H.I. Marrou’s A History of Education in Antiquity, Part III (Ad Navseam, Episode 135)

Ad Navseam

This episode is part 3 of the guys’ walk-through of Marrou’s seminal book on education in antiquity. We pick up where the last episode left off with a wrap-up of ancient Spartan education and a look at several questions: What caused Spartan artistic culture to (fairly quickly) calcify and disappear? To what degree can we actually know what Spartan education was, given that so much of our information is filtered through the so-called “Spartan Mirage” loved by Athenian aristocrats? Then we turn our attention to the delicate matter of the role of pederasty or “Greek Love” in ancient education, not out of any salacious or prurient motive but because—to paraphrase Xenophon—any discussion of ancient Greek education would be incomplete without tackling this subject.