Childhood Erased

At age 7, boys were taken from their mothers and handed to the agoge — the state training system that would run their lives into adulthood. The childhood years were the cruelest by design:

• One thin cloak a year, no shoes, in any weather
• Beds of reeds they ripped from the riverbank by hand
• Too little food, so they were pushed to steal it
• A whipping if caught — punished for getting caught, not for stealing

The hunger had a purpose beyond toughness. A boy who could feed himself by stealth, and take a beating without a sound, was a boy who would never break on a battlefield.