Athens, was exceedingly numerous and their care no light task in a small nation, she took part in their nurture with a striking delicacy of treatment, "desiring, as far as it was possible," as Plato has said in the Menexenus, "that their orphanhood might not be felt by them," and, in addition to support and education during her youth, the laws bestowed on the veteran's daughter, on her marriage day, a marriage portion or dower which was not only a substantial symbol of parental love and protection, but the very badge of legitimacy in the ancient society.
The sons of veterans were not treated as mere dependent charges of the government but, besides receiving their support from the nation, were taught a trade or trained in business to equip them for the battle of life, and were honored with signal marks of public favor in the gymnasia and especially in the sacred choruses of the great national festivals, in which the proud sons of the most prominent families of the Athenian republic felt it a distinction to appear and participate. And finally, when the veterans' sons, who had been wards of the nation, reached manhood, they were released from state control to take their places as ordinary citizens among their fellow countrymen, but amid scenes and ceremonies which were the most dramatic and inspiring on the religious and patriotic calendar.
No more conspicuous place and surely no more auspicious time could have been selected for this glorification day of the soldier's boy; for he was emancipated from his happy tutelage at the March season of the presentations in the great stone theater of Dionysus, which seated thirty thousand people, when filled, as it was sure to be at this time, when, in addition to the large attendance from the Athenian city and nation, many thousands were drawn from all parts of the Greek-speaking world. Here, at this time, the great tragedies of--Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the epoch-making comedies of Aristophanes, and the plays of the other noted dramatists were brought out, just across the way from the temple of the wine-god, with whom the ceremonies always began, and in whose honor and worship drama originated and developed.
Amid such surroundings and in the midst of such a multitude, on the gala day of the year, these orphans were presented, clad in full armor, as a symbol and memento of their fathers' valor and as an exhortation to follow their fathers' example. Just before the tragedy proper began, and after the sacrifice, the bestowing of civic and military crowns on the nation's greatest and bravest, and the sacred deposit of the tribute from the "Athenian Empire"—the safety-fund from the protective league against the Persian King—these youths were introduced to the assembled audience by the herald, who proclaimed with loud voice, what the orator Æschines—Demosthenes's great rival—
