And I was thinking that Sparta among cities of few citizens proved to be the most powerful and famous, and I wondered in what way this had come about. When, however, I thought about the Spartans’ way of life, I no longer wondered. I admired Lycurgus, their lawgiver, whose laws they were fortunate in obeying, and I think him extremely wise. He did not imitate other cities, but thinking the opposite of most, he made his country outstandingly fortunate.
Now, to begin at the beginning, I will discuss the breeding of children. In other states the girls who are destined to become mothers and are brought up in the approved manner live on the most modest amount of food, with the smallest possible allowance of delicacies. They are either totally deprived of wine, or drink it mixed with water. The rest of the Greeks think it right that their girls keep silent and work wool, like sedentary craftsmen. How, then, ought we expect that women brought up in such a way will bear a sturdy child?
But Lycurgus thought that slave women were able to supply clothing, and he believed motherhood was most important for freeborn women. Therefore first he ordered the female sex to exercise no less than the male; moreover, he created competitions in racing and trials of strength for women as for men, believing that healthier children will be born if both parents are strong.
(Xenophon, Lac. Pol. 1.1–4)
In highlighting women in the following discussion of marriage and reproduction, we are not engaging in affirmative action or compensatory scholarship. Rather, we are following the best ancient precedent: the intention of the revered founder of the Spartan way of life. Xenophon points out that Lycurgus devoted a great deal of attention to motherhood and marital intercourse. He also observes that Spartans were the only Greek girls who were generously fed, draws attention to the physical training for females that was unique in Greece, and supplies as the motivation the belief that strong parents produce stronger children. (According to Aristotle and other medical writers, acquired characteristics, as well as those with which a person was born, were widely thought to be inherited.)1 Xenophon’s account of the raising of girls makes it clear that the “Lycurgan” system—insofar as it was concerned with health and eugenics—was not merely a Hellenistic or Plutarchean invention.
Girls and boys exercised nude. Not only nude youths but young women as well may have participated in the Gymnopaidia (“Festival of Nude Youths”). Plutarch (Lyc. 15.1) writes that confirmed bachelors were dishonored: they were excluded from viewing the young women and men exercising in the nude (tais gymnopaidiais) .2 Perhaps the bachelors preferred nonproductive sexual liaisons with boys to the exclusion of reproductive sex with females and this prohibition of viewing, which meant that they were barred from attending a major festival, was the state’s punishment. In any case, while engaged in these activities, nubile Spartans had an opportunity to view the bodies of potential spouses.3 Although Plutarch (Lyc. 4.4) argues that women’s nudity was not intentionally erotic, it would have been difficult to prevent some viewers from becoming stimulated.4 Sometimes, women did parade nude in order to whet the appetite of unmarried men for marriage.5 Doubtless they attracted other women as well (see chap. 1).
Patriarchy exercises authority over men as well as women, and in Sparta apparently even more over men. Males, from the moment of birth, were examined, tested, and evaluated according to eugenic standards by older men:
The father did not decide whether to raise a baby; rather he took it and carried it to some place called Lesche where the elders of the tribes sat and examined the infant, and if it was well built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill born and misshapen, they sent it to the so-called “Apothetae,” a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taygetus, thinking that any baby which was not naturally created at the very beginning to be healthy and strong was of no good either to itself or the state. Therefore the women used to bathe their newborn babies not with water but with wine, thus making a sort of test of their constitutions. For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the unmixed wine and lose their senses, while the healthy ones are rather hardened by it, and given a strong constitution. (Plut. Lyc. 16.1–2)
Plutarch is our only source for the practice of systematic male infanticide. As we have seen, in the sentence immediately following his statement on infanticide he describes the allocation of a kleros (lot of land) to every infant.6 The Greek words Plutarch uses for infant (to gennethen, to paidarion, ta brephe) are neuter; even the pronoun autôi can be understood as neuter or masculine. On the basis of this passage alone, it could be deduced that newborn girls were subjected to exposure and infanticide and were given kleroi. However, other passages in Plutarch (Lyc. 8.4) and Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 9.5) make it clear that girls were supported by the kleroi of their male kinsmen (see below). Pierre Roussel 7 sees a connection between infanticide and allocation of a kleros and argues that the state was involved with infanticide exclusively in connection with males. Considering their concern over the decline in size of the population, it is likely that the magistrates understood that the number of Spartiates was directly related to the number of child-bearers (not inseminators) and therefore did not cull female infants.
Male infanticide was wasteful only of the mother’s nine-month investment. By eliminating unpromising male infants, the community was not obliged to pay the costs of rearing a boy who would not, as Plutarch (Lyc. 16.1–2) puts it, be of use to himself or to the state. The decision ostensibly satisfied eugenic considerations. The infant who failed the initial inspection was eliminated before he could produce children who were likely to inherit his undesirable characteristics.
