On reaching the age of twenty the youth was considered a
warrior. He did not live at home, but passed his time in barracks, as a member of
a military mess to which he contributed his proper share of food, wine, and
money. At the age of thirty years the young Spartan became a full citizen and a
member of the popular assembly. He was then compelled to marry in order to
raise children for the state. But marriage did not free him from attendance at
the public meals, the drill ground, and the gymnasium. A Spartan, in fact,
enjoyed little home life until his sixtieth year, when he became an elder and
retired from actual service.
EXCELLENCE OF THE SPARTAN SOLDIERY
This exclusive devotion to military pursuits accomplished
its object. The Spartans became the finest soldiers of antiquity. "All the
rest of the Greeks," says an ancient writer, "are amateurs; the
Spartans are professionals in the conduct of war." [22] Though Sparta
never produced great thinkers, poets or artists, her military strength made her
the bulwark of Greece against foreign foes. The time was to come when Greece,
to retain her liberties, would need this disciplined Spartan soldiery. [23]
[22] Xenophon, Polity of the Lacedaemonians, 13.
[23] The Spartans believed that their military
organization was the work of a great reformer and law-giver named Lycurgus. He
was supposed to have lived early in the ninth century B.C. We do not know
anything about Lycurgus, but we do know that some existing primitive tribes,
for instance, the Masai of East Africa, have customs almost the same as those
of ancient Sparta. Hence we may say that the rude, even barbarous, Spartans
only carried over into the historic age the habits of life which they had
formed in prehistoric times.
