Meta Description: Join Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe in Ad Navseam Episode 135 as they continue exploring Henri-Irénée Marrou’s history of classical education. Discover the harsh reality of Spartan training, the Spartan Mirage, a delicate discussion on ancient Greek educational relationships, and resources to master the Latin language.
Introduction: Superannuated Birthdays and Taylor Swift
Welcome back, classical gourmands, to Episode 135 of the Ad Navseam Podcast! Broadcasting from the subterranean depths of the bunker, your hosts, Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe, return to the microphones to tackle the complexities of ancient Greek education.
The episode begins with a celebration: it is Jeff’s birthday. While his family is asleep upstairs with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, Jeff carves out some podcast time to record. Dave notes that he is feeling less “superannuated” (outdated through age) than his co-host today, though Dave admits he has been “lucubrating” (burning the midnight oil) to prepare for an upcoming lecture.
Before delving into the main topic, Dave issues an embarrassing corrigendum (correction) regarding a previous episode’s discussion of the Indiana Jones film franchise. Dave previously stated that the city of Algiers was in Morocco; he retracts this, confirming that Algiers is, indeed, located in Algeria.
With the geography corrected, Jeff shares an anecdote. A colleague recently mentioned her child was browsing college course catalogs and found a humanities class devoted to the songs and poetry of Taylor Swift. Jeff scoffed at the idea. While he casts no shade on Ms. Swift’s pop-culture success, Jeff argues that for a subject to possess foundational educational value—to be passed down as the established accomplishment of a culture—it must first withstand the test of time. Dave agrees, noting that time acts as a filtering mechanism for art. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a commercial failure that sold fewer than five hundred copies during the author’s lifetime, yet time revealed it to be a masterpiece. Conversely, other works are recognized as genius from their inception, like Michelangelo’s David.
The Spartan State: Commissars and Wolf Cubs
The hosts resume their multi-part dive into Henri-Irénée Marrou’s 1956 historical tome, A History of Education in Antiquity (translated by George Lamb). This week, the focus shifts to the state-run education system of ancient Sparta.
In ancient Sparta, education was not an individualized, family-oriented pursuit. Marrou explains that up to the age of seven, a child was reared by their family. Spartan nurses were considered expert at this task and fetched top prices in the Athenian markets. However, the moment a boy turned seven, he was taken by the state and became state property until the day of his death.
The child was placed under the authority of a special magistrate known as the paidonomos—a commissar of national education. Dave jokes that this sounds like a terrifying job, though Jeff muses that if he were the paidonomos, he would just hand out Twinkies and Xboxes.
Marrou compares the mandatory Spartan youth organizations to totalitarian movements like the Hitlerjugend or the Gioventù Fascista. From ages eight to twenty, the boys moved through a complicated, regulated series of titles and stages. They started as wolf cubs (Mykizomenoi) who met for games, transitioned at age twelve into the Pampais (adolescents) who were forced to live in military boarding schools and barracks, and eventually became the senior ephebs. Even if a Spartan man married, he was required to live in the military barracks until the age of thirty.
Intellectual education was reduced to a minimum. Everything was sacrificed to military training. Boys learned gymnastics, how to move in file formations, and how to handle a spear and javelin. Because Sparta possessed the only professional army in classical Greece, their devotion to the state produced an unmatched military machine. The ideal was patriotism, and the only standard of goodness was whatever increased the power and greatness of Sparta, frequently leading to displays of Machiavellian cruelty on the battlefield. Jeff jokes that the martial spirit of the ancient world lives on in modern rhythmic gymnastics, comparing the ribbon-twirling routines to ancient warrior dances.
Strapping Viragos and the Spartan Mirage
The education of Spartan girls was equally rigid and subordinated to a crude utilitarianism.
