Este trabalho investigou características sócio-demográficas e vocacionais em 59 alunos de baixa renda, de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 16 e 48 anos. A maioria já prestou vestibular e tem escolha profissional definida. Os alunos relatam possuir pouca informação sobre profissões, processo de escol..

Classical Sparta is an enigma in many ways, but for ancient and contemporary political theorists it is especially intriguing insofar as its politeia (or its educational/political/social system or “constitution”) produced a city-state that was both the hegemon of all other Greek city-states, for instance during the 5th century Persians wars, but was also ignobly defeated by Thebes at the battle of Leuctra in 371, slightly more than a century later, after which its hegemony collapsed and its subject population of (...) helots won a war of emancipation. How did Sparta field citizen-soldiers in the 5th century who were without parallel in their bravery and military prowess? And why did Sparta, perhaps under the same politeia, collapse just over a century later? Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch searched for answers to such questions in the Spartan public educational program, its mixed constitutions, and its apparently militaristic goal and orientation. Such 4th century intellectuals (and Plutarch, writing in the 1st century CE) debated whether Sparta’s collapse was the result of deep-rooted problems within its Lycurgan constitution or in Sparta’s subsequent departure from that constitution; there also is significant debate concerning the education and roles of women within Spartan society. (shrink)

The article traces the reflections found in the Hellenika on the theme of Athens/Sparta bipolarity, with the intention of illustrating Xenophon's interest in this international arrangement of the Greek world and of emphasizing its repercussions in Xenophon’s historiographical project.

In 404 Sparta stood supreme, militarily and politically master of Greece, in concord with Persia. By 362, the year at which Xenophon terminated his history on the sad note of ‘even greater confusion and uncertainty’, she was eclipsed militarily, never to win a great battle again; and so far from being master even of the Peloponnese that she would spend the rest of time struggling to recover her own ancestral domain of Messenia, no longer a world power, merely a (...) local wrangler. The reasons for all this which are to seek are of absorbing interest and prime importance for the history of Greece, but it is hard to resist the temptation to connect the change with the policies of Agesilaus whose reign virtually coincided with the period in question. He was king for forty-one years and over thirty of them well before the battle of Leuctra and he had influence in the state unequalled as far as we can tell by any other king. (shrink)

In CQ n.s. 26 . 62–84 I argued that the defeat of Sparta in 371 B.C. was not due to the pursuit of unwise policies towards the other Greek states. Unwise policies there had been. Sparta being by no means superior to Athens in the formulation of foreign policy, but these did not affect the position on the eve of Leuctra when, with Thebes politically isolated, and with some of the Boeotians disaffected, Cieombrotus at the head of a (...) numerically superior Spartan and allied army was poised for the, destruction of Theban power; a triumph of policy it must have seemed. Sparta failed for military reasons. Her army was unequal to the military genius of Epaminondas. (shrink)

According to the International Relations theory known as Realism, interstate interactions, whether ancient or modern, are motivated by the pursuit of hegemony of individual states, which act as monolithic groups in articulating their foreign policy decisions. The application of Realism to the study of Spartan foreign policy in the third century BC shows the validity of this theory in explaining certain aspects of ancient interstate interactions, as illustrated by the two alliances discussed in this article. The first, earlier alliance, between (...) King of Macedonia Antigonos Gonatas and Sparta and some Peloponnesian cities, was made in response to the threat posed by King Pyrrhus of Epirus who was set on conquering them. The later alliance, between Sparta and other states, was made to stop the ambitions of King Antigonos Gonatas who controlled many cities of the Peloponnese and sought to conquer the whole of Greece. In forging such alliances, according to the Realist view, the states acted as large monolithic groups, yet a broader assessment of the available evidence shows the presence of smaller, subtler networks of individuals, which were paramount in articulating important foreign policy decisions. The comparison of Spartan decision making with the activation in 2009 of the EU’s Solidarity Clause, included in Article 222 of The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), indicates that the activation of this clause too required the consensus of several European governing bodies. By bringing to light the critical role played by smaller networks of power in foreign policy decision making in the ancient and the current-day EU alliances, this article exposes both the merits and the limits of the Realist international relations theory. (shrink)

In the first book of his History Thucydides shows ‘the Spartans and the Allies’, to give the Peloponnesian League its formal title, making the decision that Athens had broken the Thirty Years Peace. After receiving the complaints of various allies, the Spartans discussed in the assembly the conduct of Athens and what should be done about it and ended by voting that the treaty had been broken and that the Athenians were in the wrong . This decision they communicated to (...) the allies who had come complaining, and declared that they wished to summon all the allies and submit it to the vote, ‘in order that after general consultation they might make war, should it so seem good“ . Then, after the Excursus on the Pentekontaetia, Thucydides records the congress of the League in which the Spartans put to the vote whether it was necessary to go to war and the majority voted for war . Thus Sparta proposed and the allies disposed. (shrink)

Among the objects discovered in the excavation of the temple of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta is a small bronze figure of a trumpeter . Mr. Dickins, who says that the figure ‘can be dated without hesitation in the middle of the fifth century,’ regards ‘the presence of a trumpeter as a dedication in Sparta as perplexing, because the Spartans marched to battle to the sound of flutes, and made no use of trumpets for martial music’. This is, I (...) think, the view generally held. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a possible reason for the dedication of the trumpeter at the date, which the style of the work suggests. (shrink)

The relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States seems to embody most fully the type of the ‘special relationship’ today. It is a relationship founded ultimately on biological kinship, structured by mutual economic and strategic interests and cemented by a sense of political and ‘spiritual’ affinity. At least the broad contours of such contemporary ‘special relationships’ are sufficiently clear. This is far from being the case with those of the Archaic and Classical Greek world, for two main reasons. (...) First, and more decisively, our sources for the history of that world – literary, epigraphical, archaeological – are normally scrappy, discontinuous and variously slanted. Second, and only in part because of the nature of the evidence, the workings of all ancient Greek interstate relationships, whether ‘special’ or not, are in principle controversial. For in the absence of governments and parties in the modern sense it is frequently impossible to explain confidently a particular foreign policy decision taken by a Greek state. A fortiori it is in principle even more difficult to describe and account for ‘special’ relationships between states that apparently transcended purely immediate, local and narrowly self-interested considerations. (shrink)

Spartan institutions were pictured as a model of political stability from the Classical period onwards. The so-called Spartan ‘mirage’ did not involve only its constitutional order but also social and economic institutions. Xenophon begins hisConstitution of the Lacedaemoniansby associating Spartan fame with thepoliteiaset up by Lycurgus, which made the Laconian city the most powerful (δυνατωτάτη) and famous (ὀνομαστοτάτη)polisin Greece (Xen.Lac.1.1). In Aristotle'sPolitics, in which the assessment of Sparta is more complex and nuanced, one finds a critique of contemporary Spartan (...) institutions as well as praise for Lycurgus as a great lawgiver who established the laws of Sparta (Arist.Pol.2.1269a69, 2.1273b20). Most other ancient sources often remark upon the unchangeable features of some Spartan institutions as a key aspect of Spartan εὐνομία. Thucydides maintains that, after a long period of war andstasis, the Dorians established excellent laws and Sparta employed the same constitution for more than four hundred years (Thuc. 1.18.1: τετρακόσια καὶ ὀλίγῳ πλείω ἐς τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου ἀφ᾽ οὗ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῇ αὐτῇ πολιτείᾳ χρῶνται). (shrink)

Xenophon of Athens has long been considered an uncritical admirer of Sparta who hero-worships the Spartan King Agesilaus and eulogises Spartan practices in his Lacedaimoniôn Politeia. By examining his own self-descriptions - especially where he portrays himself as conversing with Socrates and falling short in his appreciation of Socrates' advice - this book finds in Xenophon's overall writing project a Socratic response to his exile and situates his writings about Sparta within this framework. It presents a detailed reading (...) of the Lacedaimoniôn Politeia as a critical and philosophical examination of Spartan socio-cultural practices. Evidence from his own Hellenica, Anabasis and Agesilaus is shown to confirm Xenophon's analysis of the weaknesses in the Spartan system, and that he is not enamoured of Agesilaus. Finally, a comparison with contemporary Athenian responses to Sparta, shows remarkable points of convergence with his fellow Socratic Plato, as well as connections with Isocrates too. (shrink)

As Sparta was a Dorian polis, many of its heroic cults have been interpreted as part of Sparta’s so-called ‘Achaian’ policy, which introduced Achaian heroes in order to legitimise its territorial claims in the Peloponnese. This article reviews the topic of ethnicity as a motivating factor behind the instigation of hero-cults in the Greek world. It focuses on three case studies in Sparta: the cult of Agamemnon, the transfer of the bones of Orestes, and of those belonging (...) to his son Teisamenos. By examining the evidence within Greek religious tradition and by placing it in its historical context, I challenge the persisting views associated with the cults of these heroes. In turn, I argue that Sparta worshiped these heroes because they were traditionally local and their foundation was not driven by any ethnic consideration. I emphasise how there has been a scholarly tendency to overuse political interpretation in the understanding of these cults, while their religious significance has been frequently neglected. (shrink)

The article which was published for the first and single time in 1939, is the starting point of Leo Strauss’ “esoteric” scholarship. While devoted to the investigation of Xenophon’s treatise called Constitution of the Lacedemonians the article, using it as an example, shows reasons, techniques, and the meaning of writing “between the lines”. Strauss sequentially shows how Xenophon hides his critique of the Spartan constitution behind the facade of an encomium. But what may be even more important, in the piece (...) Strauss clearly tries to overcome the established 19th-century view that Xenophon was a mediocre and charged with laconophilia historian; he tries to reinstate Xenophon’s position as that of a serious thinker: a Socratic philosopher. He shows how meticulously Xenophon studies the Spartan constitution and that this apparently very successful and very stable regime, in fact, deserves serious politico-philosophic critique. Thereby he partially reveals the essence of classical political philosophy to careful readers. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss at greater length two problems raised by Mr. D. J. Mosley towards the end of his discussion of the Athenian Embassy to Sparta in 371 published in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society N.s. viii, 41 ff. The first of these problems concerns the policy pursued by Callistratus at this peace-conference, the second the effect on their audience of the divergent speeches of three of the Athenian ambassadors, Callias, Autocles, and Callistratus, (...) which Xenophon reports. (shrink)

This book explores the contradictory images of the Spartan polis presented in the work of Isocrates. Countering the belief that presentation is always subordinate to rhetorical persuasion, the author shows that Isocrates actually presented different types of argumentation. Isocrates distanced himself from many arguments, calling for a discourse based on morality. His work is a critical commentary on the rhetorical practices of his times.

Plutarch, in hisApophthegmata Laconica(Ages. 25 =mor.210d), records that the Thasians made an offer of divine honours to king Agesilaus, and that Agesilaus ostentatiously refused them. In the past, most scholars who have had occasion to comment on this anecdote have not doubted the veracity either of the report or of the language in which it is expressed. The situation, however, has now reversed itself. The currentcommunis opiniois the contention of Chr. Habicht that the story is an invention of the Hellenistic (...) or early imperial period and was intended to be a criticism of contemporary practices. The purpose of this note is threefold: to demonstrate that the anecdote derives from Theopompus'Hellenica, that it has a basis in historical fact, and that the incident thus narrated had far-reaching social and political consequences. (shrink)