here is a reason Sparta is still taught in schools today.Sparta was a Greek city state that sits on the Peloponnese peninsula. It is a military based city state. The Spartan strengths outweigh the weaknesses because they had an advanced military, women were respected, and they trained their soldiers at a young age.To begin with, Sparta had an advanced military.In Document C, the text states “Spartan krypteia [crip-TEE-a], a kind of secret police or special-operation unit.”The krypteia was a group of the top Spartiates. They hid during the day, and at night they searched the roads with only a dagger and very little food. Their goal was to kill off the strongest and smartest helots to keep them from overpowering the Spartan society. This is…
I say this because the boys were only taught the rudiments, or basics. The only things that they were taught were reading and writing. Document A states,” Only the rudiments (basics) of reading and writing were taught; instruction consisted for the most part in...obedience, bodily fitness, and courage to conquer in battle.” The Spartans only learned these things for practical reasons, but all of the other forms of education were banned in Sparta. (Doc D) If they learned more than reading and writing they could have become teachers and philosophers, instead of warriors and homekeepers. That is the third and final reason why I think that Sparta’s weaknesses outweighed their…
The Spartan citizens devoted their lives to training for the army, from even when the boys were born, they were either killed if they thought the boy wouldn’t be fit enough or make it through the first stage of their training for the army. At the age of seven, the boys would be taken from their mothers, a truly harsh thing for a mother to go through and then from there on…
During the ages of 800 and 401 BCE, Athens and Sparta were very different in many ways, but in a couple of ways, they were somewhat similar. They both had wealthy aristocrats who controlled their government and who made decisions on what was “best” for their poleis and its people, and both used a political legislative system. While the Spartans had the elder council, called “Gerousia”, the Ephors and the general assembly, the Athenians had the legislative branch, called “Boule”, and the popular assembly. Whereas the Spartan’s general assembly could make laws and the Gerousia and the Ephors could veto them, the Athenians “Boule” could suggest laws, but the popular assembly was responsible for passing legislation into law or vetoing it. Both the Spartan’s general assembly and the Athenian’s popular assembly were made up of free male citizens in their respective city states.…
The education of Spartan boys was a brutal experience for all the boys; they were all to be trained well enough to be able to serve Sparta. Training for the Spartan military began at the age of seven and continued until the age of sixty, for those who lived that long. Usually the boys would be hit to help them toughen up or just because they were out of line, they trained and fought naked, ate a modest amount of food, entered public competitions, wore little amounts of clothing (loin cloth) and travelled to places barefoot; the boys had to partake in these methods because in doing so they are making themselves much more stronger. Spartan boys were disciplined to a great extent in order to create tough…
Spartan girls were allowed to remain with their parents, but they were also subjected to a rigorous education and training program. Much of the Spartan agoge involved typical Greek school subjects like reading, writing, rhetoric and poetry, but the training regimen also had a vicious side. To toughen the young warriors and encourage their development as soldiers, instructors and older men would often instigate fights and arguments between trainees. This was partially designed to help make the youths resistant to hardships like cold, hunger, and pain. Boys who showed signs of cowardice or timidity were subject to teasing and violence by peers and superiors alike (Plutarch).…
After the helots revolted, the Spartans had to develop a new way of life. There were almost 10 times the amounts of helots as compared to the free citizens. To do this, the Spartans made changes that turned their city into a military academy and camp. An official would decide if an infant was fit to survive, and if he was, he was taken from his home at age seven, and trained to become a warrior. Their constitution was mixed, with various parts of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. The goal of the new government in Sparta was to “win glory in war”.…
The Spartans encouraged athletic completion and the victors where held in high esteem. They married the strongest boys with the strongest girls and the fastest boys with the fastest girls in order to bread the best warriors. Infamously, the Spartan elders would inspect new born infants and any found to be imperfect, judged to be puny or deformed, were thrown from a cliff. They were sent to a military boarding school, or agoge, at age seven where they formed a class with other boys their age. Their education emphasized physical, mental and spiritual toughness and could be quite brutal.…
To begin with, Sparta would abuse the children. In document B it says “[Lycurgus] encouraged them to steal to get their food.” To do this, the boys in the agoges would have to spend nights planning how they were going to steal the food and they had to have spies. If they were caught, they would be beaten and whipped for stealing poorly. This is a weakness because the Spartans did not value their…
