By contrast, the Spartans, who are our second protagonist, were conservative and kept their kings. In fact, they could not have been more different from the Athenians in almost every way. The two states got on together very badly. A candid friend from the city of Corinth told the Spartans how little they had in common with the Athenians. “They are innovators, quick thinkers and swift at putting their plans into action, while you like to hold on to what you have, come up with no new ideas and when you do take action never achieve as much as you should have done.”
Where the Athenians were open-minded and excited by change, Sparta feared and resisted it, as we shall now see.
2
A State of War
The Spartan boy was terrified, but absolutely determined. He must not let himself down, or his comrades. They were under strict instructions by their official trainers to steal wherever and whatever they could. Their only crime was to be found out.
The others with him in his age group had stolen a tame young fox and given it to him to look after. When its owners came in search of it, the teenager was holding the fox under his cloak. The frightened animal struggled to escape; it began biting through his side and lacerated his intestines. The teenager did not move or make a noise, to avoid being found out.
The owners left and the boy’s friends realized what had happened. They told him off for his stupidity. Far better to let the animal be found than lose his life. “No!” he replied, though mortally wounded. “Better to die without giving in to the pain than to save a life and live ever after in disgrace.”
This famous parable was an object lesson for young Spartans.
The origins of Sparta, or Lacedaemon, its official name, are obscured by ancient myth. Its citizens numbered themselves among the Dorian “invaders” of Greece in opposition to the “native” Ionians. By the end of the eighth century, it had become one of the great city-states of Greece. You would not think it, though, if you were to judge by appearances.
Sparta, the Lacedaemonian capital, lay in a fertile river valley in the southern Peloponnese. The land was called Laconia and the river the Eurotas. The Peloponnese was, like the rest of mainland Greece, rocky and barren with only a few pockets of farmland. The mountains were still wooded, but the process of deforestation was proceeding apace. To the west, but cut off from Sparta by the high barrier of the Taygetos range, lay the rich, flat, alluvial, and tempting plain of Messenia.
As for Sparta itself, it could scarcely be called a town, let alone a city. It looked very much like what it was—a haphazard collection of four villages. There were some visually unimpressive shrines, altars, and temples, and soldiers’ barracks. It had a sort of a citadel, which, as one visitor described it, was “not so high as to be a landmark.” Thucydides, the Athenian historian, was struck by the contrast between Sparta’s position as a major power and the dismal appearance of its chief city. He noted politely: “There would be an impression of inadequacy.”
Also, unusually for an urban settlement in an age of endless wars, Sparta had no defensive walls, a fact of which the Spartans were counterintuitively proud. When someone asked a Spartan king why there were no fortifications, he simply pointed at some Spartan soldiers. “These are our walls!” There was truth in this, but Sparta was also protected by near-impassable mountains.
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This then was where a young Spartan was brought up. Children were held to be the property of the state, not of their parents. On their birth a committee of elders examined the infant to decide whether or not he or she should be allowed to live. The life of the epileptic, the sickly, and the disabled infant was “of no advantage to itself or to the state,” so it was taken to a ravine called Apothetae, which translates as a “place reserved for special occasions.” The euphemistical special occasion was the baby’s exposure to the elements (not to mention wild animals) and death.
Those allowed to live were reared without traditional swaddling clothes, leaving their limbs and physiques to develop naturally. Their nurses taught them to be happy and contented, to eat up their food and not be afraid of the dark or of being left alone. Tantrums and tears were discouraged.
At the age of seven, boys were taken on by the state and divided up into companies or troops. From this early age they were trained in the art of war. Their education—or, as it was called, agogē—was designed to make them “obey orders, cope with stress and win battles.” They were taught to read and write—but “no more than was necessary.” They lived together, rather as in a Victorian boarding school. They went about barefoot, had their hair cropped, and usually played naked. They never wore a tunic, and were given only one cloak a year. They slept together in dormitories on rush-filled pallet beds. Older men came to watch their competitions and disputes, and identified the most aggressive and fearless.
When little Spartans reached the age of twelve they were allocated “lovers” from among young men of good character. The purpose was not meant to be sexual (at least in theory), but to provide role models.
A state official, the Inspector of Boys, employed a team of men with whips to administer punishments. He supervised the companies and appointed commanders for each of them from men in their early twenties. They ordered the bigger boys to fetch and carry, to find firewood and food. The idea was that, like the boy with the fox, they stole all these things from gardens and the messes for adult Spartans, and became adept at pouncing on sleepers or catching people off their guard. According to Plutarch,
any boy who is caught is beaten and has to go hungry. For their meals are meager, so they have to take into their own hands the fight against hunger. In this way, they are forced into daring and villainy.
Adolescents took part in a fearsome rite of passage in honor of Artemis Orthia (Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt and childbirth; she was identified with Orthia, a local Peloponnesian divinity), held at the goddess’s sanctuary on the bank of the Eurotas. Cheeses were piled on an altar and guarded by men with whips. Competitors had to snatch as many cheeses as they could while running a gauntlet of flagellators. Blood stained the altar.
The Athenian writer and soldier Xenophon, who lived through Sparta’s heyday in the fifth and fourth centuries, was an admirer of the system. He observed: “All this education was planned in order to make the boys more resourceful at feeding themselves, and better fighting men.”
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That is true as far as it goes, but is not completely right. A good Spartan was expected to embody apparently contradictory qualities. Criminal guile, aggression, and tolerance of pain cohabited with obedience, deference, and modesty. A boy was taught to keep his hands inside his cloak, to walk in silence, and to fix his eyes firmly on the ground.
There were a few acceptable pleasures. Food at the Spartan dinner table may have been terrible, as can be guessed from its most famous delicacy, “black broth,” which was made from pig’s blood and vinegar; but alcohol was permitted, although not to excess. An admiring Athenian poet noted:
The Spartan youths drink just enough
To bring each mind to pleasant thoughts
…and moderate laughter.
Festivals allowed an opportunity for dancing and singing. The Gymnopaideia, the Festival of Naked Boys, was one of the state’s most solemn celebrations during which young Spartans danced in the nude in the main square (also referred to as the Dancing Floor). Three choirs would perform. Old men would begin, singing “We once were valiant young men”; then men in their prime would respond: “That is what we are now: look and learn”; and, finally, teenagers chanted: “One day we will be better men than all of you.”