This was to accustom them to discipline.
=The Girls.=--The other Greeks kept their daughters secluded in the
house, spinning flax. The Spartiates would have robust women capable
of bearing vigorous children. The girls, therefore, were trained in
much the same manner as the boys. In their gymnasia they practised
running, leaping, throwing the disc and Javelin. A poet describes a
play in which Spartiate girls "like colts with flowing manes make the
dust fly about them." They were reputed the healthiest and bravest
women in Greece.
=The Discipline.=--The men, too, have their regular life and this a
soldier's life. The presence of many enemies requires that no one
shall weaken. At seventeen years the Spartiate becomes a soldier and
this he until he is sixty. The costume, hour of rising and retiring,
meals, exercise--everything is fixed by regulations as in barracks.
Since the Spartiate engages only in war, he is to prepare himself for
that; he exercises himself in running, leaping, and wielding his arms;
he disciplines all the members of the body--the neck, the arms, the
shoulders, the legs, and that too, every day.
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