Kind of like the U.S.A., Sparta had 3 types of classes. One was the Spartans, who were full citizens. Another was the helots, who were slaves. “The Spartan way of life would not have been possible without the Helots” (Athens and Spartans).They handled all the everyday tasks to keep the society functioning. The last is the perioeci, who were neither slaves nor citizens. They were craftsmen, traders and built weapons for Spartans. The most important thing that a Spartan has is loyalty to its home state. If they did not obey that, they would be killed or shunned. Also loyalty to the state comes first, even before their own family. That is why the babies of Sparta have to be perfect to live in Sparta. If not perfect, they will be thrown off a cliff or another way of death. Also the babies were raised by nurses, not by…
When babies were born in Sparta, Spartan soldiers would come by the house to examine them. If the baby did not look healthy, it was taken away and left to die or trained as a slave. If the baby was healthy, it was assigned membership in a brotherhood or sisterhood. The boys in Sparta were sent to military camps of their brotherhood when they turned 7. They learned how to read and write until they were about 14. The Spartan government wanted to make the boys tough. To do this they were given little clothing and no shoes. They slept on hard beds made of reeds and were not given any covers. They were not given enough food. They were trained in survival skills and how to be a good soldier. Reading and writing were taught as secondary skills.…
Every infant was examined shortly after birth by the elders do the tribesman who either passed it or, if the baby was weakly or deformed, ordered it to be thrown over a special cliff. At the age of eight the boy would be enrolled in a herd' under supervision of a senior Spartiate. When the boy reached the age of thirteen he would move on to another herd'#. The training was mainly centered around athletics and military. Sparta was not known for their arts but the young men would study literature learning how to read. The boys lived a very hard regimented lifestyle living in dormitories, only receiving one garment a year, and where not aloud to bathe. They where fed meager rations and where encouraged to steal yet punished if they where careless and got caught.# The boys would be put through relentless…
In the 7th Century BC a new era of warfare strategy evolved. Before this new strategy, foot soldiers (known as hoplites) engaged in battle in the form of one mob for each army which on the command of their generals runs at each other and proceeds to hack blindly at the enemy with little to no direction other then to kill the enemy in front of them. This proved to be very messy and the tide of battle depended mostly on emotion and size of an army. In the name of strategy and organization, the phalanx was developed. A phalanx is simply defined as a line formation with its width significantly larger then its depth. The depth of the phalanx is a variable which some suggest was decided by the army itself rather then by the leaders of the army. The smallest depth appears to have been that of one man deep. However this was a unique occurrence which is widely believed to be fictitious. The largest depth is that of 120 men deep which was fielded at one time by the Macedonians. On average, the depth of the phalanx appears to be about eight men deep. During the time of Alexander the Great, the phalanx was believed to be eight men deep, but some argue that it evolved into a sixteen man deep phalanx. The Spartans purposely varied the depth of their phalanx so to confuse the enemy about the number of soldiers fielded. The phalanx proved to be a very valuable weapon for the military at that time. Armies which did not adapt to the phalanx formation were quickly slaughtered. The use of the phalanx allowed the Greeks to win the Persian Wars.<br><br>Many historians believe that the development of the phalanx led directly to social changes occurring throughout Greece during the time of the phalanx 's implementation. The phalanx formation allowed men to participate in the military who otherwise could not have because a much smaller investment in weapons and armor was needed to participate in the phalanx. The combined increase in the number of those participating in the army and the…
Spartan boys were expected to become brave soldiers. They learned to suffer pain without complaining. They slept on hard beds and washed in cold water. They marched without shoes. They did not have enough food, so they learned to go hungry.…
Family is a universal concept: everywhere we go we see happy families with excessive members or even those excited "soon-to-be" families with a newborn on the way. But what if I were to tell you that in 2008, out of these "soon-to-be"mothers "eight percent...we're illegal aliens" (502)? Our founding fathers would encourage us to welcome these "aliens" as they had accepted those wanting to experience democracy and escape from tyrannical rule, however most U.S. "natives" nowadays would be anything but welcoming. As Americans, we pride ourselves on our democratic values such as equality for all citizens no matter what race or religion: like the song says, "this land is your land, this land is my land... This land was made for you and me!" Although, recently these American ideals have been struck down by activists who disagree completely. Our American value to accept all people should apply in all cases, including immigration.…