FROT and Masculinity: AGOGE A Nation of Heroes: State-Education in Sparta

Bill Weintraub
A G O G E
the spear-points of young men blossom there
A Nation of Heroes: State-Education in Sparta

7-5-08
Hi guys,
Hopefully you've been reading AGOGE IV: Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men.
And through that post you've been introduced to the Greek word areté and the Greek idea of excellence;
and to the work of Werner Jaeger as well.
And guys, if you haven't read that post yet, you'll need to read at least the first section of it in order to understand this post.
Now, in his monumental and magesterial work Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Jaeger has a chapter titled "State-Education in Sparta."
And what Jaeger tells us is that, as I've said, the other Greeks admired the system of state-education in Sparta, and that Spartan ideas about and the Spartan ideal of such education had a tremendous impact on Greek thought.
Indeed, part of Jaeger's chapter on "State-Education in Sparta" is titled "Historical Tradition and the Philosophic Idealisation of Sparta";
and when Jaeger says "philosophic idealisation," he's not referring to people like me.
Rather, he's referring primarily to Plato, and to other ancient Greek philosophers as well.
But Plato, as we'll see, is certainly first in line of those who idealized aspects of the Spartan system.
Werner Jaeger, by the way, wasn't a fascist or crypto-fascist -- he was a humanist who fled Nazi Germany rather than collaborate with the Hitler regime.
Yet he says that Sparta was a great nation.
And that the Spartan system of state education was core to Greek ideas about paideia.
Paideia, remember, is a word which can mean "child-rearing" -- the word "pais" means child -- but which ultimately comes to mean "education" and "culture" in the highest sense of both words.
Paideia is the Molding of Men.
And, insists Jaeger, only a Man-centered culture like the Greeks could have conceived of it.
Now, some of what you're going to read may be a tad difficult for you, but the central idea is that Sparta was enormously important in the development of the Greek concept of paideia -- which in turn, Jaeger argues, was itself the most important concept in Greek culture.
And to help your reading, here are definitions of some words and terms which we've talked about before, but which might not be immediately familiar to you:

Polis -- the city-state, the primary unit of political organization in archaic and classical Greece.
Lycurgus -- Spartan law-giver, perhaps mythical, perhaps real, who's credited with formulating the Spartan way of life and important Spartan institutions, including the Eunomia or good rule, the syssitia or all-male messes, and the Agoge -- the Warrior training system.
Most people today agree that Lycurgus did exist; but there's disagreement on how much influence he actually had on Spartan society; and on what parts of that society he influenced.
Lycurgan Constitution -- a fourth-century BC intellectual construct, much used by Athenian philosophers like Plato, which assumes that Lycurgus was responsible for the shape of all of Spartan society.
Tyrtaeus -- seventh-century BC Spartan poet whose "elegies" -- which are actually war-poems -- had a huge influence not just in Sparta but throughout Greece.

Here's Jaeger, who begins with a discussion of the polis:

Greek culture first assumed its classical form in the polis, or city-state.
...
The centre of gravity of Greek life lies in the polis. It is the polis which includes and defines every form of social and intellectual activity. In early Greek history, every branch of intellectual life grows straight from the same root, the life of the community. Or, to change the metaphor, all intellectual activities are brooks and rivers which flow into one central sea -- the life of the city -- which in turn feeds them all at their sources by invisible subterranean channels.

So: the city-state is the key unit of organization in Greece; and Sparta, of course, was a city-state.
Jaeger continues by contrasting the Ionian and Dorian city-states.
The Ionian states were found primarily in Asia Minor, what is today Turkey -- ancient cities like Pergamum -- and in Attica -- cities like Athens.

The Dorian states were located primarily in that part of mainland Greece known as the Peloponnese -- eg, Sparta; and on Crete.

Indeed, in Plato's dialogue known as the Laws, the three characters are an Athenian, a Spartan, and a guy from Crete -- culturally, an Ionian and two Dorians.
The Dorians were the last of the Greek invaders, and tended to be more "military" in their outlook than the Ionians.
It's also believed that they retained more of the original Warrior Greek institutions than did the Ionians.
But as Jaeger points out, the two types of state eventually merged -- at least intellectually:

...the political and spiritual differences between the Dorian and Ionian types are quite clearly marked in the polis. The two types finally unite in the Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries. For in that period the political life of Athens was molded on the Ionian pattern, while the Spartan ideal was reborn in the realm of the intellect, through the aristocratic influence of Attic [Athenian] philosophy, and eventually, in Plato's cultural ideal, coalesced in a higher unity with the fundamental tenets of the Ionian and Attic constitutional state, stripped of its democratic form.

