SPARTAN WOMEN

(Majority of notes taken from Antiquity 3)

(There are some questions to be done at the end but you should also summarise the information)
Spartiate women played important roles in their society as the bearers of children, the mothers of
warriors, as heiresses and managers of estates. Helot women performed vital domestic and agricultural
functions.
The female voice of Sparta is not heard. Xenophon is perhaps our most reliable written source, as he
actually spent some time in Sparta in the late 5th and early 4th century BC. His evidence is therefore
contemporary but biased because of his great admiration for the Spartans. Aristotle, writing in the 4th
century BC, was highly critical of Spartan society. Plutarch wrote in the first century AD, 500 years after
the relevant period.
Sparta was a rigidly organised society, the main purpose of which was to maintain military dominance.
Everything in Spartan society, including the role of women, served this military end. Spartiate women had
considerably more freedom than the women of Athens, which naturally shocked and alarmed some of the
ancient writers. Spartan womenwere encouraged to play an active social role.
Spartan mothers
The main function of upper-class Spartan women, however, was strikingly similar to that of their
Athenian sistersto be wives and mothers of citizens. Xenophon, in his explanation of the Spartan
constitution, noted that for the Spartiate or free woman, child bearing was the most important function (I,
4). Just as a Spartan mans life revolved around being a soldier, so too, the Spartan woman was educated
to be the proper mother of warriors in a warrior state.
Children in Sparta did not belong to their families but were possessions of the state.
Child-rearing practices in Sparta were a little unusual, yet they seem to have been valued. Spartan women
in the classical period achieved a great reputation as wet-nurses and were highly sought after, particularly
in Athens, as nannies.
As a woman was burying her son, a worthless old crone came up to her and sai& You
poor woman, what a misfortune! No, by the two gods, a piece of good fortune, she
replied, because I bore him so that he might die for Sparta, and that is what has
happened.
When an Ionian woman was priding herself on one of the tapestries she had made
(which was indeed of great value), a Spartan woman showed off herfour most du4ful
sons and said they were the kind qf thing a noble and good woman ought to produce,
and should boast of them and take pride in them.
PLUTARCH, On Sparta, trans. by R. TALBERT. p. 160
What do these documents tell us about the role of Spartan mothers?
The education of Spartan girls
Young Spartan girls remained at home with their mothers, but they were still expected to be educated. It is
assumed that, like the Spartan boys, the girls were taught the basics of reading and writing. Girls were
organised into bands (similar to the boys) for team games and choral singing. Xenophon compared the
upbringing of girls elsewhere in the Greek world with that which prevailed at Sparta, explaining that it
was Lykourgos, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, who was supposed to have begun this unusual type of
society.

how can one expect girls brought up like this to give birth to healthy babies?
Lykourgos considered slave girls quite adequate to produce clothing, and thought that
for free women the most important job was to bear children. in the first place,
therefore, he prescribed physical training for the female sex no less than for the male;
next, just as for men, he arranged competitions of racing and strength for women also,
thinking that if both parents were strong their children would be more robust.
XENOPHON, cited in M. DILLON & L. GARLAND, Ancient Greece, p. 383

Women and property in Sparta

Married Spartan women exercised much more control and influence in their society than did their
Athenian counterparts. Though they took no part in the communal life of the men, and as non-citizens
could not vote, they nevertheless played an important role in the transfer of property. Wealth in Sparta
revolved around land ownership. The land was owned and controlled by the upper-class Spartiate
families, and marriage alliances ensured that property remained within this small group. At the beginning
of the classical period a Spartan woman could inherit part of her familys estate. However, she did not
own it, and it passed to her offspring. By the end of the classical period, as Aristotle and Xenophon
inform us, women did not own and manage estates without male guardians. It is also believed that they
owned their dowries. In the exceptional case of an orphaned heiress it was the kings who decided whom
they would marry (Herodotus, VI 57.4), The change seems to have come about because the men were so
often absent fighting wars: women had to manage the estates and affairs of their husbands. Towards the
end of the classical period, Aristotle noted that women in Sparta owned two-fifths of the land. Aristotle
feared that this would lead to gynaikokratia, government by women.
Spartan women were much more independent than their Athenian counterparts, for they exercised and
mingled freely with their menfolk; they had more control over their financial situation and, because the
men were frequently absent, they were involved in the running of estates.
This was exemplified among the Spartans in the days of their greatness; many things
were managed by their women. . . And nearly two-fifths of the whole country are held
by women; this owing to the number of heiresses and to the large dowries which are
customary. It would surely have been better to have given no dowries at all or if any
but small or moderate ones.
ARISTOTLE cited in M. L.EFKOWITZ & M. FANT
Womens Life in Greece and Rome p.40
Spartan men were always subject to their wives and allowed them to interfere in
affairs of state more than they themselves did in private ones.
PLUTARCH, On Sparta, trans. By R. TALBERT, p.S8
Spartan beauty
The women of Sparta were expressly forbidden by the Lykourgan law code from wearing make-up,
jewellery or perfume, or dyeing their clothes. Simplicity seems to have been the order of the day, at least
for part of the classical period. As the sources indicate, the Spartan lifestyle changed considerably at the
end of the 5th century when many Spartans, not just the women, began to use more luxury goods.
The main garment worn by the women of Sparta was a short, revealing peplos fastened on the shoulders.
The tunic was not sewn down the side, and allowed the women to move freely and exercise. As the
women moved, however, the garment revealed their thighs hence Spartan women had a reputation as
Thighdisplayers. This is very different from the protective clothing worn by the women of Athens.

