Spartan boys were taken from their families at age 7—not to play, but to be forged into warriors. This is the story of the agoge, Sparta’s unforgiving system of military training.

The Agoge prepared Spartan boys for a life of military service. Credit: Jona Lendering / Wikimedia Commons CC0 Ancient Sparta has been known for centuries around the world for its meticulous and harsh ...

Ancient Sparta has been known for centuries around the world for its meticulous and harsh training imposed on every boy of the city. The Agoge was a rigorous education as well as a military training ...

On an Egyptian desert rock ridge west of Alexandria and between the Mediterranean sea and Lake Mariout is Kom el-Nugus, an ...

To study this history, population geneticist Harald Ringbauer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in ...

One such ancient story centers on the bronze sentry Talos. Forged by Hephaestus, the Greek god of smiths and artisans, Talos ...

This Celtic celebration of fire and fertility culminates in the marriage of the May Queen and the Green Man—and the arrival ...

Father Spyridon has prayed, worked and welcomed the faithful in a monastery carved into a cliffside high above the Aegean Sea.

Amid serene olive groves, I meandered through Greece’s ghostly ruins of ancient Sparta, its archeological rubble evidence of a militant society where school-aged boys were whipped bloody to ...