Quick questions on Spartan army and the agoge: HSC Ancient History

The agoge ("the upbringing" or "the system") was the compulsory state education for Spartiate boys from age 7 to 29.

The syssitia (also called the phiditia) were military messes of around 15 men, the basic unit of military and political life. From age 20 every Spartiate had to be elected to a syssition by the existing members. Election was by secret ballot; a single black bean blackballed the candidate.

Xenophon (Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 11), a soldier who campaigned with King Agesilaus, describes the citizen army of his day as six morai (regiments), each under a polemarchos, subdivided into lochoi, pentekostyes, and enomotiai (the "sworn band," the smallest tactical unit of roughly 32 to 36 men). The depth of the officer ladder was the army's signature: Thucydides remarks that almost the whole Spartan army consisted of officers commanding officers, so orders flowed from the king to every file within moments.

The hippeis ("horsemen"), despite the name, were 300 picked hoplites who fought on foot around the king in battle. Each year the ephors appointed three hippagretai, who each chose 100 men from the citizens in their prime; Xenophon (Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 4) describes the institutionalised rivalry between the chosen and the rejected as a deliberate spur to excellence, the agoge's competitive ethos carried into adulthood. The picked 300 who died with Leonidas at Thermopylae (Herodotus 7.205 notes he selected men with living sons) are the institution's most famous appearance, and Herodotus (8.124) records 300 picked Spartans escorting Themistocles home after Salamis, the same corps in an honorific role.

The army was not separable from the rest of Spartan life. Citizenship was conditional on completing the agoge and maintaining the syssition contribution. Loss of military function meant loss of citizenship.

Use battles as EVIDENCE for the system, not as stories.

Paul Cartledge (The Spartans, 2002) treats the agoge as the central institution that linked the Helot system, the hoplite army, and the citizen body. The whole society was organised around military training.

Newborn boys were inspected by the elders of the tribe. Plutarch (Lycurgus 16) records that weak or deformed infants were exposed at the apothetai near Mt Taygetus, though the historicity of this practice has been questioned by modern bioarchaeology (no infant skeletons have been identified in the chasm).

At age 7 boys left the home and entered communal living. They were organised in agelai ("herds") under the supervision of the paidonomos (the state boy-magistrate, who Xenophon says was a citizen of rank with the power to punish) and of the eirenes (youths of the senior age-grade). Curriculum included reading, music (the lyre and the war-songs of Tyrtaeus, whose 7th-century BC elegies commanding men to stand firm in the front rank doubled as marching songs and moral instruction), and rigorous physical training.

Training intensified. Boys learned hoplite drill, formation, and endurance. They were assigned to age-graded subdivisions whose names survive imperfectly in later sources (melleirenes, mikkichizomenoi, and others; the precise ladder is a Hellenistic-era record and Kennell cautions against projecting it wholesale onto the classical period).

Boys were given one cloak only and slept on rushes they had to cut themselves. The "stealing" custom required boys to take food without being caught; if caught they were beaten "not for stealing but for being caught" (Plutarch, Lycurgus 17). The annual whipping contest at the altar of Artemis Orthia (the diamastigosis) tested endurance.

In the senior grade the young man became an eiren: still under training, but now commanding younger boys in their exercises and mess, his first taste of the officer role the army would demand. Plutarch (Lycurgus 17) describes eirenes directing the boys' foraging and punishing failures.

A selected group of the most promising youths near the end of the agoge entered the Krypteia ("secret service"). They lived alone in the countryside, hunting and killing Helots judged dangerous. The institution combined a rite of passage with Helot control.

Young men lived in the barracks rather than at home. They were eligible for election to a syssition from age 20, marking the entry to political citizenship, and became liable for front-line service.

Spartiates could marry from around age 20 but were expected to live in the barracks at night and visit their wives in secret until age 30. From 30 they could live at home as full Homoioi. Military duty continued until age 60; from age 60 a Spartiate became eligible for the gerousia.