Ephebos

This page refers to the social group denoted by this term. For other uses, eg in sculpture, see Ephebos (disambiguation)

Ephebos (disambiguation)

In Antiquity, ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek word for an adolescent male.It may also refer to:...

.

Ephebos (ἔφηβος) (often in the plural epheboi), also anglicised as ephebe (plural: ephebes) or archaically ephebus (plural: ephebi), is a Greek

Greek language

Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...

 word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

.

Though the word can simply refer to the adolescent age of young men of training age, its main use is for the members, exclusively from that age group, of an official institution (ephebeia) that saw to building them into citizens, but especially training them as soldiers, sometimes already sent into the field; the Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...

 city state (polis

Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens...

) mainly depended, as the Roman republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a republican form of government. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, c...

 before Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman general and politician elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career...

' reform, on its militia of citizens for defence.

In Rome, where the elite (mainly Patrician) were often sent to Greece or received Greek teachers, the Greek word was adopted in the latinate form ephebus (pl.

This page refers to the social group denoted by this term. For other uses, eg in sculpture, see Ephebos (disambiguation)

Ephebos (disambiguation)

In Antiquity, ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek word for an adolescent male.It may also refer to:...

.

Ephebos (ἔφηβος) (often in the plural epheboi), also anglicised as ephebe (plural: ephebes) or archaically ephebus (plural: ephebi), is a Greek

Greek language

Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...

 word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

.

In Greece

Though the word can simply refer to the adolescent age of young men of training age, its main use is for the members, exclusively from that age group, of an official institution (ephebeia) that saw to building them into citizens, but especially training them as soldiers, sometimes already sent into the field; the Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...

 city state (polis

Polis

A polis -- plural: poleis --is a city, a city-state and also citizenship and body of citizens...

) mainly depended, as the Roman republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a republican form of government. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, c...

 before Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman general and politician elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career...

' reform, on its militia of citizens for defence.

In Rome

In Rome, where the elite (mainly Patrician) were often sent to Greece or received Greek teachers, the Greek word was adopted in the latinate form ephebus (pl. ephebi), and fixed at the 16–20 age bracket.

Ephebe

In Ancient Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece.-Geometric:The origins of Greek sculpture have been ascribed to the wooden cult statues described by Pausanias as xoana. No such statue survives, and the descriptions of them are frustratingly vague despite the fact that some were objects...

, an Ephebe is a sculptural type depicting a nude ephebos. (Archaic examples of the type are also often known as the kouros

Kouros

A kouros is the modern term given to those representations of male youths which first appear in the Archaic period in Greece. The term kouros, meaning youth, was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I...

 type, or kouroi in the plural.)

This typological name often occurs in the form "The X Ephebe", where X is the collection to which the object belongs or belonged, or the site on which it was found (eg the Agrigento Ephebe).

Sources and references

• Pauly-Wissowa
  Pauly-Wissowa
  The Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, commonly called the Pauly–Wissowa or simply RE, is a German encyclopedia of classical scholarship. With its supplements it comprises well over a hundred volumes....
  
  
• H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courètes : essai sur l'éducation spartiate et sur les rites d'adolescence dans l'Antiquité hellénique, Bibliothèque universitaire, Lille, 1939 ;
• C. Pélékidis, Éphébie : histoire de l'éphébie attique, des origines à 31 av. J.-C., éd. de Boccard, Paris, 1962 ;
• O. W. Reinmuth, The Ephebic Inscriptions of the Fourth Century B.C., Leiden Brill, Leyde, 1971 ;

• P. Vidal-Naquet, « Le Chasseur noir et l'origine de l'éphébie athénienne », Le Chasseur noir. Formes de pensée et formes de société dans le monde grec, Maspéro, 1981 ;
• U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Aristoteles: Aristoteles und Athen, 2 vol., Berlin, 1916.