Science side of Tumblr coming to the rescue!
First of all, no, your question is not dumb (as you feared in the tags)! It is really interesting! But I fear that I canât give you a definitve answer. The problem is not that all we know about them was written long after the civilization died. Ancient Sparta and its infamous education system, the agoge, existed for quite a long time; concerning the agoge, from at least 500 BCE (when exactly it started is probably impossible to say) to about the 4th century CE (though with breaks in between). Of course, Spartaâs glory days were in the late Archaic/Classical era, from about the late 6th century BCE to 371 BCE (that year Sparta suffered a terrible defeat against Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra that ended Spartaâs supremacy once and for all).
And we have quite a few people writing about them, like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle (5th/4th century BCE) and Pausanias and Plutarch (1st/2nd century CE), to name the most important ones. The problem here is:Â None of them are Spartans. We have basically no writings from the Spartans themselves and so can only speculate about how they might have seen themselves or, in this case, experienced the agoge.
Concerning the agoge, our most important sources are Xenophon and Plutarch. I will quickly go over what they have to say about it and then get into the problems + attempt to answer the question as best as I can. Xenophon writes about it in his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians or Spartan Society (Lacedaemonians just being another word for Spartans here) and Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus (the mythical founder of Spartan customs).
Xenophon tells us that Spartan boys were arranged in groups with a paidonomos (trainer) in charge who was allowed to punish them severely whenever they misbehaved and had other young adults to help him, like with whipping the boys. They were also not allowed to wear shoes and had only one piece of garment to wear all year round. They were also only given just enough food so they wouldnât starve. This should make them get used to hard times and at the same time, encourage them to become good thieves. Their prowess as thieves would come into play at the festival of Artemis Orthia, where they were supposed to steal cheese from the altar of the Goddess while being whipped by others. When they reached puberty, relationships between the boys and young adult men were encouraged (Xen. Lak. pol. 2-3).
Plutarch gets into more detail. He mentions that their education started when they reached the age of seven. They were urged to fight and compete with one another. Like Xenophon, he also mentions that they were only given one cloak for the whole year (according to Plutarch, at the age of twelve) and were encouraged to steal. The boysâ lovers were also supposed to teach them good behavior and if a boy showed weakness, his lover was punished instead (Plut. Lyk. 16-18). Boys could also be brought to the syssitia, the adult dining groups, by their lovers (Plut. Lyk. 12).
So far, so disturbing. One of the main problems here is that Xenophon wrote in the early 4th century BCE and Plutarch in the 2nd century CE, so thatâs roughly 500 years in between them. And the agoge certainly underwent changes in these 500 years. A prime example would be the festival of Artemis Orthia, which at Plutarchâs times had transformed into a full-on whipping endurance contest (Plut. Lyk. 18).
Another problem is that, as I have mentioned, all those men writing about Sparta were non-Spartans writing for a non-Spartan audience. So, the authors, even if they were eyewitnesses to the education system (as in the case of Xenophon), they did so as outsiders. Also, when they write about Sparta, they often set it in opposition to other Greek city states (primarily Athens) and represent Sparta as the antithesis to that. Another reason to read these texts very carefully and critically. They surely contain a lot of reliable facts about the Spartanâs education system but others might be exaggerated (Kennell 1995: 34).
As of how Spartans were able to function after undergoing all of this, we need to get into full-on speculatory territory. The agoge certainly wasnât all physical education and punishment. As I have mentioned, boys might earn the esteem of their lovers and be invitied to the syssitia. Richer also says that ânevertheless, it seems that some young people were awarded distinction at the end of their training, not so much because of their social relationships as because of their own meritsâ (Richer 2018: 529).
A story from Xenophonâs Hellenica (Plutarch also tells it) might also shed some light on this subject. In 378 BCE, the Spartan Sphodrias tried to seize the Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. He failed and the Athenians (and Spartans) were enraged. The Spartans put him on trial and he was supposed to be put to death. Cleonymos, Sphodriasâ son, feared for his fatherâs life and since Cleonymos happened to be the lover of Archidamos, the son of the Spartan king Agesilaos, he asked Archidamos to plead with Agesilaos to use his power and acquit Sphodrias. Archidamos agreed (according to Xenophon, after a lot of crying on Archidamosâ and Cleonymosâ part) and approached his father with the request. Agesilaos granted it and acquitted Sphodrias (Xen. hell. V, 4).
I chose this example because Xenophon was a contemporary of this event and was a good friend of Agesilaos himself, so itâs very likely to be authentic. And I think this example shows that Spartans were certainly loved. Sons loved their fathers and vice versa and lovers loved each other. (Important note: I think I donât need to explain that these pederastic relationships are very problematic, to say the least. My point here is not to say that this was totally okay but that Spartans had relationships that they experienced as love).
Conclusion: It is very hard to say how brutal the agoge really was, and certain elements certainly changed over the years. Nevertheless it was undoubtetly very brutal from our point of view. But they were certainly loved and cared for in their own way, although we might strongly disagree. And I think that this is exactly the point: If I woke up tomorrow as a Spartan boy in the agoge but with all the memories that I have now, I would most likely be traumatized by the way I was treated. But for the Spartans, this was the only life they knew and they probably couldnât conceive it to be any other way. If they didnât feel like missing out on a happy childhood, they might have experienced this upbringing very differently from us. As difficult and frustrating as it is, we have to take the Spartans on their own terms.
Kennell, Nigel M.: The Gymnasium of Virtue. Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. University of North Carolina Press 1995.
Plutarch, On Sparta. Revised Edition. Penguin Books 2005.
Richer, Nicolas, Spartan Education in the Classical Period, in: A Companion to Sparta. Volume II. Edited by Anton Powell. Wiley 2018, p. 525-542.
Xenophon, Hellenika. Griechisch-Deutsch. Hrsg. von Gisela Strasburger. Artemis & Winkler 2005.
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