More specific information is available about royal women than about any other group. It is clear, however, that a historian must not generalize from information about the female kin of kings to women of lesser social status. For example, because of concern about the legitimacy of the succession, only royal women are named in tales of adultery, but the ancient sources often do not distinguish between royal and upper-class women. Many Spartiates had Heraclid blood. Aristotle writes about wealthy women, but only Plutarch gives details about particular wealthy women and they are all members of the royal houses (see below). Furthermore, the Spartiates were an elite, an aristocracy, and women of the upper classes tend to imitate the most elite among them.
Social and economic endogamy was characteristic of royal marriage. This pattern of selection of spouses was also common elsewhere in the Greek world, with uncle-niece and first-cousin marriage being common patterns.1 Endogamy is a relative concept. Since the Spartan population was small and xenophobic, it could be characterized as endogamous in general. There were never more than 10,000 homoioi (men of equal status or similars) or, consequently, more than 500 elite. Marriages among the wealthy accelerated the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer families, despite the presence of countervailing forces. The problem of finding a suitable spouse was intensified in the case of the kings: the small pool of eligible brides included members of the royal families and daughters or widows of wealthy or influential men, or in the case of Ariston, who at first had two barren wives, the extremely beautiful wife of a friend (Herod. 6.61 and Conclusion). Like Ariston, Demaratus married a woman who was claimed by another man. He carried off Percalus, the fiancée of Leotychidas II, who was his enemy, kinsman, and future successor, and married her himself (Herod. 6.65.2). Examples of royal endogamy are plentiful. The first wife of King Anaxandridas was the daughter of his sister (Herod. 5.39). Leonidas married his step-niece Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes I (Herod. 7.205.1). King Archidamus V married the daughter of his cousin Hippomedon (Polyb. 4.35.13). Lampito, daughter of Leotychidas II,married his grandson, Archidamus II (Herod. 6.71.2). Sometimes a king chose to marry a daughter of a wealthy or influential man. An heiress from a royal family was certainly desirable. The elderly Cleomenes married Chilonis, a young Eurypontid heiress. Agiatis, who inherited the great wealth of her father Gylippus, was married first to Agis IV and, when widowed, to Cleomenes III (Plut. Cleom. 1.2). Eugenics also influenced spouse selection. The Ephors fined Archidamus for marrying a short wife, for she would bear short kings (Plut. Ages. 2 ).
One of the earliest female members of the royal house about whom a story is told is Argeia, a Theban who was married to king Aristodemus, probably in the mid-tenth century B.C.E.2 After she bore twin sons, her husband died. She would not disclose which son was the elder because she wanted both to rule as equals. Nevertheless, she revealed that Eurysthenes was older than Procles by bathing and feeding him first. Of course, any story about the tenth century must be treated with caution. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that in those early days or even when the story was first told, a mother, even a queen, looked after her babies herself, or at least was on hand to supervise servants who did the actual work.
In the Life of Lycurgus (15.10, sim. Mor. 228b20), Plutarch passes on the proverbial notion that adultery was unknown at Sparta, but in other texts he tells of extramarital liaisons, mostly in the form of anecdotes about individual royal women.
Such adulterous affairs are recorded because of concern over the legitimacy of the heir. Like Spartan men, the women, evidently, were thought to be capable of duplicity concerning affairs of state. Ephors watched the first wife of Anaxandridas give birth, since she had not been able to conceive until he took a second wife (Herod. 5 .41). They suspected that she would sneak in a suppositious child, but she confounded them by giving birth to male triplets. Timaea, wife of Agis II, was accused of having had a secret affair with Alcibiades and of conceiving Leotychidas by him.3 Herodotus (5.40) comments that bigamy was “not Spartan.” The Agiad Anaxandridas, however, resorted to bigamy rather than adultery because he had not produced any children with his first wife, and did not want to divorce her since he was fond of her.4 The Eurypontid Ariston practiced bigamy, if not trigamy (Herod. 6.61–63). His third wife, whom, as we have noted, he took away from a friend, bore a son in less than nine months (Paus. 3.7.7). The legitimacy of this son, Demaratus, and his right to rule were questioned (Herod. 6.65–69).Demaratus himself confronted his mother and accused her of having had an affair with a stablehand (Herod. 6.68). (We have already observed [chap. 1] that Spartan women were interested in horses.) His mother replied that either Ariston or the legendary hero Astrobacus, whose shrine was in the courtyard, had engendered him. Of course, royal families are subject to greater constraints than commoners because of the need to have an heir, and one who was a blood heir for the kingship to be justified.
Chilonis, a Eurypontid who was the wife of Cleonymus, was involved in an adulterous liaison with Acrotatus, son of Areus I, by 272 when her elderly husband had left to persuade Pyrrhus to attack Sparta (Plut.Pyrr.26.15–29.12 ). It was said that everyone in Sparta knew how she felt about her husband, but she was not ostracized, probably because her husband was utterly despicable, while her lover defended Sparta against Pyrrhus. Plutarch portrays her as a heroine who threatened suicide if Cleonymus and Pyrrhus were victorious. That her equally heroic granddaughter was named after her indicates that Chilonis did not suffer damnatio memoriae.5
We know of no penalty for adultery, nothing to compare with the Athenian laws requiring the husband to divorce a wife who had been raped or seduced, and prohibiting the adulterous woman from wearing jewelry and attending religious ceremonies. Perhaps the task of proving adultery at Sparta was so daunting that it was practically unpunishable. At Sparta, the only consequence of adultery apparently was an aspersion that political opponents of a potential king might cast upon his legitimacy.
