The Spartan Agoge: The Delicate Balance between Democracy and Discipline

Readers who believe Sparta and its educational system were particularly brutal will be shocked to learn that many ancient Greek commentators considered the Spartan eduational system, the agoge, as one of Sparta's most "democratic features."[1]

But then, ancient observers knew -- as many modern readers do not -- that Sparta was not just the home to a disciplined army but also the first state to introduce democracy (150 years before Athens adopted that form of government). In short, Sparta was both democratic and disciplined, and the Spartan educational system, the "Agoge," reflected that perpetual balancing act between democracy and discipline. 

 

The reason ancient observers viewed the Agoge as "democratic" was two-fold. First, because it was compulsory for all except the heirs to the two thrones, and second, it opened up the ranks of citizens to those not born of citizen parents.

Before focusing on the first point, it is important to consider the revolutionary nature of the second. Whereas birth to citizen parents was the sole basis to obtain citizenship in the rest of the Greek world, Sparta had created (as we saw earlier) an additional requirement of successfully completing the educational system. Yet while this ensured that all citizens attained a least a minimal level of education, it also opened the doors to citizenship for the sons of non-citizens. Suddenly, there was a way to become a Spartan without having been born to the privilege. (2)

The way in which this was applied is vague (to say the least) and it would appear to have been applied most commonly to the sons of former citizens, boys whose parents had been citizens, but through poverty had slipped from the ranks. Yet another very likely possibility in later years was that sons of freed helots, particularly those that fought with Brasidas or other Spartan commanders, were given the chance to send their sons to the Agoge. Possibly even the sons of run-away Athenian slaves were allowed this opportunity. 

The point is extremely significant and has been too often overlooked. It shows that the Spartan state found the common experience of the agoge more important than bloodlines. Or, put another way, the Spartan state trusted the agoge to "create Spartans" in the sense of men with the right values and ethos. This is unquestionably a democratic idea, as it removes the hereditary feature of privilege altogether. 

The more obvious democratic feature of the agoge was that it treated all boys exactly the same. All participants went barefoot, all wore identical himations all year long, all ate the institutional food in common messes, all had to undergo the same training, learn the same skills, and partake in the same ceremonies and festivals. Whether the (younger) son of a king or a "mothake" (non-citizen's child) "adopted" by a more wealthy citizen,  the treatment and routine were the same. They were all under the authority of the Head Master and his assistants, and all subject to the criticism and oversight of all adult citizens.  No boy could claim he was "better" than his colleagues or withdraw from the collective games, sport, training or learning without risking his future as a citizen. 

There may also be a third democratic element in the Agoge. In the Roman agoge, the boys elected their group leaders.  That is to say, in addition to being under the oversight of the Head Master and his assistants at all times everywhere, and in addition to being constantly watched over by an Eirene, each age cohort was divided up into units or teams or groups called "herds" in the Roman-era nomenclature. These herds elected from their own number a "herd leader." It was these groups within each age cohort that competed with one another at sport, play and music. 

Since Xenophon makes no mention of the herds or their leaders, this may be yet another Roman invention, yet I wanted to mention it because it is not totally at odds with a city-state that invented democracy. Encouraging school children to annually elect their leaders is an excellent way to prepare them for living in a democracy by learning the consequences of elections and so how to select good leaders. 

Yet, to the horror of the ancient no less than the modern world, the boys in the Spartan agoge were also subject to draconian discipline. Namely, they could be flogged. It is important to keep in mind that in the rest of the Greek world flogging was a punishment reserved for slaves. So the notion that a citizen's son might be flogged was particularly debasing and offensive; it put the free man's son on the same level as a slave. Were it not for the fact that Xenophon explicitly mentions it, it would be easy to believe that flogging itself -- like the whipping contest -- was a mere Roman-era invention.

But Xenophon does mention flogging -- three times in three short paragraphs. First, he mentions that the Head Master was authorized "to punish [his charges] severely whenever they misbehaved while in his charge." And also that Lycurgus gave the Head Master "a squad of young adults equipped with whips to administer punishment when necessary."(3) Second, he notes, "Someone might ask then, why on earth did he inflict many lashes on the boy who was caught [stealing]?" in order to answer: "After making it a matter of honor for them to snatch just as many cheeses as possible from Orthia, he commanded others to whip them...." (4)

What this tells us is that whipping was used both as punishment as part of the ritual at Artemis Orthia, the same ritual that later became the whipping contest of the Roman-era agoge. It is easier to answer the question of why the whipping at Artemis Orthia -- as practiced during the Archaic and Classical era -- than why flogging was a general means of discipline.

