Both boys and girls were brought up by the city women until the age of seven, when boys (paidia) were taken from their mothers and grouped together in "packs" (agelai) and were sent to what is almost equivalent to present-day military boot camp.
Throughout their adult lives, the Spartiates continued to be subject to a training regime so strict that, as Plutarch says, ".. they were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war."[REF]