Agoge

The firstborn sons of the ruling houses, Eurypontid and Agiad, were exempted; a few trophimoi (very well-connected metics or perioeci) took part by special permission, as did syntrophoi (children of helot mothers adopted by Spartiates).

According to Xenophon, it was introduced by the semi-mythical Spartan law-giver Lycurgus, and modern scholars have dated its inception to the 7th or 6th century BC[4][3][6][1] Regardless, the structure and content of the agōgē changed over time as the practice fell in and out of favour throughout the Hellenistic period.

[9][10] The paides were taught the basics of reading and writing, but even the early stages of education focused on the development of skills that would encourage military prowess.

According to French historian Jean Ducat, Aristotle believed that it was important that a Spartan learn how to poke fun at his peers, and that he be able to accept the teasing himself.

[19] Xenophon, on the other hand, claims that the laws of Lycurgus strictly prohibited sexual relationships with the boys, although he acknowledges that this is unusual compared to other Greek city-states.

[21] It was at this age when Spartan men became eligible for military service and could vote in the assembly, although they were not yet considered full adult citizens and were still under the authority of the paidonomos.

[10][11][4] Those hēbōntes who had impressed their elders the most during their training could be selected for the Crypteia, a type of 'Secret Police' tasked with maintaining control over the Helot population through violence.

While scholars such as Pierre Vidal-Naquet have suggested that the Crypteia functioned as an initiatory ritual in the transition into adulthood, others, such as David Dodd, believe it was used primarily as a tool of terror.

[11] Xenophon describes the selection process as a public event where each of the three hippagretai (commanders) chooses 100 men, supposedly to instil a rivalry between each group, seeing as each man would be loyal to the hippagrete who chose him and resentful of the other two.

Training overlapped with ritual activity at the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where paidiskoi were made to steal from the altar under threat of being beaten if they were caught, possibly as part of an initiation rite in the transition to a hēbōnte.

[13][6] As well, the Gymnopaedia festival featured choral and athletic competitions between groups of naked youths, and boys may have been expected to participate as part of the agōgē.

[29] For example, there may have been a change in the way boys were divided by age; Plutarch (writing in the 2nd century CE) mentions only two groups: the younger paides and the older neoi.

Cicero describes an initiation ritual where naked boys were brutally whipped at the altar of that goddess, and numerous stelai mention contests of choral singing and dancing which may celebrate Artemis and the hunt.

[29][28][30] It is likely around this time that a game called Platanistas was developed (although it may have existed in the Classical period), which took place on a small island, and featured a violent, physical contest to force the opposing side into the water.

Supposedly, Pyrrhus of Epirus hid his intention to overthrow Sparta by claiming that part of his reason for marching on the Peloponnese was to have his sons trained in the agōgē.

[42] In the 1930s, the Nazi-aligned professor Helmut Berve praised the Spartan style of education in particular for its ability to weed out those considered "unfit" for society and to create a community of unified warriors.

[43][42][44] At the Adolf Hitler Schule in Weimar, Germany, schoolchildren were taught that Sparta maintained its power by producing tough, agōgē-educated warriors.

[46] In the American action film 300 (2007), Leonidas is depicted attending the Agoge as a child and fulfilling various physical and mental trials from fighting other children to being whipped as a form of discipline.

Historian Bret Devereaux has compared the Spartan agōgē to the indoctrination of child soldiers in modern societies as part of his blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry".

[47] In the Sony Santa Monica Studio Playstation game God of War Ragnarok, the protagonist Kratos talks about his upbringing alongside his brother in the agōgē, noting the cruel and violent methods used to train children and how he looked to avoid doing so with his second child, Atreus.