Related Content The program was first instituted by the lawgiver Lycurgus (l. 9th century BCE) and was integral to Spartas military strength and political power. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/sparta/. Cartwright, Mark. In preparation for marriage, Spartan women had their heads shaved; they kept their hair short after they wed. Married couples typically lived apart, as men under 30 were required to continue residing in communal barracks. But Stephen Hodkinson, an professor emeritus of ancient history at the University of Nottingham, UK, says there are hints in other sources that they received the standard Greek elementary education in reading, writing, numbers, song and dance.. Archaeological evidence, however, suggests that Sparta itself was a new settlement created from the 10th century BCE. In 371 B.C., Thebes, a rival city state, defeated Sparta at the battle of Leuctra by using unorthodox, creative cavalry maneuvers that the Spartans were too inflexible to counter. Being a militaristic state, Sparta's primary focus was on its land-based army, composed of armoured hoplites. The relationship was probably sexual, but sex was by no means the only or even always the major object. Updates? Pre- and post-battle sacrifices were a common feature of Greek warfare in general but the Spartan army took things one step further and sacrificed before crossing rivers, for example, and even withheld from mobilising the army if an important religious festival was ongoing. One factor was the agoge, the Greek city-states educational and training system, which used harsh, extreme and sometimes cruel methods to prepare boys to be Spartan citizens and soldiers. Please donate to our server cost fundraiser 2023, so that we can produce more history articles, videos and translations. To make life even tougher, Spartan boys were fed a meager diet. According to Plutarch, Spartans continued regular military training throughout their adult lives. Similarities and Differences between Spartan and Athenian society - All Submitted by Mark Cartwright, published on 28 May 2013. The only excuses for non-attendance were participation in a religious ritual or a hunting expedition. Helots could not own property and so could not rise to become full-citizens, and this lack of social mobility would come back to haunt Sparta in later centuries.