A question that is often raised is whether at Sparta girls as well as boys,were vulnerable to infanticide. Nowadays few scholars doubt that girls were regularly exposed in Athens.8 The need to furnish a dowry at, or even before, puberty, and the general devaluation of women, were probably among the reasons why a father might choose not to raise a daughter. Was Sparta the antithesis of Athens? Did Sparta expose all boys who did not appear to have the potential for becoming excellent soldiers, but raise all girls—except, one would suspect, those with obvious and debilitating physical abnormalities?9
We may deduce from Plutarch’s description that at birth girls were simply handed over to the women. This conclusion is ex silentio; on the other hand, it can be argued that Plutarch was unusually scrupulous among Greek authors in remembering to mention women where it was appropriate. It seems that girls were not subjected to official scrutiny as were Spartan boys, nor, apparently, did fathers make a determination about rearing or exposing them, as they did in Athens. The women would test the babies for epilepsy or sickliness by seeing if a bath in undiluted wine would throw them into convulsions. Plutarch does not state whether the immersion ordeal was part of the official evaluation process, nor does he indicate the fate of the infants, presumably both male and female, who failed the wine-immersion test. He does not tell us whether the women took any action in the case of infants who had failed the test, but if they did not, then what was the point? If the decision to expose apparent weaklings was up to the women, they would have exercised a power usually reserved for men in the Greco-Roman world.
There probably was change over time, with private citizens taking upon themselves the right to judge the male infant’s viability that had previously been a monopoly of the community.10 Such changes were correlated with the right to dower and to alienate and bequeath property. The individual father’s decision may have followed the verdict of the tribal elders, or the former supplanted the latter totally. At any rate, there is no indication of systematic female infanticide or neglect of girls at Sparta, nor is there any indirect evidence, such as skewed sex ratios. It seems likely that because in Sparta there was no money and women could own land, they could more easily be given a dowry.11 At Athens, where women could not own land, a father would have to furnish cash or movables, and this obligation might well be a deterrent to rearing girls.
Eugenic principles, such as existed in that era, underlie much of Spartan demographic engineering. The Spartans were celebrated for breeding fine hounds and racehorses, so it is not surprising to see them transfer these notions to human beings. By eliminating weak male infants, they tried to give natural evolution a boost, and through the subsequent rigorous training of boys, they assured the survival of the fittest and future reproduction by them. A mistake might be made, and a man might prove to be a coward. Such tremblers were most likely to be younger men facing their first real conflict, rather than hardened veterans. Anecdotes about Spartan mothers show that they are concerned lest their sons prove to be cowards (see chap. 3). In any case, cowards did not reproduce, for they were socially ostracized, and neither they nor their sisters (presumably young and not married) could find spouses (Xen. Lac. Pol. 9.5). Eugenic motivations may also be detected in the choices made in wife-sharing or husband-doubling arrangements (see below). Plutarch (Lyc. 15.7) agrees with Xenophon that a man could ask a husband if he might plant his seed in a wife who had already produced children, but he also attributes the initiative to the husband. For example an elderly man with a young wife might offer her a handsome, noble young man, and then adopt the children born of this union (Plut. Lyc. 15.12). Daniel Ogden has speculated that Spartans believed that in the process of wife-lending, male sperm could mingle and produce offspring who were thought to have descended from two male parents.12 Though the male contribution to the embryo was usually thought to dominate, it is also necessary to pay sufficient attention to the female contribution. The rejection of cowards’ sisters and of some wives in favor of married women who were euteknos (“blessed with good children”) and gennaia (“well born”) reveals a belief that the mother was more than merely a fertile field for the father’s seed, and that each woman continued to make her own particular contribution to the offspring. Indeed, in Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women (e.g., 240e, 241d), the mothers take all the credit for the way their sons turn out. Of course this is an exaggeration that results from the author’s effort to prove that Sparta was very different in this respect from other Greek cities where mothers had little to do with the rearing of sons after the age of seven. Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 6.2) reports that at Sparta fathers were involved in their children’s upbringing. Nevertheless, Plutarch’s view on the strong influence of mothers is corroborated by other sources (see chap. 3).
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has questioned the assumption of anthropologists that women prefer monogamy when raising the human infant, who is helpless for a long period, while men prefer polygamy in order to increase the possibility of creating offspring and perpetuating their own genetic legacy.13 Hrdy argues persuasively that polyandry can be beneficial to mothers, for it increases the number of possible fathers who will help with the care of infants and thus perpetuate the mother’s genetic legacy. The presence of more than one father who believes that a child may be his own is a kind of assurance of help for mother and infant. Multiple fathers increase the possibility of survival and wellbeing of offspring.14 The shared mother thus forges alliances between half siblings, more so than the father whose role both the primary sources and secondary scholarship has acknowledged. The concept of “partible paternity” which Ogden proposed in terms of benefits to the husband and the male lover or genitor (i.e., biological father) needs to be reexamined from the perspective of benefits to mother and child. Partible paternity was certainly useful in a society like Sparta, where male mortality and the absence rate of men from the home were relatively high and women were seldom at physical or economic risk. That Spartiates reproduce was certainly a goal of the community. That they treat all children as though they were their own was also an explicit goal (Xen. Lac. Pol. 2.10, Plut. Lyc. 17.1). That two men treat a child as though it belonged to each of them was certainly a step in this direction.
