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Military Life
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Spartan citizen boys left home for military boarding school at the age of seven and were required to serve in the army until
age thirty. Then they passed into the active reserve, where they remained until the age of sixty. Spartan education from the
ages of seven to thirty emphasized physical toughness, steadfastness in military ranks, and absolute obedience to orders.
The ordinary Spartan was a citizen-warrior, or hoplite, trained to obey and endure; he became a politician only if chosen
as ephor for a single year. He could be elected a life member of the council after his sixtieth year, in which he would be
free from military service. Men were encouraged to marry at the age of twenty but could not live with their families until
they left their active military service at age thirty. The Spartans perfected the craft of hoplite warfare. They called themselves
equals, pointing to their common lifestyle and the discipline of the phalanx, which demanded that no soldier be superior to
his comrades.
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When the Spartans began military training they would enter the agoge system for the education and training;everything from
physical training such as hunting and dancing, to emotional, and spiritual training. At that age they would have to go through
what was known as the gauntlet. They would have to run around a group of older children, who would flog them continually with
whips, sometimes to death. As they were lightly clothed, and had no bedding to speak of, children would often put thistles
in their pallet because the prickling sensation made them feel warmer. On leaving the agoge they would be sorted into groups,
whereupon some were sent into the countryside with nothing and forced to survive on their skills and cunning; this was called
the krypteia, believed to be an initiation rite to seek out and kill Helots who were considered to be troublesome to the state,
or were found to be wandering the countryside with no good reason.
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At the age of twenty, the Spartan citizen began his membership in one of the syssitia (dining messes or clubs), composed of
about fifteen members each, of which every citizen was required to be a member. Here each group learned how to bond and rely
on one another. The Spartan exercised the full rights and duties of a citizen at the age of thirty. Only native Spartans were
considered full citizens, and needed to undergo the training as prescribed by law, and participation in and contribution to
one of the dining-clubs. Those who fulfilled these conditions were considered "peers", citizens in the fullest sense
of the word, while those who failed were called "lesser citizens," and retained only the civil rights of citizenship.
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