Coming Of Age In Sparta

As a Spartan boys: Children when they are born are more children of the state than their parents. When a Spartan baby is born, soldiers come to examine it to determine its strength. They bathed the baby for reaction, and if weak the child would become a slave. Took from mother at age 7. Raised to be soldiers, loyal to the state, strong, and self-disciplined. The boys were taken to the barracks by the city and raised, and they trained in the military. They were not allowed to leave until the age of 30.

The spartans only accepted babies that were strong. If the baby was weak they would leave it to die one Mount Taygetus. They would begin at the age of seven for training. The selection of spartan warriors began before birth. They would send boys at the age of seven to military boarding school.

I’m not overly thrilled with that aspect, however, even if I were living in Athens I feel that’s how most men and societies at the time viewed women, simply for reproduction and raising a family. Spartan society also didn’t push their girls into premature marriage or sex, most married around the age of 18 which I believe is a much more acceptable age than that of the Athenian women at 12 or 14. Of course women were taught the domestic skills required to maintain a home and household, their children would live at home until they turned 7 and went off to school, for boys it was military camp and girls also attended something similar to train them for motherhood.. Their husbands lived away from home most of the time confined to the army barracks. This left the women in charge of the finances and land, how radical is that? (Schrader, 2012, p. 5,

After an embarrassing defeat at the battle of Hysiai Sparta went through great military change, these changes dramatically changed all other areas of Spartan life, turning Sparta into a military focused state. This militaristic influence impacted greatly on Spartan education, essentially aiming to mass produce the perfect solider. The education and training of Spartan boys aged as young as 7 in the agoge became the crucial

In the documents, especially in documents A and B, the agoge is described in detail. In Document A, it states that Spartan parents had no choice but to get their infant son inspected for healthiness. This benefits by nurturing only the healthy boys and be able to have a better army. Moreover, agoge’s system makes it inevitable for boys to not obey. Document A says, “instruction consisted in the most part in… obedience, bodily fitness, and courage to conquer in battle.”

As they never swathed the infants, their limbs had a freer turn, and their countenances a more liberal air; besides, they used them to any sort of meat, to have no terrors in the dark, nor to be afraid of being alone, and to leave all ill humor and unmanly crying (Plutarch: training regime of Spartan boys). Spartan warriors were very manly. At the young age of 7, they were expected to never cry or feel scared. This self-discipline helped them to toughen out in war, defeat opposing soldiers with ease, and have lots of confidence. These many reasons are why self-discipline was so important for this amazing

The Agoge was a harsh, tough education program which all men of Sparta were required to participate in. The agoge would begin when a Spartan boy was at the age of seven. All boys would receive the same education which was harsh, brutal, and torturing. It was designed to condition the boys to become ready to fight rather than learning about traditional subjects. In the end, some Spartan boys turned into strong hoplite soldiers while unsuccessful boys were outcast from society. Despite the hardships many Spartan boys had to endure, the agoge would prove very useful for Sparta. Out of all the Greek poleis, Sparta was the one known for having the strongest army.

At the age of 7 boys were taken from their families and entered agoge. This program sculpts the boys into warriors. They are beaten and battered by each other, taught not to show pain. This toughness and fearlessness is seen throughout Bernard Knox excerpt. In the document Xerxes sends a man to spy on the Spartans. When he arrives to the camp he is astonished, not by the number of Spartan soldiers but by the lack of uneasiness in the men. Many men were combing there hair as if the culmination of war right around the corner was nothing more than another training exercise. After they had completed agoge around the age of 20 they were given the opportunity to fully become a Spartan solider. They had to be voted in unanimously by their peers. If they were not voted in by age 30 they would not be granted Spartan citizenship. This meant that they could not marry, hold office, or father children. However, the Spartans

They were also trained to learn how to fight, but not as harsh as the males. “The boys endured harsh physical discipline and deprivation to make them strong.” The females also did wrestling, gymnastics and many more physical training. This tells me that being physically build was a major value to Spartans. It also shows that a mother (back then) would have mostly likely not get upset if her son would have been killed at birth by being weak. Based on how they were raised, she would have probably been ashamed of bringing a weak baby. That doesn’t mean they did not care about their children, but based on how their society was based on, being physically strong was a major component to their social status. If your child was born weak, maybe they would have blamed the mother and say that she wasn’t strong enough, as a result, it was her fault her child was weak

To come of age, the boys had to go through a rite of passage to determine if they are ready to transition. After going through with a certain rite of passage, the boys gain more rights. For example, if the boys graduated from school, they were allowed to join the military and get citizenship. Unlike in the United States, if people wanted to become citizens, they had to fight for Sparta. It was a lot more dangerous to try to become a citizen of Sparta.

Spartans saw death during child birth as one of the two most honorable deaths (first being death during war for men). Moms who die while giving birth are granted a head stone on their grave which is the only way a women can get a head stone. Spartan women are more respected and have more freedom then most other Greek city-states; they could own land, talk to men, and receive education. Women

Moreover, they lived separate from their family in military-style barracks, where they learned training and obedience. Spartan boys were treated with such harsh discipline so that they

In addition, CSUN Spartan women did not marry when they were “of tender years, but [when] in their full bloom and ripeness”, allowing many of them to pursue their education for the same length of time as modern students. They most likely learned cultural norms through differing types of performance art, specifically choruses sung at festivals or during early plays, along with reading, arithmetic and writing. The purpose of these performances by young maidens was twofold: first to entice young men to marry, along with instilling both men and women with the idea of what a good Spartan should be.

The ancient Greeks made city states that functioned as their society. These were small, usually consisting of a population of around eight to ten thousand people. Some of the famous city states are Sparta and Athens. Sparta imposed many tensions on the individual. Sparta was a highly militarized state and would pull the boys away from the family usually around age seven and put them into a state sponsored training regimen that would make them highly skilled warriors. If the boy was unable to complete the training for any reason they were seen as unable to be a Spartan and were usually seen as an outcast and removed from society. The Spartans, just like most other societies in ancient times, valued boys over girls. “Spartan parents often exposed female babies to the elements and leave them to die they also made decisions on male infants testing them and seeing if they would develop into a mature warrior and if not they would face the same fate as females.”1 This

The next stage in turning a Spartan male into a Spartiate soldier was for them to become enrolled as an eiren, or a prefect. Their job was to oversee the younger boys, as had been done for them. They were encouraged to use violence against the younger boys to toughen them up. The older boys were now expected to attempt to get into a syssition, however if they failed to get into the syssition they applied for they would lose their citizenship and become an outcast. The Spartans at this point were able to go to war and get married, however they were not allowed to leave the barracks.