The ( in Attic Greek, or , in Doric Greek) was the training program prerequisite for Spartiate (citizen) status. Spartiate-class boys entered it at age seven and would stop being a student of the agoge at age 21. It was considered violent by the standards of the day and was sometimes fatal. Those who survived to the final stage (and around the age of 18 to 19) would have the chance to be selected into the Crypteia.

The was divided into three age groups, paides, paidiskoi, and hēbōntes, roughly corresponding to young boys (7–12), adolescents (12–20), and young men (20–30). The deliberately deprived boys of food, sleep, and shelter. It involved cultivating loyalty to Sparta through military training (e.g., pain tolerance), hunting, dancing, singing, and rhetoric. There seems to have been ritual beating. It was intensely competitive, and the boys were encouraged to use violence against each other; by Plutarch's account, this included sexual violence by hēbōntes against paides. while Xenophon says the relationships were widely but wrongly considered to be sexual. Participants were required to live in the open or in barracks and were restricted from contact with birth families or wives.

Participants were the sons of Spartiates and Spartiate-class mothers (that is, those eligible for citizen status, totaling perhaps 1/10 to 1/32 of the population). Spartiate-class girls (who could not become citizens) did not participate in the , although they may have received a similar state-sponsored education. There is no evidence that it was used to refer to the Spartiate education system until the 3rd century BC, but it was often used before then to mean training, guidance, or discipline. Sources are unclear about the exact origins of the . According to Xenophon, it was introduced by the semi-mythical Spartan law-giver Lycurgus, and modern scholars have dated its inception to the 7th or 6th century BC. They answered to the or "boy-herder," an upper-class official who was tasked with overseeing the entire Spartan education system.

The were taught the basics of reading and writing, but even the early stages of education focused on the development of skills that would encourage military prowess. Boys would compete in athletic events such as running and wrestling, as well as choral dance performances. Notably, were expected to steal food for themselves and their , and were probably underfed as a means of encouraging this. There were other hardships too: the boys were made to participate in the in bare feet, supposedly to toughen their feet and improve agility, and beginning at the age of 12, boys would be given only one item of clothing, a cloak, per year. Plutarch reports that the boys slept together with the other members of their , constructing beds out of reeds pulled by hand from the Eurotas River.

Additionally, were educated in Laconism, the art of speaking in brief, witty phrases. According to French historian Jean Ducat, Aristotle believed that it was important that a Spartan learn how to poke fun at his peers, and that he be able to accept the teasing himself. Plutarch described this form of Spartan pederasty (erotic relationship) as one where older warriors (as the erastes) would engage promising youths (the eromenos) in a long-lasting relationship with an instructive motive. Xenophon, on the other hand, claims that the laws of Lycurgus strictly prohibited sexual relationships with the boys, although he acknowledges that this is unusual compared to other Greek city-states.

Ducat considers the stage of as a transitional phase between a child and an adult, where upper-class Spartan boys were encouraged to integrate themselves into adult society. It was at this age when Spartan men became eligible for military service and could vote in the assembly, although they were not yet considered full adult citizens and were still under the authority of the .

A Spartan man could graduate from the ' at age 30, at which time he was expected to have been accepted into a and was permitted to have a family. Those not accepted into a did not become Spartiates (citizens). They may have become hypomeiones.

Purpose

According to Plutarch, the main purpose of the ' was for Spartan boys to undergo intense physical trials to prepare their bodies for the harshness of war. The competitive nature of athletic events encouraged hard work and merit.

There may have been an initiatory component to the ', especially in its early history. Training overlapped with ritual activity at the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where were made to steal from the altar under threat of being beaten if they were caught, possibly as part of an initiation rite in the transition to a . It wouldn't be until their membership in the crypteia or adulthood that they were finally taught these military skills.

After the Classical period

The popularity of the was diminished by the first half of the 3rd century BC, possibly as a result of the declining Spartan population, but was successfully reinvigorated by Cleomenes III in 226 BC. It was abolished less than forty years later by Philopoemen when Sparta was forced into the Achaean League in 188/9 BC but was restored after Sparta came into Roman possession in 146 BC.

Roman Sparta was characterized by a desire to emulate the traditional institutions of the archaic past, and this was mainly expressed through the '. Ironically, the ' in this period was almost certainly different from that of the Classical period. It is likely around this time that a game called was developed (although it may have existed in the Classical period), which took place on a small island, and featured a violent, physical contest to force the opposing side into the water. As the ultimate position of authority within the Spartan education system, the was responsible for doling out punishment but was probably not directly responsible for inflicting it; this would have been delegated to the , a squadron of armed with whips.

Xenophon stresses the difference between the , a free, high-ranking magistrate, and the (tutors) found in other poleis, who were slaves.

Reception

In Antiquity

The exact nature of an education in the ' was not hidden from the rest of the Greek world. This is evidenced by the number of non-Spartan sources who wrote about the ': Thucydides indicates that the ' was well-known throughout Greece in the Classical period, and both Plato and Aristotle praised it as part of an ideal city-state.

