Yale Professor Donald Kagan on Sparta

Here’s a fascinating lecture by Yale professor Donald Kagan on the organization of Spartan society. This is a culture that really upends a lot of our notions about human nature and propriety.

Here’s the capsule summary: Sparta maintained a massive slave population to do the farming, leaving the citizens free to spend all their time training for war. Spartan authorities examined every newborn and put to death any who showed signs of congenital weakness. At age seven Spartan boys were taken from their families and enrolled in military school, where they would remain until the age of thirty. Students were not given enough to eat, and were expected to supplement their diets by thieving, in the process learning initiative, guile, and self-reliance. Students trained nude, within sight of the Spartan girls, who also participated in athletics and who also trained nude. Teenage males were expected to take a male lover from among their instructors, aged twenty to thirty, and these pairs would remain good friends throughout their lives. At the age of twenty, Spartan males were permitted to marry, but were not allowed to leave the school to visit their wives. They were expected to do so secretly — as with stealing food — and the penalties for getting caught were severe. For the wedding, the bride’s head would be shaved and she would be dressed up like a man. At the age of thirty, men could leave the school and move in with their wives, but they still ate dinner every night in a cafeteria with their squadmates.