The wives and daughters of Spartan kings could not be styled “queens” and “princesses,”for they had no special role to play in society or religion.“Queen,”at least as a title used by non-Spartans of one woman, emerged only in the late Hellenistic period.6 Some of the royal women at Sparta did, however, wield a great deal of authority because of their influence on the kings. There was a long tradition of the involvement of women in politics, beginning with the child Gorgo, who advised her father the king about how he should treat a foreign ambassador (Herod. 5.51, 7.239). Her advice shows that she understood well the Spartan policy of avoidance of strangers (xenelasia). Women’s influence was most apparent in Hellenistic dynastic politics as it was in much of the Greek world at that time. The women were often widows and older than the men they swayed. In the middle of the third century, when Agis IV promulgated his reforms, Agesistrata 7 was in her late fifties and Archidamia in her early eighties (see below).8 It is rare in Greek history to find a grandmother and mother both not only alive, but active, at such advanced ages.9Cratesicleia remarried when old to give her son a stepfather as an ally (Plut. Cleom. 22.4). Agiatis was older than Cleomenes III when she converted him to the revolutionary program of her former husband Agis IV. Xenopeithia was the mother of Lysanoridas, who was a commander at Thebes. His father is not named; therefore we deduce that she was a widow, and important enough for her son’s political enemies to want to murder her and her sister Chryse. 10 Cynisca was around sixty years old when she defied her brother, who was then king (see chap. 1).
The wealth of Spartan women was fabled before reliable evidence for it appears in historical times. In Homer, Helen spins with a golden distaff, brings a hoard of valuable clothing to Troy, and obtains even more when there (Od. 4.131–35, Il. 6.289–92). The young girls in Alcman’s oeuvre allude to valuable jewelry and objects, including purple garments, golden mitres and bracelets, perfume, silver, ivory,11 and racehorses. Euripides (Andr. 147–53) refers to the golden ornaments Helen wore in her hair, her embroidered dresses, and her wedding presents.
Archaeological evidence confirms the poets’ reports. Gold and silver jewelry, mostly dating from the seventh century, was dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. 12 The pieces include fibulae, pendants, and beads (see further chap. 6).
Sometime after the Second Messenian War, when an austere discipline was imposed, the use of gold and silver was forbidden. We do not know what happened to women’s valuable possessions when precious metals were outlawed and houses were searched to make certain that none were hidden within (Xen. Lac. Pol. 7.6, 14.3 ). Perhaps they were dedicated to the gods. Thereafter, women were not permitted to wear ornaments or gold.13 Until the Hellenistic period, Sparta did not have coined money, or, consequently, a cash economy. When King Polydorus died and the Spartans purchased his house from his widow, they payed with oxen (eighth century B.C.E.: Paus. 12.3). Of course this purchase predated the invention of coinage, but even though foreign coins became available, such awkward transactions must have continued at Sparta long after other Greeks were using coins (see chap. 5 n. 9).
Land was the most valuable commodity in the ancient world, and the land of Laconia was among the most fertile in Greece. The ownership of land connotes permanence. In Athens and some other Greek states, women were not permitted to own land or to manage substantial amounts of wealth.14 These limitations draw attention to the impermanence of Athenian women in the family and state and their lack of access to the most valuable economic resources. The dowries of Athenian women consisted of movables and money. They were like metics (resident aliens), who also could own only movables and money. The type of
property women could hold was due not only to their low status, but also to the possibility that they might marry out of the polis. Moreover, Athenian women did not manage their own property; rather, the dowry passed from a woman’s father to her husband. Unlike Spartan women, however, Athenians could produce wealth. The Athenian oikos was a locus of production as well as reproduction. Respectable citizen women contributed directly to the economic prosperity of the oikos by weaving and shrewd management.15 Poor or lower-class women made money, often by working outside the home, and slave women contributed to their owner’s economic prosperity by working as domestics or in manufacture or in service industries such as prostitution. Against this background, Spartan women (like Spartan men) can be viewed not as versatile producers, but essentially as owners, managers, and consumers of wealth based on land (see chap. 3).
The system of land tenure at Sparta is poorly understood.16 Moreover, it changed drastically over time. Our knowledge of the laws governing the ownership of property at Sparta is uncertain, and in any case the laws may not reflect the actual historical situation at all times (Xen. Lac. Pol. 14.1, and see Appendix). In the following discussion, I will sketch a likely scenario and will concentrate in particular on the role women played in the evolving economy.
There were two systems of land tenure in Sparta, one private, the other public. The story just above about the house of the widow of Polydorus indicates that women owned property in Sparta from earliest times, and they continued to do so. The story also indicates that her property was private property.
Much of the land in Sparta was owned by the state. The participation of both men and women in this publicly owned land system changed over time. In archaic Greece, it was common for the founder of a colony to measure the territory and distribute it in equal shares to the male colonists. The Spartans, in effect, colonized their neighbors in Messenia and Laconia, though they themselves did not settle in the conquered territory and continued to live in the Spartan polis. The state distributed parcels of land to be used only for a man’s lifetime.17
According to Plutarch (Lyc. 8), Lycurgus distributed 9,000 lots (kleroi) of state-owned land in equal shares. The conquered people became helots and worked the land (see chap. 5). They owed a certain amount of produce to the Spartiate to whom the kleros had been assigned at birth (see chap. 3). Spartan women were not assigned kleroi, but received the benefits of the system through male relatives. The system was unstable for one obvious reason: the population fluctuated. By the time of Demaratus, there were 8,000 Spartans (Herod. 7.234).
After the Spartan victory in the Peloponnesian War, the Lycurgan system regulating public property was abolished.18 Thenceforth, a man could give his kleros and his house to anyone he wished, or bequeath them by testament. Furthermore, at the end of the Peloponnesian War a large amount of gold and silver entered Sparta.19Greed, which had been a vice attributed to Spartan men, was now seen in women as well. Expensive imported dresses were desired.20 Xenophon reports that wives agreed to produce children for men in addition to their husbands so that they might control two oikoi. 21 These changes decisively undermined the ideal of economic equality, and eventually led to the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a minority and the creation of an impoverished majority who no longer met the property requirements necessary to enjoy full citizenship.
