Editing Sparta (section)

==Life in Classical Sparta==
[[File:Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours - Gericht über die Neugeborenen Spartas - 2358 - Bavarian State Painting Collections.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|[[Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours]], ''The Selection of Children in Sparta'', 1785. A [[Neoclassicism|Neoclassical]] imaging of what [[Plutarch]] describes.]]

===Birth and death===
Sparta was above all a militarist state, and emphasis on military fitness began virtually at birth. According to Plutarch after birth, a mother would bathe her child in wine to see whether the child was strong. If the child survived it was brought before the Gerousia by the child's father. The Gerousia then decided whether it was to be reared or not.<ref name=EB1911/> It is commonly stated that if they considered it "puny and deformed", the baby was thrown into a chasm on [[Taygetus|Mount Taygetos]] known euphemistically as the ''Apothetae'' (Gr., ''ἀποθέται'', "Deposits").{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|p=84}}{{sfn|Plutarch|2005|p=20}} This was, in effect, a primitive form of [[eugenics]].{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|p=84}} Plutarch is the sole historical source for the Spartan practice of systemic infanticide motivated by eugenics.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bayliss |first1=Andrew J. |title=4. Raising a Spartan |journal=The Spartans: A Very Short Introduction |date=26 May 2022 |pages=59–76 |doi=10.1093/actrade/9780198787600.003.0004|isbn=978-0-19-878760-0 }}</ref> Sparta is often viewed as being unique in this regard, however, anthropologist Laila Williamson notes: "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Williamson |first=Laila |contribution=Infanticide: an anthropological analysis |editor-last=Kohl |editor-first=Marvin |title=Infanticide and the Value of Life |pages=61–75 [61] |publisher=[[Prometheus Books]] |place=NY |year=1978}}</ref> There is controversy about the matter in Sparta, since excavations in the chasm only uncovered adult remains, likely belonging to criminals<ref>{{cite journal |author=Theodoros K. Pitsios |url=http://www.anthropologie.ch/d/publikationen/archiv/2010/documents/03PITSIOSreprint.pdf |date=2010 |title=Ancient Sparta – Research Program of Keadas Cavern |journal=Bulletin der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie|volume=16|issue=1–2|pages=13–22|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002192630/http://www.anthropologie.ch/d/publikationen/archiv/2010/documents/03PITSIOSreprint.pdf |archive-date=2 October 2013 }}</ref> and Greek sources contemporary to Sparta does not mention systemic infanticide motivated solely by eugenics.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece |journal=Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens |date=2021 |volume=90 |issue=4 |pages=747 |doi=10.2972/hesperia.90.4.0747 |last1=Sneed |s2cid=245045967 }}</ref>

Spartan burial customs changed over time. The Archaic Spartan poet [[Tyrtaeus]] spoke of the Spartan war-dead as follows:

<blockquote>Never do his [the war-dead's] name and good fame perish,<br>But even though he is beneath the earth he is immortal,<br>Young and old alike mourn him,<br>All the city is distressed by the painful loss,<br>and his tomb and children are pointed out among the people,<br>and his children's children and his line after them.<ref>Tyrtaeus, fr.12 lines 27–32</ref></blockquote>

When Spartans died, marked headstones would only be granted to soldiers who died in combat during a victorious campaign or women who died either in service of a divine office or in childbirth.<ref>Plutarch, ''Life of Lycurgus'' 27.2–3. However this may be conflating later practice with that of the classical period. See Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art ed. Beth Cohen, p. 263, note 33, 2000, Brill.</ref> These headstones likely acted as memorials, rather than as grave markers. Evidence of Spartan burials is provided by the Tomb of the Lacedaimonians in Athens.{{Citation needed|date=June 2023}} Excavations at the cemetery of classical Sparta, uncovered ritually pierced [[Kantharos|kantharoid]]-like ceramic vessels, the ritual slaughter of horses, and specific burial enclosures alongside individual 'plots'. Some of the graves were reused over time.<ref>Tsouli, M. (2016). Testimonia on Funerary Banquets in Ancient Sparta. In: Draycott, C. M., Stamatopoulou, M., & Peeters, U. (eds.), Dining and Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the 'Funerary Banquet' in Ancient Art, Burial and Belief, Peeters, 353–383.</ref><ref name=":0">Christesen, P. (2018). The typology and topography of Spartan burials from the Protogeometric to the Hellenistic period: rethinking Spartan exceptionalism and the ostensible cessation of adult intramural burials in the Greek world. ''Annual of the British School at Athens'', ''113'', 307–363.</ref>

In the Hellenistic Period, grander, two-storey monumental tombs are found at Sparta. Ten of these have been found for this period.<ref name=":0" />