According to Marrou, the primary duty of a Spartan woman was to produce as many bouncing babies as possible for the state. To achieve this, their education prioritized gymnastics and physical sports over music or dancing. They were forced to put aside traditional delicacy and “womanish tenderness” by hardening their bodies and appearing naked at public ceremonies. The goal was to turn virgins into “strapping viragos” with zero illusions about sentimentality, ensuring they would mate in the best interests of the Spartan race.
Despite this totalitarian societal structure, Dave and Jeff point out a historical caveat known as “The Spartan Mirage”. Because the Spartans were “smugly anarchic” and left behind virtually no written culture or literature of their own, our modern knowledge of their society is filtered. We view Sparta through the romanticized, idealized accounts of their historical enemies—specifically, aristocratic Athenian writers who admired Spartan discipline from a safe distance.
A Delicate Subject: Paideia and Paiderasteia
The hosts cautiously transition to chapter three of Marrou’s text, which tackles a delicate, complex subject: the role of pederasty in classical Greek education. Dave provides a respectful listener warning, noting that the historical reality of romantic relationships between men and boys in antiquity is an unavoidable topic when discussing ancient education.
Marrou argues that modern historians frequently mishandle this subject. They either ignore it with excessive circumspection or malignantly scrutinize the texts with a prurient curiosity. Marrou emphasizes that ancient Greece was not a “pervert’s paradise,” noting that the vocabulary of the Greek language and the established laws of most city-states viewed passive homosexuality as abnormal and outside the ideal of manliness.
However, to understand ancient Greek paideia (education), one must recognize that for the Greeks, it found its realization in paiderasteia. In the ancient aristocratic system, the traditional family could not serve as the educational center. Mothers were kept in the background, deemed unfit to train a boy into adulthood after the age of seven. Fathers were absorbed in public political affairs and had no time to instruct their own sons.
Consequently, the intimate union between a young man and an elder guide became the culturally accepted substitute. This relationship was considered educative. The younger man desired to show himself worthy of his older lover, strengthening a mutual love of glory, honor, and knightly ethics. In Sparta specifically, this practice was encouraged up to a certain age to bond soldiers tightly together in the deadly phalanx formation, but it was punished later in life when men were legally required to marry and propagate the race. While strange to modern sensibilities, Marrou insists we cannot understand the ancient Greeks without analyzing this specific cultural framework.
Sponsors: Fueling the Classical Renaissance
Before concluding the episode, the boys thank their sponsors for keeping the bunker operational.
- MossMethod & LatinPerDiem: Dave makes an announcement for his educational platform! To celebrate the upcoming holiday, he is launching “BlaFriMonCyi” (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) sale. From November 22nd to November 29th, listeners can receive a 20% discount on his language courses. Take your ancient Greek from neophyte to erudite at mossmethod.com, or master the Latin language from the ground up (ab initio) at latinperdiem.com/llpsi using Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata curriculum. Dave also notes that his free YouTube channel just surpassed 2,000 instructional videos.
- Ratio Coffee: If you want to brew a great birthday cup of coffee, discard your cheap “squirty plastic” machines. Mark Hellweg’s Ratio 8 and Ratio 6 machines offer a flawless brewing experience. The machines feature a wide Fibonacci showerhead that distributes hot water over the grounds. This design manages the “bloom phase,” allowing trapped carbon dioxide to off-gas. This process eliminates the dreaded “brackish tang,” extracting great flavor every time. Visit ratiocoffee.com and use the code ANCOK5 for 15% off your order.
- Hackett Publishing: Celebrating their fiftieth anniversary, Hackett provides superb, affordable texts for academics and casual readers. Drop some books into your digital satchel at hackettpublishing.com and use the code AN2022 for a 20% discount and free shipping.
The Gustatory Parting Shot
To close out Episode 135, Jeff delivers an unsettling Gustatory Parting Shot courtesy of authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.
“Think it’s rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc – three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don’t talk about bugs’ disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.”
A special thanks to Mishka the sound engineer, and to Scott Van Zen and Ken Tamplin for the guitar riffs. Inspect your pepper, avoid the fury of the paidonomos, and keep taking in the classics. Valete!
