g up in a race which for countless years had prized physical prowess and spiritual harmony as the highest good attainable by man, and which had striven by grave and ceaseless rivalry, by exertion involving the utmost energies of mind and body alike, to bring those qualities to the greatest possible perfection.
Men who loved the possessors of those enviable qualities were moved by an ideal, the love for areté. Lovers who were bound by the male Eros [the God of Romantic Passion] were guarded by a deeper sense of honour from committing any base action, and were driven by a nobler impulse in attempting any honourable deed.
The Spartan state deliberately made Eros [male-male love] a factor, and an important factor, in its agogé.
See also Areté, Agon, Athlos, Natural male sex aggression, Warrior Altruism, Warrior Ethos, Fidelity, Heroes, Heroic Man2Man, and Heroic Love.
And AGOGE: The Spear-points of Young Men Blossom There.
And seven other articles in the AGOGE series, listed in the Heroes Site Guide.
Plus!! -- The Secret Craft of Warriorhood.