their citizens. The boys go to school and give their time to learning
justice and righteousness: they will tell you they come for that
purpose, and the phrase is as natural with them as it is for us to
speak of lads learning their letters. The masters spend the chief part
of the day in deciding cases for their pupils: for in this boy-world,
as in the grown-up world without, occasions of indictment are never
far to seek. There will be charges, we know, of picking and stealing,
of violence, of fraud, of calumny, and so forth. The case is heard and
the offender, if shown to be guilty, is punished. [7] Nor does he
escape who is found to have accused one of his fellows unfairly. And
there is one charge the judges do not hesitate to deal with, a charge
which is the source of much hatred among grown men, but which they
seldom press in the courts, the charge of ingratitude. The culprit
convicted of refusing to repay a debt of kindness when it was fully in
his power meets with severe chastisement. They reason that the
ungrateful man is the most likely to forget his duty to the gods, to
his parents, to his fatherland, and his friends. Shamelessness, they
hold, treads close on the heels of ingratitude, and thus ingratitude
is the ringleader and chief instigator to every kind of baseness. [8]
Further, the boys are instructed in temperance and self-restraint, and
they find the utmost help towards the attainment of this virtue in the
self-respecting behaviour of their elders, shown them day by day. Then
they are taught to obey their rulers, and here again nothing is of
greater value than the studied obedience to authority manifested by
their elders everywhere. Continence in meat and drink is another
branch of instruction, and they have no better aid in this than,
first, the example of their elders, who never withdraw to satisfy
their carnal cravings until those in authority dismiss them, and next,
the rule that the boys must take their food, not with their mother but
with their master, and not till the governor gives the sign. They