===Education===
{{main|Agoge}}
[[File:Spartan swordman.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|left|Bronze appliqué of Spartan manufacture, possibly depicting [[Orestes]], 550–525 BC ([[Getty Villa]])]]
When male Spartans began military training at age seven, they would enter the ''[[agoge]]'' system. The ''agoge'' was designed to encourage discipline and physical toughness and to emphasize the importance of the Spartan state. Boys lived in communal [[mess]]es and, according to Xenophon, whose sons attended the ''agoge'', the boys were fed "just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough."<ref name="Xenophon, Spartan Society, 2">Xenophon, Spartan Society, 2</ref> In addition, they were trained to survive in times of privation, even if it meant stealing.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Western Heritage|last1=Kagan|first1=Donald |last2=Ozment|first2=Steven|last3=Frank|first3=Turner|last4=Frank|first4=Alison|publisher=Pearson|year=2013 |pages=44, Spartan Society|chapter=The Rise of Greek Civilization}}</ref> Besides physical and weapons training, boys studied reading, writing, music and dancing. Special punishments were imposed if boys failed to answer questions sufficiently "[[Laconic phrase|laconically]]" (i.e. briefly and wittily).{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|p=85}}

Spartan boys were expected to take an older male mentor, usually an unmarried young man. According to some sources, the older man was expected to function as a kind of substitute father and role model to his junior partner; however, others believe it was reasonably certain that they had sexual relations (the exact nature of [[Pederasty in ancient Greece#Sparta|Spartan pederasty]] is not entirely clear). Xenophon, an admirer of the Spartan educational system whose sons attended the ''agoge'', explicitly denies the sexual nature of the relationship.{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|pp=91–105}}<ref name="Xenophon, Spartan Society, 2"/>

Some Spartan youth apparently became members of an irregular unit known as the ''[[Krypteia]]''. The immediate objective of this unit was to seek out and kill vulnerable helot Laconians as part of the larger program of terrorising and intimidating the helot population.{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|p=88}}

Less information is available about the education of Spartan girls, but they seem to have gone through a fairly extensive formal educational cycle, broadly similar to that of the boys but with less emphasis on military training. Spartan girls received an education known as ''mousikē''. This included music, dancing, singing and poetry. Choral dancing was taught so Spartan girls could participate in ritual activities, including the cults of Helen and Artemis.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Millender|first=Ellen G.|title=A Companion to Sparta|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|year=2018|editor-last=Powell|editor-first=Anton|pages=504}}</ref> In this respect, classical Sparta was unique in ancient Greece. In no other city-state did women receive any kind of formal education.{{sfn|Cartledge|2001|pp=83–84}}

===Military life===
{{main|Spartan army|Spartiate}}
[[File:Helmed Hoplite Sparta.JPG|thumb|upright|The so-called [[Leonidas (sculpture)|Leonidas]] sculpture (5th century BC), [[Archaeological Museum of Sparta]], Greece]]
At age 20, the Spartan citizen began his membership in one of the ''[[syssitia]]'' (dining messes or clubs), composed of about fifteen members each, of which every citizen was required to be a member.<ref name=EB1911/> Here each group learned how to bond and rely on one another. The Spartans were not eligible for election for public office until the age of 30. Only native Spartans were considered full citizens and were obliged to undergo the training as prescribed by law, as well as participate in and contribute financially to one of the ''syssitia''.<ref>{{cite book| title=Aristophanes and Athenian Society of the Early Fourth Century B.C| first=E.| last=David| year=1984| isbn=9004070621| publisher=Brill Archive}}</ref>

Sparta is thought to be the first city to practice athletic nudity, and some scholars claim that it was also the first to formalize pederasty.<ref>{{cite journal| last1=Scanlon| first1=Thomas F.| year=2005| title=The Dispersion of Pederasty and the Athletic Revolution in Sixth-Century BC Greece| journal=J Homosex| volume=49| issue=3–4| pages=63–85| pmid=16338890| quote=''Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West'', pp. 64–70.| doi=10.1300/j082v49n03_03| s2cid=19140503}}</ref> According to these sources, the Spartans believed that the love of an older, accomplished aristocrat for an adolescent was essential to his formation as a free citizen. The ''[[agoge]]'', the education of the ruling class, was, they claim, founded on pederastic relationships required of each citizen,<ref>[[Erich Bethe]], ''Die Dorische Knabenliebe: ihre Ethik und ihre Ideen'' (The Doric pederasty: their ethics and their ideas), <!-- NOTE: Google Translation --> Sauerländer, 1907, 441, 444. {{ISBN|978-3921495773}}</ref> with the lover responsible for the boy's training.