A parenthetical comparison with the evolution of the kleros system in Ptolemaic Egypt (which is better documented than the Spartan system) is illuminating.22 Ptolemy I established the kleros system by distributing parcels of agricultural land in the Fayum to entice veterans of Alexander’s campaigns to settle in Egypt. Tenure of a kleros was tied to military service in behalf of the Ptolemies and to the payment of certain taxes. The holder of the kleros could lease it out, but not sell it. The king could revoke the grant, and he repossessed the kleros upon the death of the beneficiary, giving it to another potential soldier.23A stathmos (billet or dwelling place) was included in the grant. In the second half of the third century, as the strong central government declined and natives entered the military, cleruchs (holders of kleroi) regularly bequeathed billets to wives, sons, and daughters, and the kleroi became hereditary in the male line.24 Eventually, in the first century B.C.E., a brotherless girl inherited her father’s kleros.25 Despite obvious differences, in both Sparta and Ptolemaic Egypt the kleros system aimed at creating a hereditary army which would always be ready and willing to go out and fight, inasmuch as sustenance from the land was constantly available for the soldier’s family and for himself. In both places, the interests of the private family triumphed over the goals of the central government. The documentary papyri record the gradual evolution of the house and the land from public to private tenure, and the change from the inheritance of land exclusively by male kin to inheritance by both sexes. It is also apparent that, doubtless for practical reasons, women could inherit dwelling places before they were able to inherit kleroi. At Sparta, there are no comparable records documenting change over time; consequently it is not possible to determine whether the decree attributed to Epitadeus accomplished or acknowledged the transformation by one radical piece of legislation.26
The aims of the state were at variance with the economic ambitions of individual families. Like other Greeks, Spartans practiced diverging devolution, but the Spartans alone attempted to counter the decline in economic status that large families would experience when the paternal estate was divided. Diverging devolution works well only in a capitalistic economy with ever-expanding resources. In a city like Athens, expansion was the result not only of intensification of agriculture,27 but also of trade, colonization, banking, manufacturing, and services. Sparta’s economy, however, was based on agriculture, and property consisted of a finite amount of land and a servile population not augmented by purchase.
The liberation of part ofMessenia in 369 seriously undermined the Spartan economy as well. The Messenian helots and the income from the land they tilled were lost to the Spartans. Perhaps it was to some extent due to economic pressures that Spartans began to experiment with various unique methods of family planning (see chap. 3).
Aristotle criticized the Spartan system of land tenure, which permitted women to own land, manage their own property, and exercise authority in the family:
Again, the licence in the matter of their women is detrimental both to the chosen aim of the constitution and to the happiness of the state. For just as man and wife are part of a household, so clearly we should regard a state also as divided into two roughly equal bodies of people, one of men, one of women. So, in all constitutions in which the position of women is unsatisfactory, one half of the state must be regarded as unregulated by law. And that is just what has happened there. For the lawgiver, wishing the whole state to be hardy, makes his wish evident as far as the men are concerned, but has been wholly negligent in the case of the women. For being under no constraint whatever they live unconstrainedly, and in luxury.
An inevitable result under such a constitution is that esteem is given to wealth, particularly if they do in fact come to be female-dominated; and this is a common state of affairs in military and warlike races, though not among the Celts and any others who have openly accorded esteem to male homosexuality. Indeed, it seems that the first person to relate the myth did not lack some rational basis when he coupled Ares with Aphrodite; for all such people seem in thrall to sexual relations, either with males or with females. That is why this state of affairs prevailed among the Laconians, and in the days of their supremacy a great deal was managed by women. And yet what difference is there between women ruling and rulers ruled by women? The result is the same. Over-boldness is not useful for any routine business, but only, if at all, for war. Yet even to those purposes the Laconians’women were very harmful. This they demonstrated at the time of the invasion by the Thebans: they were not at all useful, as in other states, but caused more confusion than the enemy.
So it seems that from the earliest times licence in the matter of their women occurred among the Laconians, reasonably enough. For there were long periods when the men were absent from their own land because of the campaigns, when they were fighting the war against the Argives, or again the one against the Arcadians and Messenians. When they gained their leisure, they put themselves into the hands of their legislator in a state of preparedness brought about by the military life, which embraces many parts of virtue. People say that Lycurgus endeavoured to bring the women under the control of his laws, but that when they resisted he backed off. These then are the causes of what took place, and clearly, therefore, of this mistake as well. But the subject of our inquiry is not whom we ought to excuse and whom not, but what is correct and what is not.
The poorness of the arrangements concerning women seems, as was said earlier, not only to create a sort of unseemliness in the constitution in itself on its own, but also to contribute something to the greed for money; for after the points just made one could assail practice in respect of the uneven levels of property. For some of them have come to possess far too much, others very little indeed; and that is precisely why the land has fallen into the hands of a small number. This matter has been badly arranged through the laws too. For while he made it (and rightly made it) ignoble to buy and sell land already possessed, he left it open to anyone, if they wished, to give it away or bequeath it—and yet the same result follows inevitably, both in this case and in the other. Moreover, something like two-fifths of all the land is possessed by women, both because of the many heiresses that appear, and because of the giving of large dowries. Now it would have been better if it had been arranged that there should be no dowry, or a small or even a moderate one. But as it is one may give an heiress in marriage to any person one wishes; and if a man dies intestate, the person he leaves as heir gives her to whom he likes. As a result, although the land was sufficient to support 1,500 cavalry and 30,000 heavy infantry, their number was not even 1,000. The sheer facts have shown that the provisions of this system served them badly; the state withstood not a single blow, but collapsed owing to the shortage of men.28
As we have seen, by Aristotle’s time, women owned nearly two-fifths of the land of Laconia. Because the Spartan economy was based entirely upon agriculture, women controlled a significant portion of the means of production. The wealthiest women in mainland Greece were Spartans. They advertised their wealth flamboyantly by winning victories in horseraces at Olympia. One woman is named in a fragmentary inscription listing Spartans who had made monetary donations for the rebuilding of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Philostratis is cited for giving three obols in 360. Only one man gave as little as she, and most gave at least twice that amount.29As time went on, Macedonian queens and royal women (like Amastris) on the fringes of the Greek world rivaled and surpassed Spartan women in wealth, for, like the Romans, the former had access to many sources of revenue in their various empires, while the Spartans were limited to incomes derived from a polis economy based on agriculture.30
Spartan society as a whole had become stratified, with the majority of male Spartiates so impoverished that they could not meet the requirements of membership in a syssition. They were no longer homoioi, but known as “inferiors” (Xen. Hell. 3.3.6). Moralists claimed that wealth, rather than the old Spartan virtues, had become the principle criterion for high social status. In any event, this social change gave women an opportunity to be members of the elite on the same terms as men. Some were even able to enrich themselves illegally, as men did. Theopompus reports that during the Third Social War (356–346), Archidamus III took some of the money at Delphi and that the Phocians bribed his wife Deinicha so that she would persuade her husband to support them (Paus. 3.10.3).
