Spartan Education: the Paidonomos

With this exposition of the customs in connection with the birth of children, I wish now to explain the systems of education in fashion here and elsewhere.

Greek Education

As soon as the children are of an age to understand what is said to them, they are immediately placed under the charge of Paidagogoi (1) (or tutors), who are also attendants.

They are sent off to the school of some teacher to be taught:

• grammar
• music
• the concerns of the palestra. (2)

Besides this they are given shoes (3) to wear which tend to make their feet tender.

• Their bodies are enervated by various changes of clothing.

For food, the only measure recognised is that which is fixed by appetite.

Spartan Education

But Lycurgus did not leave it to each member of the state privately to appoint a slave to be his son’s tutor.

Instead, he set a public guardian over the young Spartans. This was the Paidonomos (4) or “pastor” who had complete authority over them.

This guardian was selected from those who filled the highest magistracies.

He had authority to:

• hold musters of the boys, (6)
• to chastise severely in case of any misbehaviour, as their overseer

The legislator provided his pastor with some youths in the prime of life. They had whips(7) to inflict punishment when necessary.

This happily resulted in Spartan modesty and obedience going hand in hand. There is lack of either.

Instead of softening their feet with shoe or sandal, his rule was to make them hardy through going barefoot. (8)

He believed that this would enable them to:

• scale heights more easily
• clamber down precipices with less danger

In fact, with his feet so trained, the young Spartan would leap and spring and run faster unshod than another shod in the ordinary way.

Instead of making them effeminate with a variety of clothes, his rule was to habituate them to a single garment the whole year through. In this way, they would be better prepared to withstand the variations of heat and cold.

The Eiren was (9) the head of the flock. He must see that his messmates gathered to the club meal (10) with such moderate food as to avoid that heaviness (11) which is engendered by repletion, and yet not to remain altogether unacquainted with the pains of penurious living.

Such training in boyhood would make them better able to continue toiling on an empty stomach.

They would be all the fitter, if the word of command were given, to remain on the stretch for a long time without extra dieting.

The craving for luxuries (12) would be less, the readiness to take any victual set before them greater, and, in general, the regime would be found more healthy. (13)

Under it, he thought the lads would increase in stature and shape into finer men, since, as he maintained, a dietary which gave suppleness to the limbs must be more conducive to both ends than one which added thickness to the bodily parts by feeding. (14)

He did not allow the boys to get more than they needed.

In order to guard against starvation, he did allowed them to steal (15) to alleviate their hunger.

But there was no reason to do this because there was no real difficulty to supply them with food.

Nor can I conceive that any one will so misinterpret the custom.

To succeed, a robber must forgo sleep by night. In the daytime, he must:

• lie in ambush
• prepare his scouts and so forth

The Spartan education tended to make the boys craftier and more inventive in getting in supplies, as intended.

• At the same time, it cultivated their warlike instincts.

An objector may retort: “But if he thought that it was good to steal, why did he inflict punishments on those who were caught?”

My answer is: to punish the malperformance of a service.

So the Spartans give penalties on the boy who is detected stealing as being a sorry bungler in the art.

So stealing as many cheeses as possible off the shrine of Orthia (17) was encouraged.

But, at the same time, others were enjoined to scourge the thief, which would point a moral not obscurely, that by pain endured for a brief season a man may earn the joyous reward of lasting glory. (18)

It is plainly shown that where speed is requisite the sluggard will win for himself much trouble and scant good.

In order that the boys should not lack a ruler, even when the pastor (19) himself was absent, he gave to any citizen who was present the authority to:

• lay on them injunctions for their good
• chastise them for any trespass committed

By so doing, he created in the Spartan boys a most rare modesty and reverence.

There is nothing which, whether as boys or men, they respect more highly than the ruler.

He laid down the rule that when there was no ruler, the most active of the Leaders or Prefects (20) was to become ruler for the nonce, each of his own division.

This means that the boys of Sparta would always have someone to rule them.

I should not omit some remark on the subject of boy attachments, (21) it being a topic in close connection with that of boyhood and the training of boys.

The rest of the Hellenes deal with this relationship in different ways.

• With the Boeotians, (22) the man and boy are intimately united by a bond like that of wedlock.
• With the Eleians, where the fruition of beauty is an act of grace; whilst there are others who would absolutely debar the lover from all conversation (23) and discourse with the beloved.

Lycurgus adopted a system opposed to all of these.

Lycurgus commended a relationship wherein the ideal man admires a boy’s soul and tries to be his true friend and to consort with him. He regarded this as the noblest type of bringing up.

But if it was not an attachment to the soul, but merely a yearning towards the body, he stamped this thing as foul and horrible.

And so in Lacedaemon, the relationship of lover and beloved has no carnal appetite just like that of:

• parent and child or
• brother and brother

But to other states do not oppose the carnal desires and so they ignore this fact.