The Spartan Regime by Paul Anthony Rahe

Author:Paul Anthony Rahe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2016-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

Appendix 2

The Néoι at Sparta

WITHIN the ordinary Greek city, it was customary to refer to those under thirty as hoι néoι, “the young men” (Xen. Mem. 1.2.35; Polyb. 4.20.7); and we know that, at Sparta, those under that age were subject to special restrictions: Plut. Lyc. 25.1. This has led scholars to presume that the néoι referred to at Plut. Lyc. 15.7–8 are Spartiates in their twenties.1 However, in classifying citizens among the youth [neótēs], as in so many other things, Sparta appears to have been an exception to the rule.2 Xenophon’s assertion (Ages. 1.6) that Agesilaus was “still young [étι néos]” when he became king in about 400 would otherwise make no sense given the fact (Hell. 5.4.13) that he was over sixty in 379 and well into his eighties and had been king for more than forty years when he died in or shortly after 360 (Ages. 2.28; Plut. Ages. 36.3, 40.3). This peculiar technical use of the term néos and its cognates by the Spartans almost certainly underlies the report which Diodorus (13.76.2) drew on in claiming that Kallikratidas was quite young [néos] when he became navarch in 407/406; and Plutarch (Lyc. 22.1–6) clearly uses these terms in this fashion as well. The néoι or, as they are sometimes (e.g., Xen. Hell. 3.3.8–9) called, the neteroι appear to have been distinguished from the presbúteroι of classical Sparta in much the same fashion as the iuniores were distinguished from the seniores of ancient Rome. The fact, then, that all the men under forty-five slept with their tent-mates helps explain why so many Greeks looked on Sparta as an armed camp. If the comparative data gathered by ethnologists are any guide, Henri Jeanmaire may be correct in arguing that the young men of a set of sussιtía shared sleeping quarters.3 This would, in any case, stand to reason. Not all of the fifteen or so men who belonged to a particular mess will have been under forty-five, and the remainder will have spent their nights at home. It is conceivable, but, I think, improbable that a man graduated from the néoι when he reached the age of fifty (rather than forty-five).4

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