Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 121
At the age of six, boys were removed from the care of their parents
and subjected to a tough system of state education known as
the agôgê, or training. The aim of the agôgê, which had something
of the character of a Victorian boarding school, was to instill obedience,
discipline, and resourcefulness. It probably had the further
consequence of turning the child first into a brat, then into a bully.
Boys were divided into packs and placed under the general control
of an educational director known as a paidonomos. At about the age
of twelve, a Spartan boy became a meirakion or youth. He lived in
barracks and was kept on a minimal diet, the expectation being that
he would supplement it by stealing. Plutarch describes the educational
process as follows:
Learning how to read and write was not considered important. Mainly
their education consisted in learning how to carry out orders, how to test
themselves to the limits of their endurance, and how to succeed at wrestling.
So their training got tougher and tougher as they got older. Their
heads were close-shaved, and they learnt how to march barefoot and go
naked when training. (Life of Lykourgos 16.6)
The courage that this kind of training was designed to instill is
indicated by the well-known story of a boy who was apprehended
with a stolen fox under his cloak. Rather than admit his crime to his
captors and undergo the humiliation of punishment, the boy vehemently
denied the charge. His courage cost him his life because the
fox gnawed through his entrails while he was being interrogated. We
also hear of a strange ritual that was enacted annually at the altar of
Artemis Orthia. One group of youths would try to steal cheese from
the altar while another group would use whips on them to keep
them at bay. The ritual enjoyed considerable popularity in Roman
times, attracting large numbers of what have been aptly described
as “sado-tourists.” Although physically weak babies were exposed
at birth, there must have been a number of perfectly fit and healthy
children who were bullied mercilessly and who found this brutal
system quite intolerable.
When a youth reached the age of 16 (or possibly 18), he became a
member of the krypteia. This, as its name from the Greek verb kryptô,
meaning “conceal,” indicates, was a kind of secret police force. Its
purpose was to intimidate the subjected helot population, sometimes
by slaughtering them. (The fact that the ephors declared war
on the helots at the beginning of each campaigning season meant
that killing them was not deemed impious.) During this period, the
youth lived out in the wild and had to fend for himself.