Were Spartan Boys Whipped to Death?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36991/PHILIA.202302Abstract
During the Roman period, the whipping contest at the altar of Artemis Orthia at-tracted numerous visitors who flocked to Sparta in order to witness the spectacle of young boys being whipped till the blood flowed, the last boy standing being declared the winner. Among the visitors was Plutarch who in his biography of the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus re-lates how he has seen boys dying under the whip at Artemis’ altar. Cicero, too, has witnessed the whipping contest and has been told that from time to time, boys die during the flagella-tion. Most modern scholars have accepted these accounts as statements of fact. From the writings of Pausanias and Philostratus, however, it would appear that deaths in connection with the endurance contest were not a common occurrence. Furthermore, a comparison with more recent and better documented examples of fatalities due to excessive whipping reveals that death would not occur in the manner described by Plutarch, but hours or days later.
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