In most patriarchal and patrilineal states in antiquity, husbands enjoyed exclusive access to the reproductive potential of wives, using legal remedies or even violence to exclude intruders. At Sparta, the authoritarian patriarchy impinged upon the husband’s monopoly of sexual access to his wife. Not only were the Spartan man’s rights as a husband less than those of husbands elsewhere in Greece, but his rights as a father were less. As we have mentioned above, the state also usurped the father’s right to determine whether his son was to be reared.
Primary sources generally view reproduction from the father’s perspective. In a typical nineteenth-century attempt to interpret the development of marriage and society in prehistory, Engels painted a picture of the introduction of strict sexual restraints on women coinciding with the development of private property and the father’s wish to know for certain that he was both pater (i.e., legally father and husband of the child’s mother) and genitor of his heir.15 Engels ranked the “pairing marriage” that he found at Sparta as more archaic than marriage in Homeric times, but he believed that Spartan marriage customs allowed greater freedom to women.
Darwin, who wrote at about the same time as Engels, at least was largely correct in his views, but there is no doubt that he was influenced by Victorian assumptions about male and female sexuality.16 Darwin asserted that “the female is less eager (to copulate) than the male . . .and may often be seen endeavoring for a long time to escape from the male.”17 Scholars of Greek demography and society have long been influenced by Darwinian theories about the promiscuous human male and the coy female whose behaviors were considered advantageous for human evolution.18 Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 1.9) spelled out some but not all the benefits of having, in effect, two husbands when he wrote: “for the wives want to get possession of two oikoi, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons.” Plutarch’s report mentions the benefits to the husband of impregnation of his wife by a vigorous lover, but the modern feminist scholar can extend the concept to the wife. Surely she, too, benefited both genetically and perceptibly from producing strong children. Her investment in nine months of pregnancy would not be wasted by a decision of male elders to toss the offspring off Taygetus. If she was an heiress, she would sooner fulfill her obligation to produce an heir for her father. Because Greek gynecologists were uncertain about the period of gestation, it would be easy to attribute paternity to more than one father.19
Spartans were reputed to have chosen their spouses by several systems, some similar to those practiced in other poleis, others unique. The former were based on the oikos system and the goal was the perpetuation and prosperity of the individual family; the latter evolved from the communal ideal of equality and the goal was the production of children for the good of the state.20 In the former system, personal inclinations and ambitions determined the choice of a spouse; in the latter system the state provided incentives for marriage. Women were active players in both systems.
Xenophon’s description shows that in his day the two systems overlapped. Although there was an oikos system in place, the welfare of society was fostered by means of what is commonly referred to by scholars as ‘wife-sharing’ for reproductive purposes. Although it is not always obvious that Xenophon is reporting an entirely logical system, it is apparent from his language that the wife is an active participant in the arrangement whereby she produces children for a partner in addition to her husband. This practice should therefore be called “husband-doubling” or “male-partner duplication” or “nonexclusive monogamy,” or, at any rate, some term that does not suggest passivity on the wife’s part:21
He [Lycurgus] saw, too, that during the time immediately following marriage, it was usual elsewhere for husbands to have unlimited intercourse with wives. He decreed the opposite of this: for he ruled that the husband should be embarrassed to be seen visiting his wife or leaving her. Thus the desire for intercourse was more fervent in both of them, and if there should be a child, it would be more sturdy than if they were satiated with one another. In addition to this, he took away from men the right to take a wife whenever they wanted to, and ordered that they marry in their prime, believing that this too was conducive to the production of fine children. If, however, it happened that an old man had a young wife—seeing that men of that age guard their wives—he thought the opposite. He required the elderly husband to bring in some man whose body and spirit he admired, in order to beget children. On the other hand, in case a man did not want to have intercourse with his wife22 but wanted children of whom he could be proud, he made it legal for him to choose a woman who was the mother of a fine family and well born, and if he persuaded her husband, he produced children with her. Many such arrangements developed. For the wives want to get possession of two oikoi, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons who will share their lineage and power, but claim no part of the property. Thus in regard to the breeding of children he thought the opposite to those of other states. And anyone who wishes to may see whether it turned out that the men in Sparta are distinctive in their size and strength. (Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.5–10)
Plutarch also describes marriage customs appropriate for a utopian society in which reproduction is the primary goal of marriage and the economic aspects of the private oikos are deemphasized in favor of the common good. Though he reiterates much of Xenophon’s report on husband-doubling, in Xenophon the child born of extramarital intercourse would have no claim on the estate of the biological mother’s husband.23 It appears that the Spartans were not concerned with the legal issue of illegitimate birth: rather, arrangements between consenting males, with the practical consent of the woman involved, were valid in assigning paternity. Children belonged to the oikos of the father and therefore the biological mother would have no legal claim on the newborn, except after adoption. Plutarch introduces the new idea that the biological mother and her husband might adopt the child born from extramarital intercourse, and then, of course, the child would inherit from them:
There were also these incentives to marry. I mean the processions of girls, and the nudity, and the competitions in view of the young men, who were attracted by a compulsion not of an intellectual type, but (as Plato says)24 a sexual one. In addition he [Lycurgus] decreed that those who did not marry would lose a civic right, for they were excluded from the spectacle of the Gymno-paidiai [“Nude Youth”] . . . .
