The wild training of Sparta's children to become the best soldiers

Unlike the other Greek polis, the customs and institutions that governed Sparta did not focus on the development of the arts, mathematics or philosophy, but on war. The education that each man received from his first steps, was destined to create elite warriors, implacable and with a wide sense of belonging to his city-state.

Such military principles have led the collective imagination to look with fascination and astonishment at the education of children aimed at being Spartan citizens, especially in physical development, music, dance and, of course, war. Historians and chroniclers of all times do not hesitate to pay homage to the people established in the Peloponnese peninsula, whose military excellence was recognized throughout ancient Greece; However, few know the high price that the Spartan society had to pay for its warlike excellence.

The practices and guidelines for forming great warriors were set in motion from the beginning of each human life; Acts that from contemporary morality, are little more than unacceptable. For a Spartan newborn, the first test was an exhaustive eugenic practice: mothers were forced to take their child to an Elderly Commission, which examined the baby for physical and mental defects. If the group determined that the child did not meet the standards of beauty, robustness and health of the time, it was abandoned at the foot of Mount Taigeto.

If the child managed to get past the first obstacle, the next step was to leave his family at a very young age. Between five and seven years old, the little Spartan had to go to a militarized center where the Spartan educational system, the 'agogé', was fully launched. Within this scheme, organized and financed entirely by the State, children were instructed in the arts of war. Physical development through gymnastics and resistance tests, mastery of the use of weapons, and subjection of blind obedience to their elders were the three pillars on which Spartan education was based. Reading and writing skills were shorter than military techniques and were often limited.

The young people were organized in small groups that carried out their activities equally and with whom they shared the scarce foods, the hours of sleep and of work. The cells, known as 'agelai', were guarded by 'mastigophori' (carriers of the whip), responsible for establishing punishments and physical violence if one did not obey orders and by vigilantes, 'eirenes'. Such a union of group fomented in the Spartans a patriotic spirit, where the only priority and the maximum honor was to serve to the polis in the war.

Although Spartan women enjoyed wider "freedoms" than in most Greek polis, this excess military and patriotic vision also permeated their lives: their recognition was only a function of how good mothers of future warriors Could be, denying their rights as citizens, except in times of war, when they were in charge of an endless amount of land and crop production. The education they received was focused on physical development, with disciplines such as dance, gymnastics and struggle.

Finally, after making them go hungry, lashes and the impossibility of being cleaned, at twenty they entered the final stretch of the agogé, where they were quartered and formed sports teams and divisions of warriors of different kinds. Ten years later, education was considered completed by the State and they were granted a plot, while the majority expected to be called to war.

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This is a translation of this article: Cultura Colectiva