This book is the first full-length historical study of Spartan women to be published.1 I have not written in detail about Spartan women since the publication of Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves,2 although more recently I contributed to the scholarship on this subject in two jointly authored books.3 It was when I was writing a brief survey of the Spartan family4 and one of the anonymous referees remarked “but there were no female Spartiates” 5 that I first realized that there was much work to be done.
My recent work on Xenophon6 and Plutarch,7 two of the major sources on Spartan women, made me appreciate how little had been written about the ways in which the perspectives of these two authors, more than any others, have shaped our views of Spartan women. Because of my training as a papyrologist, I have often written about women in the Hellenistic period;8 writing about Plutarch convinced me to extend this study to Roman Greece. Thus this book covers some thousand years of history, but despite the timespan, it is short. Extant sources are few, although I have tried to exploit every ancient text and artifact that appeared relevant. The sources on various aspects of Spartan women’s lives are unevenly distributed. There is far more information on education, reproduction, and religion than on other subjects. These emphases are reflected in the lengths of the various chapters. The longstanding lack of serious scholarship on the history of Spartan women has meant that there has been less impetus than is usual for a scholar working in classics and ancient history to take into account previous studies. Nevertheless, this book has been the most difficult one I have ever written. It must be confessed that we know little about Spartan women, but it is not so readily conceded that we do not actually know much about Spartan men either. Compared to what is known about Athens, there is little direct evidence about life in Sparta. It is difficult to construct a realistic picture of how women and men actually lived in such a place; there is, however, a great deal of evidence for what other Greeks thought about their lives. Much current scholarship on Sparta is devoted to the latter subject. It must be emphasized that often the primary sources do not distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive writing; and pictorial representations may also be idealistic or fantastic rather than realistic. Contemporary scholars, as well, differ in their assessment of what constitutes historical reality, and what was part of the “Spartan mirage.”9 Having stated these caveats here, I will not repeat them throughout the book. I must, however, confess that my tendency is to grant more credence to the primary sources than some contemporary hypercritical Spartanologists are wont to do, and to understand that they generally reflect an actual historical situation rather than a utopian fiction. Sophocles described the versatility and ingenuity of the human race. The Greek text permits a literal and gender-free translation. The chorus reflects:
Many the wonders, but nothing more wonderful than a human being . . .
Having a clever inventive skill beyond hope
A person proceeds sometimes to evil, sometimes to good.
(Antigone 332–33, 365–68)
A survey of the sources may be found in an Appendix at the end of this book. The nineteenth century paintings that are reproduced in this book may serve to remind us that history is a conversation between the present and many pasts.
The traditional chronological framework for Greek history, which labels blocks of time “archaic” (ca. 750–490),“classical” (490–323), and “Hellenistic” (323–30), is based on political changes that are reflected in the visual arts. While this periodization is appropriate to most Greek poleis (especially Athens), it does not reflect some of the most significant events in Spartan history. Furthermore, the usual framework does not take into account events that affected women. In any case, it is irrelevant insofar as Sparta’s contribution to the material arts was negligible after the archaic period.
Perhaps most important for Spartan history were the political and social changes that occurred after the Second Messenian War. By the end of the seventh or in the early sixth century these changes created the distinctive Spartan way of life. Changes in the fifth and fourth century may have been significant, but these were not accompanied by sharp dislocations. A major turning point was the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.E.), when enemy troops invaded Spartan territory for the first time, soundly defeated the Spartans, and brought about the liberation of Messenia. Though individual Spartans were tempted to work as mercenaries, Sparta declined to participate in the campaigns of Alexander and thus was not so immediately affected by the changes that produced the Hellenistic world. Sparta’s relative isolation was not ended until the reign of Agis IV,which began ca. 244 B.C.E., when Sparta went through a series of political upheavals culminating in defeat by the Roman general Flamininus in 195 B.C.E. and inclusion in the Roman province of Achaea.
This simple time line does not reveal how the Spartans themselves manipulated, created, and recreated their own history. There were two successful programs to revive the traditional Lycurgan constitution and the social, educational, and religious institutions alleged to have existed in earlier times, one in the Hellenistic period, the second in the Roman period. At the time of both revivals, the sources refer explicitly to actions taken in accordance with the ancient customs and laws.10 The impact of these revivals complicates the historian’s task. For example, if the evidence for the authority of the priestess of Artemis Orthia is purely Roman, should we assume that she exercised exactly the same power in an earlier period? The Spartans believed (or at least wished others to believe) that she had. In the Roman period, they were known to be proud and pedantic about their heritage, and nostalgia would have encouraged them to accept or even promulgate myths as historical truth and exaggerate the virtues and distinctiveness of their past (see Appendix). Plutarch, one of our principle sources, is often not aware of the chronological problems, and in fact offers pieces of information about such important topics as marriage that are mutually contradictory unless the practices he refers to were not concurrent but occurred at different time periods. In his defense, in his works that deal with Sparta, he was writing biography and philosophy, not history. Although these problems will be discussed as they emerge, let me sketch them here. As a historian, I naturally try to use a chronological approach, but because of the ways in which the Spartans themselves revised their own history, I have found a straightforward chronological framework unworkable. For this reason, the chapter titles are topical: the first three, however, follow the Spartan woman through the life cycle. Furthermore, the discussions of the topics are, as much as possible, chronological. Motherhood is the thread that links all the chapters. The reader should note in addition that B.C.E. or C.E. have been added to a date when necessary to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise, all dates should be understood as “Before Common Era.” “Spartan women” applies only to women of the highest civic class, although I will discuss other women who lived in the territory controlled by Sparta and who interacted with the highest class.
