EDUCATED AND ECONOMICALLY EMPOWERED
In no other Greek city-state did women
enjoy the same freedom and status as Spartan
Only in Sparta did women possess
economic power and influence.
Only in Sparta did girls engage in sports and
receive public education – in other city-states, most women
were completely illiterate.
Scandalized observers from other Greek
cities commented that not only did Spartan women have opinions, they
were not afraid to voice them in public; and worse still –
their husbands listened to them!
status of women in most of the Greek world, and particularly in Athens,
was similar to the status of women under the Taliban today.
Wives were acquired strictly for the purpose of the production of
legitimate heirs, and sexual pleasure was sought from boys, slaves, and
prostitutes (who were also unfree) in explicitly lopsided relationships
in which the free, adult male dominated and demeaned the object of his
sexual attentions. The wives and daughters of citizens were
excluded from all public and intellectual activities, were kept inside
behind locked doors, and were not allowed to exercise or eat as well as
their brothers or husbands. Women could not inherit or own
property, and it was not considered wise to educate them.
is against the backdrop of
this essentially misogynous world, where women were deemed "a curse to
mankind" and "a plague worse than fire or any viper" (Euripides), that
the status of Spartan women must be judged. Spartan women
were not as free as modern women. Their primary role in
society was that of wives and mothers. Their fathers chose
their husbands for them, and they were honored most for producing
sons. They did not have the right to vote (but then they
weren't expected to spend forty years in the army, either), and they
could not be elected to public office. Nevertheless, they
enjoyed status and rights that were exceptional in ancient Greece and
were the scandal of the ancient world.
The greater freedom and status of Spartan women
began at birth.
Sparta's laws required female infants and children to be
given the same care and food as their brothers – in contrast
to other Greek cities, where girls were more likely to be exposed
(rejected and killed) at birth, were fed on a less nutritious diet than
their brothers, and were prevented from getting exercise or even fresh
Furthermore, like their brothers, Spartan girls attended the public
school, although for a shorter period of time than the boys.
At school they were allowed and encouraged to engage in
sports. But, as Plato points out in his Protagoras (342d),
this education was not purely physical. On the contrary, in
Sparta "not only men but also women pride themselves on their
intellectual culture." This was more than mere literacy: it
was systematic education in rhetoric and philosophical thought.
When girls reached sexual maturity, they were not rushed – as
were their sisters throughout the rest of the ancient world –
into marriage, thereby suffering psychological and physical injury from
premature sex and
frequently dying early in childbed. On the contrary, the
Spartan laws explicitly advocated marrying girls only after they had
reached an age to "enjoy sex." The reasoning was simple: for
young girls not yet psychologically ready for sexual intimacy, sex was
an "act of violence." It is highly significant that Spartans
condemned violence inside marriage, and understood that sex with a
child is abusive. Nor were Spartan girls married to much
older men, as was usual in other Greek cities. It is estimated that
most Spartan wives were only four to five years younger than their
husbands. The fact that much of Sparta's concern
was for the production of healthy children does not detract from the
fact that the laws protected girls from early marriage. All Greek
marriages were for procreation, but in other cities men were willing to
accept the inevitable higher death rates and other physical
consequences of forcing sex on young girls for the sake of indulging
their own preference for sex with children. (For more details, see the
essay on Sexuality.)
Because Sparta's male citizens
were required to devote their lives to the military and other forms of
public service, Sparta's matrons ran the estates of their husbands.
This meant that Spartan wives controlled the family wealth
– and, in effect, the entire Spartan agricultural economy.
(Trade and manufacturing were in the hands of the perioikoi –
see the essay on Economy.)
A Spartan citizen was dependent on his wife's efficiency to
pay his dues to his dining club and his son's agoge fees.
This economic power is in particularly sharp contrast to cities such as
Athens, where it was illegal for a woman to control more money than she
needed to buy a bushel of grain. (An excellent article on how Spartan
women's economic power gave them status is provided by Maria
Dettenhofer in "Die Frauen von Sparta", in Reine Maennersache?
(Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1996).)
What was more: Spartan women could inherit and so transfer
wealth. Athenian women, by contrast, were never heiresses:
all property passed to the next male kinsman, who might at most be
required to marry the heiress in order to claim the inheritance
– an arrangement that often led men to discard their previous
wife, although she was blameless, just to get their hands on the
inheritance of a kinsman. Economic power has always had the
concomitant effect of increasing status. This is clearly
evidenced by contemporary descriptions of Spartan women. They
were "notorious" for having opinions ("even on political matters"!) and
– what was clearly worse from the perspective of other Greek
men – "their husbands listened to them"! Aristotle
claimed that Spartan men were "ruled by their wives" – and
cited the freedom of Spartan women as one of two reasons why the
Spartan constitution was reprehensible. (For a comparison of
women's legal status in Sparta to that in other city-states, see
Raphael Sealey, Women
and Law in Classical Greece (University of North Carolina
Press, Chapel Hill, 1990), or Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece
(British Museum Press, London, 1995).)
In a frequently quoted incident, the wife of King Leonidas was asked
why Spartan women were the only women in Greece who "ruled" their
husbands. Gorgo replied,
"Because we are the only women who give birth to men." In
other words, only men with the self-confidence to accept women as
equals were men at all.
Lastly, it is a frequent misconception that Spartan society was blatantly homosexual. Curiously, no contemporary source and no
archaeological evidence support this widespread assumption.
The best ancient source on Sparta, Xenophon, explicitly
denies the already common rumors about widespread pederasty.
Aristotle noted that the power of women in Sparta was typical
of all militaristic and warlike societies without a strong emphasis on
male homosexuality – arguing that in Sparta this
"positive" moderating factor on the role of women in society was
absent. There is no Spartan/Laconian pottery with explicitly homosexual
motifs – as there is from Athens and Corinth and other
cities. The first recorded heterosexual love poem was written
by a Spartan poet for Spartan maidens. The very fact that
Spartan men tended to marry young by ancient Greek standards (in their
early to mid-twenties) suggests they had less time for the homosexual
love affairs that characterized early manhood in the rest of Greece.
Certainly the Spartan state considered bachelorhood a
disgrace, and a citizen who did not marry and produce future citizens
enjoyed less status than a man who had fathered children. In
no other ancient Greek city were women so well integrated into society.
All this speaks against a society in which homosexuality
was institutionalized or predominant. (For more
details, see the essay on Sexuality.)
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