t as soon as they were seven years old they were
to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived
under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking
their play together. Of these he who showed the most conduct and courage
was made captain; they had their eyes always upon him, obeyed his
orders, and underwent patiently whatsoever punishment he inflicted; so
that the whole course of their education was one continued exercise of a
ready and perfect obedience. The old men, too, were spectators of their
performances, and often raised quarrels and disputes among them, to have
a good opportunity of finding out their different characters, and of
seeing which would be valiant, which a coward, when they should come
to more dangerous encounters. Reading and writing they gave them, just
enough to serve their turn; their chief care was to make them good
subjects, and to teach them to endure pain and conquer in battle. To
this end, as they grew in years, their discipline was proportionally
increased; their heads were close-clipped; they were accustomed to go
barefoot, and for the most part to play naked.

After they were twelve years old they were no longer allowed to wear any
under-garment; they had one coat to serve them a year; their bodies were
hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of baths and unguents; these
human indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular days
in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the
rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they were
to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter, they
mingled some thistledown with their rushes, which it was thought had the
property of giving warmth.

Besides all this, there was always one of the best and most honest men
in the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance of them; he
again arranged them into their several bands, and set over each of
them for their captain the most temperate and bold of those they called
Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two years out of boyhood; and
the eldest of the boys, again, were Mell-Irens, as much as to say, "who
would shortly be men." This young man, therefore, was their captain when
they fought, and their master at home, using them for the offices of his
house; sending the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the weaker and less
able, to gather salads and herbs, and these they must either go with