Following the precedent of classical authors, I will refer to the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus and the Lycurgan constitution without implying a belief that this shadowy figure ever existed, or that Spartan customs or laws were the result of a single creative act. In the same way I will refer to the rhetra (“legislation”) of Epitadeus without insisting that Epitadeus ever existed.11 Plutarch (Agis 5) reports that sometime after the Peloponnesian War a certain ephor named Epitadeus proposed a rhetra that would permit a person to give or bequeath his kleros (“plot of land”) and house to anyone he wished. Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 15) does not name Epitadeus, but observes that in his day the Spartans no longer obeyed the laws of Lycurgus. Aristotle (Pol. 1270a15–34) also does not mention Epitadeus. Whether or not Epitadeus ever existed, major economic changes associated with him occurred at the end of the fifth or in the early fourth century (see chap. 4). These changes began earlier, but the dramatic events after the Peloponnesian War precipitated the changes and made them perceptible. The changes are important because they increased women’s potential to own immovable property. To establish the chronological framework, my book will attribute these changes to the rhetra of Epitadeus without lingering on the complexities of dating.
Another issue is whether the cult of Hera at Elis is directly relevant to Spartan women. We do not know if races in honor of Hera were restricted to local girls from Elis or were pan-Hellenic, like the competitions for men at neighboring Olympia. The latter seems more likely. Whatever the current political relationships in Greece, the games were usually held under conditions of a temporary peace,12 and statuettes of the victors show girls dressed in the semi-nude costume associated only with Spartans. Since only Spartan women are known to have seriously pursued physical education, they would probably have been the most numerous among the competitors. Convenience of travel to nearby Elis probably ensured a strong presence for Spartan women in any female agonistic activity at Olympia. This volume therefore includes a discussion of the athletic events associated with the cult of Hera at Elis (see chap. 1).
I am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship and to the Fellows of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and to the American Academy at Rome for their frequent hospitality while I was doing research for this book. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to thank Thomas Figueira, Nigel Kennell, Jo Ann MacNamara, H. Alan Shapiro, and the Family History Reading Group for their comments on the manuscript. I am also grateful to Georgia Tsouvala for research assitance, to David van Taylor for computer advice, and once again to Angela Blackburn for gracious and tactful editorial help.
1. See L. Zuckerman,“Spartan Women, Liberated,” New York Times, Jan. 1, 2000, sec. F, pp. 1, 3.
2. New York,1975, republished with a new Preface 1995.
3. Elaine Fantham, Helene Peet Foley,Natalie Boymel Kampen, Sarah B. Pomeroy, and H. Alan Shapiro, Women in the Classical World (New York, 1994), and Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanely M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts,Ancient Greece (New York, 1998).
4. Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford, 1997).
5. A Spartiate was a Spartan with citizen rights (see chap. 5). The feminine form of Spartiates is Spartiatis: see LSJ s.v. Sparte. Lippold, RE 3A (Stuttgart, 1929), s.v. Sparta (die Ethnika), 1280–92, esp. 1283, 1291–92, notes that the feminine Lakedaimonia is very rare, Spartiates is rare, and Spartiatis is poetic.
6. Xenophon. Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1994).
7. Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife (New York, 1999).
8. E.g.,Women in Hellenistic Egypt (New York, 1984; pbk. Detroit, 1990).
9. See further F. Ollier, Le mirage spartiate, vol. 1, Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans l’antiq-uité grecque de l’origine jusqu’aux cyniques; vol. 2, Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans l’antiquité grecque du début de l’école cynique jusqu’à la fin de la cité (Paris, 1933–43, repr. 1973).
10. E.g., SEG XI.626, lines 2–3, and see chap. 4, below.
11. Thus S. J. Hodkinson, s.v. Epitadeus, OCD3, describes him as fictitious, and in “‘Blind Ploutos’? Contemporary Images of the Role of Wealth in Classical Sparta,” in The Shadow of Sparta. ed. A. Powell and S.J. Hodkinson (London, 1994), 183–222, esp. 207, 214, he sees Epitadeus as part of the “mirage.”Hodkinson,Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (London, 2000), 90–94, reviews the scholarly debate on Epitadeus and change in property tenure. E. Schütrumpf, “The Rhetra of Epitadeus: A Platonist’s Fiction,” GRBS 28 (1987), 441–57, argues that Plutarch’s report is adapted from Plato Rep. 8.555D–E. In contrast, J. Christien, “La loi d’Épitadeus: Un aspect de l’histoire économique et sociale à Sparte,” RD 52 (1974), 197–221, and Evanghelos Karabélias, “L’épiclerat à Sparte,” Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi (Milan, 1982), vol. 2, 469–80, 471–72, express no doubt about the existence of Epitadeus and the impact of his reform. On Plutarch, see the Appendix to this book.
12. But for the relationship between Sparta and Elis as a hindrance to Cynisca’s entrance into the equestrian events at Olympia, see chap. 1.