{"id":100909,"date":"2026-06-26T02:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=100909"},"modified":"2026-02-16T22:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:36:26","slug":"sparta-vs-athens-2c-spartan-childhood-the-agoge-infant-inspection-and-state-brutality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/26\/sparta-vs-athens-2c-spartan-childhood-the-agoge-infant-inspection-and-state-brutality\/","title":{"rendered":"Sparta vs Athens 2(c): Spartan Childhood &#8211; The <em>Ag\u014dg\u0113<\/em>, Infant Inspection, and State Brutality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q-EOac2oCe4?si=3o25HpnxLbZN_sI0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>seangabb<\/strong><br \/>\nPublished 8 Feb 2026<\/p>\n<p>Greece: A Brief History, c.700 BC &#8211; 500 AD<\/p>\n<p>This segment goes straight to the ancient evidence. Using Plutarch&#8217;s <em>Life of Lycurgus<\/em> (with the passages shown on-screen), I explain how Sparta understood itself: infant inspection and exposure, the collective upbringing of boys in the <em>ag\u014dg\u0113<\/em>, deliberate hunger and deprivation, enforced endurance, and the suppression of private loyalties in favour of loyalty to the state.<\/p>\n<p>This is not presented as scandal. Plutarch often writes admiringly, which is precisely why the text is so revealing. The system is coherent. It is also terrifying. Sparta did not merely train soldiers. It manufactured them, beginning at birth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>seangabb Published 8 Feb 2026 Greece: A Brief History, c.700 BC &#8211; 500 AD This segment goes straight to the ancient evidence. Using Plutarch&#8217;s Life of Lycurgus (with the passages shown on-screen), I explain how Sparta understood itself: infant inspection and exposure, the collective upbringing of boys in the ag\u014dg\u0113, deliberate hunger and deprivation, enforced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,84,1526,7,5],"tags":[1527,31,374,1468,605,1151],"class_list":["post-100909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-government","category-greece","category-history","category-military","tag-ancientgreece","tag-army","tag-children","tag-seangabb","tag-slavery","tag-sparta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qfz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100910,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100909\/revisions\/100910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}