When arrived at the age of seven years, they were taken from the nurses, and placed in their proper classes. The diet and clothing of all were the same, just sufficient to support nature, and defend them from the inclemency of the seasons; and they all lodged alike in the same dormitory on beds of reeds, to which for the sake of warmth they were all allowed in winter to add the down of thistles. Their sports and exercises were such as contributed to render their limbs supple, and their bodies compact and firm. They were accustomed to run up the steepest rocks barefoot; and swimming, dancing, hunting, boxing, and wrestling, were their constant diversions. Lycurgus was equally solicitous in training up the youth to a habit of passive courage as well as active. They were taught to despise pain no less than danger, and to bear the severest scourgings with the most invincible constancy and resolution. For to flinch under the strokes, or to exhibit the least sign of any sense of pain, was deemed highly infamous. Nor were the minds of the Spartan youth cultivated with less care. Their learning, as Plutarch informs us, was sufficient for their occasions, for Lycurgus admitted nothing but what was truly useful. They carefully instilled into their tender minds the great duties of religion, and the sacred indispensable obligation of an oath, and trained them up in the best of sciences, the principles of wisdom and virtue. The love of their country seemed to be almost innate; and this leading maxim, “that every Spartan was the property of his country, and had no right over himself,” was by the force of education incorporated into their very nature. When they arrived to manhood they were enrolled in their militia, and allowed to be present in their publick assemblies: privileges which only subjected them to a different discipline. For the employments and way of living of the citizens of Sparta were fixed, and settled by as strict regulations as in an army upon actual service. When they took the field, indeed, the rigour of their discipline with respect to diet and the ornament of their persons was much softened, so that the Spartans were the only people in the universe, to whom the toils of war afforded ease and relaxation. In fact, Lycurgus’s plan of civil government was evidently designed to preserve his country free and independent, and to form the minds of his citizens for the enjoyment of that rational and manly happiness, which can find no place in a breast enslaved by the pleasures of the senses, or ruffled by the passions; and the military regulations which he established, were as plainly calculated for the protection of his country from the encroachments of her ambitious neighbours.[9] For he left no alternative to his people, but death or victory; and he laid them under a necessity of observing those regulations, by substituting the valour of the inhabitants in the place of walls and fortifications for the defence of their city.