Life as a Spartan Similar was one of privilege, but not of ease. At birth, a young Spartan male was brought before a board of elders and examined for physical deformities. If he was not up to standard, he was carried to a nearby gorge, where he was left to die of exposure. At age seven, a boy who had survived his initial review was taken from his mother to begin his formal education in discipline and obedience, a training that would effectively last the rest of his life. Young Spartans were divided among ‘herds’ of youths in an educational regime that resembled a Boy Scout troop in hell. Each herd was run by the older boys, who were mandated to whip (literally, in the case of certain endurance rituals) the younger ones into shape. In effect, the Spartan kindergarten was run by the toughest kids from junior high, and these were in turn urged on to new levels of toughness by stern elders, men who had suffered the same upbringing.

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Young men undergoing training were isolated from the rest of society; it is perhaps not surprising that homosexual relations between boys and young men were regarded as standard. Indeed it was a mark of shame for a boy not to be courted by an older youth. The Spartans believed that homosexual relations between young men encouraged unit solidarity and battlefield valor, reasoning that a lover would surely not shame himself before his beloved by flinching back from the line.

The Spartan youths were taught to fend for themselves. They slept in the open, engaged in endless military drill, athletic contests, and mock battle. In order to sharpen their agility and resourcefulness, they were expected to steal most of their food from local farmers. Would-be Similars learned to depend on themselves and their unit-mates–and the devil take everyone else. Institutionalized thievery is the context of the story of the Spartan boy who had stolen a fox and hid the live animal under his cloak. Upon being apprehended, the youth bluntly denied the theft and never flinched as the desperate canine chewed through his innards. While surely apocryphal, the often-told tale gives some notion of the standard of toughness the Spartans had established as an ideal for themselves, and the steadfast, dying Spartan thief stands as a fitting symbol for a society that would eventually find itself dead on its feet, eaten away from the inside by its own unyielding code.

Upon reaching age twenty, the young Spartan sought induction into one of the collectivized mess units around which the lives of the Similars were organized. A youth who failed to be inducted into one of the units never became a true Similar; he was forced to join an inferior caste, his life in ruins before it had properly begun. The mess units, which contained about fifteen men each, were the basis of the organization of army and society alike: a Spartan fought beside, lived with (until marriage), and ate with his mess-mates. He owed them absolute fealty, and he owed them dinner on a regular rotation.

In principle, each Spartan inherited a state-assigned plot of land, and a set of Helot-serfs to farm it. That land was notionally adequate for his sustenance, and adequate to provide his regular contribution to the mess unit. If, through bad luck or mismanagement, the Spartan was unable to’stand his round’–to feed his mess-mates when his turn came–he was cast out of the unit and demoted from the Similars.

Disobeying an order or demonstrating any hint of fear during battle were further grounds for expulsion. There were several inferior castes of persons who had fallen (or whose ancestors had fallen) from the ranks of the elite Similars; each was given a derogatory name: ‘Inferiors,’ ‘Tremblers,’ and the like. ‘Tremblers’ did fight with the Spartan army, but in separate (and clearly inferior) units. There was, in brief, a good deal of social mobility in Sparta, but mostly downward. A Similar could be demoted for a variety of failings; neither he nor his descendants could expect to ascend back into the privileged elite.

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