Despite their vaunted austerity, Spartans apparently were tempted to keep some items of luxury in private at home. Xenophon (Lac. Pol. 7.6) reports that houses were inspected to ascertain whether anyone was hiding any gold or silver. This practice may have become more common in Xenophon’s day, because that was the time when large amounts of precious metals were entering Sparta. Doubtless Aristotle associated women with greed and luxury, for these were features of private life.31 A parallel from Roman history is of interest. In 195 B.C.E., during the debate over the repeal of the Oppian Law at Rome, a speaker argues that women should be granted the opportunity to display their wealth by wearing gold and purple and riding in carriages, for they had few other avenues by which to satisfy their ambitions.32 The single item of conspicuous consumption that Spartan women were permitted was racehorses. It is no accident that a Spartan was the first woman whose horses were victorious at pan-Hellenic games, for such triumphs provided women with an approved avenue for the display of their wealth.33 Entering such a competition was expensive, for the owner was obliged to pay for horses, trainers, charioteer, chariot, and—if victorious—a victory monument.
Lycurgus had outlawed dowries, but by the end of the fifth century, if not earlier, women had them.34 Perhaps the tradition that Spartan women did not have dowries was revived or invented in the Hellenistic period under the influence of Agis IV and Cleomenes III or some other utopian program (see below). In the Greek world various lawgivers, philosophers, and moralists disapproved of dowries, or believed they should be regulated. In Plato’s Republic there is neither marriage nor private property, and therefore there are no dowries, and in Laws (742C), dowries are specifically outlawed. Justin (Epit. 3.3.8) states that girls marry without a dowry so that they will not be chosen for their wealth.
In an ideal Sparta, just as all the men are homoioi who enjoy equal status, so are all the girls equally endowed. It is reasonable to suppose that in a Sparta lacking precious metals, slaves, or other movable wealth, there would be little, except land and horses, to constitute a substantial and useful dowry. A theory about dowry supports the view that there was a time when dowries did not exist in Sparta. Dowries are found principally in parts of the Mediterranean where men cultivate land with a plow and own the instruments and beasts needed for production. In such societies, women’s work is undervalued: a woman is viewed as a burden to her husband, and her father must contribute a dowry for her support.35 This analysis is appropriate to a society like that of Athens, where women were barred from access to most economic resources and the means of production, and men performed agricultural labor. In Sparta, in contrast, women were not economic liabilities, for the kleros system ensured their basic sustenance.
Certainly by the end of the fifth century, if not earlier, along with the decline in the kleros system and the accumulation of precious metals and other valuable items in private hands, dowries were a conspicuous part of the economic regime and doubtless contributed to the impoverishment of some families and the accumulation of wealth by others. Aristotle (Pol. 1270a25–26) mentions dowries as a means by which women came to possess wealth. Lack of a dowry in Sparta, as elsewhere in Greece, threatened to make a girl an unwilling spinster. The fiancés of Lysander’s daughters attempted to break their engagements when they discovered that their brides-to-be were poor (Plut. Lys. 30.5). Without giving any historical background by which the event may be dated, Plutarch (Am. narr. 775d) tells of a woman’s attempted act of savage revenge on other women when her daughters could no longer have dowries after her husband’s property was seized by his political enemies. Aelian (VH 6.6) reports that a man who had five sons could give his daughters in marriage without a dowry. This exception implies that such a father would be so highly honored that a man might marry his daughter just for the sake of becoming a son-in-law of such a man, but that in ordinary circumstances a dowry was necessary.
In terms of Greek law, an “heiress” was a fatherless, brotherless woman. The heiress at Athens was called epikleros; in Gortyn, she was known as patroiokos; in Sparta, as patrouchos. In the absence of a male descendent, such a woman could be the means by which her father’s lineage was perpetuated. She also might transmit her father’s property to her son (who thus became his grandfather’s heir), or inherit it herself. In some cases there was no property, but the filial obligation to perpetuate the lineage remained. At Athens, the filial obligation was always foremost; at Sparta, the meager sources suggest that the emphasis in the role of the heiress changed over time, with concerns about her property eclipsing those of her father’s lineage.36
The principal primary sources that help to define the position of the heiress at Sparta include Herodotus,Aristotle, and analogies with the Code of Gortyn. At Gortyn, the heiress (patroiokos) was permitted to keep part of her patrimony and marry outside her father’s lineage.37 According to Herodotus (6.57.4), the kings originally exercised the right to give an heiress (patrouchos) in marriage if she had not already been betrothed by her father. If her legal situation was similar to that in Gortyn, the heiress at Sparta was never subject to an inflexible rule that she marry her father’s closest male next of kin. She may, however, have been under some moral and religious obligation to see that her father’s lineage not be extinguished.38 There was some concern for the continuity of oikoi at Sparta: for his suicide mission at Thermopylae, Leonidas selected men who had children (Herod. 7.205.2, 5.41.3). Furthermore, we may speculate that the prestige of the kings made it virtually impossible for the Spartan heiress to reject the bridegroom chosen for her.
