Sport and Society in Sparta

Abstract

This chapter discusses what is known about Spartan sport and considers the role of sport in Spartan society. Sport fostered cohesive social relations among Sparta's male citizens and in that way contributed meaningfully to maintaining the remarkable political stability that characterized Sparta for more than four hundred years. In the Classical period, Sparta was one of the most powerful states in the Greek world. The chapter explains how a boy from a Spartiate family would have been introduced to sport and how he might have pursued it as he got older. Sport and choral dancing helped produce a Spartan citizen body that was unusually cohesive because these activities inculcated norms that prioritized the interests of the group over those of the individual, taught Spartiates to think and act as members of a collectivity, and helped made them readily obedient to rules and authority figures.

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