Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/82

54 necessary, therefore, for the Spartans to be a nation of soldiers, ready for a call to arms, and convinced that their supreme duty was to conquer or die on the field.

Spartan training, therefore, was entirely directed to this end. It began from childhood. If an infant seemed weak and unpromising at its birth it was exposed on Mount Taygetus to perish. If it was decided to rear a male child, from his seventh year he was removed from his mother and brought up with other boys under the care of public officers. He was trained to endure every kind of hardship, to live on the plainest food, to dress in a single garment, to sleep on a mat of rushes, to walk barefooted, to bear the severest punishment without flinching, and to submit to his elders and officers with unquestioning obedience. At twenty the youths began regular military service, and were called eirenes, but had no part in civil business till thirty, and meanwhile were under a discipline as severe as that of their boyhood. Every citizen was bound to marry, but was allowed neither free choice nor unrestricted intercourse with his wife. The women were trained with almost equal severity, engaged in athletic exercises with the youths, and were taught to regard sons and husbands as belonging to the State rather than to themselves. Their death on the field was not to be lamented, but rather their survival of defeat.

Simplicity of life was promoted by all taking meals in common. These sussitia had nothing to tempt the appetite or to debilitate the frame, but were supplied with the plainest and homeliest food. All