The power of the state over the heiress and her property decreased as the power of the private family increased, for Aristotle’s testimony differs markedly from that of Herodotus. Therefore the change probably occurred at the same time as the other changes increasing the individual’s rights over private property that are associated with the reforms attributed to Epitadeus. According to Aristotle, however, the kleronomos (heir apparent: Pol. 1270a28) had the power to give the heiress (epikleros) as well as the property to whomever he pleased. The “heir apparent” was doubtless the nearest male kin of the heiress’s father: he was the man who exercised authority over the heiress and her property.
The inheritance regime for Spartan males was the same as for Athenians, but the system was more favorable for Spartan women than for their Athenian counterparts, who did not inherit at all, and who were given dowries that were perhaps one-sixth of what their brothers received.39 In contrast, the Spartan woman’s share of the patrimony was half as much as her brother’s. Girls who were fatherless and brotherless were better off at Sparta than at Athens, for the Spartans got to control their property, while the Athenians were simply conduits of the patrimony to their sons. Moreover, the brotherless, fatherless Athenian woman was required to marry her father’s closest kinsman, usually her uncle or cousin, even if both were married at the time the woman’s father died. On the other hand, in cases where the heiress was not wealthy, the inexorable obligation of the male next of kin to marry her themselves or to find her a husband assured her marriage at Athens, but could compromise her Spartan counterpart. The daughters of Lysander, who were brotherless, nearly lost their bridegrooms when the men learned that their finaceés were poor.40 It is not certain, however, whether they were engaged to kinsmen.
Aristotle reports that at Sparta, heiresses were numerous (see above). This plethora of heiresses was exaggerated inasmuch as Sparta was always plagued by oliganthropia (sparse male citizen population). Aristotle and later writers drew attention to the connection between oliganthropia and women’s ownership of property (see chap. 3). In addition, women of the property-owning classes may have outnumbered men at Sparta, as they did at Rome during and after the Second Punic War. Fearing that men would no longer fulfill the criteria necessary for their census classes and that the number of men eligible for military and governmental service would be diminished, the Romans passed legislation aimed at preventing women from owning great wealth.41 As is apparent in the western world nowadays, women’s survival and longevity is a significant factor in property ownership.
At the end of the fifth century, private property triumphed at the expense of public property. The reforms attributed to Epitadeus that allowed women to inherit kleroi, the influx of precious metals, the use of dowries, and the laws affecting heiresses permitted women to possess a large portion of the total wealth of Sparta. The period of the Peloponnesian War was a watershed in the history of Athenian women as well. After the Spartans occupied Decelea and war was waged throughout the year rather than just in the summer, as had previously been customary, Athenian women had to assume more responsibility and exercise greater economic power. Like Spartans, in the absence of men Athenian women managed their affairs.42 Defeat cost the Athenians their empire and produced an immediate, though temporary, decline in the city’s economy. Some thirty years after the Peloponnesian War, Athens had returned to its traditional way of life: in contrast, the Spartan defeat at Leuctra and the loss of the rich agricultural land of Messenia dealt a lethal blow to the Spartan economy. A generation later, Sparta pointedly refused to support the campaigns of Alexander: consequently, Spartans missed the opportunity to share in plundering the wealth of Persia. By the third century, the economy was characterized by many mortgages and by large estates in the hands of a few. These few included royal women, who were among the wealthiest people in Sparta (see below). Only 700 old Spartan families remained, and of these only about 100 possessed land and kleros (Plut. Agis 5.4). Female members of these fortunate 100 families benefited from the concentration of wealth. A brotherless woman could inherit all her father’s land, as did Agiatis, who inherited from the extremely wealthy Gylippus (Plut. Cleom. 1.2).With such assets, she was claimed as wife by two kings, Agis IV and Cleomenes III.
In 244 B.C.E., when he was not quite twenty, Agis IV became the Eurypontid king of Sparta.43 He had been raised by his mother Agesistrata and his grandmother Archidamia. The Agiad king,Leonidas (ca. 316–235), was older, had lived with the Seleucids in great luxury, was married to a daughter of one of them, and had two children by that wife.44Agis, in contrast, recreated himself as a Spartan of the old austere tradition, wearing the short cloak, for example, and following the laws attributed to Lycurgus. He proposed a program of reform, principally designed to increase the number of full-fledged citizens and restore Sparta to its former prestige. Redistribution of the wealth was essential to reinstate the 600 landless citizens as homoioi. Agis donated 600 talents and his own huge estate for redistribution (Plut. Agis 9). Women controlled most of the wealth in Sparta: therefore their support was essential for the success of the reforms. Agis was able to convince his mother and grandmother, who were not only the two wealthiest women, but who were the wealthiest of all Spartans, to contribute their property. They were both widows, and doubtless doted on the charismatic young king, but other wealthy women did not support his program. According to Plutarch (Agis 7), they were corrupted by their desire for luxury and were reluctant to give up the prestige and influence derived from their wealth. We also observe that the women exercised full control over their own property.
Leonidas led the opposition to Agis’ program, and after much strife was deposed and replaced by Cleombrotus, his son-in-law, who supported the reforms (Plut.Agis 11.3–4). At this juncture,Leonidas’daughter Chilonis took her father’s side and joined him in the temple of Athena of the Bronze House, where he had sought asylum.45 The favor she showed the dissolute old man was the best recommendation he had. He was eventually recalled. Chilonis was able to convince her father to spare her husband Cleombrotus, but Agis was summarily murdered in 241. Agesistrata and Archidamia were killed as well. One of the ephors had a particular reason for wanting to eliminate Agesistrata: he had borrowed some expensive cups and clothing from her and did not want to return them (Plut. Agis 18.4). Leonidas saw to it that Agiatis, the extremely wealthy widow of Agis IV, was given in marriage to his son Cleomenes III, though he was too young for marriage. Her young son by Agis was not heard from again. Pausanias (2.9.1) asserts that Cleomenes poisoned him, but this charge is difficult to accept, unless Agiatis was an unusually forgiving and stoical woman. She had at least one son by Cleomenes (Plut. Cleom. 22.8).