Historical Tradition and the Philosophic Idealisation of Sparta

Both in the history of philosophy and in that of art, Sparta holds a subordinate position. The Ionian race [the Greeks of Asia Minor and Athens, etc], for example, led Greece in the search for philosophical and ethical truth; but no Spartan name occurs in the long roll of Greek moralists and philosophers.
However, Sparta has an unchallengeable place in the history of education. Her most characteristic achievement was her state; and the Spartan state is the first which can be called, in the largest sense, an educational force.
...
[Jaeger then cautions that the idea of Spartan education as purely military must be seen in terms of the times in which it arose: the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, with Spartan military hegemony throughout Greece. And he adds]
... [What the Greeks regarded as] the legislation of Lycurgus was not a codification of separate civil and constitutional laws, but a nomos in the original sense of the word -- it was a current oral tradition. ... This fact contrasted sharply with the cacoethes of legislation which afflicted the democracies of the fourth century, and seemed to contemporary observers to be not a survival of primitive practice but an example of the far-seeing wisdom of Lycurgus, who, like Socrates and Plato, believed the power of education and the creation of the social sense to be more vital than any written code of laws.
...
In fact, Plato's ideal, like other theories of paideia, was largely based on the Spartan model, although the spirit of it was quite new.
...
[The] tradition [of the Lycurgan constitution] was created by an age which thought the Spartan system was deliberately created to serve an educational purpose, and which believed a priori that the highest end and meaning of the state was paideia -- namely, a process by which the life of each citizen should be shaped to conform with some absolute norm. ... If we wish to understand [the historical force of the idea of the Lycurgan constitution] properly, we must remember that it grew up when Greek speculation about the nature and principles of paideia was at its height, and when educational theorists had a burning interest in Spartan affairs. Its survival (and the preservation of Tyrtaeus' poems) is due to the vital importance of the Spartan ideal in the later development of Greek paideia. [26]

Footnote 26: More accurately speaking, we can trace back the tradition about Lycurgus to two different periods in the spiritual history of Greece. It first originated in the time when rational speculation about the best form of the state (eunomia) started, i.e. in the sixth-fifth centuries. This speculation is reflected in the report of Herodotus I, 65 ff. The second impulse came from the pedagogic and philosophic discussion of the time during and after the Peloponnesian War. This phase is represented by men like Critias, Plato, and Xenophon. The first phase stressed the religious (Delphic) origin and authorization of the Spartan cosmos. The second elaborated on the paideutic [educational] structure of the Spartan system.

[And adds Jaeger, in another footnote (8),]
Plato in Laws 629a and 660e chooses Tyrtaeus as the outstanding representative of the Spartan spirit and its ideal of areté, and he illustrates this by quoting from his poems. In Plato's time Tyrtaeus was generally accepted as the herald of Spartan virtue, and in Sparta everyone was impregnated with the ideals of his poetry (Laws 629b). ...

Jaeger continues:
A Spartan held his citizen rights in virtue of his status as a soldier. Tyrtaeus is the first author to describe this ideal of the citizen-soldier, which was later realized in the whole Spartan educational system. ...
...
[Tyrtaeus arrived at a time in Sparta's 20-year-long struggle with the Messenians when Sparta was losing -- badly.]
And indeed, tradition described Tyrtaeus as the leader sent to the Spartans by the Delphic Apollo, to save them in their danger.
Tyrtaeus' Call to Areté
The will which made Sparta a great nation still lives in the elegies of Tyrtaeus. It had the power to create a great ideal, a power which long survived historical Sparta, and is not yet exhausted; and these poems are the strongest manifestation of that power. ... [T]he ideal which inspired [Sparta's] citizens, and towards which, with iron consistency, every effort of every Spartan was directed, is imperishable because it is an expression of a fundamental human instinct. Although the society which incorporated it appears to us to have been partial and limited in its outlook, the ideal itself remains true and valuable. Plato himself considered the Spartan conception of the citizen's functions and education to have been narrow-minded, but he saw that the Spartan idea immortalized in Tyrtaeus' poems was one of the immutable bases of political life. The Greeks of his time did not give unqualified approval to Sparta and her policy, but they recognized the value of her ideal. ...
[T]he position which Plato alloted to Tyrtaeus in his cultural system remained valid for the Greeks of all subsequent ages, and was an indefeasible element of their culture. It was Plato who arranged and systematized the spiritual inheritance of his nation: in his synthesis, the various ideals which inspired Greece are objectified and set in their correct relationships. Since then, no great change has been made in his system; and the Spartan ideal has for two thousand years kept the position in the history of civilization which Plato assigned to it. [37]

Footnote 37: This admiration for Spartan valour and its expression in Tyrtaeus' poems should not be confused with the philo-Laconism of political reaction of later centuries. The spirit of Leonidas, who died with his Spartans at Thermopylae for the freedom of Greece, after the soldiers of other cities had abandoned their positions, remains the genuine monument of that ideal.

The elegies of Tyrtaeus are inspired by a mighty educational ideal. The demands which they make on the self-sacrifice and patriotism of the Spartans were no doubt justified by the circumstances in which they were written -- Sparta was almost sinking under the burden of the Messenian war. But they would not have been admired by later ages as the supreme expression of the Spartan will to forget oneself in one's country, if they had not been a permanent and timeless utterance of that ideal. The standards they impose on every citizen's thoughts and actions were not produced by a momentary outburst of warlike patriotism; they were the foundation of the whole Spartan cosmos.
Nothing in Greek poetry shows more clearly how the creative activity of the poet begins in the life of the society to which he belongs. ... he is the universal I, he is what Demosthenes calls "the voice of the country."
...
The Greek poets had for centuries been the heralds of areté, and such a herald now appeared in Tyrtaeus. As we have observed, the legend said he was sent by Apollo -- a striking expression of the strange truth that when a spiritual leader is needed he always comes. Tyrtaeus came to express in eternal poetry the new civic virtues which were needed in the national crisis.
[Jaeger then explains the difference between "elegiac" and "heroic" -- or "epic" -- poetry:]
Apart from the elegiac metre itself -- which in the earliest times had no special name to distinguish it from the heroic metre -- there is only one constant element in elegiac poetry. It is always addressed to someone : either to one individual or to a collective of people. ... Tyrtaeus, for example, speaks either to the citizens of Sparta or to the young men of Sparta. ... The epic with its mythical examples is set in an imaginary world; the elegy, with its address to real concrete people, takes us into the actual situation which inspired the poet.
[Jaeger then explains that Tyrtaeus] borrowed much of Homer's language, words, phrases ...
Even in the epic, the speeches made at the crises of the fighting have a strongly protreptic [hortatory -- encouraging and instructing] effect. They seem to be addressed not so much to the other characters as to Homer's audience. Certainly the Spartans felt that effect very strongly. Tyrtaeus had only to transfer the vast moral impetus of these speeches from Homer's imaginary battles to the real struggles of the Messenian war, and he had created his elegy. We shall understand that spiritual transference better if we read Homer as the age of Tyrtaeus and Hesiod read him -- not as the narrator of the past, but as the teacher of the present.
...
[Jaeger then looks at this poem by Tyrtaeus, which we've seen before, though in a slightly different form; here I'm using a prose translation by Douglas Gerber.
Tyrtaeus begins by deprecating values which are dear to the aristocracy:]

