Xenophon, a philosopher and historian who lived from the late 400s to mid-300s B.C., noted that one purpose was to keep them slim, which Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan system, believed would make them grow taller. To make life even tougher, Spartan boys were fed a meager diet. In addition to foot races and wrestling, their sports included a particularly brutal contest in which two teams would try to drive each other off an island by pushing, kicking, biting and gouging their opponents, according to Kyle’s book. Kyle notes in his book Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, Spartan youth had to present themselves for regular inspections in the nude, and boys who didn’t look sufficiently fit were flogged. For clothing, they were given just one cloak to wear year-round, to make them learn to endure heat and cold, and made their own beds from plants that they had to rip out of the ground with their bare hands from river banks.Īccording to Plutarch, as the young Spartans grew, they were required to exercise more and more to build their bodies.
To toughen them up even more, Spartan boys were compelled to go barefoot and seldom bathed or used ointments, so that their skin became hard and dry, Plutarch wrote. But Stephen Hodkinson, an professor emeritus of ancient history at the University of Nottingham, UK, says there are hints in other sources that they received “the standard Greek elementary education in reading, writing, numbers, song and dance.” Plutarch portrayed Spartan boys as receiving little schooling. “The rest all kept their eyes on him, obeying his orders and submitting to his punishments, so their boyish training was a practice of obedience.” “The boy who excelled in judgement and was most courageous in fighting was made captain of the company,” Plutarch wrote. At age seven, Spartan boys were turned over by their parents to the state, where they were organized into companies that lived, studied and trained together.