The festival of Artemis Orthia initially replicated an incident in which the Dorians were attacked by barbarians while celebrating a festival to Artemis. The Dorians beat off the barbarians armed with just canes from the river. The Archaic and Classic ritual entailed one class of boys from the agoge trying to steal cheese from the altar of Artemis Orthia (see above: "...an honor for them to snatch as many cheeses....") while another age cohort defended the altar armed with canes. 

But why would the Spartans alone of all Greeks institute flogging as a means of punishing their own youth? Xenophon is silent, and we have no Spartan voice that explains it. Was it just a means of making their youth particularly tough? Was it a means of impressing upon the youth that they were like slaves until they attained citizenship? After all, if citizenship was not a privilege of birth, then in effect the children of the agoge were not necessarily going to be citizens; by being treated like slaves they were reminded of the value of completing the agoge successfully.

Or were Spartan youth so unruly and so impudent that only the threat of a whipping could get them to behave? We know that Xenophon praised the "respect and obedience" and appearance of modesty among Spartan youth, yet he praised these qualities in all Spartans. It was the Spartan obedience to their laws that impressed him most, along with their self-discipline and self-restraint. In short, the draconian nature of the ultimate discipline may have been a means to induce self-discipline because there would be few things worth risking the humiliation of a flogging. Unfortunately, we will probably never know.


(1) Cartledge, Paul. Spartan Reflections. Duckworth, 2001, p. 85.
(2) Ducat, Jean. "Perspectives on Spartan Education." Hodkinson, Stephen and Anton Powell (eds). Sparta: New Perspectives. Duckworth, 1999, p. 53. 
(3) Xenophon, 2.1.
(4) Xenophon, 2.3. 

Next month I will look at the co-educational nature of the Spartan agoge. Meanwhile,

Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:

    

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The Spartan Agoge: A Public Institution, a Collective Responsibility

Thanks to films like "300," the Spartan Agoge is commonly viewed today as a brutal -- not to say savage -- training in which boys and youths were taught nothing but survival skills by sadistic instructors. In my last entries, I pointed out that this image is an illusion created in part by the artificial agoge of the Roman era and in part by poor historiography on the part of scholars copying from each other carelessly. 

Yet even after removing the grotesque mask created by later generations, the Spartan educational system was characterized by unique elements which attracted the praise of many ancient observers -- including Plato.

Today I look more closely at the "public" aspect of the Spartan Upbringing.

 

In an age when private schools and colleges enjoy a reputation for quality that generally exceeds that of public institutions, it is hard to understand why the public nature of Sparta's education attracted the admiration and praise of some of ancient Greece's most famed philosophers -- including Aristotle, otherwise a critic of Sparta. To understand the attraction of Sparta's public school it is essential to understand that the alternative was often no education at all.

True, in cities like Athens that attracted great philosophers and scientists from around the world, the opportunities were seemingly limitless.  An Athenian could theoretically indulge his own intellectual curiosity by attending talks by the greatest minds of his age at the famous gymnasiums and lyceums or by meeting and discussing with these men in a more intimate setting at the various symposiums hosted by leading citizens. An Athenian could even engage such men, or their more humble disciples, to act as teachers for his sons.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Athens citizens had neither the time nor the means to indulge in this kind of intellectual pursuit because the vast majority of Athens' citizens had to earn a living. That meant they could not stay up all night drinking at symposiums, nor spend the afternoons listening to lectures at the gymnasiums either because most Athenians were too busy earning a living. As for their children, as soon as they had grown out of infancy they had chores to do and errands to run. Soon they began to assist their father in his business and craft, and at the earliest opportunity learned a trade. Time for education was limited and competed with being useful to their family or learning skills necessary for gainful employment.  Furthermore, education was expensive, because teachers had to make a living too and so charged for their services. 