I would not mention or take account of a man for his prowess in running or wrestling, not even if he had the size and strength of the Cyclopes and outstripped Thracian Boreas in the race, nor if he were more handsome than Tithonus in form and richer than Midas and Cinyras, nor if he were more kingly than Pelops, son of Tantalus, and had a tongue that spoke as winningly as Adrastus', nor if he had a reputation for anything -- save furious valour.
For no man is good in war unless he can endure the sight of bloody slaughter and, standing close, can lunge at the enemy.
This is excellence, this the best human prize and the fairest for a young man to win.
This is a common benefit for the state and all the people, whenever a man with firm stance among the front ranks never ceases to hold his ground, is utterly unmindful of shameful flight, risking his life and displaying a steadfast spirit, and standing by the man next to him speaks encouragingly.
This man is good in war. He quickly routs the bristling ranks of the enemy and by his zeal stems the tide of battle.
And if he falls among the front ranks, pierced many times through his chest and bossed shield and corselet from the front, he loses his own dear life but brings glory to his city, to his people, and to his father. Young and old alike mourn him, all the city is distressed by the painful loss, and his tomb and children are pointed out among the people, and his children's children and his line after them. Never do his name and good fame perish, but even though he is beneath the earth he is immortal, whoever it is that furious Ares slays as he displays his prowess by standing fast and fighting for land and children.
And if he escapes the doom of death that brings long sorrow and by his victory makes good his spear's splendid boast, he is honoured by all, young and old alike, many are the joys he experiences before he goes to Hades, and in his old age he stands out among the townsmen; no one seeks to deprive him of respect and his just rights, but all men at the benches yield their place to him, the young, those of his own age, and the elders.
Let everyone strive now with all his heart to reach the pinnacle of this excellence, with no slackening in war.

Jaeger:
[Tyrtaeus] has recast the Homeric ideal of the single champion's areté into the areté of the patriot, and with that new faith he strives to inspire his whole society. He is endeavouring to create a nation of heroes. Death is beautiful if it is a hero's death; and to die for one's country is a hero's death. That is the only thought which can exalt a dying man, by making him feel that he is sacrificing himself for a higher good than his own life.
[This is, adds Jaeger, a "transvaluation of the idea of areté".]
[The dead soldier, says Tyrtaeus,] though he lies beneath the earth, becomes immortal.
The glory of a Homeric hero, however widely it is disseminated by the wandering bard, is nothing to the glory of a simple Spartan warrior, as Tyrtaeus describes it, laid up forever deep in the hearts of his people. The close community of the city-state, which seemed at the beginning of the poem to be only an obligation, now appears a privilege and an honour: it is the source of all ideal values. The first part [of the poem] states the heroic ideal of areté in terms of the city-state. The second restates, in the same terms, the heroic ideal of glory. Areté and glory are inseparable in the epic. Glory is now to be given, and areté exercised, by and in the city-state. The polis lives when the individual dies; and so it is a safe guardian of the 'name' and with it, of the future life of a hero.
The early Greek city-state was small, but it had something truly heroic and truly human in its nature. Greece, and in fact all the ancient world, held the hero to be the highest type of humanity.

Bill Weintraub:
Now, I know that's a lot of information, but let's look at the key points:

Sparta believed in "the power of education."
"Plato's ideal, like other theories of paideia, was largely based on the Spartan model."
Via Plato, "the Spartan ideal was reborn in the realm of the intellect."
Greek "educational theorists had a burning interest in Spartan affairs. [The Lycurgan constitution's] survival (and the preservation of Tyrtaeus' poems) is due to the vital importance of the Spartan ideal in the later development of Greek paideia."
"A Spartan held his citizen rights in virtue of his status as a soldier. Tyrtaeus is the first author to describe this ideal of the citizen-soldier, which was later realized in the whole Spartan educational system. ..."
"[T]he ideal which inspired [Sparta's] citizens, and towards which, with iron consistency, every effort of every Spartan was directed, is imperishable because it is an expression of a fundamental human instinct."
"Plato ... saw that the Spartan idea immortalized in Tyrtaeus' poems was one of the immutable bases of political life. The Greeks of his time did not give unqualified approval to Sparta and her policy, but they recognized the value of her ideal."
"the Spartan ideal has for two thousand years kept the position in the history of civilization which Plato assigned to it."
"The spirit of Leonidas, who died with his Spartans at Thermopylae for the freedom of Greece, after the soldiers of other cities had abandoned their positions, remains the genuine monument of that ideal."
"The elegies of Tyrtaeus are inspired by a mighty educational ideal" -- the Spartan educational ideal.
[Tyrtaeus and the Spartans were] "endeavouring to create a nation of heroes."
"The glory of a Homeric hero, however widely it is disseminated by the wandering bard, is nothing to the glory of a simple Spartan warrior, as Tyrtaeus describes it, laid up forever deep in the hearts of his people."
"The early Greek city-state was small, but it had something truly heroic and truly human in its nature. Greece, and in fact all the ancient world, held the hero to be the highest type of humanity."