Royal women in the Hellenistic period were influential in politics as powers behind the throne. As we have seen, Agiatis was married first to Agis IV, and when widowed she was married to Cleomenes III. In Plutarch’s descriptions, both marriages were paradigmatically harmonious and loving, typical of the ideals of the Hellenistic period.46 Agiatis was able to instill in her second husband the revolutionary ideas of her first (Plut. Cleom. 1.2). Cleomenes also was influenced by his studies with Sphaerus, a Stoic who came to Sparta to lecture (Plut. Cleom. 2.2, 11.2). In 235, when Cleomenes became the sole king of Sparta, he attempted to revive Agis’ program. His mother, Cratesicleia, who was extremely wealthy, supported his efforts and, in fact, remarried so that her husband Megistonous would use his influence on her son’s behalf. Plutarch indicates that it was her own independent choice both to remarry and to select her new husband. Megistonous and his supporters contributed their property for redistribution (Plut. Cleom. 10–11.1). Abolition of debt and redistribution of land followed. The agoge and syssitia were revived. Sparta was restored to its former military eminence for a time, but with Macedonian forces threatening him, Cleomenes turned to Ptolemy III Euergetes for assistance. Megistonous had been killed in battle, and Agiatis had died around 224. Ptolemy promised to help, but only if Cleomenes sent Cratesicleia and his children to Egypt as hostages.
Eventually Cleomenes was defeated by an alliance of Macedonians and Achaeans and fled with three thousand soldiers to Egypt, where the degenerate Ptolemy IV, Philopator, was now ruler. Philopator ordered that Cleomenes be imprisoned.47 and the Spartan women and children in Alexandria be killed. At first Cratesicleia panicked, but in the end they died stoically and bravely.48 Plutarch (Cleom. 39.1) commented: “Sparta played out these events with the deeds of women rivaling those of men.”
Nabis reigned as sole king of Sparta from 207 to 192. He may have been a member of the Eurypontid dynasty, though he executed all members of the royal houses. His wife Apega is probably identical with Apia, daughter of Aristippus of Argos who, like Nabis, ruled as a tyrant.49 By marrying one of their daughters to Apia’s brother, Pythagoras of Argos, and by trying to arrange marriages for their adult sons with the daughters of Philip V ofMacedon in 197, they mimicked the political endogamy of tyrants in the archaic period.50 Polybius disliked both Nabis and Apega and portrays them in an unfavorable light. He indicates that Apega wielded a great deal of power, furthering her husband’s ambitions and gratifying her greed. Like a Hellenistic queen, an Arsinoë or Cleopatra, she received men at court alongside her husband. She evidently wanted to be wealthy like her royal predecessors, and Nabis sent her to her native Argos to procure money. Her viciousness exceeded her husband’s. A woman, she knew how to humiliate women, and also how to dishonor men by humiliating the women in their family. She subjected the Argive women to suffering and violence and stole nearly all their gold jewelry and valuable clothing (Polyb. 13.7). Inspired by his wife, Nabis invented a female robot as evil and deceptive as Pandora:
He also had made for himself a machine, if one should call such a thing a machine. It was the image of a woman, dressed in expensive clothing, in appearance a well-executed likeness of the wife of Nabis. Whenever he sent for any of the citizens, wishing to exact money, he would begin by speaking gently. . . . If any refused and said they would not pay the sum, he said something like,“Perhaps I am not able to persuade you; however, I think this Apega will.” This was the name of Nabis’ wife. He said this, and soon the image I have described was present. When the man shook her hand, rising from his chair, he made the woman stand and embraced her with his hands and drew her little by little to his chest. Under her dress she had arms and hands and breasts covered with iron nails. Whenever Nabis placed his hands on his wife’s back and by means of certain devices drew the man towards her and drove him against her breasts very slowly; he forced the man who was being crushed to say anything. In this way he destroyed quite a few of those who refused to pay him. (Polyb. 13.7)51
Nabis was a reformer, like Cleomenes. His program included the redistribution of land, but unlike the reigns of Agis and Cleomenes, in Nabis’ time the donations were not voluntary. His program, like that of the reformer kings, included abolition of debts and the restoration of the Lycurgan constitution (Livy 34.31.16–18). In 195, he executed eighty of the principes iuventutis (Livy 34.27.8). He also exiled the wealthiest and most prominent Spartiates who were his enemies, and gave their property as well as their wives and daughters (Livy 34.35.7 liberos coniuges) in marriage to newly freed helots.52We are not told if the helots were bachelors or what happened to their former wives, or how many women were involved. Doubtless the men were enthusiastic about marrying the wives of their former masters, at the very least because they would enjoy their estates.53 Previously when helots were freed, they had not usually been made citizens, but Nabis conferred citizenship on them in large numbers (Livy 38.34.6). Polybius (16.13.1) refers to the men as douloi (slaves) and Livy (34.27.9) once uses the word ilotae (helots), but elsewhere (34.21.11) refers to servi (slaves). It seems more likely that the members of the lower class who married the wives and daughters of the Spartan exiles were helots and mercenaries rather than slaves.54 The early Ptolemies had already demonstrated that mercenaries could be recruited as citizens by the offer of an oikos, 55 and Nabis certainly was interested in increasing the number of soldiers at Sparta. Furthermore, at least judging by the swashbuckling adventurers depicted in New Comedy, mercenaries often captivated the hearts of women. In any case, to force upper-class Greek women to marry purchased slaves, who were possibly foreign born, and to confer Spartan citizenship on such people, would have been unthinkable. Marriage to a Spartan wife or daughter instantly supplied a helot with an oikos sufficient to maintain a citizen soldier. According to a treaty of 194 B.C.E. between Nabis and the Romans, the wives and daughters of the men exiled by Nabis were permitted to join their original husbands.56 The treaty stated explicitly that the women would not be forced to join their previous husbands. We are not told whether any of them chose to do so.57 Plutarch’s use of the verb metoikizo (Phil. 16.4), with its connotations of transferring an oikos, to describe Philopoemen’s eviction of the slaves and mercenaries whom tyrants had made Spartan citizens implies that they left with their Spartan wives and families. Furthermore, we may speculate that, considering the social hierarchies in force in