Women in ancient Sparta
[3] Sparta is one of only three states in ancient Greece, along with Athens and Gortyn, for which any detailed information about the role of women survives.
[9] In the Roman period, sources include Plutarch's biographies and collections of sayings and customs of the Spartans and Pausanias' guide to Laconia.
[11] It is likely that girls were simply given into the care of their mothers immediately after birth,[12] though there is not enough evidence to say whether this was the case throughout Spartan history.
[14] Finally, the songs to which the girls danced provided an opportunity to inculcate them with Spartan values and gender roles.
[22] Early sources report that Spartan girls practiced running and wrestling; later texts also mention throwing the javelin and discus, boxing, and pankration.
[33] According to Spartan ideology, the primary role of adult women was to bear and raise healthy children.
[34] Before marriage, there was a trial period for the potential couple to ensure that they could have children; if they could not, divorce and remarriage was the customary solution.
For Spartans, all activities involving marriage revolved around the single purpose of producing strong children and thus improving their military.
Herodotus says that the bigamy of Anaxandridas II, who married a second wife because his first had not been able to produce an heir, was un-Spartan,[38] but Polybius wrote that it was common at his time, and a time-honoured practice.
[39] Andrew Scott suggests that polygyny would have been more common in ancient Sparta in the early 4th century BC, when the number of Spartan citizen men sharply decreased.
[43] The bride was then left alone in a darkened room, where she would be visited and ritually captured (Ancient Greek: ἁρπάζω, romanized: harpagō, lit.
[45] The purpose of this was to make it more difficult for new couples to consummate their marriage, which was thought to increase the desire between husband and wife, and lead to the creation of stronger children.
[33] Due to this Aristotle was critical of Sparta, and claimed that men were ruled by strong and independent women, unlike in the rest of Greece.
He attributed the state's precipitous fall from being the master of Greece to a second-rate power in less than 50 years, to the fact that Sparta had become a gynocracy whose women were intemperate and loved luxury.
[52] Spartan women were encouraged to produce many children, preferably male, to increase Sparta's military population.
[54] By contrast, the female relatives of the Spartans who died heroically in the Battle of Leuctra were said to have walked around in public looking happy.
[54] Spartan women did not simply celebrate their sons who had shown bravery and mourn when they had not, but they were crucial in enforcing social consequences for cowardly men.
When Pausanias, a traitor to Sparta, took refuge in a sanctuary to Athena, his mother Theano is said to have taken a brick and placed it in the doorway.
But Astymelosia does not answer me at all, When she has the crown, Just like a brilliant star falling through the sky Or a golden bough or soft feather... She advanced with striding feet...
Alcman’s Partheneia or ‘maiden song’ was among the earliest documents discovered to express homoerotic sentiments between women.
[59] As well as two major cult sites, a shrine to Helen was located in the center of Sparta, and many steles featuring her were carved and displayed throughout the city.
[12] The Dorian peplos was made of a heavier woolen material than was common in Ionia, and was fastened at the shoulder by pins called fibulae.
[74] By the Hellenistic period, the geographer Polemon of Athens reported that he had seen bronze statues in Sparta dedicated by the prostitute Cottina,[74] and there was a brothel named for her near the temple of Dionysos.
[76] The status of these nurses is not clear – they were probably not helots who would not have been sold to foreigners, but could have been some other form of non-citizen women from Laconia.
Because of this, helots were able to freely choose partners and live in family groups, whereas other Greek slaves were kept in single-sex dormitories.
[79] These children were called mothakes, and were apparently free and able to gain citizenship – according to Aelian, the admiral Lysander was a mothax.