The hero is the highest type of humanity;
and moral heroism is the highest expression of areté.
Sparta's AGOGE then was a system for creating heroes.
And these heroes were not mythic -- they were, rather, real: simple Spartan warriors, citizen-soldiers -- and heroes.
That's Sparta's achievement, and why Sparta lives.
And look at how it was done.
Through the Agoge.
"Plato's ideal, like other theories of paideia, was largely based on the Spartan model."
What was "the Spartan model?"
The AGOGE.
In his chapter, Jaeger doesn't go into the specifics of the Agoge.
But classical writers did, including Plutarch, Xenophon, and Pausanias.
The AGOGE.
At the age of seven all Spartan boys were taken from their mothers and made to live in all-male groups where they were trained in the arts of war and survival.
Plutarch, writing ca 100 AD, says the boys were taught

to endure pain and conquer in battle. To this end, as they grew in years, their discipline was proportionately increased; their heads were close-clipped, they were accustomed to go barefoot, and for the most part to play naked.
After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to wear any undergarment; they had one coat to serve them a year; their bodies were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of baths and unguents; these human indulgences they were allowed only on some particular days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of rushes that grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistle down with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving warmth. By the time they were come to this age there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company.

The boys had lovers.
The affairs were intense.
Very intense.
The Encyclopedia -- encyclo-paideia -- Britannica says that a system of "homosexual pairbonding" kept the usual hoplite bonds at a level of "ferocious intensity."
Ferocious intensity.
Ferociously intense.
There were three categories of males within the agoge:
1. Boys / youths aged 7 - 18, called paides.
2. Youths, ages 18-19, called paidiskoi.
3. Young adults, aged 20-29, called hebontes or eirenes.
At the age of 30, men married, and joined an all-male dining club or mess, the syssition.
This is classicist W. G. Forrest's description of the agoge:

... After six years with his mother, the child who had been accepted was taken from home and enrolled in a group of his contemporaries under the leadership of an older boy ...
With his group the boy lived for the next fourteen years as he worked his way up through the increasingly brutal and brutalising training schedules which passed for education among the Spartans. Music and dancing he would learn, for both had their military uses, but reading and writing, as Plutarch remarks, 'only because they were unavoidable'. For the rest everything was designed to produce toughness, endurance and discipline ...
So schooled, at the age of twenty or thereabouts, the young man graduated to another class, that of the so-called eirenes, in which he remained for a part, perhaps even the whole of, his twenties, not yet a full citizen but liable for military service and for the time being occupied in doing to others as he had been done by, acting as leader of a younger group, ... and, a nice touch, allotted to one of two large teams to encourage rivalry in bravery, such rivalry that 'members of each team fall to fighting each other whenever they meet'.
At the age of thirty the Spartan was admitted to the assembly. Whether he had already received the other mark of manhood, admission to a syssition [an eating-club or mess], either on becoming an eiren or on ceasing to be one, is unknown ...
This was the last formal test the Spartan had to pass. Beyond it lay freedom, freedom to marry, to lead something like a normal life. His duties were light -- he had to dine with his fellows, to train with them and to fight with them; and from his kleros [land allotment] he had to provide the stipulated contribution to maintain the mess.
But it is easy to underestimate the effect even of this amount of communal living in a society where there was no other focus for a man's interests. The Spartan did not work -- he trained, with the men of his mess, he fought, with the men of his mess, or he was idle, again for the most part, one would imagine, with the men of his mess.

As we've discussed before, Forrest, who wrote in the late 1960s, was hostile to Sparta.
And as you can see in that quote, it's because he was speaking for his own, highly heterosexualized, culture.
For example, he says that once a Spartan had been admitted to the Assembly, it was "the last formal test the Spartan had to pass. Beyond it lay freedom, freedom to marry, to lead something like a normal life."
Forrest is wrong.
First of all, it wasn't "freedom" as we think of it, because the marriage would have been arranged.
Unlike Prof Forrest, who presumably got to choose his wife, a Spartan -- we'll call him Alcon -- wouldn't have.
Alcon's marriage would have been arranged.
The one truly free relationship in a Spartan's life would have been that with his male lover.
Alcon and -- let's call him Sebros -- would have chosen each other.
And that's where Alcon and Sebros' freedom lay -- in their free choice of each other.
It was that freedom which gave such relationships their "ferocious intensity."
Remember again, that in the ancient world, marriage, as John Boswell puts it, was "for family and country"; while a male lover was "a friend inspired by God."
Furthermore, Forrest assumes that marriage in some way defines "a normal life."
In reality, as Forrest himself admits, the all-male or homosocial aspects of the Agoge and Sparta were for millenia the hallmarks -- the normative, normal, common, and ubiquitous hallmarks -- of Warrior societies worldwide:

...almost every aspect of the full Spartan practice can be paralleled among backward warrior tribes today. The age-groups, the communal life, the initiation ceremonies, all had been handed down through generations as have similar institutions among the Masai in Kenya, the Zulus, or the Red Indians.
~ Forrest, A History of Sparta 950 - 192 BC

