[6] Or, "assemble the boys in flocks."

[7] {mastigophoroi} = "flagellants."

Instead of softening their feet with shoe or sandal, his rule was to
make them hardy through going barefoot.[8] This habit, if practised,
would, as he believed, enable them to scale heights more easily and
clamber down precipices with less danger. In fact, with his feet so
trained the young Spartan would leap and spring and run faster unshod
than another shod in the ordinary way.

[8] Cf. Plut. "Lycurg." 16 (Clough, i. 106).

Instead of making them effeminate with a variety of clothes, his rule
was to habituate them to a single garment the whole year through,
thinking that so they would be better prepared to withstand the
variations of heat and cold.

Again, as regards food, according to his regulation the Eiren,[9] or
head of the flock, must see that his messmates gathered to the club
meal,[10] with such moderate food as to avoid that heaviness[11] which
is engendered by repletion, and yet not to remain altogether
unacquainted with the pains of penurious living. His belief was that
by such training in boyood they would be better able when occasion
demanded to continue toiling on an empty stomach. They would be all
the fitter, if the word of command were given, to remain on the
stretch for a long time without extra dieting. The craving for
luxuries[12] would be less, the readiness to take any victual set
before them greater, and, in general, the regime would be found more