Spartan Wolf

Lykos - The Wolf

Lykourgos - creator of the new order or mythical wolf-man?

I chose the name ‘Lykos’, partly as a nod towards Lykourgos (Lycurgus in modern spelling) the man who supposedly founded the system by which Spartans lived in the 5th Century BCE. In fact nothing for certain is known about him and many modern scholars doubt he existed at all! The name in Greek means ‘wolf-worker’ or possibly ‘someone who holds back wolves’ and it has been claimed that this name shows his quasi-religious or mythic roots. (The man-wolf had a long tradition in Greek folklore particularly in the northern Peloponnese.) One way or another, it seemed appropriate that my hero’s name should be an echo of this legendary figure so strongly associated with Sparta.

The Wolf-Pack Mentality 

I also chose the name as it seemed to fit my protagonist’s ambiguous situation.

Spartan elite male society was divided common messes (syssitia), fifteen or so members in each, living and sharing their food together. They probably fought alongside each other, as well as hunting together for recreation. The broad parallels with the communal behaviour of a wolf pack are obvious.

Lykos spends his boyhood in a similar pack of ‘cubs’ and feels destined to join an adult group in due course.  As a member of the pack he tries to conform but also to excel according to the shared understanding of what it means to be a Spartan elite warrior.

There is, however, a crucial difference between the Spartan mess and an actual wolf pack. A wolf pack is an extended family unit, including the young and the infirm, dominated by a breeding pair. The Spartan mess on the other hand, was a highly artificial construct of adult men only. This created a strong sense of solidarity and shared identity within the group but it must also have been conservative and inward looking.

The Lone Wolf

Unfortunately for Lykos, Spartan packs were exclusive, not inclusive and there was no place for the weak or disabled so that if he is not accepted into a mess,  Lykos must face the possibility of being a ‘lone wolf’, with all the modern connotations that the term implies - self-sufficiency and independence certainly, but also isolation and a loss of social identity.

In practical terms he would have to become one of the underclass of ‘inferiors’ or seek a new life outside Sparta altogether. Either choice would involve humiliation and a profound sense of shame. However, there is another side to this. By becoming an outsider he is freed from the rigid constraints of his upbringing and life within a mess. He can begin to gain a wider perspective of the world around him. For better or worse, he learns to see things differently.

If you enjoyed reading The Hidden Prince there are other titles in the Spartan Wolf series awaiting publication. Below are some brief summaries to whet the appetite.

Book 2 - A Persian Archer

On the death of his grandfather, Archidamos is set to assume royal power, but the general Pausanias has other ideas. Now seventeen years old, Lykos is forced to go undercover in an attempt to expose the general’s plot to overthrow the Spartan system and reduce Archidamos to little more than a puppet king. But first he needs to unravel the mystery of a Persian coin marked with a mysterious sign and he is soon caught up in a web of murder and intrigue.

Book 3 - Earthshaker

An earthquake brings massive destruction to Sparta. Archidamos struggles to cope with the immediate aftermath but his problems are only just beginning as the slaves threaten to revolt and Sparta’s neighbours seek to destroy the city once and for all. Lykos becomes the king’s advisor but their relationship remains uneasy and eventually he finds himself an outcast. There is now only one way for Lykos to save his city but it comes at terrible personal cost.

Book 4 - Paths of Atonement

Lykos seeks to atone for his crime against the gods by searching for a boy kidnapped during the earthquake. His quest takes him east across the Greek world into Persian territory where he has a taste of the luxury and the brutality of the most powerful people in the ancient world. On his return he finds the Spartans engaged in a siege of an impregnable Helot stronghold. Somehow he needs to help his king resolve the situation without loss of life on either side. But with Persian sympathisers, political enemies, and embittered rebels at his throat, a solution seems impossible.

Problems with the sources

“I am acutely aware that, so far, I have not given a description of the Spartan system of education; we know too little about the subject even to imagine being able to do this successfully.” 

