At the age of seven years the Spartan boy left his father’s house to live with companions of his own age, whose occupation and mode of life were regulated by definite rules. All the boys were divided into companies, according to age. Several of these companies were again combined into a troop. At the head of each company and of each troop was a superintendent, chosen from among the youths. His duty was to direct the occupations and exercises of the boys under his charge, and, as leader in their gymnastic exercises, to help them by his example. The general care of their education was in the hands of the trainers (παιδόνομοι), themselves under the control of a Board of Inspection (βιδιαῖοι), but in other respects their power was unlimited, and they had the right, by means of “scourge-bearers” (μαστιγόϕοροι), to inflict punishment for disobedience or other faults. In this office, which was a very responsible one for a single man, they were assisted by the whole body of citizens, who were not only permitted, but even bound by their duty, to take part in the exercises of the boys, instructing, encouraging, or even punishing them. Every Spartan citizen could, in a measure, exercise paternal rights over every boy, and, again, was regarded by every boy in the same light as his own father. Obedience towards their elders, modest and reverent bearing, were impressed on the Spartan boys from their earliest years, and they were thus advantageously distinguished from the somewhat precocious Attic youth. The aim of their whole education was to harden the body and to attain the greatest possible bodily skill. The boys had only the most necessary clothing; from their twelfth year onwards they wore only an upper garment, even in winter, and in all other respects their life was of the simplest, so that it is not a mere figure of speech to talk of Spartan discipline. They received only sufficient food for the barest needs, and, though the boys were often taken to the meals of the grown men, yet these too were anything but luxurious. Their bed was hay or straw; from their fifteenth year onwards reeds or rushes, which they had themselves to fetch from the Eurotas. Indifference to physical pain was carried to an excess which appears to us absolutely barbarous, even in later times, when they had departed in some respects from the original severity of the so-called laws of Lycurgus.