Education in the "agoge" served as a great equalizer in Sparta. Men were meant to compete in athletics and in battle. Spartans who became kings, diplomats or generals would also improve the rhetoric, reading, and writing skills necessary for their positions. How the majority of the population of citizen male Spartans became literate, or whether they were literate at all, is not well known. However, in his "Sayings of Spartan Women", Plutarch references correspondence kept between mothers and sons at war, which suggests some degree of literacy.