10 Wild Facts About The Way The Spartans Raised Their Children
Sparta! The very name is redolent of military prowess and self-sacrifice. Whether because of the famous film 300, or from general knowledge; almost everyone knows about the last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan soldiers as they held the Persian Army at the gates of Thermopylae for three days, saving Greece but dying in the process.
The Spartans have always, even in the ancient world, been viewed as something of a race apart, special, different and, to be perfectly honest, downright scary. The Spartan state was unlike
anything either before or since; in many ways it resembled a martial equivalent of a religious sect. The state played a huge role in everyday life and regulated even when and who people could marry. Every aspect of life was controlled in a manner designed to support the military with young boys entering training from a very tender age.Spartan women enjoyed more rights than their contemporaries but Sparta was, in all other respects, a very stratified society. All Spartiates (descendants of the original inhabitants of Sparta) were required to serve in the army for life (or at least until age 60), there was no other acceptable occupation.
In order to serve in the army Spartiate boys were required to complete the Spartan education in the agoge and therefore take their place as a fully-fledged Spartan citizen. If a family could not pay for the agoge education they would lose citizenship and become one of the perioikoi, free men who lived in but were not citizens of Sparta and who provided skilled crafts and services, (all manual labor was done by the state owned slaves known as helots). For this reason the state education was seen as the lynchpin of Spartan society.
The Spartan attitude to childhood is almost completely at odds to our own. Children were seen as a state asset rather than an emotional blessing. With that in mind here is our list of 10 of the wildest things these young Spartiate children were required to do.
10Spartan babies were bathed in wine
9Children were taught that the only valuable death was in battle (or childbirth for women).
8Children were reared on a diet of ‘Tough Love’
7Spartan children were expected to treat all older Spartans as their parents.
6Spartan children were taken from their parents at age 7
5The time at the Agoge was brutal and included ritualistic beatings, hazing and shortage of food
4Boys were encouraged to join the secret police
3Pederasty was an expected and normal part of childhood
2Girls were not exempt from high expectations
1Spartans had to continue to live communally until the age of 30.
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