The formal education of Spartan boys consisted mainly of gymnastics, music, choric dancing, and larceny. Their literary education was confined to a little reading, writing, and finger-arithmetic; everything beyond this was proscribed. And the reasons for this proscription are not difficult to discover. Sparta staked everything upon her political strength, and this involved two things, (1) equality among her free citizens, and (2) absolute devotion on their part to her interest, both of which the higher education would have rendered impossible. Education establishes among men distinctions of worth quite other than military, and gives them individual interests distinct from those of the State. It was the same reason that induced Rome, during the best period of her history, to exclude her citizens from all higher education, which is essentially individual and cosmopolitan.
The education of the Spartan boys was conducted mostly in the open air and in public, so that they were continually exposed to the cheers or scoffs of critical spectators, to whom their performances were a continual amusement of the nature of a cock-fight. Whether the different "inspirers" betted on their own boys may be doubtful; but they certainly used every effort to make them win in any and every contest, and the "inspirer" of a "winning" boy was an envied man. The result was that many boys lost their lives amid cheers, rather than incur the disgrace of being beaten. Inasmuch as the sole purpose of gymnastics was strength and endurance; of dancing, order; and of music, martial inspiration, it is easy to see what forms these studies necessarily assumed; and we need only stop to remark that Dorian music received the unqualified approbation of all the great educational writers of antiquity,—even of Aristotle, who had only words of condemnation for Spartan gymnastics.
There was only one branch of Spartan school-education that was not conducted in public, and that was larceny. The purpose of this curious discipline was to enable its subjects to act, on occasion, as detectives and assassins among the ever discontented and rebellious Helots. How successful it was, may be judged from the incident recorded on page 45. Larceny, when successfully carried out under difficult circumstances, was applauded; when discovered, it was severely punished. A story is told of a boy who, rather than betray himself, allowed a stolen fox, concealed under his clothes, to eat out his entrails.
In one respect Spartan education may claim superiority over that of most other Greek states: it was not confined to one sex. Spartan girls, though apparently permitted to live at home, were subjected to a course of training differing from that of their brothers only in being less severe. They had their own exercise-grounds, on which they learnt to leap, run, cast the javelin, throw the discus, play ball, wrestle, dance, and sing; and there is good evidence to show that their exercises had an admirable effect upon their physical constitution. That the breezy daughters of Sparta were handsomer and more attractive than the hot-house maidens of Athens, is a well-attested fact. Many Spartan women continued their athletic and musical exercises into ripe womanhood, learning even to ride spirited horses and drive chariots. If we may believe Aristotle, however, the effect of all this training upon their moral nature was anything but desirable. They were neither virtuous nor brave.
(c) Youth.—About the age of eighteen, Spartan boys passed into the class of epheboi, or cadets, and began their professional training for war. This was their business for the next twelve years, and no light business it was. For the first two years they were called melleirenes, and devoted themselves to learning the use of arms, and to light skirmishing. They were under the charge of special officers called bideoi, but had to undergo a rigid examination before the ephors every ten days (see [p. 41]). Their endurance was put to severe tests. Speaking of the altar of Artemis Orthia, Pausanias says: "An oracle commanded the people to imbrue the altar with human blood, and hence arose the custom of sacrificing on it a man chosen by lot. Lycurgus did away with this practice, and ordained that, instead, the cadets should be scourged before the altar, and thus the altar is covered with blood. While this is going on, a priestess stands by, holding, in her arms the wooden image (of Artemis). This image, being small, is, under ordinary circumstances, light; but, if at any time the scourgers deal too lightly with any youth, on account of his beauty or his rank, then the image becomes so heavy that the priestess cannot support it; whereupon she reproves the scourgers, and declares that she is burdened on their account. Thus the image that came from the sacrifices in the Crimea has always continued to enjoy human blood." This Artemis appears, with a bundle of twigs in her arm, next to Ares, among the Spartan divinities, on the frieze of the Parthenon. At twenty years of age, the young men became eirenes, and entered upon a course of study closely resembling actual warfare. They lived on the coarsest food, slept on reeds, and rarely bathed or walked. They exercised themselves in heavy arms, in shooting, riding, swimming, ball-playing, and in conflicts of the most brutal kind. They took part in complicated and exhausting dances, the most famous of which was the Pyrrhic, danced under arms. They manned fortresses, assassinated Helots, and, in cases of need, even took the field against an enemy.
(d) Manhood.—At the age of thirty, being supposed to have reached their majority, they fell into the ranks of full citizens, and took their share in all political functions. They were compelled to marry, but were allowed to visit their wives only rarely and by stealth. They sometimes had two or three children before they had ever seen their wives by daylight. When not engaged in actual war, they spent much of their time in watching the exercises of their juniors, and the rest in hunting wild boars and similar game in the mountains. Like Xenophon, they thought hunting the nearest approach to war.
Such was the education that Sparta gave her sons. That it produced strong warriors and patriotic citizens, there can be no doubt. But that is all: it produced no men. It was greatly admired by men like Xenophon and Plato, who were sick of Athenian democracy; but Aristotle estimated it at its true worth. He says: "As long as the Laconians were the only people who devoted themselves to violent exercises, they were superior to all others; but now they are inferior even in gymnastic contests and in war. Their former superiority, indeed, was not due to their training their young men in this way, but to the fact that they alone did so." And even Xenophon, at the end of a long panegyric on the Spartan constitution, is obliged to admit that already in his time it has fallen from its old worth into feebleness and corruption, and this in spite of the fact that he had his own sons educated at Sparta. When Sparta fell before the heroic and cultured Epaminondas, she fell unpitied, leaving to the world little or nothing but a warning example.