You can hear Forrest's racism and contempt -- he's writing in 1968 -- in terms like "backward" and "Red Indians."
But when he says, "almost every aspect of the full Spartan practice can be paralleled among backward [sic] warrior tribes today. The age-groups, the communal life, the initiation ceremonies, all had been handed down through generations..."
-- my reply is -- Indeed.
That's why it appealed -- and appeals.
That's why it was so effective.
And why it was so extensive.
Jesus, for example, and as we've discussed, not only had but one cloak, but traveled around in homosocial -- all male -- groups.
While holding a special affection for a guy named John.
In point of fact, the Spartan ideal was well-known among the Jews of Jesus' day.
Greeks had been living in Palestine since at least 323 BC and probably a good deal before.
Indeed, the Maccabees -- ca 168 BC -- had *proudly* compared themselves to Spartans -- as did many warrior bands in the Greco-Roman world.
As have Warriors ever since.
Because, as Jaeger says,

"the Spartan ideal has for two thousand years kept the position in the history of civilization which Plato assigned to it."
"The spirit of Leonidas, who died with his Spartans at Thermopylae for the freedom of Greece, after the soldiers of other cities had abandoned their positions, remains the genuine monument of that ideal."

Every ancient Warrior knew that story; every modern Warrior knows that story.
That history.
So -- what've I told you about Sparta and its importance in Greek history isn't some Weintraubian eccentricity -- it's the truth.
The one person who actually seems to understand that truth is Frances -- who's a Woman.
Maybe all you putative men -- should WAKE UP.
Now, in Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men, I describe and document how Fighting was literally central to paideia:

Schematic of the palaestra at Olympia
The Fight Pits are in the center of the building;
they're surrounded by classrooms for teaching philosophy, rhetoric, and other subjects
So the palaestra, whose name derives from the word "pale" for wrestling, is basically a fight space surrounded by classrooms.
Where males were instructed in paideia -- culture.
A palaestra was to be found in EVERY Greek city-state.
There was a palaestra in every polis.
What about Sparta?
Well, we know there was a palaestra in Sparta -- Statius refers to the dusty ring where Hermes himself instructed the boys in boxing and wrestling ...

[There are Spartan warriors from] steep Taygetus
And hardy squadrons from Eurotas where
The white swans breed. The god of Arcady
Himself had reared them in the dusty ring
And trained them in the ways of angry war
And naked valour; hence their high resolve
And sweat the sacrament of glorious death.

And in Statius' poem The Thebaid, the Spartan Alcidamas, who takes on a much larger man in boxing, had been trained by Polydeukes -- the Roman Pollux -- also a god:

At length from Sparta's naked ranks there sprang
Alcidamas, to their surprise, and made
The Dorian princes marvel, but his friends
Knew he'd grown up in Pollux' boxing-ring
And trusted in his trainer. Hands and arms
Pollux himself had guided -- limbs he loved! --
And sparring with him many a time admired
His matching fury and, exultant, snatched
Him up and pressed him naked to his chest.

Alcidamas, by the way, wins the match.

So there was a palaestra and the boys learned how to fight there;
but there were other institutional inducements to fight built into the Agoge.
For example, looking again at Plutarch, we learn that the boys were organized into Trooops or Herds -- Herds is the Spartan word -- in which they were accustomed to
live together and be brought up together, playing and learning as a group. The captaincy of the Troop was conferred upon the boy who displayed the soundest judgement and the best fighting spirit. The others kept their eyes on him, responded to his instructions, and endured their punishments from him, so that altogether this training served as practice in learning ready obedience. Moreover, as they exercised, boys were constantly watched by their elders, who were always spurring them on to fight and contend with one another; in this their chief object was to get to know each boy's character, in particular how bold he was, and how far he was likely to stand his ground in combat.

So -- the boy with the "soundest judgement and best fighting spirit" was made group captain.
And the elders were constantly "spurring the boys on to fight and contend with each other."
Fighting then was part of the daily training of the youths.
As it was, it must be said, in every polis.
The Spartan boys were also questioned at the Men's Messes on subjects such as
"Who among the men is the best?" or "What is your opinion of so-and-so's action?" Thereby boys grew accustomed to judging excellence and making a critical appraisal of the citizens right from the start. ... Answers had to be reasoned, supported by argument, and at the same time expressed with brevity and conciseness.
...
Whether a boy's standing was good or bad, his lover shared it. There is a story that once when a boy had let slip a despicable cry in the middle of a fight, it was his lover whom the magistrates fined. Sexual relationships of this type were so valued that respectable women would in fact have love-affairs with unmarried girls.
~ Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, translated by Talbert

We'll return to the question of the status of women and love affairs between women in a bit.
For now I just want you to see that fighting was part of the boys' daily training, and it was overseen by both the Herd-leader and other adult male Spartans -- the Spartiates.
And that the youth's lover was held responsible for, in effect, making sure that the boy showed the proper fighting spirit.
And then there was another level of institutionalized fighting in Sparta.
It was called Plantanistas, or Plane-tree Grove.
And clearly its significance was very great.
Here's its description from Pausanias, a Greek writer who lived in the second century AD, and who starts with a description of other athletic and educational facilities in the town:

