It would be a misconception to believe that education was the same all over ancient Greece. Although most Greek cities had an education system that was somewhat similar there were a few that did not. The two cities that had the most extreme differences in education systems would be Athens and Sparta. Although Athens did not force mandatory schooling and the education of children in the same way that Sparta forced military training, the state still took some interest in the prevailing educational conditions. Without offering state run schools they still provided elementary, musical, and physical instruction which Sparta did not. Considering this, the Athenians had a more diverse and overall better education than the Spartans.
At the young age of eight Spartan boys were taken away from their family and
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From what we understand of Sparta, the agoge was the education. They had no daily lessons and most of their education “was directed towards responsiveness to command, endurance in hardship, and victory in battle” (Rhodes, no. 95 = Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16. vii – 17. vi). Spartan citizens wanted to make sure that their sons got beneficial training so “each man [was not] permitted to rear and train his sons as he wished” (Rhodes, no. 95 = Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16. vii – 17. vi). This way all of the male children were trained properly for battle so that they would grow up to be strong soldiers who were able to fight for Sparta. While education in Sparta was quite military in form, Athenian education was “divided into two parts: gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. For the former
“reach them to endure pain and conquer in battle.” (Document 11). Sparta was especially known for their strong army force. From age seven, all boys were trained not to express their pain and become great soldiers on the battlefield. Unlike Sparta, Athens’ main focus was not on the military. “For we are lovers of beauty, yet with no extravagance and lovers of wisdom, yet without weakness.” (Document 9). Athens was essentially based upon the arts and intelligence. Instead of boys going through years and years of military training, Athenians learned subjects like literature, art, and arithmetic.
As with most historical re-enactments, 300 places significant exaggeration on each civilizations central city-state ideologies and this is reflected in each scene by the actions of the individuals throughout Zack Snyder’s film. The representation of the Spartan warrior mentality through scenes depicting young Spartan children throughout their childhood participating in multiple life threatening challenges; are seemingly accurate as the primary purpose of Spartan schooling was to produce perfect soldiers, through strictly disciplined military training that began for all boys at the age of 7 as they left home to join the agoge. The agoge was set up in order to weaken family ties and create personal identity. These children were usually allotted no shoes, little clothing and educated through a vigorous training schedule of boxing, wrestling, javelin and discus throwing. They suffered through harsh conditions and were taught to take satisfaction in enduring pain and hardship, as well as to value strengt...
Athenian girls were not officially schooled, they were usually taught in the own homes. The purpose of an Athenian education was to train people to be thinkers, people who are well-trained in the arts and sciences (Columbia). The education of the youth establishes a precedent for the differences between the way Spartans and Athenians lead their lives. At age seven, training for the military began for all Spartan boys, they’re forced to leave their homes and go to military schools, where they endure all types of harsh training and discipline. The main lesson was learning to take pride in enduring pain and hardship.
Within different civilizations of the Greek City-States and the Hellenistic World, there were different values, power structures, and politics that made the societies powerful and successful. In the Greek City-States there was Sparta and Athens and in the Hellenistic World, there was different views and ideas for the few rulers of the Hellenistic society. Sparta was focused on the strength of the state and on their military readiness and discipline. Athens was a democratic state focused on the rights of individuals. The main differences between Sparta and Athens are their style and system of government, and their societal values. In the Hellenistic world, the most famous ruler, Alexander was focused on unifying the people and giving them a sense religion and morality. Under the rule of Antiochus, who took the kingdom when Seleucid died, they wanted people to focus on the Greek way of life. These
The citizens also had the most important jobs. Then there was the lower class, who were the slaves. They were treated like property and forced to do all the hard labor. The difference between the two city-states is that Spartan women were given an education, could own land, and generally had many more rights than the Athenian woman. This was because the Spartan citizens, the men, had to go off and fight in the military for most of their lives so women were left and they had to run the city.
This source was rather interesting because instead of being a web page full of information, this source was a letter written from the young women of Sparta t...