The 7th Century BC poet Alkman describes the beautiful purple clothes, a coiled snake bracelet and a
Lydian (therefore probably gold) mitra or headband worn by girls in his chorus. (Brennan)
Photos taken from Brennans Spartan Society

Religious roles
The most famous cult centre in Sparta is that of the goddess Artemis Orthia. This goddess was associated
with childbirth, and large quantities of votive offerings have been found at the sanctuary. These offerings,
it is thought, were brought by women who were barren, pregnant or had survived childbirth. When a
young Spartan woman married, Spartan mothers made sacrifices to the goddess Aphrodite Hera.
At festivals, Spartan women performed special religious dances, sometimes with the men and sometimes
separately. Examples of these are the Hyporchema in honour of Apollo and the Caryatid in honour of
Artemis at Caryae. At the famous Hyakinthia festival in honour of Apollo, women took part, riding on
richly decorated carriages made of wicker work, while others yoked chariots and drove them in a
procession for racing.
Little is known of womens participation in burial customs and of how women themselves were buried.
Lykourgos, like Solon, laid down strict procedures relating to death and burial practices, one of them
being that no inscriptions were to be placed on the tomb of a woman who had died in sacred office (a
priestess). Herodotus describes how, when a king of Sparta died, women walked through the streets
beating cauldrons, perhaps to frighten away evil spirits. A man and a woman from each household were
required to dress in mourning and express their grief.

Given the rigorous nature of their upbringing, it is not surprising that Spartan women gained a reputation
for great daring, valour and patriotism. Such women can be glimpsed in the following documents.
Kyniska, an Olympic heroine
Kyniska won the chariot race at the Olympic Games in 396 and again in 392 BC.
(Kyniska) was extremely ambitious of winning at the Olympic Games and was the
first woman to breed chariot horses and the first to win an Olympic victory. After
Kyniska Olympic victories were gained by other women, particularly from Sparta, but
no one was more distinguished for their victories than she was.
M. DILLON & L. GARLAND, Ancient Greece, p. 384

Argileonis, mother of Brasidas

The Spartan general Brasidas fought against the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, 431404 BC and
was killed at the battle of Amphipolis, 421 BC.
Brasidas mother Argileonis when some of the Amphipolitans came to Sparta and
visited her asked them if Brasidas had died nobly and in a manner worthy of Sparta.
When they extolled her son and said that Sparta had no one else like him
she said Dont say that strangersBrasidas may have been noble and brave
but Sparta has better men than he.
M. DILLON & L. GARLAND Ancient Greece p. 385

Gorgo, daughter of King Kleoinenes I

Gorgo married her uncle, King Leonidas I, who led the Greek force at Thermopylae in 480.
When asked by a woman from Attica: Why are you Spartan women the only ones
who can rule men?, Gorgo said: Because we are also the only ones who give birth to
men. On her husband Leonidas departure for Thermopylae, while urging him to
show himself worthy of Sparta, she asked what she should do. He said: Marry a good
man and bear good children.
PLUTARCH, On Sparta, trans. by R. TALBERT, p. 158
Questions
What does Kyniskas feat reveal about Spartan women?
How were Spartan women different from the other women of Greece?
What do the words of Argileonis reveal about Spartan women attitudes towards war and death?
What do the words of Gorgo reveal about Spartan marriage customs and the role of women within
society?
Perioikoi and helot women
Little is known about those Spartan women who were classed either as perioikoi or as helots. These
women are not known by name, and we can only presume that they carried out menial tasks and led lives
of hard work and drudgery, supporting their
menfolk.