The Lacedaimonians [Spartans] give the name Dromos (Running Course) to the place where it is the custom even down to the present day to practice running. ... In the course are two Gymnasia, one being a votive gift of Eurycles, a Spartan. Outside the Course, over against the image of Heracles, there is a house now belonging to a private individual, but in olden times to Menelaus. Farther away from the course are sanctuaries of the Dioscuri, of the Graces, of Eileithyia, of Apollo Carneus, and of Artemis Leader. ... At the beginning of the Dromos are the Dioscuri Starters, and a little further on a hero-shrine of Alcon, who they say was a son of Hippocoon.
Beside the shrine of Alcon there is a sanctuary of Poseidon, whom they surname "of the House." And there is a place called Plantanistas (Plane-tree Grove) from the unbroken ring of tall plane-trees growing around it. The place itself, where it is customary for the youths to fight, is surrounded by a moat just like an island in the sea; you enter it by bridges. On each of the two bridges stand images; on one side an image of Heracles, on the other a likeness of Lycurgus. Among the laws Lycurgus laid down for the constitution are those regulating the fighting of the youths.
There are other acts performed by the youths which I will now describe. Before fighting they sacrifice in the Phoebaion, which is outside the city, not far distant from Therapne. Here each company of youths sacrifices a puppy to Enyalius [Ares], holding that the most valiant of tame animals is an acceptable victim for the most valiant of the gods. I know of no other Greeks who are accumstomed to sacrifice puppies other than the people of Colophon; these too sacrifice a puppy, a black bitch, to the Wayside Goddess. Both the sacrifice of the Colophonians and the youth of Sparta are appointed to take place at night. At the sacrifice the youths set trained boars to fight; the company whose boar happens to win generally gains the victory in Plane-tree Grove. Such are the performances in the Phoebaion. A little before the middle of the next day they enter by the bridges into the place I have mentioned. They cast lots during the night to decide by which entrance each band is to go in. In fighting they use their hands, kick with their feet, bite, and gouge out the eyes of their opponents. Man to man they fight in the way I have described, but in the mellay they charge violently and push one another into the water.
~Pausanias, III, xiv. Translated by Jones and Ormerod.

In addition to the sacrifice in the Phoebaion, Pausanias notes further along in his description of Sparta that the youths sacrifice to Achilles in his sanctuary:

[There's also a] sanctuary of Achilles. This is not customary to open [to the public], but all the youths who are going to take part in the contest ["agon"] in Plane-tree Grove are wont to sacrifice to Achilles before the fight ["maches"]. The Spartans say that the sanctuary was made for them by Prax, a grandson of Pergamus, the son of Neoptolemus [who was Achilles' son].
~Pausanias, III, xx.

Let's take a look at what Pausanias has said, and see what other information we have about these fights.
For one thing, Pausanias says that there were two Gymnasia by the Dromos or Running Course.
And that may be.
However, while Pausanias wrote in Greek, he was writing for a Roman audience; and given that the word "gymnasium" was more familiar to the Romans, my guess is that of the two structures, one was a gymnasion and the other a palaestra, and that they abutted each other the way the gymnasion and palestra did at Olympia:

In this model of Olympia, TZ = the Temple of Zeus; G = gymnasion; and the palaestra is the smaller square building immediately to the south of the gymnasion
Now, Xenophon confirms, in his book Spartan Society, that the young adult males were separated into two, rival, groups,
... and the two groups are on the lookout for any negligent act which may contravene accepted standards of honour. This is also the type of competition most highly favored by the gods and best suited to a citizen community -- in which the conduct required of the brave man is spelled out and each of the two groups independently strives to ensure that it will always prove superior, while should any need arise they would as one protect the city with all their might. They must keep themselves physically fit too, since their rivalry actually makes them come to blows whenever they meet. ...

So we know that there were rival groups formed among the young adults, and such groups may have existed among other age groups as well -- I would be sure they did.
And Xenophon tells us that the guys would fight each other whenever they met up.
While Pausanias tells us that fights between the groups were organized, that there was a special place for the fights, and that the fighters sacrificed to the gods the day and/or evening before the contest began.
Pausanias also says that the boys were required to sacrifice a puppy.
Where have we heard something like that before?
Among the American Sioux, in Charles Eastman's memoir An Indian Boyhood.
Eastman recounted how, as a child, he was required to sacrifice his own dog, whom he greatly loved, to the "Great Mystery."
Obviously such a sacrifice would be very painful and difficult for a boy.
But he did it -- and so did the Spartan boys.
And I'm sure the reasoning was the same among the Spartans as it was among the Sioux:
that the young Warrior must learn the true meaning of sacrifice.
And that he's able to make that sacrifice.
In Eastman's account, he's asked by his grandmother to give up that which is most dear to him.
And that's what it has to be.
Now, the Fighting Pausanias describes sounds like it was a special occasion, involving sacrifices to Ares and Achilles beforehand, and observed or if you prefer, as I do, celebrated, in a special place: Plane-tree Grove.
And Pausanias tells us that Plane-tree Grove was an artificial island, accessed by bridges, and that "On each of the two bridges stand images; on one side an image of Heracles, on the other a likeness of Lycurgus.".
Lycurgus of course was the Spartan law-giver, and he was the person who had regulated, says Pausanias, "the fighting of the youths."
So again, this was part of the Agoge as set down by Lycurgus.
And my guess is that the statues of Lycurgus were on the "mainland" side of the bridge;
but that the statues of Herakles were on the island itself.
Because Herakles was one of the tutelary or guardian gods of palaestrae everywhere, and statues of Herakles were common in Fight and other athletic spaces all over the ancient world, as we can see from this Roman-period terracotta:

