“With reference to the source below from Plutarch and other evidence, asses the accuracy of the modern portrayal of the agoge in films such as “300”.

The Spartan education system for boys consisting of rigorous training is known as the ‘agoge’. The people of Sparta have been interpreted as very violent and warrior like and a fierce and brutal society has since been represented in modern times due to the portrayal of Spartans in graphic films such as “300” and “Spartacus”.
Zack Snyder’s “300” depicts the young boy’s process of training to become a man and Spartan citizen to then the harsh brutality of fighting and war. As the movie is shaped on the comic series “300” by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley in 1998, the film recounts a fictionalized …show more content…
They also mention the historical figure Lycurgus that created this harsh system of the ‘agoge’ where boys were taken away from their families at the age of seven to train to become a soldier. The ‘great law-giver’ Lycurgus, although there is great amount of disagreement as to whether Lycurgus was a real historical person or a mythical figure, his legacy and laws continued on for years.
Spartans are again shown to be full of brutality in the book “Horrible Histories: The Groovy Greeks and The Rotten Romans” by authors Terry Deary and Martin Brown. The facts presented in the book are dramatized and exaggerated giving an inaccurate portrayal of the Spartan agoge with only limited reliable information.
Plutarch’s source is somewhat reliable as it reveals the different stages of the agoge in his writing on Sparta “Lycurgus”. Although Plutarch is a Greek writer, he is not a historian and therefore there are issues involving the reliability of his sources as he is writing “lives not histories” as a biographer. Subsequently, because his work was written many years after the Spartan society he is writing about, this source is not completely reliable however, Plutarch has provided a great insight towards Lycurgus and the Spartan