However, other scholars question this interpretation. Xenophon explicitly denies it,<ref name="Xenophon, Spartan Society, 2"/> but not Plutarch.<ref>Plutarch, ''Life of Lycurgus'' 18.</ref>

Spartan men remained in the active reserve until age 60.  Men were encouraged to marry at age 20 but could not live with their families until they left their active military service at age 30.  They called themselves "''homoioi''" (equals), pointing to their common lifestyle and the discipline of the [[Phalanx formation|phalanx]], which demanded that no soldier be superior to his comrades.<ref name=cowley>Readers Companion Military Hist p. 438. Cowley</ref>  Insofar as [[hoplite]] warfare could be perfected, the Spartans did so.{{sfn|Adcock|1957|pp=8–9}}

Thucydides reports that when a Spartan man went to war, his wife (or another woman of some significance) would customarily present him with his [[aspis]] (shield) and say: "With this, or upon this" (Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς, ''Èi tàn èi èpì tàs''), meaning that true Spartans could only return to Sparta either victorious (with their shield in hand) or dead (carried upon it).{{sfn|Plutarch|2004|p=465}} This is almost certainly propaganda.  Spartans buried their battle dead on or near the battle field; corpses were not brought back on their shield.<ref name="Sons and Mothers"/> Nevertheless, it is fair to say that it was less of a disgrace for a soldier to lose his helmet, breastplate or [[greave]]s than his shield, since the former were designed to protect one man, whereas the shield also protected the man on his left. Thus, the shield was symbolic of the individual soldier's subordination to his unit, his integral part in its success, and his solemn responsibility to his comrades in arms – messmates and friends, often close blood relations.

According to Aristotle, the Spartan military culture was actually short-sighted and ineffective. He observed:

<blockquote>It is the standards of civilized men not of beasts that must be kept in mind, for it is good men not beasts who are capable of real courage. Those like the Spartans who concentrate on the one and ignore the other in their education turn men into machines and in devoting themselves to one single aspect of city's life, end up making them inferior even in that.{{sfn|Forrest|1968|p=53}}</blockquote>

One of the most persistent myths about Sparta that has no basis in fact is the notion that Spartan mothers were without feelings toward their off-spring and helped enforce a militaristic lifestyle on their sons and husbands.{{sfn|Pomeroy|2002|p={{page needed|date=September 2013}}}}<ref>''The Greeks'', H. D. F. Kitto, {{ISBN|0-202-30910-X|978-0202309101}}</ref> The myth can be traced back to Plutarch, who includes no less than 17 "sayings" of "Spartan women", all of which paraphrase or elaborate on the theme that Spartan mothers rejected their own offspring if they showed any kind of cowardice. In some of these sayings, mothers revile their sons in insulting language merely for surviving a battle. These sayings purporting to be from Spartan women were far more likely to be of Athenian origin and designed to portray Spartan women as unnatural and so undeserving of pity.<ref name="Sons and Mothers">{{cite journal| author=Helena P. Schrader | title=Sons and Mothers| journal=ΣPARTA: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek History| volume=7| issue=4| year=2011| url=http://www.sparta.markoulakispublications.org.uk/index.php?id=316| publisher= Markoulakis Publications| issn=1751-0007 | access-date=14 September 2013}} {{subscription required}}</ref>

===Agriculture, food, and diet===
Sparta's agriculture consisted mainly of barley, wine, cheese, grain, and figs. These items were grown locally on each Spartan citizen's kleros and were tended to by helots. Spartan citizens were required to donate a certain amount of what they yielded from their kleros to their syssitia, or mess. These donations to the syssitia were a requirement for every Spartan citizen. All the donated food was then redistributed to feed the Spartan population of that syssitia.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ceramics, Cuisine and Culture|last=Langridge-Noti|first=Elizabeth|publisher=Oxbow Books|year=2015|isbn=978-1-78297-947-0|editor-last=Spataro|editor-first=Michela|location=United Kingdom|pages=148–55|chapter=Unchanging Tastes: First Steps Towards Correlation of the Evidence for Food Preparation and Consumption in Ancient Laconia|editor-last2=Villing|editor-first2=Alexandra}}</ref> The helots who tended to the lands were fed using a portion of what they harvested.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Figueira|first=Thomas|date=1984|title=Mess Contributions and Subsistence at Sparta|journal=Transactions of the American Philological Association|volume=114|pages=87–109|doi=10.2307/284141|jstor=284141}}</ref>

===Marriage===
Plutarch reports the peculiar customs associated with the Spartan wedding night:

<blockquote>The custom was to capture women for marriage... The so-called 'bridesmaid' took charge of the captured girl.  She first shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark.  The bridegroom – who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always – first had dinner in the messes, then would slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to the bed.<ref>Plutarch, ''The Life of Lycurgus''</ref></blockquote>

The husband continued to visit his wife in secret for some time after the marriage.  These customs, unique to the Spartans, have been interpreted in various ways.  One of them decidedly supports the need to disguise the bride as a man in order to help the bridegroom consummate the marriage, so unaccustomed were men to women's looks at the time of their first intercourse. The "abduction" may have served to ward off the [[evil eye]], and the cutting of the wife's hair was perhaps part of a rite of passage that signaled her entrance into a new life.{{sfn|Pomeroy|2002|p=42}}