Send a text

THIS IS SPARTA. Xenophon said that, even in his day, the rest of the Greeks thought Sparta's laws wholly strange: "all men praise such institutions, but no state chooses to imitate them." Foremost among these strange laws, of course, were the ones concerned with the rearing and education of children. And these laws, he said, were in their own turn developed not by imitating others, but came from the mind of a single great lawgiver: Lycurgus. It should come as no surprise, then, that the strict military training regime instituted by something of a philosopher-king held out its charms to the young men of Athens who surrounded Socrates. This had, in the case of Critias and the Thirty Tyrants, disastrous results. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Xenophon, Plutarch, and other texts concerned with the appalling and enthralling institutions of ancient Lacadaemon.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

Previous New Humanists episode on Sparta: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17503634-sparta-before-the-reactionary-turn-episode-xcii

Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.html

Plutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.html

Paul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245

Pericles' Funeral Oration (from Thucydides): https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html

New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's The Greek State: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14044549-compassion-versus-classical-antiquity-episode-lvii

Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080

New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi

Fragments of Critias: 

https://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:critias_of_athens_fragments

Paul Rahe's The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300227093

Paul Rahe's Was There a Spartan Mirage?: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2016/10/06/was-there-a-spartan-mirage/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Support the show