They used to marry by capture, not when the women were small or immature, but when they were in their prime and fully ripe for it. The so-called “bridesmaid” took the captured girl. She shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man’s cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom, who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always, having dined with his mess group, then would slip in, untie her belt, lift her, and carry her to the bed. After spending only a short time with her, he would depart discreetly so as to sleep wherever he usually did with the other young men. And he continued to do this thereafter. While spending the days with his contemporaries, and going to sleep with them, he would cautiously visit his bride in secret, embarrassed and fearful in case someone in the house might notice him. His bride at the same time was scheming and helping to plan how they might meet each other unobserved at a suitable time. They did this not just for a short period, but for long enough that some might even have children before they saw their own wives in the day. Such intercourse was not only an exercise in self-control and moderation, but also meant that partners were fertile physically, always fresh for love, and ready for intercourse rather than being satiated and impotent from unlimited sexual activity. Moreover, some lingering spark of desire and affection always remained in both.
After making marriage as modest and orderly as this, he showed equal concern for removing empty womanish jealousy. Banning from marriage every kind of outrageous and disorderly behavior, he made it honorable for worthy men to share children and their begetting, and derided people who think that there can be no combination or sharing of such things, and who resort to murders and wars. Thus if an older man with a young wife should take a liking to one of the handsome and virtuous young men and approve of him, he might well introduce him to her so that he might fill her with noble sperm and then adopt the child for themselves. On the other hand, a respectable man who admired someone else’s wife noted for her lovely children and her self-control might persuade the husband that he have intercourse with her—thereby planting in fruitful soil, and producing fine children who would be linked to fine ancestors by blood and kinship. (Plut. Lyc. 15.1, 3–7)
Some of the bizarre customs Plutarch mentions, such as the cutting of the bride’s hair and the secret marriage, could not have existed simultaneously, certainly not where women regularly spent much time out of doors. Nor are they mentioned by Xenophon. We can only speculate that they were created over time like other reforms attributed to Lycurgus, were enforced by the ongoing fear of oliganthropia (sparse population) after the Second Messenian War (see below) or even later, and relaxed when the Spartans realized that they were able to win the Peloponnesian War despite their small population. Another possibility is that these customs were revived or invented in the Hellenistic period either in connection with the reforms of Agis IV and Cleomenes III or under the influence of some other utopian philosophical program.
The “capture” of the bride was a ritual enactment of a prearranged betrothal.25 The bridesmaid was ready and waiting with the bride’s costume. The bride herself, full grown, would have been able to put up a good struggle if she truly objected and the groom was really raping her. An abduction rather than a joyous spectacular wedding ceremony may serve to ward off the jealous evil eye. The shaving of the head and dressing of the bride as a man (Plut. Lyc. 15.8) may have been part of a rite of passage that signalled her entrance into a new life. As a maiden she wore her hair long and uncovered, as a wife she wore it short, and covered by a veil (see fig. 4).26 In some sense, she was transformed into a youth in the agoge. Since participation in the agoge was a prerequisite to becoming a full-fledged citizen, the transvestism may have been symbolic of the bride’s inclusion in the citizen body.27 It may also have been an attempt to ward off the evil eye or the supernatural spirits who were deemed to be jealous of the bride’s fortune. The bride’s costume may have also helped to ease the husband’s transition to procreative sex from the homosexual intercourse to which he was accustomed.28
Fig. 4. Married woman.
Mature woman with head and shoulders covered by a mantle. Rim of the Vix crater. Bronze volute crater from a tomb at Vix. Total height 1.64 m. Châtillon-sur-Seine. Ca. 530. See Appendix n. 102, and most recently C.M. Stibbe, Das andere Sparta (Mainz, 1996), fig. 8 and pp. 137, 152, for a date of 570–560.
We may ask if there were any analogous comforts for the bride who had been accustomed to female caresses. At Athens, vases depicting weddings often show Erotes (“Cupids”), an attempt to enlist the services of the supernatural in making the bride receptive to the bridegroom. The Athenian bride, however, was much more in need of help than the Spartan. The Athenian was not quite fifteen: she married a stranger nearly twice her age, moved to a new house, and rarely saw her friends and relatives again.29 The Spartan, in contrast, married a young man close in age. The couple had seen each other nude at festivals and during exercise since childhood. Because the marriage was secret until the bride became pregnant, she did not change domicile for a while (see below). Since the bride and groom were around eighteen and the groom was obliged to live with his army group until the age of thirty, the wife would not have been obliged to adapt to her husband’s personality; she raised the children and managed the household for the most part by herself. These responsibilities made it necessary that the bride be mature, not an adolescent like the Athenian bride. Furthermore, the Spartan bride’s principal source of companionship and sentimental attachments would continue to be other women. In cases where the bridegroom was older than normal, the scenario would be quite different, for the husband would no longer be sleeping with his army group.