antiquity, the older women wanted to continue to control and enjoy younger husbands who were clearly their social inferiors, and not exchange them for the original husbands, who were doubtless irate and displeased with what had transpired in their absence. The older women may also have stayed to support their daughters, who knew no other husbands. Moreover, the women wanted to keep their land, and were afraid that the children they had borne to the helots would suffer the same fate as those supposedly born to their ancestors during the Second Messenian War. It was said that when the Spartan husbands returned after the war they exiled these half-breed children to Italy, where they allegedly founded the colony of Tarentum (see chap. 2). In any case, in 188 after Nabis had been killed under Philopoemon, the Achaean commander who had restored Sparta as a member of the Achaean League, the exiles returned to Sparta and those who had been made citizens by “tyrants” were exiled to Achaea (Plut. Phil. 16.4, Livy 38.34). We are not told what happened to the women. We may speculate that their original husbands were willing to take them back, if for no other reason than the fact that they possessed substantial amounts of property.58
Nabis was killed in 192 by Aetolians, who were his putative allies. The Romans reluctantly settled affairs in Sparta for a time. The last radical leader of Sparta was Chaeron, who had been exiled from Sparta and had served as an envoy to Rome in 182–181. He seized the property of the sisters, wives, mothers, and children of men who had been exiled (by rulers from Cleomenes through Nabis), and distributed it at random to his most needy supporters (Polyb.24.7.3). Finally, the Spartans invited Aristaenus, the commander of the Achaean League, to put an end to Chaeron’s tyranny, and returned the property to those from whom it had been seized.
Individual women like Gorgo, Agiatis, Cratesicleia, and perhaps Deinicha exercised a significant influence on male members of their own family and on society at large. Moreover, women in groups were encouraged to uphold Spartan ideals by activities such as publicly praising brave men and reviling cowards and bachelors. No other Greek women are reported to have been involved in elections to the extent that Spartans were. When a member of the Gerousia was elected, he was followed by throngs of young men who praised him and many women who sang of his excellence and congratulated him on his good fortune in life. His syssition awarded an extra portion of food to the victor. After dinner, his female relatives congregated at the doors of the mess-hall. Thereupon, in public, a second selection took place, but the competitors were female. The victor summoned the woman whom he held in the highest esteem and gave her the food, saying that he had received it as an indication of his excellence and he gave it to her in the same way.59 The rest of the women congratulated her and escorted her home (Plut. Lyc. 26.3–4).
Such reports do not indicate that women were fully active citizens in the sense that men were, that they could defend their polis, vote, or hold governmental office, for overt political power was not exercised by women anywhere in the Greek world before the advent of Hellenistic queens. But, as Aristotle remarked in his discussion of Sparta, in warlike societies men are dominated by their wives. Even if he is exaggerating, he did perceive that women had a voice in managing affairs at Sparta. Some scholars in the second half of the twentieth century have gone even further than Aristotle in detecting the power and influence of Spartan women.60 Stephen Hodkinson paints the grandest picture of Spartan women in a plutocratic society. Hodkinson argues that the kleros system governing public lands that Plutarch describes was solely an invention of the Hellenistic period. Consequently, no category of land was ever restricted to ownership only by males. If Hodkinson were correct, the situation described by Aristotle would have had roots as early as the archaic period when women would have possessed and managed vast amounts of property.61 The evidence from women’s history, however, indicates that he is not correct, but rather that an additional source of great wealth was available to women at the end of the fifth century. Indeed, Hodkinson draws the bulk of his evidence for women’s wealth from fourth-century evidence. Victories in pan-Hellenic chariot races were evidence of vast wealth. All twelve Olympic victories won by Spartans from 548 to 420 were won by men. In contrast, half of the six victories from 396 to 368 were won by women. The sudden appearance of female victors in chariot races at Olympia beginning in 396,62 the new craving for expensive imported dresses, and even Agesilaus’ scoffing remark about Cynisca seem suitable to the conspicuous consumption characteristic of the nouvelles riches.
G. E. M. de Ste Croix contrasts “the inferior position of women at Athens” with “the powerful position of women in the Spartan system of property ownership.”63 James Redfield points out that women were active in the system of marriage exchange and in motivating men to increase the economic status of the oikos. 64 According to Barton Kunstler, women made major decisions concerning the disposition of household and communal wealth, discussing financial matters with helots and perioikoi. 65
Women’s influence, however, was not restricted to the private sphere. Maria H. Dettenhofer argues that wives managed the kleroi, and were therefore responsible for their husbands’ social status.66 She claims that women wielded political influence through their economic power. As we have seen above, Plutarch’s description (Agis 7) of women’s participation in the reforms of Agis gives a clear picture of the direct relationship between wealth and public power. For elite women at Sparta at that time, wealth was probably the only secure basis of influence and autonomy. In each of the sagas of reform, royal women were directly involved because they were property owners and controlled their own wealth. Agesistrata,Archidamia, and Cratesicleia espoused the political beliefs of the men in their family, and like the men, paid for their involvement with their lives. That they were executed is testimony to their power.
1. Plut. Roman Questions, 108, and see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores,Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York, 1995), 64.
2. Herod. 6.52, 4.147; Paus. 3.1.5–9. See Deborah Gera, Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus de Mulieribus (Leiden, 1997), no. 5 and pp. 121–25.
3. Plut. Lys. 22.3–4, Alcib. 23.7–8, Ages. 3.1–2, and see further P. A. Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London, 1987), 115, and chap. 3, above.
4. Herod. 5.39–41. On the familial strife that ensued, see C. Dewald, “Women and Culture in Herodotus’Histories,”in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. H. Foley (New York, 1981), 91–125, esp. 108–9.