Further evidence for this comes from the word , which is used to describe foreigners who were educated in the .

Plutarch, writing after Xenophon and during the Roman era when the Agoge was restored, was critical of this education. He wrote that reading and writing were studied only for practical reasons and that every other form of education was banned in the city-state. Plutarch also emphasized the brutality and indoctrination of the Spartan education system.

19th – 21st centuries

In the early 20th century, comparisons were drawn between the Spartan education system and the Royal Prussian Cadets in Germany, praising the harsh education as the driving force behind the cadets' military prowess. In 1900, Paul von Szczepanski published his novel (Spartan Youths) about his education at one such cadet school during the late 19th century. Aside from the name, the book features other references to Spartan training, which Helen Roche believes are indicators that boys at these schools were taught to associate themselves with young Spartans. In the 1930s, the Nazi-aligned professor Helmut Berve praised the Spartan style of education in particular for its ability to weed out those considered "unfit" for society and to create a community of unified warriors. He argued that Nazi leaders should use Sparta as an example of their ideal society, ideas which Hitler himself supposedly agreed with. At the Adolf Hitler Schule in Weimar, Germany, schoolchildren were taught that Sparta maintained its power by producing tough, -educated warriors. In science fiction, Red Rising contains a training program based on Greek institutions like the agōgē in the form of a state-sponsored military education system that utilizes Greek names and symbols; the program emphasizes Spartan discipline against Athenian Democracy.

In the American action film 300 (2007), Leonidas is depicted attending the Agoge as a child and fulfilling various physical and mental trials, from fighting other children to being whipped as a form of discipline.

Historian Bret Devereaux has compared the Spartan to the indoctrination of child soldiers in modern societies as part of his blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry".

In the Sony Santa Monica Studio Playstation game God of War Ragnarok, the protagonist Kratos talks about his upbringing alongside his brother in the , noting the cruel and violent methods used to train children and how he looked to avoid doing so with his second child, Atreus.

See also

  • Fagging
  • History of Sparta
  • Paideia
  • Spartiates

References

Bibliography

Secondary sources

  • Cartledge, Paul (2001). Spartan reflections. London: Duckworth. . OCLC 45648270
  • Christesen, Paul (2017). Sparta and Athletics. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp.534-564
  • Demandt, Alexander (2002). "Klassik als Klischee: Hitler und die Antike". Historische Zeitschrift. 274 (2): 281–313. ISSN 0018-2613.
  • Devereaux, Bret (2019-08-16). "Collections: This. Isn't. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School". A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
  • Ducat, Jean (2006). Spartan education : youth and society in the classical period. Emma Stafford, Pamela-Jane Shaw, Anton Powell. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. . OCLC 76892341
  • Figueira, Thomas (2017). Helotage and the Spartan Economy. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 565-595.
  • Hodkinson, Stephen (1996). "Agoge". In Hornblower, Simon (ed.). Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
  • Hodkinson, Stephen (2003). Social Order and the Conflict of Values in Classical Sparta. In Sparta, ed. Michael Whitby. Taylor & Francis. pp.104-130.
  • Kennell, Nigel (2017). Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp.643-662.
  • Kennell, Nigel M. (1995). The gymnasium of virtue : education & culture in ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. . OCLC 42854632.
  • Powell, Anton (2017). Sparta: Reconstructing History from Secrecy, Lies and Myth. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. pp. 1-28.
  • Rebenich, Stefan (2017). Reception of Sparta in Germany and German-Speaking Europe. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. pp. 685-703
  • Richer, Nicolas (2017). Spartan Education in the Classical Period. In A Companion to Sparta, eds. Anton Powell. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 525-542.
  • Roche, Helen (2013). Sparta's German children the ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet-Corps, 1818-1920, and in the Nationalist-Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933-1945. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. pp. 32–35. . OCLC 1019630468.
  • Scanlon, Thomas Francis (2002). Eros & Greek athletics. New York: Oxford University Press. . OCLC 316719681.
  • Stewart, Daniel (2017). From Leuktra to Nabis, 371-192. In A Companion to Sparta, ed. Anton Powell. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp.374-402.
  • Tazelaar, C.M. (1967). "ΠAIΔEΣ KAI EΦHBOI". Mnemosyne. 20 (2): 127–153. doi:10.1163/156852567X01473. ISSN 0026-7074.
  • Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1981). Le chasseur noir : formes de penseé et formes de société dans le monde grec. Paris: F. Maspero. . OCLC 7658419.

Primary sources

  • Aristotle. Politics
  • Berve, Helmut (1937). Sparta. Meyers Kleine Handbücher,7. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut AG.
  • Cicero. Tusculan Disputations
  • Plutarch. Lives. Life of Lycurgus
  • Plutarch. Lives. Life of Pyrrhus
  • Szczepanski, Paul Von (2018). Spartanerjünglinge: Eine Kadettengeschichte in Briefen. Forgotten Books. .
  • Xenophon. Constitution of the Lacedaimonians

External sources

  • Agoge further reading. Agoge training