The gymnastic training had a double purpose; in the first place to teach the boys a modest and dignified bearing (much as dancing is taught in the present day), and in the second, which, of course, was most important, to train them in the chief gymnastic exercises. These were jumping, which included both the high and long jump, for which purpose dumb-bells were generally used; racing, throwing the quoit and the spear, and wrestling. Boxing was not included in the instruction given to boys, nor yet the _pancratium_, a combination of wrestling and boxing, nor the _pentathlum_, a combination of five exercises specially used in athletic contests, and therefore not generally practised at the wrestling unless boys were to take part in some public contest, in which case they might, of course, be prepared here beforehand. We shall deal later on in greater detail with the separate exercises, and must therefore content ourselves for the present with merely enumerating them, since the exercises of the boys only differed in degree, but not in kind, from those of the youths and men.
Such was the training given to the boys until about their sixteenth year. This was, however, by no means the end of their education, at any rate not for boys of the better classes, who were not obliged to follow any definite profession; and the gymnastic training extended for several years longer. The years between adolescence and somewhere about the twentieth year were generally called _ephebeia_; but besides this expression we find a good many others, especially in inscriptions, which prove that there were several sub-divisions for the purposes of gymnastic exercises and tests, made according to age; in fact, they generally distinguished between a first, second, and third class of _ephebi_. But there were other special names in use. In ancient times the only distinction in the gymnastic tests was between boys and men, and the ephebi were therefore included in the former class; but afterwards they distinguished between boys, youths, and men, though these designations and their sub-divisions according to age seem to have varied a good deal according to time and place. In any case, we must distinguish between the use of the term _ephebus_ in the gymnastic classes and in the State. For State purposes it was not applied till the eighteenth or nineteenth year, and the boy had then to take his oath as a citizen; his name was entered in the book of his deme, and he received a warrior's shield and spear. The oath taken by the ephebi, composed by Solon, has been preserved to us. The youth had to swear "Never to disgrace his holy arms, never to forsake his comrade in the ranks, but to fight for the holy temples and the common welfare, alone or with others; to leave his country, not in a worse, but in a better state than he found it; to obey the magistrates and the laws, and defend them against attack; finally to hold in honour the religion of his country." The witnesses to this oath were, besides Zeus, a number of special Attic local deities of military or agrarian importance.