Tresantes

The tremblers. The formal Spartan status of a man who had shown cowardice in battle, and the sharpest illustration of how the city enforced its standard without needing to execute anyone.

Xenophon lists the consequences. The trembler was passed over in the distribution at the mess. No one would wrestle with him. He was left out when teams were chosen for a ball game, and given the losing position in a dance. He had to yield the road, give up his seat to younger men, and keep unmarried female relatives at home, answering for their remaining unmarried. He went about unwashed and unshaven. Xenophon concludes that in Sparta death was preferable to such a life, and presents this as the intended design.

Herodotus supplies the case. Aristodemus, one of two Spartans invalided out before Thermopylae, returned alive and was shunned; no one would give him fire or speak to him. At Plataea the following year he fought with conspicuous fury and was killed, and the Spartans withheld honours from him on the grounds that he had sought death rather than held the line.