=The Children.=—­They began to make soldiers of them at birth.  The newly-born infant was brought before a council; if it was found deformed, it was exposed on the mountain to die; for an army has use only for strong men.  The children who were permitted to grow up were taken from their parents at the age of seven years and were trained together as members of a group.  Both summer and winter they went bare-foot and had but a single mantle.  They lay on a heap of reeds and bathed in the cold waters of the Eurotas.  They ate little and that quickly and had a rude diet.  This was to teach them not to satiate the stomach.  They were grouped by hundreds, each under a chief.  Often they had to contend together with blows of feet and fists.  At the feast of Artemis they were beaten before the statue of the goddess till the blood flowed; some died under this ordeal, but their honor required them not to weep.  They were taught to fight and suffer.

Often they were given nothing to eat; provision must be found by foraging.  If they were captured on these predatory expeditions, they were roughly beaten.  A Spartiate boy who had stolen a little fox and had hidden it under his mantle, rather than betray himself let the animal gnaw out his vitals.  They were to learn how to escape from perplexing situations when they were in the field.

They walked with lowered glance, silent, hands under the mantle, without turning the head and “making no more noise than statues.”  They were not to speak at table and were to obey all men that they encountered.  This was to accustom them to discipline.

=The Girls.=—­The other Greeks kept their daughters secluded in the house, spinning flax.  The Spartiates would have robust women capable of bearing vigorous children.  The girls, therefore, were trained in much the same manner as the boys.  In their gymnasia they practised running, leaping, throwing the disc and Javelin.  A poet describes a play in which Spartiate girls “like colts with flowing manes make the dust fly about them.”  They were reputed the healthiest and bravest women in Greece.

=The Discipline.=—­The men, too, have their regular life and this a soldier’s life.  The presence of many enemies requires that no one shall weaken.  At seventeen years the Spartiate becomes a soldier and this he until he is sixty.  The costume, hour of rising and retiring, meals, exercise—­everything is fixed by regulations as in barracks.

Since the Spartiate engages only in war, he is to prepare himself for that; he exercises himself in running, leaping, and wielding his arms; he disciplines all the members of the body—­the neck, the arms, the shoulders, the legs, and that too, every day.  He has no right to engage in trade, to pursue an industry, nor to cultivate the earth; he is a soldier and is not to allow himself to be diverted to any other occupation.  He cannot live at his pleasure with his own family; the men eat together in squads; they cannot leave the country without permission.  It is the discipline of a regiment in the enemy’s territory.