Paideia and Polis: The Ephebate and Citizen Training

Bull-lifting was a form of collective ritual action in which a group of young men placed a bull on their shoulders and, standing before an altar, ritually killed and offered it to a god or gods. While receiving scant attention in the literature, scholars have regarded bull-lifting as having a special association with ephebes, newly enrolled eighteen and nineteen year old citizens undergoing military training. Ephebes, they claim, lifted bulls at altars as a maturation or initiation ritual.

Years ago, Sterling Dow determined that Athenians who appeared next to one another with the same patronymic in ephebic lists were not true twins but brothers born close in time, commenting 'of course the presence of non-twins in even one list proves that at a very early period the age-limit was altered. Brothers served together as (full) epheboi' (TAPA 91 [1960] 391). Although Dow's insight has been commonly accepted, its implications have not yet been explored.

The aim of this paper is to examine the history of the Athenian ephebeia for the last quarter of the fourth century B.C. It argues, contrary to the prevailing view (e.g. Pélékidis 1962; Reinmuth 1971), that the formal ephebic institution as described in Chapter 42 of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia ceased to function during the oligarchy of Phocion (322/1-319/8 B.C.) and the regime of Demetrius of Phalerum (317/6-307/6 B.C.).

The Athenian ephebeia was a multi-faceted institution, serving a variety of functions. Vidal-Naquet famously drew attention to its role as initiation ritual (Vidal-Naquet, 1981).