Sparta Strengths And Weaknesses

Sparta...was it really worth all the attention we give it here in America. We write movies about its strong military and tough culture and glorify its way of life ignoring the actual atrocity that was the Spartan society. Sparta was a Greek city-state located on the Peloponnesus peninsula The city-state’s society was based on its brutal educational system. This system was known as the agoge system and it was basically a military training that the young Spartan boys were forced to go through from the young age of seven to the age of twenty-one. (thirteen years of training). Sparta’s agoge system had many weaknesses but it also had many strengths. Which one outweighed the other? To me the answer is obvious. The weaknesses of the Spartan society outweighed the strengths because the Spartans destroyed families, they abused their youth and they murdered their own people.

To begin with, Sparta had a tendency to tear apart their natives’ families for the sake of war.“ A spartiate’s son was nurtured by his parents only until he was seven years old.

At that age he was removed from his family and, from his eighth to twenty first year, he was educated by the state according to the rigorous [military-like] discipline.”(Doc, A)This way of life was unhealthy for the children because the only adults they ever met were the abusive army generals. The children were almost always fighting or training and would never have had time to relax. Also, in addition to the young boys away, the daughters were separate from their families as well. This was because the Spartans believed in training the girls for childbirth from a young age. Due to this separation, the Spartans most likely did not know what the word “family” even meant. This weakened Sparta mainly because it obliterated any possible family connections, which is something most successful modern societies value today. Depriving its people of non-military human interactions was a major flaw in the Spartan

society.
Another example, of the Spartan educational system and society’s weakness was the harsh abuse of it’s youth, especially the young males.One of the more gruesome examples of this is the annual Flagallation contest held in Sparta.“The boys of Sparta were lashed with whips during the entire day at the altar of Artemis Orthia, frequently to the point of death, and they bravely endured this, cheerful and proud, vying with one another… as to which one of them could endure being beaten for the longer time and the greater number of blows.”(Doc. D) This abuse to the children is most definitely a flaw in Sparta’s educational system. Just the fact that they had the capacity to beat children in the name of fun and games is something that definantly isn’t a strength. One of the most disgusting things in this excerpt is the way that it seems that the boys have been so mistreated that they endure this abuse like it is normal. No successful society that I’ve ever heard of has ever treat their children in such an inhumane way. Beating the children like this is something that the boys will never forget and quite possibly may have caused a rebellion. The Flagellation contest is an example of the abuse that took place in Sparta, and was a truly gruesome example of the flawed spartan education.
Another example of the Spartan educational weakness, is the krypteia murder squads. These squads were groups of the most experienced agoge members who were periodically sent on trips to “maintain” the helots. ”By day they [the krypteia] scattered into obscure places, where they hid themselves and kept quiet; but at night they descended upon the highways and slaughtered any helots they caught. Often too they made their way across the fields and killed the strongest and best of the helots…”(Doc. C)This gruesome murder of the people who did their labor for them is heartless and senseless. The helots outnumbered the Spartans five to one but this horrific answer to the problem wasn’t the solution. Instead the krypteia could have let some of the helots free or let them become citizens. Also, murdering these innocent people lowered the amount of people doing labor for the benefit of the city-state. This shows Spartan weakness because they let the helots out number them and their paranoid actions that showed off Sparta’s bad judgement.
In conclusion, the Greek city-state of Sparta obviously had some major weaknesses that eventually led to it’s downfall.Despite these weaknesses though, the Spartans did manage to have a strong army and defeat the strongest army of their time, the Persians. That being said, the reasons stated above definitely prove that the weaknesses outweigh the strengths of the Spartan educational system and society because, the Spartan’s separated families, abused kids and murdered innocent people.