The Training of Spartan Citizens

1. The Training of Spartan Citizens

2. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 33 [239B]: "They did not attend either comedy or tragedy, so that they might not hear anyone speak either in earnest or in jest against the laws." Acropolis of Sparta

3. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 4 [237A]: "They learned to read and write for purely practical reasons; but all other forms of education and books they banned from the country. All their education was directed toward prompt obedience to authority, stout endurance of hardship, and victory or death in battle."

4. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 6 [237B]: "The young men slept together, in barracks, upon pallets which they themselves brought by breaking off by hand, without any tool, the tops of the reeds which grew on the banks of the River Eurotas. In the winter they put beneath their pallets the plant called lykophron, since the plant is said to possess some warming qualities."

5. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 12 [237E]: "The boys steal whatever they can of their food, learning to make their raids secretly upon people who are asleep. The penalty for getting caught is a beating and no food. For the dinner allowed them is little, so that through coping with hunger, they may be compelled to be daring and cunning."

6. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 13 [237E-F]: "This was the object of the starvation diet. It was small so that the youth should never become used to being satisfied, but to be able to go without food; for in this way, the Spartans thought the youth would be stronger in war if they were able to carry on without food. The youth were able to consume anything that came to hand.

7. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 2 [Moralia 236F]: "A thing that was popular among them was their black broth [zomos], so much that the older men did not require a bit of meat, but gave up all of it to the young men. It is said that the ruler of Sicily, for the sake of this broth, bought a slave who had been a Spartan cook to prepare the broth for him. But when the king tasted it, he spat it out in disgust, whereupon the cook said, 'O King, it is necessary to have exercised in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed in the River Eurotas, in order to relish this broth."

8. Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans 41 [239D-E]: " ... it was not permitted them to take up any work or trade at all; and there was no need whatever of making money, because wealth was unenvied and unhonored.

9. Plutarch, Sayings of Kings and Commanders [Moralia191F]: "When Paedaretus (a Spartan soldier) was not chosen to be one of the Three Hundred, an honor which ranked highest in the State, he departed cheerful and smiling, with the remark that he was glad if the State possessed three hundred citizens who were better than himself."