anaphlustos and Thorikos in the south. The epheboi, like the κρυπτοί in Plato’s Laws and at Sparta, were shifted about from district to district, in order that they might acquire a thorough knowledge of their country’s geographical peculiarities. The tribal companies, into which they were divided, relieved one another in various stations. Thus in the course of 334-333 we know that both the Hippothontid and the Kekropid tribes were successively stationed at Eleusis, for the people of that district pass two separate votes of thanks to them for the excellent discipline which they had preserved.[633] There may also have been open-air camps: the Eleusinian inscriptions talk of ὑπαίθριοι.
The epheboi seem to have been assisted in their patrol-duties by a mercenary force of foreigners. Thucydides[634] declares that Phrunichos was assassinated by a peripolos: the Athenian people, according to Lusias, rewarded Thrasuboulos of Kaludon as the slayer and recorded his name on a pillar.[635] If the historian had meant to dispute this award, he must have referred to it, for it was clearly the accepted version. He also states that the plot was arranged at the house of the captain of the peripoloi, and mentions an Argive as one of the accomplices: Lusias mentions a Megarian. Both these foreigners were probably peripoloi. But foreign youths cannot at this period have been permitted to serve with the tribal companies of epheboi. A legend, it is true, asserts that this privilege was granted to the young men of Kos, in honour of the great doctor Hippokrates; but even this only shows that all other states were excluded. Indeed, foreigners were not enrolled among the Athenian epheboi until a much later epoch, when the system was no longer military.
What, then, was this “Foreign Legion”? M. Girard identifies it with the Mounted Archers, on the strength of a passage in Aristophanes’ Birds. An unknown deity has invaded the territory of Cloud-Cuckoo town. Peisthetairos exclaims, “Why didn’t you despatch peripoloi after him at once?” To which the messenger replies, “We did send 30,000 Mounted Archers.” The inscriptions at Eleusis also make a force of non-citizen troops serve under the captain of the peripoloi. These mercenary troops, having no civil duties, would naturally be used as a patrol. Moreover, to an Athenian, “archer” meant “policeman.” Athens was policed by foreign “Archers”: it would be natural for Attica to be policed in like manner, only by a mounted force, as a greater distance had to be covered.[636] But it is also possible that the non-Athenian peripoloi were the sons of μέτοικοι ἰσοτελεῖς, who, being forced to serve as hoplites when grown up, would require some preliminary training; these alien hoplites are coupled by Thucydides[637] with the recruits and veterans, who garrisoned the Athenian walls and forts: they seem to have served as a perpetual patrol.