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01

Crypteia

Spartan boys earned citizenship by stalking and murdering helot slaves at night, alone, with a knife. The state called it education. The helots called it nothing — they left no record.

02

Hermae mutilation

Every herma in Athens — stone pillars topped with Hermes' head and an erect phallus — was mutilated in a single pre-dawn operation in 415 BC. The fleet never fully recovered its nerve.

03

Lupercalia

Priests called Luperci slaughtered goats, cut strips from the hides, smeared sacrificial blood on two boys' faces, then ran naked through Rome striking every woman they passed. February. Every year.

04

Týr

Tyr placed his sword hand inside the wolf Fenrir's jaws as a pledge of good faith — knowing the gods were lying. The wolf bit it off. He remains the god of justice.

05

Sacred Band of Thebes

Thebes' Sacred Band — 300 men arranged as 150 lover-pairs — held the line against Philip of Macedon at Chaeronea in 338 BC. Every single one died in formation. Philip wept over the bodies.

06

Berserker

Norse berserkers bit their shields and charged wearing bear pelts, impervious to iron. Saga accounts describe them foaming at the mouth; one killed 11 men before being pinned to the earth with a pitchfork.

07

Agoge

Spartan boys in the agoge were given rations calibrated to be insufficient — deliberate hunger was the lesson. A boy caught stealing food was flogged, not for theft, but for being caught.

08

Gymnopaedia

At the Gymnopaedia, naked Spartan youths danced in full summer sun on the Spartan agora for days — a festival honoring the dead of Thyreatis. The audience was the entire citizen body.

09

Bullfighting

Minoan frescoes show unarmed athletes vaulting over charging bulls in rituals that predate the Spanish corrida by 3,000 years. The matador's suit of lights is Bronze Age costume with a modern tailor.

10

Therianthropy

From Siberian shamans to West African priests, ritual specialists across every continent claimed to physically enter animal bodies — not metaphorically. Some courts executed people specifically for this crime.