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 when we turn to Lycurgus, instead of leaving it to each member of the state privately to appoint a slave to be his son’s tutor, he set over the young Spartans a public guardian, the Paidonomos (4) or “pastor,” to give them his proper title, (5) with 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). As their overseer, in case of any misbehaviour, to chastise severely.

The legislator further provided his pastor with a body of youths in the prime of life, and bearing whips, (7) to inflict punishment when necessary, with this happy result that in Sparta modesty and obedience ever go hand in hand, nor is there lack of either.

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

This habit, if practised, would, as he believed, enable them to scale heights more easily and 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, thinking that so they would be better prepared to withstand the variations of heat and cold.

The Eiren, (9) or head of the flock, 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.

His belief was that by such training in boyhood they would be better able when occasion demanded 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)

On the other hand, in order to guard against a too great pinch of starvation, though he did not actually allow the boys to help themselves without further trouble to what they needed more, he did give them permission to steal (15) this thing or that in the effort to alleviate their hunger.

It was not of course from any real difficulty how else to supply them with nutriment that he left it to them to provide themselves by this crafty method. Nor can I conceive that any one will so misinterpret the custom.

Clearly its explanation lies in the fact that he who would live the life of a robber must forgo sleep by night, and in the daytime he must employ shifts and lie in ambuscade; he must prepare and make ready his scouts, and so forth, if he is to succeed in capturing the quarry. (16)

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 it so fine a feat to steal, why did he inflict all those blows on the unfortunate who was caught?”

My answer is: for the self-same reason which induces people, in other matters which are taught, to punish the malperformance of a service.

So the Spartans visit penalties on the boy who is detected thieving as being but a sorry bungler in the art.

So to steal as many cheeses as possible (off the shrine of Orthia (17)) was a feat to be encouraged; but, at the same moment, 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.

Furthermore, and in order that the boys should not want a ruler, even in case the pastor (19) himself were absent, he gave to any citizen who chanced to be present authority to lay upon them injunctions for their good, and to chastise them for any trespass committed. By so doing he created in the boys of Sparta a most rare modesty and reverence.

There is nothing which, whether as boys or men, they respect more highly than the ruler. Lastly, and with the same intention, that the boys must never be reft of a ruler, even if by chance there were no grown man present, he laid down the rule that in such a case the most active of the Leaders or Prefects (20) was to become ruler for the nonce, each of his own division.

The conclusion being that under no circumstances whatever are the boys of Sparta destitute of one 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.

We know that the rest of the Hellenes deal with this relationship in different ways, either after the manner of the Boeotians, (22) where man and boy are intimately united by a bond like that of wedlock, or after the manner of 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 alike. Given that some one, himself being all that a man ought to be, should in admiration of a boy’s soul (24) endeavour to discover in him a true friend without reproach, and to consort with him—this was a relationship which Lycurgus commended, and indeed regarded as the noblest type of bringing up.

But if, as was evident, it was not an attachment to the soul, but a yearning merely towards the body, he stamped this thing as foul and horrible; and with this result, to the credit of Lycurgus be it said, that in Lacedaemon the relationship of lover and beloved is like that of parent and child or brother and brother where carnal appetite is in abeyance.

That this, however, which is the fact, should be scarcely credited in some quarters does not surprise me, seeing that in many states the laws (25) do not oppose the desires in question.