Yet, even in such households the husband probably did not completely dominate the wife. If he was impotent or infertile, he nevertheless was obliged to participate in the social goal of reproduction as well as to consider wife’s desires. Xenophon implies that her wishes and ambitions were consulted in cases where she was to be inseminated by a younger man to whom she was not married. Marriage between an older man and a younger woman could be the consequence of the epiklerate. 30 Though Spartan law is not so well understood as Athenian, some form of the epiklerate may have existed, for it appears that when a daughter was the sole survivor and heiress in a family, she was under some obligation to marry a close kinsman of her father, though he might have been elderly. In such cases, nevertheless, the pressure to produce an heir was intense.
There is no reason to assume that the sexuality of Spartan women was repressed or indeed less assertive than that of the men, or, of course, to assume the contrary. If we rely on the judgment of Teiresias, who had been both male and female, women’s capacity to enjoy sex was nine times greater than men’s. Xenophon and Plutarch speak of desire for intercourse on the part of both spouses, though within the limits of modesty.31 Plutarch (Lyc. 15.1 ) also refers to flirtatious behavior when the girls parade nude before the bachelors, trying to interest them in marriage. Perhaps this competition for men continued after marriage. Xenophon at first reports the incitement for wife-lending or husband-doubling from the male perspective: “a man could choose a woman who was already mother of a fine family and of high birth.” Since the goal of the liaison was only reproduction, it made sense for the potential genitor to choose a mature woman who had already proven her ability to reproduce, rather than a young virgin. Plutarch (Lyc. 15.7) agrees with Xenophon, and draws attention to the age and impotence of the husband and the attractiveness and nobility of the lover. Though no ancient source mentions that any woman actively chose her surrogate husband, we suggest that a lively young wife would be able to exert influence on a feeble old husband. Why should a modern scholar assume that women were passive in these arrangements? And why did the attractive man in question choose one woman rather than another? It is not improbable that she solicited his attention. One revered example of a Spartan woman who chose a man younger than her husband is of course Helen. Spartans, because of their respect for tradition, took their mythical exempla seriously, and Helen must have been a major figure in a Spartan woman’s thoughts even before marriage (see chap. 6).
In cases where the husband was old, the young man who was allowed to have intercourse with the wife was physically and morally attractive. Though eugenic goals were primary, we need not assume that the wife’s experience with her surrogate husband was unpleasant.
Xenophon depicts the Spartans as careful, if not calculating, in their selection of spouses and family planning. Herodotus (6.57, 71) refers to fathers betrothing daughters and giving them in marriage. Contradicting Herodotus is the report of Hermippus (late third century B.C.E.) that cohorts of nubile men and women found spouses by groping randomly in a dark room, and that the women were without dowries.32 Likewise, the enactment of the marriage as an abduction suggests a lack of dowry, but does not definitely preclude one. This method of spouse selection reflected the ideal of equality among potential partners. It was a casualty of the manifest advent of private property. The men who were engaged to marry Lysander’s daughters attempted to break their engagements when they discovered that Lysander was poor. They were fined for marrying badly, for their primary goal was to marry wealthy, rather than virtuous, women.33 Xenophon does not mention the random selection of spouses, but he does describe husband-doubling, a practice that was unique in the Greek world and doubtless contributed to the racy reputation of Spartan women. This breach of sexual exclusivity was introduced after the rhetra of Epitadeus, which permitted a man to give his house and kleros to whomever he wished while he was alive, or to bequeath them in his will.34 By the classical period (if not earlier), in addition to the land designated for distribution as kleroi, some was held as private property.35 It is clear that with more property openly in private hands Spartan men and women had increased incentives to develop heirship strategies. They may have limited the number of their offspring to increase the patrimony and social mobility of their heirs.36 Wives and husbands evidently shared the same views about family planning and attempted to further the special interests of the oikos within the context of an authoritarian patriarchy.
Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 1.8), Polybius, 37 Plutarch (Lyc. 15.12–13), and Nicolaus of Damascus (FGrH 90 F 103Z) refer to polyandry at Sparta. This practice is not necessarily indicative of a paucity of women, which, in turn, could be a symptom of female infanticide. Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 1.8) mentions the case of the married man who has no desire to synoikein with his own wife, but prefers to produce offspring by a married woman who has already proven her procreative gifts. Some scholars understand synoikein as “marry” rather than in its common sense of “cohabit,” “live with,” or “have intercourse with.”38 The two interpretations, of course, overlap: it is a question of emphasis and the writer’s usage. Xenophon uses lambano of a man who takes a wife, and synoikein for “having intercourse with.” Furthermore, as we will see, there were other childless women in addition to those whose husbands rejected them (see below). In another variation on this theme, Polybius states that several brothers would share one wife. Fraternal polyandry was also a form of family limitation, for one shared wife could not have produced as many children for the brothers as individual wives might have. When each of these matrimonial experiments began and how long they lasted is unclear. Xenophon’s description of husband-doubling postdates the rhetra attributed to Epitadeus, the victory in the Peloponnesian War, and perhaps the disaster at Leuctra—undoubtedly a period in Spartan history of such turbulence as to stimulate radical social change (see Appendix).
