The 9,000 or so Spartiates were equals -- equal to each other and superior to all other men. They got there by passing through the Agoge: twenty three years of military training starting at age seven. The years before age twenty were brutal and made up of long and increasing difficult military training. Beaten by their elders, the young would train in teams with a watchful eye of an elder looking to identify the best of them. Then from age twenty to thirty the victims became the punishers, as they achieved senior cadet status. They learned to read and write; to sing and dance, but all of this was window dressing around the fine tuning their ability to fight. Everywhere there was rivalry -- boy against boy within a team, and team against team. Admission to the sussition (mess) was the end point, but not without a unanimous vote in favor – a single no vote and a man became an outcast.
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