So writes Jean Ducat in chapter 3 of his book Spartan Education: Youth & Society in the Classical Period.¹ Yet if you do a little research on the internet, it won’t take you long to find lots of detailed information about how it all worked. How can this be?

Well, essentially, the problem is that descriptions of the Spartan system mostly come from sources written long after the Classical period, and may actually be describing something that evolved when Sparta was already well into its decline. Imagine writing a story about a school in the 19th Century based on information about a 21st Century Comprehensive School - computers instead of quill pens, counselling instead of corporal punishment and science instead of lots and lots of Latin and Greek!

Of course, the process of evolution was likely to have been slower than that of education in modern times and it was certainly true that other Greeks were aware of the unusual nature of the Spartan educational system long before the period in which I have set my story. Therefore for the purposes of my book I have supposed that, broadly speaking, the system in the 5th Century BCE was the one described  by these later sources; that boys left their homes at the age of seven and lived communally, under the immediate supervision of older boys, with a ‘paidonomos’ appointed by the state in overall control.

A Broad Education

History has its fashions like anything else, and there has been a move away from viewing Spartan education as purely militaristic but rather as a more balanced social training. This makes sense. If nothing else, there is only so much drill you can do over a period of perhaps fifteen years, before you stop learning anything useful.

So there were lessons in writing and basic arithmetic, and singing and formal dancing had an important role in creating a sense of community and cohesion. Beyond that, it is hard to know. It is generally thought that they didn’t do weapon combat in the early years but fighting with sticks is such a part of every child’s instinctive behaviour that I can’t believe it wasn’t at least a game that they played. So I put that in. There were ball games too, apparently, but I resisted the temptation of including one in the book. I’d have had to have made up some rules, as few have come down to us!

Olympic Sports

Sparta had a lot of success in the early Olympic competitions before the events became dominated by professionals with specialised diets. I have supposed that there was a designated training area and that wrestling was done by all the boys. Specialised events such as javelin and long jump were probably not so generally practised and it is chance that allows my hero, Lykos, to have lessons in the javelin. Throwing or stabbing with hoplite combat weapons would not have required great specialist skill, just strength.

Survival Techniques 

The other aspect of Spartan education was self-reliance. According to ancient sources, Spartan boys were kept hungry and encouraged to steal to supplement their diet. If they were caught they were severely  punished. The practicalities of this has always worried me. For one thing, surely, you would want your future warriors to be strong and well-nourished? To keep them permanently half-starved doesn’t seem the most sensible plan. And how far could they travel to steal? The local farms would only have so much edible produce easily available, and then only at particular times of the year. No one is suggesting they went off into town to steal from the markets.

I have gone my own way on this, imagining that there were periods set aside from their general routine when boys were sent off into the countryside to fend for themselves, like a boy-scout expedition. Potentially dangerous, of course, but without too many significant risks, and offering just the sort of opportunity for self-reliance that was apparently prized by the Spartans.

I also invented the game with the strips of cloth and the helmet. It is the sort of team game that they might have played to build group identity and ingenuity, and, to be honest, it suited the story. (In the back of my mind I think there was something similar with strips of cloth in the ancient world. If anyone can throw any light on this, please get in touch!)

The Limitations of the System

All in all, Spartan education was relatively balanced, but still very narrow by modern standards. Even the Spartans themselves seem to have been aware that more was needed as there is evidence that wealthier parents gave their sons additional training.

But what of the outside world? That was the problem, of course, for the whole Spartan system. It created warriors, it created a cohesive system for the elite, but it was hermetically sealed. Once Spartans crossed their borders, the limitations of their world-view were exposed. Then they were too often blunt and unsympathetic, as well as corrupt.

If you want to delve a little deeper into Spartan education and the mentality it produced, try my next blog - Shame and Success in Spartan Culture.

And if you have any thoughts on this one, please get in touch!

¹Ducat, Jean, et al. Spartan education: Youth and Society in the Classical Period, Classical Press of Wales, 2006, JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvn9g2.14. Accessed 23 June 2026