The answer to the question whether Spartans practiced female infanticide is not the same for all time periods. There is little data and few dates. Certainly by the Hellenistic period, when the Spartan ideal was thoroughly contaminated by alien arrangements and the “Lycurgan” economic system was embattled, and there is plenty of evidence for infanticide in the Greek world,39 beleaguered and impoverished fathers may have decided to do away with female as well as male infants. The reports of fraternal polyandry in Polybius (12.6b.8), and of husband-doubling in Plutarch (Lyc. 15.7, see also Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.5–9) and Nicolaus of Damascus (FGrH 90 F 103), may actually indicate a scarcity of marriageable women at that time. On the other hand, if these arrangements were also found in the archaic period, that would suggest the simultaneous practice of female infanticide even then. In the light of the changing demographic picture at Sparta, it is interesting that Polybius (12.6b. 8) refers to polyandry as an “ancestral” custom: however, the Spartans instituted many novel social practices in the fourth century and Hellenistic period, for which they gained credence by referring to them as “ancestral” (see Preface).40 Furthermore, Polybius was not favorably disposed to Sparta and not averse to attributing customs to the Spartans that his readers would consider barbarous.41 Some elite families in Hellenistic and Roman Sparta raised as many as three daughters, and in some cases daughters outnumber sons.42Women are well represented in these stemmata, owing in part to the fact that these families often resorted to claiming descent through matrilineal succession from Bronze Age heroes and heroines, including Helen and the Dioscuri. 43
We may speculate that if female infanticide were not common, polyandry would have left some women unmarried. There was, however, so much movement out of the Spartiate class downward that the resultant sex ratio becomes unfathomable. We may also speculate about the possibility of intermarriage between full-blooded Spartan women and members of the various subordinate classes in Laconia, though there is little evidence for such arrangements, with one exception. A story about the founding of Tarentum is worth discussing, though its veracity has been questioned for many reasons.44 During the archaic period, when the army was in the field for many years and it was uncertain whether the men would ever return safely, the Ephors (“Overseers,” elected magistrates) directed that the women have intercourse with helots in order to produce a new crop of children who could replace the men in case they never came home. When the army did return to Sparta, the children born of miscegenation were sent off to found the colony that became known as Tarentum. This episode—if it actually occurred—was exceptional, and clearly an emergency measure. Furthermore, that Greek women would be forced to have intercourse with their social inferiors, who were simultaneously at war with their polis, is difficult to believe, though the eugenics program perhaps was not yet in place.45 If these liaisons ever occurred, it is no suprise that the Spartans sent the offspring off to a colony. It is also reported that after many Spartans died in the war with the Messenians, they made some helots go to bed with the widows of the dead men so that their lack of manpower would not be apparent. They made these helots citizens.46 In general, hypogamy was not an option for elite Greek women, and there is nothing in the education of Spartan women that prepared them for such a possibility. Polybius’ (12.6.5) version of the official insemination program is more credible: the Lacedaemonians sent back to their country men in their prime of life for the purpose of begetting children.
Limiting our discussion to the upper class, unmarried or childless Spartan women include those in the following five categories: the sisters of cowards, whom no man will marry; the wives Xenophon mentions, whose husbands prefer to reproduce by other men’s wives; those to whom the state forbids marriage;47 those like Lysander’s daughters, whose lack of wealth does not make them attractive partners, particularly in a period of economic instability for men; and those to whom Cicero refers as refusing to bear children (see chap. 3). It must have taken a great deal of determination and self-will to belong to the latter group in a state that so cherished motherhood.
1. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford, 1997), 96–99.
2. On the ambiguity of this word, see Appendix n. 77.
3. See further David Leitao,“The Exclusion of Agamoi from the Gymnopaidiai and the Politics of Viewing in Sparta” (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 29, 1997; Abstract published in American Philological Association 129th Annual Meeting: Abstracts, 171). Contra Michael Pettersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai, and the Karneia (Stockholm, 1992), 76. See Preface, above.
4. Compare a male reaction to the first sculpture of the nude Aphrodite at Cnidus: according to Pliny, HN36.20, a man embraced the statue and ejaculated on it.
5. Plut. Lyc. 15.1. Athen. 13.566e exaggerates the erotic or leering aspect when he reports that Spartans strip virgins before strangers.
6. On Hodkinson’s criticism of this passage, see chap. 4 nn. 61–62 and Appendix n. 90.
7. “L’exposition des enfants à Sparte,” REA 45 (1943), 5–17, in agreement with G. Glotz, “L’exposition des enfants,” Études sociales et juridiques sur l’antiquité grecque (Paris, 1906), 187–227, esp. 188, 192, 217–19,who mentioned only sons.
8. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1995), 69–70, 164–65, 227, etc., and Families, 118, 120–21, etc. Mark Golden, in “Demography and The Exposure of Girls at Athens,” Phoenix 35 (1981), 316–31, argues that the female infanticide rate was as high as 20 percent.
