Women of  Sparta

Ancient Sparta

  1. 900 BCE →Early Sparta
  2. 650 BCE → Sparta defeated Messeni - creation of the Helots
  3. 550-336 BCE → Sparta was the dominant military power of Greece
  4. 418 BCE → Greek states united against Persian invasion
  5. 489 BCE → Battle of Thermopylae
  6. 478 BCE → Battle of Platea, Sparta began to withdraw from Greek affairs & rise of Athens (until early 430’s)
  7. 461 BCE → Earthquake and Helot revolt
  8. 431-404 BCE → Peloponnesian War, defeat of Athens
  9. 300 BCE → Sparta lost dominance on Greece
    1. 200 BCE → Rise of Rome

Key features

  • Dual monarchy
  • However, the elders (Gerusia) that controlled the political system - not a democracy!
  • 3 classes:
    • True Spartans → Spartiates
    • Perioikoi → Craftsmen
    • Helots → Enslaved people with some freedom, outnumbered the Spartiates 10:1
  • Effectively closed society
  • Most sources were from Athenian writers

Spartites (or Homoioi)

  • Men were expected to become soldiers and warriors
    • Boys were sent to the military camp at age 7, stayed there for the next 23 years in training until 30
    • At age 30, men could marry but still lived in the military
    • Spartan women were expected to marry and produce healthy male children (all babies were inspected by the elders at birth)

Spartan women

  • Spartan women were not considered citizens or allowed to join the army.
  • Spartan women had better rights and more freedom than women from the other states of Greece.
  • The reason why Spartan women were granted such rights was to ensure Sparta ran efficiently while the men were away at war.
  • Spartan women performed a number of religious roles, like performing dances, contrasting to other Greek women whose roles were centered around being mothers and wives.
Domestic
  • Like boys, Spartan women were also told to value strength, and were allowed to join with the boys in sports and physical exercise.
  • This was because it was argued that that strong females would produce strong male children. Hence, the girls were involved with training exercises.
  • Given full power to look after the farms and Helots, and even give punishments.
  • Women of Sparta were also educated in basic reading and writing in addition to cooking and cleaning.
Economic
  • Women of Sparta were encouraged to play active roles in their society.
  • At the beginning of the Classical period, a Spartan woman could inherit part of her family’s estate, but she could not own it.
  • By then end of the Classical period, women could own and manage estates without male guardians. In fact, at the end of the Classical period, women in Sparta owned 2/5 of the land.
  • They owned their own dowries.
  • Spartan women could speak in a legal court without a male relative present.
  • Married women of Sparta had much more control and influence in their society than women in other parts of Greece.

Views on the women of Sparta

  • Despite all of these rights, the majority of Ancient Greece writers, including Aristotle, were quite judgmental about Spartan women.
  • While there are no surviving sources written by Spartan women, there are surviving sources that concerned their lives that were written by men from other Greek states.
  • They usually criticized the women’s behavior or praise their physical attributes.