What this meant was that while the rich could hire private tutors and personal trainers for their sons, for the poor education was simply an expensive luxury that their children didn't have. Everybody in between sent their sons to one or another of the plethora of schools run by anyone who wanted to set one up, and the boys went whenever they could squeeze it between their chores and their skills-training for as long as their father could (or would) afford it. The result was that there was no overall standard of education in most Greek cities, and large numbers of citizens were both illiterate and innumerate.

Sparta, in contrast, education was deemed too important to be left to the whims and preferences of fathers. Instead, the state assumed responsibility for the education of all citizens' children. As Xenophon worded it, "Lycurgus, in place of the private assignment of slave tutors to each boy, stipulated that a man from the group, out of which came the highest office-holders are appointed, should take charge of [the children]."(1) 

Xenophon goes on to stress that this Head Master was given absolute authority over the boys and youths of the city at all times and in all places. Furthermore, the city provided him with an (unnamed) number of assistants to help him enforce his regime.  "The result," Xenophon claims, "has been that respect and obedience in combination are found to a high degree at Sparta."(2)

To the modern ear it is striking that a man, himself a student of Socrates, was more interested in "respect and obedience" than in intellectual development. This is particularly bewildering when one remembers that Xenophon sent his own sons to the agoge. Would a philosopher and intellectual, a man who developed his own theories on education for a prince, really have sent his children to a school where their minds were not trained, sharpened and broadened? The most likely answer is 'no."  The solution to the apparent contradiction is that Xenophon's focus in his short essay was on what made Sparta different. Xenophon expects schools to deliver intellectual content, and because Sparta's education does, it is not worthy of mention. On the other, it also taught youth respect and obedience. In short, "respect and obedience" were not achieved at the expense of intellectual development but rather in addition to it. 

Unmentioned but obvious is the fact that a single public school ensured a common curriculum and common standards. All attendees of the Spartan agoge learned the same things for the same amount of time and had to pass the same tests. Thus, the Spartan public school ensured at a minimum that all citizens were literate and numerate. 

The latter was assured not only by the school officials but by the fact that the entire community, notably all adult citizens, were held responsible for the education of the youth. Xenophon puts it like this: "...in other cities each man is master of his children, slaves and property. But Lycurgus...caused each man to be master of other people's children just as much as his own."(3) 

Jean Ducat notes that this collective responsibility for all youth is frequently encountered in tribal institutions, and draws attention to the fact that the boys and youth of the agoge were required to perform publicly at the many and varied religious festivals throughout the year. Ducat posits that this was another means of collective control over their education. (4) Throughout the year, as the various festivals came and went with their many youth events, the entire city could watch and see how well the boys were doing; They could judge if individuals boys were excelling or falling short of the mark by how well they behaved in the public fora.

Notably, however, the collective responsibility for the behavior and progress did not exclude or replace the role of parents. Ducat argues "it was indeed the father who was considered to have principle responsibility for the education of his son," noting that a boy's father "followed the boy's performance in the agoge with a passionate interest...." (5)

Furthermore, the costs of education also remained a private responsibility. The father of each child in the agoge was required to make a fixed contribution to the agoge to cover the costs of his child's upkeep. Thus while all the boys attending the agoge received the same clothes and rations, these were financed from the collective contributions of their fathers.

In short, the public nature of the Spartan agoge did not constitute an abrogation of responsibility on the part of Spartan parents, nor did it result in a complete loss of influence. Rather, like sending children to public schools today, parents retained primary responsibility for the overall performance of their children, but availed themselves of an institution that was organized by the city and run by a highly-respected (and most probably elected) public official from the city's elite. They shared the responsibility for the education of their children with their neighbors, and took an active interest in the education of their neighbor's children as well. 

The reasons the Spartan state (characterized or represented by the legendary Lycurgus) would have chosen this radical innovation of introducing public education can only be speculated upon. We have no written record explaining the rationale. Several advantages of the system, however, are immediately apparent. For a start, the public schooling ensured that all men entering the ranks of the army had at least the same minimal standard of education. Every officer knew that his men could read, write, add, etc. He knew they had also received physical educational training, and music training (important for an army that sang as it marched). 