9. Cf. Conclusion, below, on “ugly”daughters. Daniel Ogden,“Crooked Speech: The Genesis of the Spartan Rhetra,” JHS 14 (1994), 85–102, esp. 91–98, follows M. Delcourt, Stérilités mystérieuses et naissances maléfiques dans l’antiquité classique (Liège, 1938), in stressing the exposure of infants with marks of divine disfavor such as clubfeet.
10. Roussel,“L’exposition des enfants à Sparte,” 17, alludes to such changes, though he is unable to determine exactly when they occurred.
11. See further Pomeroy, Families, 55.
12. Daniel Ogden, Greek Bastardy (Oxford, 1996), 230, 234–35. Cf. Plut. Cat.Min. 25 on Cato’s sharing his wife Marcia with Hortensius for the purpose of bearing children. The arrangement was a result of the profound friendship between the two men.
13. “The Optimal Number of Fathers: Evolution, Demography, and History in the Shaping of Female Mate Preferences,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 907 (2000), 75–96.
14. See S. Beckerman, R. Lizarralde, et al., “The Bari Partible Paternity Project: Preliminary Results,” Current Anthropology 39, 1 (1998), 164–67, esp. 166, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,Mother Nature (New York, 1999), 246–49.
15. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884),with introd. by Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York, 1972), 125–28.
16. See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, “Raising Darwin’s Consciousness,” Human Nature 8.1 (1997), 1–49, esp. 6–9.
17. The Descent of Man (London, 1871, repr. Princeton, 1974), 273.
18. See, e.g., Paul Cartledge, “Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?” CQ 31 (1981), 84–105, esp. 105: “the modern feminist is unlikely to be over-impressed by the way in which Spartan women . . . were ‘seized’ and ‘had’ as wives in the domicile of their husbands, who could ‘lend’ them for extramarital procreation; finally, and perhaps least of all, by the overriding emphasis placed on their childbearing potential and maternal roles by men who monopolized the political direction of a peculiarly masculine society.” On Cartledge’s place in the historiography of Spartan women, see Appendix, below.
19. See, on Timaea, chap. 4, and Ann Ellis Hanson,“The Eight-Months’Child and the Etiquette of Birth,” Bulletin of the HistoryofMedicine 61 (1987), 589–602, esp. 589–92, 596.
20. Pomeroy, Families, 48–50, 54–56, 59–62.
21. Thus Bella Zweig, “The Only Women Who Give Birth to Men: A Gynocentric, Cross-Cultural View of Women in Ancient Sparta,” in Woman’s Power, Man’s Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King, ed. Mary DeForest (Wauconda, Il., 1993), 32–53. Cartledge,“Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?” 103, 105, and Cynthia B. Patterson, The Family in Greek History (Cambridge,Mass., 1998), 73, 77–78, take cognizance only of the first part of Xenophon’s report on husband-doubling (to 1.8), thus suppressing the second part stating that the women want to control two oikoi. Both emphasize “lending” the wife, rather than husband-doubling. In this way, the wrong impression is given that Spartan women are merely passed around between men to be used as baby-making devices.
22. For this translation, see n. 38 below.
23. J. Christien Tregaro, “Les bâtards spartiates,” in Mélanges Pierre Lévêque, ed. M.-M. Mactoux and E. Geny (Paris, 1993), 33–40, esp. 36, argues that the Xenophon passage means that the child born of the union of a lover (“amant,” i.e., genitor) and another man’s wife would be a member of the lover’s family but have no claim on the lover’s property, because such a child was illegitimate. Since Tregaro (35–36) also argues that the lover was a bachelor, it is difficult to understand the lover’s motivation in such a scenario. The passage is ambiguous. The common interpretation, however, that Xenophon is referring to the husband’s motivation (i.e., getting allies for his children free of charge), seems more sensible. On the domicile of the married woman who has produced children for more than one oikos, see chap. 3.
24. Rep. 458D.
25. See further Judith Evans- Grubbs,“Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh ix.24.1) and Its Social Context,” JRS 79 (1989), 59–83, esp. 62–63.
26. Heracl. Lembus, Excerpta Politiarum, 373.13 (Dilts); Lucian, Fug. 27; cf. Xenophon of Ephesus 5.1.7 (Dalmeyda). Plutarch’s explanation is that unmarried girls need to find husbands; the married women need to keep the men who have them (Sayings of Spartans, 232c2). Pliny HN 8.164 states that the libido of mares is extinguished once the mane is cut. Horace Od. 2.11.24 writes of a woman with hair tied back in a twist in the Laconian style. This style was simple and appropriate for women who spent time outdoors. Propertius 3.14.28 associates unscented hair with Spartan women. See further R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book II (Oxford, 1978, pbk. 1991), 178–79. I am grateful to Nicholas Horsfall for this reference. For elaborate hair-cutting
protocols marking ages and marital status, see Ellen N. Davis,“Youth and Age in the Thera Frescoes,” AJA 90 (1986), 399–406.
27. See further Ephraim David, “Dress in Spartan Society,” AncW 19 (1989), 3–13, esp. 7, and “Sparta’s Social Hair,” Eranos 90 (1992), 11–21, esp. 17.