Herakles is in the center,
two boxers on the right,
two other athletes, one a victor, on the left
Herakles was represented in the Fight Space not only because he was a symbol of strength, but because his fight with the Nemean lion was the mythical model for the pankration:

Herakles battles the Nemean lion
Notice how the genitals of both man and beast are prominently displayed
Remember that people in the ancient world engaged in a process we call "mythic identification" -- they identified with mythic figures and modeled their own lives on those of their mythic heroes.
Pan-kration means "all-powerful"; and Herakles was, as Professor Miller tells us in Ancient Greek Athletics, "the patron deity of pankratiasts."
Now, pankration was an all-in, no holds barred, form of fighting.
And the Fighting in Plane-tree Grove was -- "pankrationic."
It was all-in.
Pausanias says of the young Warriors that "In fighting they use their hands, kick with their feet, bite, and gouge out the eyes of their opponents."
Is that credible?
Yes, because we know that pankratiasts fought that way.
Here for example are two vase-paintings of pankratiasts kicking:

Pankratiasts ca 490 BC
What about eye-gouging?
Yep.
In this vase-painting, also ca 490 BC, the guys on the right are eye-gouging, and it looks like it's against the rules, since the judge is about to whap one or both of them with his stick:

While in the remains of this Hellenistic era (323 - 168 BC) statuary group, a pankratiast is attempting to pull his opponent's hand out of his eye:

Biting?
I haven't come across any pictures of pankratiasts biting -- but, in the famous statuary group from Olympia of the battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, a centaur is biting a young man's arm -- and the man winces in pain.

A Centaur battles a Lapith

A Centaur bites a Lapith
I should note that, properly speaking, biting and eye-gouging were not allowed in the sport of pankration -- like I said, in the vase-painting of the guys eye-gouging, we can see that the judge is about to whap them with his stick.
But the Fighting in Plane-tree Grove wasn't about sport.
The Spartans weren't interested, on this occasion, in sport.
They weren't training these kids to compete in the Olympics.
They wanted them to learn what was necessary to win a fight.
Remember what Tyrtaeus says in that poem -- I'm not interested, he says, in "prowess in running or wrestling," or whether a guy's good-looking or well-spoken.
Only one thing concerns me, and it's this:
Furious Valour.
Courage in the Fight.
"This is excellence, this the best human prize and the fairest for a young man to win."
So: the point of these exercises, from the Spartan point of view, was to prepare their young men for war, and to win at war, and if that meant biting and eye-gouging -- they'd learn to do it and what to do about it -- that is, how to counter it.
Now, such fighting as Pausanias describes would have been two things:
1. Nude; and
2. Bloody
And here we have a vase fragment of pankratiasts which I've shown you before, but this is the first time we've seen it in color, because this is the first time I've seen it in color.
And as you can see, not only are there bloody handprints on both men's bodies, but both are smeared and spattered with blood:

There's a lot of blood, just as there sometimes is in modern-day mixed martial arts.

Guys fight, guys bleed.
And this little fragment, because it has a free-form feel, probably best reflects what the Spartan youth would have looked like during those Sacred Fights in Plane-tree Grove.

Indeed, the smearing of the blood is represented very realistically, as we can see if we compare the vase fragment to this picture of contemporary mixed martial arts fighters:

MMA
Notice the blood smears on the standing fighter's body
Now, as you know, even in the year 2008, and even in an elective fight, when guys bleed during a fight it rubs, as it were, a lot of folks the wrong way.
But these were NUDE guys who were bleeding in their fights.

And W G Forrest, our Sparta disparager from 1968, clearly had trouble with that.
Because in his History of Sparta, he speaks sarcastically of this line from Xenophon -- "fell to fighting each other whenever they met."
He says of it that it's "a nice touch."
So Forrest was very dismissive of that team rivalry, which was instituted to encourage bravery.
Yet Fighting, as Forrest certainly knew, was for the ancients a core element of a classical education -- an education designed to produce Areté -- Excellence, Valour, Virtue -- in a Man.
Forrest knew that.
He knew that the palestra -- and its nude Fights -- was core to the way boys learned to be Men -- of culture.
That's right -- culture.
Again, what the Greeks called "Paideia."
That's not news now and it wasn't news in 1968.
Forrest just didn't want to acknowledge it.
Why?
Because the Fighting was skin-on-skin.
And not just skin-on-skin but nude.
"nudamque lacessere pugnam" says Statius.
"and incites to nude combat"
Cock incites cock to nude combat.
Balls incite balls to nude combat.
That's what happens.
The genitals, in which reside the male's virtus -- his Valour -- incite to combat.
incite to nude fight
It's a Latin phrase written by a Roman poet -- but it reflects a Greek -- and Roman -- reality.
Nude, Man2Man, all-in Fighting.
Forrest doesn't like that.
Because it expresses not just aggression but attraction too.
Phallus and Fighting.
Forrest doesn't want to think about that.
Most people don't want to think about it.
But we do.
And guys, for more on this point, please read or re-read AGOGE I: the spear-points of young men blossom there -- and specifically the section titled

In addition, it's also the case, which Forrest doesn't mention, that the fighting was controlled.
Remember that the remark about "fighting whenever they meet" is from Xenophon's Spartan Constitution or Spartan Society -- different translators give it different names -- and that Xenophon goes on to note that

all passers-by [who are full-fledged adult Spartans -- the Men known as Homoioi, Equals, Spartiates] have the right to separate the combatants. Anyone who defies the man attempting to separate them is brought before the ephors by the Trainer-in-Chief. They levy a stiff fine in their desire to establish the principle that anger must never prevail over respect for the law.

