In Athens one did not become a full citizen simply by growing older. Between childhood and adult life lay a period of passage with a precise name, the ephebeia, which in the fourth century BC took on a clear institutional form. It is one of the best-documented examples of a civic rite of passage in the ancient world.
Before the ephebeia: the festival of the Apaturia
Already in childhood the Athenian boy passed through ritual stages linked to the phratries, the ancient associations of families. During the autumn festival of the Apaturia, fathers presented their sons to the phratry; in adolescence, on a day called koureotis, the youth offered a lock of his hair and was received as a member. Cutting the hair was a gesture of separation from childhood.
Enrolment in the deme
At eighteen the young man was enrolled in the registers of his deme, the territorial district. Aristotle, in the Constitution of the Athenians, describes the procedure: the members of the deme voted under oath to verify that the candidate had reached the required age and was born free and of legitimate parents. If the outcome was negative, an appeal to the court was possible.
The organisation described by Aristotle
After enrolment, two years of service began. According to Aristotle, each tribe elected a sophronistes, a supervisor of conduct, and the people elected a kosmetes in charge of all the ephebes.
The first year
The ephebes served as a garrison in the Piraeus, in the forts of Munichia and Akte. They received military training: hoplite combat, archery, javelin throwing, use of the catapult. They ate together, organised by tribe.
The public display
At the end of the first year the ephebes demonstrated their skills before the people assembled in the theatre. They then received from the state a shield and a spear: a true rite of handing over, marking their new role.
The second year
In the second year they patrolled the territory of Attica and manned the border posts. During this period they were exempt from taxes and could neither bring lawsuits nor be sued, except in particular cases such as inheritance. They lived, in a sense, suspended between private life and full citizenship.
The ephebic oath
The text of the oath has come down to us through literature, quoted by the orator Lycurgus, and above all thanks to a fourth-century BC stele found at Acharnae in Attica. The young man promised, among other things:
- not to disgrace the sacred arms and not to abandon the comrade beside whom he stood in the line;
- to defend things sacred and profane;
- to leave the fatherland not diminished but greater and stronger;
- to obey the magistrates and the established laws.
Numerous deities were invoked as witnesses, including Aglauros, Hestia, Ares, Athena Areia, Zeus and Heracles, and then, in a very concrete formula, the boundaries of the fatherland, wheat, barley, vines, olives and figs. The land itself became guarantor of the pledge.
A fourth-century reform
The form described by Aristotle is usually linked to the reforms attributed to Lycurgus in the years following the defeat at Chaeronea in 338 BC. Earlier forms of youth training may have existed, but the two-year, state-regulated organisation is clearly documented from that period.
In the Hellenistic age the ephebeia changed character: it became voluntary, shorter and attended mainly by young men from wealthy families. Alongside military exercises, gymnastics, letters and philosophy gained ground, and foreigners were also admitted.
The anthropological reading
The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, in a famous essay entitled The Black Hunter, proposed reading the ephebeia as a liminal phase. The ephebe lived on the borders of the territory, fought with light weapons and ambush tactics, that is, in a way opposite to the model of the hoplite drawn up on the plain. He was, symbolically, the reverse of the mature citizen: only by passing through this condition could he become one.
The pattern of rites of passage is easy to recognise:
- separation: enrolment, detachment from family, communal life;
- margin: service on the borders, suspended legal condition;
- aggregation: handing over of arms, entry into political life.
In short
- The ephebeia was the period of passage between adolescence and full citizenship in Athens.
- At eighteen the young man was enrolled in the deme after a formal check.
- Aristotle describes two years of service: garrison in the Piraeus and patrol of the borders.
- The ephebic oath invoked gods, boundaries and fruits of the earth as witnesses.
- In the Hellenistic age the institution became voluntary and more cultural.
