These two great divisions interchanged their work every year, the soldiers becoming husbandmen, and the husbandmen soldiers.

Thus they all became equally inured to the hardships and dangers of the camp, and to the more continuous but safer labors of agricultural toil.

Their fields were devoted to pasturage more than to tillage, for flocks and herds could be driven from place to place, and thus more easily preserved from the depredations of enemies than fields of grain.

The children grew up almost perfectly wild from infancy, and hardened themselves by bathing in cold streams, wearing very little clothing, and making long hunting excursions among the mountains.

The people had abundance of excellent horses, which the young men were accustomed, from their earliest years, to ride without saddle or bridle, the horses being trained to obey implicitly every command.