Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

120 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
view of the fact that these were referred to as homoioi or “equals,”
Spartans may well have observed a greater uniformity of behavior
than other Greeks did.
Sparta was also admired for its mixed constitution. That is, it had
a dual monarchy, subject to scrutiny by an overseeing body known
as the ephorate; a council of elders; and a popular assembly known
as the apella , which exercised a limited right of veto. The mercenary
leader Xenophon (Constitution of the Spartans 10.4), for instance, an
Athenian who was born a generation later than Perikles, has this
to say about it: “The state of Sparta with good reason outshines all
other states in virtue, since she alone has made the attainment of a
high standard of nobility a public duty.”
It would be impossible to write a detailed account of Spartan daily
life, because its people have left behind so few traces of themselves.
Very little Spartan literature has survived, and nothing later than
the seventh century b.c.e. Most of what we know about Spartan
society comes from philosophers and historians, and they were not
much concerned with the practicalities of daily life, although they
do provide a detailed description of the educational system, so it is
that which we will focus upon. Because these writers were foreigners,
however, we see the Spartans from the outside, although our
earliest source, Xenophon, who was writing around 400b.c.e. , did
at least visit Sparta.
Upbringing
From birth onward, the obligation to the state overrode not only
any duty to the family but also one’s right to life, in that Spartans
practiced the compulsory exposure of newborn males in the case
of those deemed unfit for rearing. Plutarch (Life of Lykourgos 16.1),
writing around the beginning of the second century c.e. , tells us
that the father was required to present his offspring to the elders of
the tribes for inspection. Then, “If the child was strong and lusty, the
elders ordered him to raise it; if it was not, he had to expose it at a
chasm-like place called Apothetai (Place of Exposure).”
The Spartan home was hardly a home in our sense of the word,
because children spent most of their time with their peers. Even the
first years of a boy’s life were not completely free of discipline, as
Plutarch (Life of Lykourgos 16.3) goes on to tell us: “Spartan nurses
taught Spartan babies to avoid any fussiness in their diet, not to be
afraid of the dark, not to cry or scream, and not to throw any other
kind of tantrum.”