Paedonomus
παιδονόμος
Paedonomus (παιδονόμος) was a magistrate at Sparta (and in some other Doric states) who had the general superintendence of the education of boys, which in Doric states was concerned with little else besides bodily training [LUDUS LITTERARIUS p. 94]. His office was honourable; the appointment by election. He had control over the discipline and moral conduct of the boys, at Sparta after the age of 7; he inspected them and punished those who were negligent or disobedient. For this purpose μαστιγοφόροι were assigned to him by Lycurgus. The more immediate inspection of the gymnastic exercises belonged to magistrates called βιδιαῖοι or βιδέοι [BIDIAEI]. In Crete also we find παιδονόμοι (Strabo x. p.483; Schömann, Antiq. p. 303), but boys there did not come completely under their control till the age of 17. At Teos (see inscriptions in Gilbert, Staatsalterth. 2.338), the παιδονόμος shared with the γυμνασίαρχος the charge of education. (Xen. Rep. Lac. 2.2, 3.10, 4.6; Plut. Lyc. 17; Krause, Gymnastik u. Agon. pp. 254, 677; Gilbert, op. cit. 1.67.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.