Hence the unsettling paradoxes that governed Spartan society: humiliation was pride; restriction opportunity; discipline freedom; subordination the truest mastery. Even when, at the age of thirty, a Spartan finally became a full citizen, a “homoios,” or the “peer” of his fellows, he continued to live in conditions that would have appeared to the elite of any other city akin to slavery. Every evening, he would be obliged to eat in a common mess; he would bring a set ration of raw ingredients which the cooks would mix into a black, bloody broth. So disgusting was this concoction
