ABSTRACT
Direct evidence for educational practices in Sparta comes primarily from two sources, Xenophon and Plutarch, who made extensive use of Xenophon’s writings on Sparta. The Spartan educational system was tightly woven into the fabric of Spartan society. Over seven hundred years later, Plutarch neatly linked the nature and duration of Spartan upbringing with the military character of Spartan society. To the characterization of Sparta as a paidagogos, compare Pericles’ statement that Athens is the “schooling of Greece”. One of the difficulties in studying Spartan education is the probability that some of the features presented as part of its early core are really later additions or distortions of early elements. Pericles summarizes the essential differences which he sees between the Spartan and Athenian systems of education. The kind of person that the Spartan system aimed to produce may be seen from lines of the late seventh-century bc Spartan poet Tyrtaeus.
