syssitia

Definitions

noun In ancient Greece, notably among peoples of Dorian blood, and most conspicuously among the Spartans and Cretans, the custom that full citizens-should eat the chief meal of the day in a public mess.

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Then at the age of 20, they joined military organizations called syssitia

Slap Upside The Head 2009
In winter they retired into houses on the north of the hill, in which they held their syssitia.

Critias 2006
Tell me — were not first the syssitia, and secondly the gymnasia, invented by your legislator with a view to war?

Laws 2006
Men of military age lived away from their wives in barracks and ate at common messes (syssitia).

c. Sparta and the Peloponnese 2001
The number of full citizens who could contribute to their mess-tables (syssitia) had fallen to 700.

c. Macedon and Greece, to 146 B.C.E 2001
They were exercised in hunting and in drills; took their meals together in the _syssitia_ (the public mess), where the fare was rough and scanty; slept in dormitories together; and by every means were disciplined for a soldier's life.

Outline of Universal History George Park Fisher 1868
The general arrangements were divided into syssitia, according, perhaps, to the number of families, and correspondent to the divisions or obes acknowledged by the State.

Pausanias, the Spartan The Haunted and the Haunters, an Unfinished Historical Romance Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton 1838
Homosexuality would have been the only option for the men, as they were not allowed to have wives, or even to leave their syssitia on their own.

Slap Upside The Head 2009