Document Review
Spartan girls in a chorus
Now this song of mine is of Agido: to my eyes she is like the sun that she invokes to be our witness. But I
must not speak good or ill of her when the chorus star performer stands out like a racehorse among the
herds, a thundering winner, that kind that you see in dreams when you doze in a shady cave. Oh, look
that horse is a Venetian, that combed-out hair of our cousin Hagesichora has the sheen of purest gold, and
that silver face!! How can words convey it? Theres Hagesichora; while Agidos nearest challenger for
looks might be a second-rate horse from Skythia compared to such a thoroughbred Ibenian. The Pleiades
(the doves the star group or maybe a rival choir called the doves?) rise like the star Sirius and fight
against us, while we, through the ambrosial night bear a robe to the goddess of the dawn.
For our excess of purple garments is not what protects us, nor the intricate snake-shaped
bangle all of solid gold, nor the Lydian headband the ornament of soft-eyed girls, nor Nannos
hair, nor the divine Areta, nor Thulakis, nor Klesithera. Nor shall you go to Ainesimbrotas
house and say: If only Astaphis were mine, and may Philylla look upon me and Damareta or charming
Vianthemis, but it is Hagesichora who really affects me.
For is not Hagesichora, with the lovely ankles, present in the dance? Does she not stay near Agido and
commend our ceremony? Come 0 gods, accept their prayers their completion and fulfillment lies with
the gods. Dance-leader, may I say that even though I am myself only a girl who vainly hoots like an owl
in the rafters, still, for my part, I seek to please Aotis, (the Lady of the Dawn) who has been the healer of
our sufferings. Through Hagesichora the girls have ound a charming concord.
Alkman, Parthenelon (Maiden Song) lines 40-91
1. List those things that the poem mentions as items worn by women.
2. What indications can you find in the poem that Spartan women might have sought to be seen as
beautiful?
3. How does Alkman compliment the girls in the chorus?

4. What gods or goddesses are mentioned?

5. What information does this poem provide about religious beliefs?
Some sayings of Spartan women
(1) Another Spartan woman killed her son, who had deserted, because he was unworthy of his fatherland.
He is not my child she said. This is the epigram about her:
Away to the darkness, coward child, to the place where the river Eurotas does not flow, even for a
terrified deer. Useless pup, worthless piece, Go to hell! Get away! This child was never mine!
(2) When a woman from Attica asked: Why are you Spartan women the only ones who rule men? she
replied Because we are the only ones who give birth to men.
(3) Another woman, handing her son his shield, and providing him with encouragement, said either
come back carrying this shield or come back (dead) on it.
Read the source above and answer the following questions:
1. Why do you think these sayings were collected in antiquity?
2. What does the lack of specific detail suggest about the reliability of this source material?
3. How useful to a historian are these Sayings of Spartan Women? Support your view with a paragraph
of argument.

The following Notes have been scanned from Anton Powell Constructing Greek Political and Social
History from 478BC.

Female citizens
The citizen women of Sparta were believed to lead unusual lives by Greek standards. In trying to
reconstruct certain aspects of their existence we have to beware not only of ancient theorists looking for
an explanation of Spartas rapid decline but also, possibly, of our own enthusiasms over a community of
women with exceptional access to information and influence.
Discrimination against girls and female babies may well have been less at Sparta than in other parts of
Greece. In an incomplete passage of his Constitution of the Spartans, Xenophon implies a contrast:
whereas other states, he observes, feed girls on a meagre diet. He then passes on to a different point of
contrast between the Spartans and other Greeks in respect of the status of females, and fails to make
explicit what he evidently understood: that Spartan girls got more nourishment.
Other Greeks, Xenophon continues, require girls to sit quietly nd work wool, whereas at Sparta physical
training is arranged for females no less than for males; contests of running and of strength exist for each
sex. Elsewhere in Greece the report of such public displays by Spartan girls aroused much disapproving
or prurient interest. We may perhaps think of modern ideals of sexual equality. However, the motive
ascribed by our Greek sources to the physical training of girls is far from feminist. Xenophon suggests
that the exercise was meant to produce strong mothers, with a view to the production of strong offspring.
Kritias writes similarly.
But we have learnt to distinguish in point of reliability between ancient reports of what happened in
antiquity and those stating why things happened. Is it possible that Xenophon and Kritias have
misleadingly assimilated Spartan motives to those of their own society, whether through the common
process of misperceiving as familiar what in reality is different, or as a means of commending to nonSpartans an unsympathetic Spartan practice?
In having citizen girls train and reveal their bodies in view of men, Sparta differed greatly from Athens
and other Greek cities with their ideals of sexual segregation and feminine modesty. Other Spartan
practices, differing even more markedly, are recorded by Xenophon. An elderly husband with a young
wife was encouraged to use another man, whose physique and character he admired, to impregnate his
wife. And a man wishing not to cohabit with a wife, but desiring fine children, could breed with any
distinguished woman with fine offspring ... once he had persuaded her husband. Sparta breached

