thebrotherhood

The Brotherhood is one of a series of small paintings inspired by Greek history and mythology. The concept and composition while executed in a more modern context still reflects the influence of early Greek vase painting; color, flatness and repetition of simple almost geometric forms have their origins in ancient artistic representations.

Sparta was a militarist state that maintained high physical standards in their population and from their earliest days of the Spartan citizen, the claim on his life by the state was absolute and strictly enforced. Soon after birth, the mother of a child bathed it in wine. If the child was strong and it survived it was brought before the elders and they decided whether it was to be reared or not. Those that were defective or weak were left on the wild mountain slopes to die or cast into the sea. Some would be trained as a slave (a helot).

Babies both boys and girls who passed this examination were educated at home until the age of seven. Then they were sent off to boarding schools where the state took over their official training. They were assigned membership in a brotherhood or sisterhood, usually the same one to which their father or mother belonged.

Spartans believed in a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity and education was to produce a well-drilled, well-disciplined marching army loyal to the state.

The boys were placed under the supervision of an official called the Paidonomos (literally, the "Boy-Herd"!), whose job it was to oversee their training. They lived, trained and slept in the barracks of their brotherhood and were taught skills necessary to be a soldier. Although students were also taught to read and write, those skills were not very important to the ancient Spartans. Their concept of education focused on discipline, national pride, physical fitness, and on inuring the boys to all forms of deprivation and suffering. Training was very hard and often painful. To make them strong they marched without shoes and it was not unusual for some to die from exposure starvation and physical abuse.

On winter nights, the boys slept outdoors with only a single cloak, issued each year, to keep them warm. For food they were expected to forage in the countryside, stealing what they couldn't hunt; a skill needed soldiers in the ancient world.

Both boys and girls learned music and dance, which for the Spartans had military applications. They were also were a pious people and performed complicated corral dances in the nude during the frequent religious festivals.

One such ritual was the Gymnopaedia, a yearly male coming-of-age initiation, linked to a warrior victory celebration. With an audience restricted to married men, naked boys danced in armor keeping time to a drum and the rhythmic stamping of their feet. These dances gave them the means to perfect unison of movement and their physical forms.

Spartan citizenship was inherited by blood and Sparta therefore faced the problem of having a helot slave population vastly outnumbering its citizens. In their late teens the most promising young Spartans roamed the countryside in what were literally "adolescent death squads." Their job was to intimidate and kill helots at night in order to instill fear in the slave population and prevent rebellion. By the time they reached full maturity Spartan men, those that survived, were cruel, heartless murderers, above the law and intent on enforcing the absolute power of the state. By the 4th century BC, Sparta was the most powerful nation in all of Greece

The Spartan Army remained the finest fighting force in the Greek world for three hundred years. Yet, while the Spartans developed one of the most formidable military organizations in the ancient world, perhaps in all of history, they never influenced western civilization to the extent as did the Athenians. Athens did have a strong army and emphasized athleticism in preparation for war but it also it also prepared their boys for peace with instruction in philosophy, politics, literature dram, art and music.

Serious study of ancient Greece always must address the fact the Spartans believed that the education of the ruling class was thus founded on the love of an older, accomplished aristocrat for an adolescent boy and essential to his formation as a free citizen.

Many ancient writers including Plutarch and Plato held that this love was chaste, though still erotic. Plato states that it was as unthinkable for a lover to sexually consummate a relationship with his beloved as for a father to do so with his own son. Aelian goes even farther, stating that if any couple succumbed to temptation and indulged in carnal relations, they would have to redeem the affront to the honor of Sparta by either going into exile or taking their own lives. Still the alleged sexual indulgence of Spartan pederasty was a running gag in the repertoire of Athenian comedians although it is not clear to what extent the Athenian term “Lacedaemonian way” taking on the meaning of "to sodomize." is a reflection of the enmity between Athens and Sparta.

We know very little about Spartan culture because it was a secret society that had no historical records, literature, or few written laws. The term "Spartan" still remains synonymous for anyone rigorously self-disciplined or courageous in the face of pain, danger, or adversity.

According to Byzantine sources, some parts of the Laconian region around Sparta remained pagan until well into the 10th century AD, and Doric-speaking populations survive until today.

Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first racially pure state, and, praised its primitive eugenics practice of selective infanticide policy which was applied on deformed children.

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