So there were limits set to these fights, which were enforced if need be by the ephors -- who were, as we saw in the 300 thread, elected officials with great authority.
(The Trainer-in-Chief, by the way, was called the Paidonomus, which can be translated as "boy-herdsman" or, more poetically, Herder of the Bull Calves)
And the Paidonomus is simply doing what both my foreign friend and NW recognize must be done: he's making sure the bull calves grow up to be Men through an appropriate experience of the roughs and toughs of life TOGETHER.
And it was *together*, as we can see in these scenes:

This first may be at an official competition, but it could just be at the Fight School.
Guys wrestling and boxing while other guys watch:

And of course they're not just guys.
They're nude guys.
Nude guys wrestling and boxing while other nude guys watch:

And wait to take their turn.
They'll all get a chance to Fight.
To Fight Nude.
Is the Nudity important?
YES.
Nudity in athletics is, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, one of the defining characteristics of ancient Greek civilization.
Wrestling -- and boxing and pankration -- are core to Greek athletics.
Pale / palaestra.
Nude Fighting is core to the palaestra.
And thus core to Paideia.
That conclusion is inescapable.
Nudity matters.
And in this second vase painting, we see three young men of different ages standing nude together, presumably in the undressing room after working out.

The two older boys have instruments which were used to scrape the oil off their bodies; the younger boy is carrying a container of oil.
But you can see that the three are relaxed, and relaxed in their maleness with each other -- in a way that's difficult to imagine today.

And I want to emphasize how ubiquitous male nudity was.
For example, here are guys participating in a "hoplitodromos" -- a hoplite race:

Each man carries a shield and wears a helmet.
And both were heavy.
But otherwise they're nude.

That's how they competed.
And that's how they fought.

Here's a young man putting on a sort of soft leather wrapping for boxing:

You'll notice something that looks like a piece of cloth hanging in the upper right hand corner of the painting.
That's his garment -- his clothes.
That item is often present in these scenes, as though to say, you see, I wear clothes, but when I fight, I remove them and hang them from a hook, so that I can fight nude -- nude and unfettered.
Look, here it is in this scene -- on the left, between the wrestlers and the on-lookers:

Nudity matters.
Here are more boxers.

It's all done with the genitals openly displayed.
Here's another example.
One of the major Spartan festivals was called the Gymnopaediae -- which is usually translated as the "Festival of the Naked Youths."
We know the festival was very important because Xenophon tells us that prominent Spartiates boasted of never having missed one.
Yet no one knows for sure what happened at the festival.
But here's a clue.
This is a relief from Athens of youths participating in the pyrrhiche, or Pyrrhic Dance:

We talked about the Pyrrhic Dance in Nude Combat:

The Pyrrhic Dance

the pyrrhic dance

The Pyrrhic Dance -- most likely named for Achilles' son Pyrrhus ('Fiery Red') who later became Neoptolemus ('New War') -- was a series of stylized defensive and offensive movements performed to the accompaniment of a flute. (The flute was used in other military settings as well, such as to accompany hymns or paeans (songs of praise) before battle or to help keep hoplites in order during an advance.)
Similar techniques exist in contemporary martial arts. For example, those who've trained in karate will be familiar with "kata," a series of increasingly complex formal movements that have to be learned for the student to rise in rank.
Training such as this is thought to increase reaction time and of course the repertory of moves available to a fighter.
Notice that the warrior here once again carries the basic hoplite equipment of helmet, shield, spear, and greaves, and notice too the phallic position of his spear.
It's likely that the Pyrrhic Dance would have been presented at festivals, such as the Spartan Gymnopaediae, or Festival of the Naked Youths, sacred to Apollo, which included choral dancing.

veii

The Greeks were not alone in having this sort of exercise. These terra cotta figures, performing a similar sort of dance and dating from the 5th century BCE, are from a tribe called the Veii, an Italic people eventually absorbed by Rome.
And Tacitus speaks of a naked war dance among Teutonic tribal youth in the 1st century AD.
As in the first painting in The Warrior Bond, "Achilles and Patroclus," which has the appearance of a Japanese woodcut, it's interesting to see here an ancient Greek variant on a present-day east Asian martial art, another example of cultural convergence among warrior societies.

Let's go back to the Athenian relief:

This is Plato's description of the pyrrhiche from the Laws:

The warrior dance ... may be rightly termed Pyhhric; this imitates the modes of avoiding blows and missles by dropping or giving way, or springing aside, or rising up or falling down; also, the opposite postures which are those of action, as, for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows.
And when the imitation is of brave bodies and souls, and the action is direct and muscular, giving for the most part a straight movement to the limbs of the body -- that, I say, is the true sort ...
~ Laws, VII, 815a, translated by Jowett

Plato goes on to condemn other kinds of dancing, such as the Bacchic, which, he says, imitates drunkenness.
So -- there's a moral dimension to the Pyrrhic Dance.
And it's very important that you understand that.
The Gymnopaediae / Pyrrhiche was not about licentiousness.
It was rather, as Plato says, about "brave bodies and souls."
With an action which was both "direct and muscular."
As such, it was a demonstration of the martial prowess, both physical and spiritual, of the youth -- of the upcoming generation.
The next generation of citizen-soldiers.
And that's why it was so important.
And why it was done in the nude.
Because, again, the Spartans and other Greeks fought nude:

Sometimes they wore a corselet to protect the upper body:

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Spartan Hoplites
But the genitals were always displayed: