The boys steal whatever they can of their food, learning to make their raids adroitly upon people who are asleep or are careless in watching. The penalty for getting caught is a beating and no food. For the dinner allowed them is meagre, so that, through coping with want by their own initiative, they may be compelled to be daring and unscrupulous. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus , chap. xvii. (50 e); Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta , ii. 6-9; Isocrates, The Panathenaicus , 211-214; Heracleides Ponticus, Frag. ii. 8, in Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. ii. p. 211.