τι θά ’νιωθε τό Σπαρτιατόπουλο
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No later account of Spartan education could do without [those elements]: scanty clothing, communal meals, and theft of food.
Unlike their mollycoddled coevals elsewhere in Greece, Spartan boys went barefoot and wore only one outer garment all year round. They worked and slept together in groups, learning to feel comfortable as small cogs in a big machine. In a much-garbled passage, but one whose general meaning is clear enough, Xenophon informs us that Lycurgus established that each boy contribute only so much food as he had so that he would never be oppressed by overindulgence and would know what it was like to go hungry. Their frugal communal rations could be supplemented, but only by theft, so that the boys learned to cooperate with one another and gained the skills essential for survival as Spartan warriors.
This custom gave rise to what is still probably the best known anecdote about Spartan education, the story of the boy and the fox, found in the Laconian Apophthegmata. So familiar is the tale to everyone, classicist and non-classicist alike, that what it actually has to tell us is resolutely ignored:
When the time came for free children, according to custom, to steal whatever they could and being caught was considered disgraceful, another young boy was guarding a live fox cub his companions had stolen and given to him, when the owners appeared looking for it. Just then, he thrust it under his himation and, even though the animal was devouring his side through to his entrails, kept quiet so that he would not be discovered. Later, when they had gone away, the boys saw what had happened and criticized him, saying that it was better to show the fox cub than to hide it until death. “No way!” he said, “It’s better to die without giving in to pain than to be caught out because I was soft and put a shamefully high value on living.”
Doubt has been cast on the anecdote’s originality, mainly because fox could not possibly have figured in the Spartan diet. This observation is undoubtedly correct but is no warrant for rejecting the anecdote out of hand. In fact, the fox cub is its best guarantor of authenticity. Fox imagery popped up at several points in Spartan education: the hero Alopecus, “Mr. Fox,” had discovered the cult image of Artemis Orthia; the ephebes’ sojourn in the wilds was called phouaxir, “the fox time”; and the word used to describe training was phouaddei, “he plays the fox.” Youngsters were supposed to emulate the fox’s cunning and become tricksters (plagiaddonter), while their parents’ admiration for the animal’s qualities was so well known that Aristophanes twice calls attention to Spartan foxiness. In short, the appearance of a fox cub in this situation is too unusual to have come from a non-Spartan source, but is completely consistent with the symbolic representation of Spartan youths. The story’s origins must remain shrouded in mystery; I wonder, however, whether it did not start out as an exemplary tale that used to be told to ephebes at Sparta.
Whatever its precise nature, the passage contains a valuable drop of information. We are told that, on a specific occasion (kairos), it was the custom (nenomisto) for ephebes to steal whatever they could without getting caught. The implication could not be clearer; contrary to the canonical interpretation, Spartan boys only stole at particular times established by custom. In his account, Xenophon rationalized this ritual theft into a regular activity intended to augment the ephebes[SUP]’[/SUP] provisions. Other commentators, ancient and modern, have understood him to mean that the ephebes stole food daily, without taking into account the consequences such continual thievery by all the younger male population would have had on a rigidly structured society such as Sparta. Either the city would have degenerated into anarchy or the act of stealing would have become a counterfeit, with food set aside especially for boys to filch. Instead of an everyday occurrence, then, theft was only sanctioned in particular circumstances, as part of larger religious festivals during which the conventional norms of society were periodically overturned. Xenophon himself alludes to one form of ritual theft at Sparta when he ends his discussion of larceny’s pedagogical value with the cheese-stealing contest at Artemis’ altar.
Nigel M. Kennell. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolima Press, 1995.
Unlike their mollycoddled coevals elsewhere in Greece, Spartan boys went barefoot and wore only one outer garment all year round. They worked and slept together in groups, learning to feel comfortable as small cogs in a big machine. In a much-garbled passage, but one whose general meaning is clear enough, Xenophon informs us that Lycurgus established that each boy contribute only so much food as he had so that he would never be oppressed by overindulgence and would know what it was like to go hungry. Their frugal communal rations could be supplemented, but only by theft, so that the boys learned to cooperate with one another and gained the skills essential for survival as Spartan warriors.
This custom gave rise to what is still probably the best known anecdote about Spartan education, the story of the boy and the fox, found in the Laconian Apophthegmata. So familiar is the tale to everyone, classicist and non-classicist alike, that what it actually has to tell us is resolutely ignored:
When the time came for free children, according to custom, to steal whatever they could and being caught was considered disgraceful, another young boy was guarding a live fox cub his companions had stolen and given to him, when the owners appeared looking for it. Just then, he thrust it under his himation and, even though the animal was devouring his side through to his entrails, kept quiet so that he would not be discovered. Later, when they had gone away, the boys saw what had happened and criticized him, saying that it was better to show the fox cub than to hide it until death. “No way!” he said, “It’s better to die without giving in to pain than to be caught out because I was soft and put a shamefully high value on living.”
Doubt has been cast on the anecdote’s originality, mainly because fox could not possibly have figured in the Spartan diet. This observation is undoubtedly correct but is no warrant for rejecting the anecdote out of hand. In fact, the fox cub is its best guarantor of authenticity. Fox imagery popped up at several points in Spartan education: the hero Alopecus, “Mr. Fox,” had discovered the cult image of Artemis Orthia; the ephebes’ sojourn in the wilds was called phouaxir, “the fox time”; and the word used to describe training was phouaddei, “he plays the fox.” Youngsters were supposed to emulate the fox’s cunning and become tricksters (plagiaddonter), while their parents’ admiration for the animal’s qualities was so well known that Aristophanes twice calls attention to Spartan foxiness. In short, the appearance of a fox cub in this situation is too unusual to have come from a non-Spartan source, but is completely consistent with the symbolic representation of Spartan youths. The story’s origins must remain shrouded in mystery; I wonder, however, whether it did not start out as an exemplary tale that used to be told to ephebes at Sparta.
Whatever its precise nature, the passage contains a valuable drop of information. We are told that, on a specific occasion (kairos), it was the custom (nenomisto) for ephebes to steal whatever they could without getting caught. The implication could not be clearer; contrary to the canonical interpretation, Spartan boys only stole at particular times established by custom. In his account, Xenophon rationalized this ritual theft into a regular activity intended to augment the ephebes[SUP]’[/SUP] provisions. Other commentators, ancient and modern, have understood him to mean that the ephebes stole food daily, without taking into account the consequences such continual thievery by all the younger male population would have had on a rigidly structured society such as Sparta. Either the city would have degenerated into anarchy or the act of stealing would have become a counterfeit, with food set aside especially for boys to filch. Instead of an everyday occurrence, then, theft was only sanctioned in particular circumstances, as part of larger religious festivals during which the conventional norms of society were periodically overturned. Xenophon himself alludes to one form of ritual theft at Sparta when he ends his discussion of larceny’s pedagogical value with the cheese-stealing contest at Artemis’ altar.
Nigel M. Kennell. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolima Press, 1995.