Yet despite the obsession of foreigners with the military aspects of Spartan education, the Spartans themselves probably valued the fact that the agoge, with its uniform clothes and food, curricula and routine, reinforced the Spartan notion of equality. 

Equally important to the Spartans, was probably the fact that the agoge was a common bond between citizens. The shared experience of common schooling reinforced identity and strengthened fraternity among the citizens long, long after they had left school.

(1) Xenophon, 2.1.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ducat, Jean. "Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period." Hodkinson, Stephen and Anton Powell (eds). Sparta: New Perspectives. Duckworth, 1990, p. 51.

(5) Ibid, p. 46.

    

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The Spartan Upbringing: Universal and Compulsory

Thanks to films like "300," the Spartan Agoge is commonly viewed today as a brutal -- not to say savage -- training in which boys and youths were taught nothing but survival skills by sadistic instructors. In my last entries, I pointed out that this image is an illusion created in part by the artificial agoge of the Roman era and in part by poor historiography on the part of scholars copying from each other carelessly. 

Yet even after removing the grotesque mask created by later generations, the Spartan educational system was characterized by unique elements which attracted the praise of many ancient observers -- including Plato.

Today I look more closely at the universal and compulsory aspect of the Spartan Upbringing.

 

Unlike the rest of Greece, where education was viewed as a strictly private and optional affair, the children of all Spartan citizens were required to enroll in the agoge. Furthermore, successful completion of the agoge was a prerequisite for citizenship. Indeed, a citizen risked losing his own citizenship if he failed to pay the agoge fees associated with each of his children -- a set amount of produce owed in kind to the agoge administration.

Citizenship in other cities was more like citizenship in most countries today: the only criteria for citizenship was to be born of married citizen parents (i.e. only the legitimate children of citizens were entitled to citizenship.) Education was not part of the formula. Thus, in Classical Athens, for example, parents were not legally compelled to educate their children at all, much less up to a specific standard. 
 
As we will examine in greater depth next month, the famed schools and symposiums of Athens, which honed human intellect as never recorded before and fostered a spirit of scientific inquiry fostered, existed only for the sons of the rich. Working and middle-class Athenians were too busy making a living to stay up all night talking, and their children learned a trade early rather than going to any kind of school. Futhermore, girls were viewed as only quasi-human with brains too small for any kind of abstract thought.

In the absence of compulsion, many Athenian citizens opted not to send their sons to school with the consequence that many Athenian citizens could not read or write at all -- something that politicians exploited shamelessly. For example, there are anecdotes of illiterate citizens being bamboozled into voting the opposite of their declared intentions. This, in turn, led "all classical Greek political philosophers, apart from the near-anarchist Cynics," to agree that comprehensive and compulsory education was essential for the creation of "good citizens" and so "good governance." (1)


It was precisely Sparta's insistence on education for all citizens that struck a chord with many of the Athenian intellectual elite. The Athenian political philosophers admired Sparta for requiring citizens' children to go to school. Even Aristotle, otherwise a severe critic of Sparta, admired the obligatory nature of the Spartan agoge. 

This would hardly have been the case if the Spartan agoge had failed to deliver a standard of education better than what was the norm (not for the elite but for the average citizen) in Athens.  In other words, while the Spartan agoge might not have taught youth up to the same standards as the rich could obtain with their tutors and coaches, it did deliver a standard equal or better -- yet more broadly and consistently -- to the basic Athenian education.

That "basic education" included "basic literacy (and possibly numeracy), music, and physical education." (2)  Musical education included both singing, dancing and playing the lyre and bagpipes. Physical education included running, long-jumping, javelin, boxing, and wrestling.  All these skills are patently evident in Sparta based on the records we have both of the festivals in which the children participated and based on Sparta's performance at the pan-Hellenic games. 

To repeat then, what was exceptional about the Spartan education, was not what it taught, but the fact that it was a prerequisite for citizenship. Even the legitimate sons of citizens could not obtain citizenship if they had not passed through the agoge. This is what made the agoge "universal" (as it applied to all future citizens) and "compulsory" as no citizen had the option of not sending his sons to school if he wanted them to become citizens.  Ducat, however, makes the important point that there were no penal sanctions for non-compliance.(3)  There was no punishment beyond the loss of citizenship for failure to send sons to the agoge. It is telling that this alone was compulsion enough; we know of no cases where Spartan citizens opted not to enroll their sons.