The lifestyle and in some occasions their occupations were chosen from the time they were born. For example, when a Spartan women gave birth to a boy, soldiers went to the place where the baby was born and examined it to determine the strength of the child. Uniquely then the baby is placed into a bath, but not a bathed in water, but wine to see its reaction (“Spartans”). If the baby squirmed and cried a lot then it would be taken away from the parents to become a helot, or a slave. If the child took the bath well, then it would one day become a soldier in the Spartan army (“Spartans”). The Spartans were particularly picky about their children, so much that infanticide was a major problem (“Spartans”). Children had a hard role to fill in Spartans society, because not only was the fate of the child determined by the family but also by the city-state in which the child lived. So if you were not as strong or as intelligent as others you were looked down upon (“Spartans”). The boys that were strong and intelligent though, were taking from their family at age 7 and h...
Sparta was a strict military city-state. The people were Dorians who conquered Laconia. This region lies in the Peloponnesus, which lied in southern Greece. The invaders turned the conquered people into state owned slaves, called helots. Since the helots greatly outnumbered their rulers, Spartans established a strict and brutal system of control. The Spartan government had two kings and a council of elders who advised the monarchs. An assembly made up of all citizens approved all major decisions. From child-hood, a Spartan prepared to be part of the military. All newborn were examined and the healthy lived and the sickly were left to die. Spartans wanted future soldiers or mothers of soldiers to be healthy. At the age of seven, boys trained for a lifetime in the Spartan military. They moved to the barracks and endured brutal and extensive training.
But Spartan society itself changed, evolving into a city-state. The state determined whether children, both male and female, were strong when they were born, leaving the weak in the hills to perish. At the age of seven, every male Spartan was sent to military and athletic school teaching discipline, endurance of pain, and survival skills. At twenty, the Spartan became a soldier spending his life with his fellow soldiers to live in barracks with his fellow soldiers. Only at the age of thirty, did the Spartan become an "equal," and was allowed to live in his own house with his own family, although he continued to serve in the military. Military service ended at the age of sixty.
Athens and Sparta were both city-states in Classical Greece. While Athens embraced democracy, Sparta was a dictatorial fierce warrior state. Sparta was a militaristic community, Athens was a freethinking, and commerce minded city-state. Modern societies have modeled their government organizational structure and military discipline practices from lessons learned of these ancient city-states. There is much is to be praised regarding Classical Greece for their courage, their progressive thinking and the birth of democracy. However, I think it is important to remember that in both cases, Athens and Sparta were able to sustain their lifestyle on the backs of countless slaves, non-citizens and women and that there is a darker and less romantic side to the past.
In The Peloponnesian War, the two regimes are described as opposites: severity versus freedom. The Spartans believe that the best political education, that which rears the most superior of men, consists of being educated with "too little learning to despise the laws, and with too severe a self-control to disobey them" (Thuc. 1.1.84)1 and of being "brought up not to be too knowing in useless matters" (Thuc. 1.1.84). For them, "the superiority lies with him who is reared in severest school" (Thuc. 1.1.85). The Athenians, on the other hand, say that "while in education, where our rivals [the Spartans] from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger" (Thuc. 2.6.39). They produce men who only have the...
In Classical Sparta, the agoge, was a successful education method as it bred discipline and fear into the future homoioi. Fear benefited the Spartan polis due to the fact that it created unquestionable obedience to authority. Plutarch expressed how that, ‘Where there is fear, there is also a sense of respect’ (Plutarch, Cleomenes). At the age of seven, the young Spartans started their agoge training, a paidonomos was placed in consistent supervision of the boy and was able to punish them when they felt necessary (Webb, 2012). Furthermore, the paidonomos was assisted by a young man, aged around 18-20, called an eirenes. The eirenes carried a whip around with them, able to chastise students for any misbehaviour (Amos and Lang, 1979), this was effective as it further created more fear, which lead to a higher respect for those older than them.
The ancient Greece was divided among several hundreds of city-states called “Poleis”. Within this poleis, Athens and Sparta were the most powerful, significant, largest and significant states.
Sparta was a city-state based on strict military ruling, at the age of seven a young Spartan would start out training and be trained into killing machines. When a Spartan baby is born, high elite Spartan soldiers would observe the baby to see if it was healthy and strong, if not the baby was ill and weak so it would be taken up a mountain and left there to die. This is just one example that shows how Sparta only wants a strong army and doesn't care about anything else. Strict rules of the government made it so that every Spartan was trained to be physically and mentally fit for war.
Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave and kept under a close eye to prevent insurgence (History of Greece:The Golden Age of Greece). Additionally, Sparta had strict and trained soldiers that underwent intense physical exercising and instruction.