He also describes how the Spartans limited civic education so as to maintain social control over the young: Plutarch observes that 'the whole course of education was one of continued exercise of a ready and perfect obedience' in which 'there scarcely was any time or place without someone present to put them in mind of their duty, and punish them if they had neglected it.' Lycurgus Īccording to the Roman historian Plutarch, the semi-legendary Lycurgus of Sparta considered education of the citizenry to be his main priority as framer of the Spartan constitution. Simonides called Sparta 'the tamer of men,' because by early strictness of education, they, more than any nation, trained the citizens to obedience to the laws, and made them tractable and patient of subjection, as horses that are broken in while colts.

Plutarch relates a comparison made by Simonides between Spartan education of citizens and horse husbandry: One asking to this purpose, Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to learn? “What they ought to do when they come to be men,” said he. įrench essayist Michel de Montaigne commended how Agesilaus II, the son of Archidamus, followed his father's approach closely:

Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school. In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides ascribes a speech to Archidamus II in which he stresses the importance for Sparta of civic education for the Spartan virtues of toughness, obedience, cunning, simplicity, and preparedness:Īnd we are wise, because we are educated with too little learning to despise the laws, and with too severe a self-control to disobey them, and are brought up not to be too knowing in useless matters-such as the knowledge which can give a specious criticism of an enemy's plans in theory, but fails to assail them with equal success in practice-but are taught to consider that the schemes of our enemies are not dissimilar to our own, and that the freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation. Philosophical views Ancient Sparta Archidamus

Civics today textbook chapter 20