28. See further G. Devereux, “Greek Pseudo-Homosexuality and the ‘Greek Miracle’,” Symb. Oslo. 42 (1968), 69–92, esp. 83–84. On the potential for extramarital intercourse with lower-class women, see chap. 5.
29. For the Athenian marriage at best, see Xen. Oec. 7–10 and Sarah B. Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Political Commentary (Oxford, 1994), ad loc.
30. Thus E. Karabélias, “L’épiclérat à Sparte,” Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi, vol. 2 (Milan, 1982), 469–80, esp. 479.
31. Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.5, Plut. Lyc. 15.1.4–5; see also Plut. Advice to the Bride and Groom, 18.
32. Of course, the nubile men and women were not equally endowed with good looks. On Lysander’s bad luck in this selection process, see: Athen. 13.555b–c citing Hermippus = FGrH IV.3 1026 F 6 = F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, suppl. 1 (Basel, 1974), fr. 87. J.-F. Bommelaer, Lysandre de Sparte: Histoire et Traditions (Athens, 1981), 58, finds the anecdote suspect for chronological reasons, unless Lysander married twice. See also chap. 3 n. 18 and Conclusion.
33. Plut. Lys. 30.5. On the traditions concerning Lysander’s daughters,see Bommelaer,Lysandre de Sparte, 57–58.
34. Cf. Plut. Agis 5.2–5. On the rhetra, see Preface n. 11 and chap. 4 nn. 61–62.
35. See further Ephraim David, “The Influx of Money into Sparta at the End of the Fifth Century b.c.,” Scripta Israelica 5 (1979/80), 30–45, and chap. 4.
36. Thus Thomas J. Figueira,“Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta,” TAPA 116 (1986), 165–213, esp. 195.
37. Polyb. 12.6b.8. F.W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1967), 340 ad loc., suggests that fraternal polyandry was an adaptation to the absence of men.
38. Pace Ogden, Greek Bastardy, 239, and Tregaro,“Les bâtards spartiates,” 35–36,who take synoikein as “marry” rather than as “live with” or “have intercourse with.” For the latter meaning, see E. C. Marchant,Xenophon, vol. 7, ScriptaMinora (Cambridge,Mass., 1968), 139; F. Ollier,Le mirage spar-tiate (Paris, 1933–43), vol. 1, 379, and Xénophon: La république des Lacédémoniens (Lyons, 1934), commentary, 34.8; W. den Boer, Laconian Studies (Amsterdam, 1954), 223; and Liana Bogino, “Note sul matrimonio a Sparta,” Sileno 17 (1991), 221–33, esp. 229. F. W. Sturtz, Lexicon Xenophonteum (1801–4, repr. Hildesheim, 1964), vol. 4, 190, s.v. synoikein, gives as a primary translation, “Consuetudinem habere, coire.” Only secondarily, citing other scholars, Sturtz gives, “Dicitur autem non de sola tori, sed de tota consuetudine, de matrimonio in universum,” thus allowing for the possibility that the
genitor may have been a man who declined to cohabit, not only with a wife, but with any woman at all (except obviously, in the context being discussed, for the encounter necessary for insemination).
39. Sarah B. Pomeroy,“Infanticide in Hellenistic Greece,” in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (London, 1983), 207–22.
40. Michael Flower, “The Invention of Tradition in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta” (paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Sept. 7, 2000), suggests that “husband-doubling” was introduced at a time when Spartiates were concerned about their falling population. He suggests that this may have happened towards the end of the fifth century.
41. See Appendix. For polyandry and multiple sexual partners among barbarian women, see Herod. 1.216; 4.172, 176, 180; 5.6.
42. A. J. S. Spawforth, “Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus: Some Prosopographical Notes,” ABSA 80 (1985), 191–258, esp. 234, 238, for the descendants of Tib. Claudius Eudamus and Claudia Damostheneia. Androtelia had at least four daughters: SEG IX.677c (add. et corr.), 2d–1st cent. B.C.E.
43. Spawforth,“Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,” 195–96, 219, 221.
44. Polyb. 12.6b5, Strabo 6.3.3 (279–80), etc. The probable source of this anecdote was Ephorus. Irad Malkin, Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean (Cambridge, 1994), esp. 139–42, understands it as aetiological, derived from the fact that the colonists were called “Partheniai.”
45. Ogden, Greek Bastardy, 242, admits the possibility of procreative unions between Spartan women and helot men, though not in the context of the foundation of Tarentum. But this is highly unlikely for eugenic reasons among others. Acting on the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, helots were bred for docility. A liaison between a Spartan woman and a male helot would not have produced the ideal Spartan; but see chap. 5.
46. Athen. 6.271c quoting Theopompus Hist. 32 = FGrH 115 F 171.
47. Plut. Am. narr. 775d gives one undatable example of the daughters of Alcippus and Damocrita. Their father’s enemies had a vote passed forbidding the daughters from marrying. The damning nature of this vote shows that central to the values of marriage and motherhood was the capacity to create alliances between males. The family of Alcippus and Damocrita was prevented from acquiring sons-in-law who would be allies, and, like the families of cowards, it was doomed to extinction.