monogamy, obviously for the sake of producing more and superior children. This gives considerable
support to the claim that a eugenic motive lay also behind the physical training of females. Aristotle
confirms that Sparta took unusual measures to promote childrearing, giving exemption from military
service and taxation respectively to those who fathered three or four sons. In view of Spartas attachment
to the persuasive use of the visual image, we may even take seriously Plutarchs suggestion, that the
processions of the maidens, their removal of clothes and their contests where young men could see were
intended to incite men to marry. Xenophon, in a different Athenian context, describes lightheartedly an erotic tableau involving an athletic slave woman which caused those male onlookers who
had not married to swear that they would.
If the physical training of girls at Sparta had arisen from a belief that they should on principle share in
honoured activity equally with males, we might expect to find some involvement of females in military
drill. But we learn nothing of the kind. The argument from silence here is of unusual force, because there
was at Athens (as elsewhere) almost an obsession among men with the idea of warrior women. Herodotos
records that the Athenians offered a huge reward, of 10,000 drakhmai, for the capture alive of Artemisia, a
captain in Xerxes navy of 480; for they considered it terrible that a woman should be fighting against
Athens. Athenian vase-painters and sculptors made innumerable representations of the legendary female
warriors, the Amazons. The Athenians, who made such play with the partial nudity of Spartan girls at
their exercise, would surely have toyed unforgettably with the idea of female Spartan warriors, had there
been such.
In the aftermath of Leuktra the army of Thebes approached the villages where the Spartans lived; the
behaviour of the Spartan women on this occasion confirms their lack of military training. According to
Xenophon, they could not stand even the sight of the smoke [raised as the Thebans ravaged] because
they had never before seen enemies. Aristotle goes further: they did not make themselves useful, as
women do in other cities [during an invasion], but they created more of a confused din than the enemy.
While there may be some exaggeration here, caused by theorising about the responsibility of women for
Spartas decline, the two passages together do suggest that the military contribution of female Spartiates
on this rare occasion of trial was not praiseworthy. If Sparta had intended its training of girls to produce
warlike women, the eminent local knowledge of military drill would have ensured success. The
hypothesis of training for motherhood seems confirmed. A possibility remains, however, that the
exercising of Spartan women was adopted or retained at least in part because of an eagerness of women
themselves to share, within supposed feminine limits, in the prestige of local athleticism. The political
influence of women within Sparta seems to have been unusually great by Greek standards. Was it that
which produced also the apparent parallelism in Spartan funerary practice, whereby the inscription of a
name on a gravestone was allowed only for a man killed in battle or a woman killed by childbirth? In any
case, this practice is further evidence of the value placed on motherhood.
About the circumstances in which Spartan girls or women were given in marriage we have little
information. There is some suggestion that a female Spartiate married on average a few years later than
her Athenian counterpart. It has been argued that Spartan women owned their own dowries, which again
would involve a difference from Athens. Aristotle, censuring Sparta for her economic arrangements,
states that nearly two-fifths of the whole country belongs to women, because there are many sole
heiresses and also because [Spartans] give large dowries. A sole heiress, as we have seen, may often
have married a man outside her own wider family. She might thus be less constrained by her family from
threatening or going through with divorce, as compared with an Athenian heiress married to one of her
own kin. The threat of divorce, when seen as realistic, gave power to a woman who had brought her
husband great wealth; other things being equal, the greater the wealth, the greater the power would be. It
should be stressed that we do not know whether Spartan women had the power to effect divorce purely
through their own will. But if, like Athenian women, they had, then that fact when combined with the
large number of sole heiresses and of other women with large dowries may be sufficient to explain
Aristotles indignant remark about female ownership of much Spartan land. No formal ownership of great
wealth by women need perhaps be posited.
Aristotle complained about the freedom enjoyed by Spartan women. He reported a saying that Lykourgos
had tried to subject the women to his rules, but had given up on meeting feminine resistance. This, of
course, may tell us more about the classical period than about the mythical lawgiver. Like Plato, Aristotle
considered it a serious fault in Sparta that only the male part of the population had in his opinion

been regulated, and used a word from the root tryph-, connoting luxurious living, to describe the
extravagance and indiscipline of the Spartan wmen. However, it seems that the only satisfying detail
which we possess on this subject is that concerning expenditure by women on horse-racing.
We have already encountered three facts which may have caused Spartan women to be more assertive
outside the home than those of other cities: their financial position, their outdoor training and the absence
abroad of many men in the period of Spartas empire. Among his disapproving comments, Aristotle
writes: during the period of their [the Spartans] empire, many things were administered by the women.
Yet what is the difference between having rulers who are ruled by women and an actual government of
women? The premise that female government would be absurd is considered by Aristotle to be so
obvious and cogent that he does not trouble even to make it explicit; we recall his remark in another
context on the inherent inferiority of womens intelligence. Sadly, this statement about the Spartan empire
also lacks any detailed illustration; we shall probably never know which decisions during Spartas
ascendancy Aristotle would have attributed to gynaikokraria, government by women.