Page "Sparta" Paragraph 67

There is some evidence that in late-Classical and Hellenistic Sparta boys were expected to take an older male mentor, usually an unmarried young man.

However, there is no evidence of this in archaic Sparta.

According to some sources, the older man was expected to function as a kind of substitute father and role model to his junior partner ; however, others believe it was reasonably certain that they had sexual relations ( the exact nature of Spartan pederasty is not entirely clear ).

It is notable, however, that the only contemporary source with direct experience of the agoge, Xenophon, explicitly denies the sexual nature of the relationship