After a boy had completed his elementary education, he enrolled in the army, normally between the ages of eighteen and twenty. In fact, a period of military service for men was compulsory in all of the ancient Greek city-states and all Greek males would have fought in a battle in their lifetimes. In the fourth century, the period of military training was referred to as ephebeia, meaning "at puberty," after which point one joined either the hoplites (a phalanx formation) or became a sailor in the navy. Youths spent their first year living in barracks near the Athenian harbor, the Piraeus, where they underwent extensive physical conditioning. In the second year, they began active service stationed on the frontiers of Attica. Because military service bridged the critical period between boyhood and adulthood, it resembled a rite of passage...