The motives for making the agoge a prerequisite of citizenship are exactly the same as the reason Athenian philosophers praising the practice: education made better citizens. Education, particularly literacy and numeracy, improved the overall quality of government by ensuring that every citizen could read the laws, the inscriptions, the judgment of the courts etc. Education made citizens better able to debate and deliberate, and citizens less likely to be bamboozled by their "betters." Compulsory, universal education remains to this days one of the most important means of securing and defending democracy around the world.
 

(1) Cartledge, Paul. Spartan Reflections, Duckworth, 2001, p. 83.

(2) Ibid. 

(3) Ducat, Jean. Hodkinson, Stephen and Anton Powell (eds). Sparta: New Perspectives. Duckworth, 1999, p. 85.

Next month I look more closely at the public quality of the Spartan educational system.  Meanwhile, Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:

    

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A Unique Institution - The Spartan Agoge

Thanks to films like "300," the Spartan Agoge is commonly viewed today as a brutal -- not to say savage -- training regime in which boys and youths were taught nothing but survival skills by sadistic instructors. In earlier entries, I pointed out that this image is an illusion created in part by the artificial agoge of the Roman era and in part by poor historiography on the part of scholars copying from each other carelessly. 

Yet even after removing the grotesque mask created by later generations, the Spartan educational system was characterized by unique elements which attracted the praise of many ancient observers -- including Plato. A summary follows.

The one feature of the Spartan agoge most admired by Athenian political philosophers was the fact that it was compulsory and universal, i.e. all future citizens of the city-state had to have completed their education before they could be admitted to the ranks of the citizens. The Athenians thinkers recognized that poorly educated citizens undermined the very basis of democracy. Yet in no other city -- not even in the city that prided itself most on its democracy, Athens -- were citizens required to obtain an education at all, much less meet specific standards. Sparta was alone in making education a criteria of citizenship.

The second key distinguishing feature of the Spartan "upbringing" or "agoge" was the fact that it was it was public. In other cities, notably Athens, each citizen was responsible for his son's education. Although the sons of the wealthy benefited from private tutors drawn from the impressive intellectual pool of the city, the sons of the poor might get none at all. In between were the vast majority of boys who got a spotty education by attending private schools irregularly for indefinite periods. In short, the quality of education varied from outstanding to non-existent. On average it was haphazard, individual and inadequate. Indeed, the fact that Athenian education system as a whole was worthless is one of the few things on which Athenian philosophers agreed! (They disagreed on how to fix it.)

In Sparta in contrast, the state ran the educational system, which was supervised by officials of the Spartan state. The curriculum and standards were set by the state. There were age-cohorts and public rituals in which the pupils had to participate in front of the entire city. Furthermore, responsibility for the education of youth was collective. By this I mean that any citizen had the right, and was expected to, take an active part in education the all children -- not just their own.

In addition, the Spartan educational system contained exceptionally draconian discipline combined with democratic elements. Particularly shocking to the ancient world was the employment of flogging as a means of discipline. In the rest of the Greek world, flogging was a punishment for slaves. The idea that the sons of citizens, even the (younger) sons of kings could be flogged for transgressions was viewed with voyeuristic horror that eventually mutated into the grotesque whipping contests of the Roman period. Yet in their shock over this tool, many commentators lose sight of the fact that Spartan youth elected some of their leaders, and the agoge itself enabled the sons of non-citizens to obtain citizenship - strikingly democratic features.

Last, yet arguably the most radical aspect, the Spartan agoge was that it was co-educational. To the horror and disgust of other Greeks -- much less barbarians, the daughters of Spartan citizens also attended the agoge, albeit for a shorter period of time. This meant they too shared in the common experience of living in barracks, eating institutional food at the common messes, wearing identical clothes, competing in sports, and participating in festivals.

Over the next four months, I will be looking at the above unique features of the Spartan agoge, examining what we know about them and speculating on its purpose -- i.e. why Sparta might have chosen to include these particular elements into their public educational system.

Next month I will look more closely at the "Compulsory and universal" aspects of the Spartan upbringing.

Meanwhile, the Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:

    

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