5. See further Alfred S. Bradford, “Gynaikokratoumenoi: Did Spartan Women Rule Spartan Men?” AncW 14 (1986), 13–18, esp. 14.
6. An honorary inscription at Delphi (SIG3 430) identifies Areus as the son of King Acrotatus and Queen Chilonis. If this inscription refers to Areus I and to his mother Chilonis, the date is 267 b.c.e., though the parents of Areus I had not been king and queen. If the inscription refers to Areus II, posthumous child of Chilonis and Acrotatus, the date is 262–254. See R. Flacelière, Les aitoliens à Delphes (Paris, 1937), 84 n. 2, 457–58; Linda J. Piper, Spartan Twilight (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1986), 22; Bradford, “Gynaikokratoumenoi: Did Spartan Women Rule Spartan Men?” 14; LGPN 3A s.v. Areus 4 (ca. 330–265), 6 (ca. 262–254) for the posthumous child, and s.v.Chilonis 3.1, daughter of Leotychidas (i.e., Latuchidas) and 4 daughter of Leonidas and Cratesclea, and see chap. 3 n. 27. See also on Apega, below, although a tyrant’s wife is technically not a queen, despite behaving like one. On the title of “queen” in general see Elizabeth Carney, “’What’s in a Name?’ The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period,” in Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeory (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 154–72.
7. LGPN 3A s.v. Agesistrata dates her ca. 295–241.
8. LGPN 3A s.v. Archidamia dates her ca. c. 310–241, and see below.
9. For Nicippia, a wealthy great-grandmother who is also probably a widow, see SEG XI.677, 1st cent. c.e., and see further chap. 6 nn. 54, 80.
10. Her sister Chryse was probably close to her in age. See Conclusion n. 2.
11. Parth. 1.64, 66–67; 3, fr. 3.71, 77; 162 fr. 2.c 3,5S elephantin, conj. D.A. Campbell, Greek Lyric, vol. 2 (Cambridge,Mass., 1988), 498 line 5, and see chap. 1 n. 123 for ivory plaques, and Appendix for ivory artifacts possibly portraying Helen.
12. J. P. Droop,“The Bronzes,” in Dawkins, AO, 196–202, esp. 200, refers to “several silver specimens and two of gold with silver bulbs joined by a chain.” See also R. M. Dawkins, “Artemis Orthia: Some Additions and a Correction,” JHS 50 (1930), 298–99 and pl. XI.1, for another bronze fibula. Of course, there is no way to ascertain whether these items were worn by or dedicated by women. Men could have purchased them and given them immediately as gifts to the goddess, but (at least judging from inscribed dedications to Artemis elsewhere in Greece) women seem more likely to have done so.
13. Heraclides Lembus, Excerpta Politiarum, 373.13 (Dilts).
14. See further David Schaps, The Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 1979), 6–7.
15. See further Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 63, 72–73, and Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1994), passim.
16. See further David Asheri, “Laws of Inheritance, Distribution of Land, and Political Constitutions in Ancient Greece,” Historia 12 (1963), 1–21, esp. 5–6, 12–15, 18–20, and for recent interpretations see S. Hodkinson, “Inheritance, Marriage, and Demography: Perspectives upon the Success and Decline of Classical Sparta,” in Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success, ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1989); Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (London, 2000); and Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece (Oxford, 1997), 51–54, and Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. The views Hodkinson expresses in Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta on women and the development of Spartan society have not changed fundamentally since the publication of his earlier articles on this subject, although, like Cartledge, he is now more firmly convinced that the economic system Plutarch attributed to Lycurgus and to archaic Sparta was really an invention of Hellenistic reformers. See Appendix n. 90, below.
17. According to Diod. Sic. 10.34.8, the Spartans did not receive wealth from their fathers, but inherited zeal to die in behalf of freedom and glory.
18. See further David Asheri, “Sulla legge di Epitadeo,” Athenaeum n.s. 39 (1961), fasc. i–ii, 45–68.
19. Plut. Agis 5.1,Ps.-Pl. Alcib. 122E–123B, and see further Ephraim David,“The Influx of Money into Sparta at the End of the Fifth Century B.C.,” Scripta Classica Israelica 5 (1979–80), 30–45, and S. Hodkinson, “Warfare,Wealth, and the Crisis of Spartiate Society,” in War and Society in the Greek World, ed. J. Rich and G. Shipley (London, 1993), 146–76.
20. Plut. Lys. 2.7–8, Mor. 141d (26), 190e (1), 229a (1), and see further Ephraim David,“Dress in Spartan Society,” AncW 19 (1989), 3–13, esp. 12.
21. Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.7–9, cf. Polyb. 12.6b.8, Plut. Lyc. 15.12–13, Comp. Lyc. et Num. 3.1–2, Mor. 242b(23), and see chap. 3.
22. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (New York, 1984), 151, and C. Préaux, L’économie royale des Lagides (Brussels, 1939), 463–80.
23. See further J.Modrzejewski,“Régime foncier et status social dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque,”in Terre et paysans dépendents dans les sociétés antiques (Paris, 1979), 163–88, esp. 172, and see now P. Petrie2, pp. 37–39.
24. Around 60 b.c.e. Auletes recognized the right to dispose of the kleros by testament: BGU VI.1285.
25. P. Berol. Inv. no. 16 223 (Heracleopolis) = SB VIII.9790.
26. Also note the suggestion of Thomas J. Figueira, “Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta,” TAPA 116 (1968), 186, that in order to stem the decline in population after the earthquake, the arkhaia moira (Arist. fr. 611.12, Plut. Mor. 218e) was intended to prevent the alienation of the original kleros.
27. See further Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 46–50.
28. Arist. Pol. 1269b12–1270a34, trans. T. J. Saunders, Aristotle, Politics: Books I and II (Oxford, 1995), 42–43.
29. Gifts to the Naopoioi: CID II.4.1.55–6, table 3, and see further Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 174–75, 439.
30. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 14–16.
31. Plutarch (Agis 4) also associates women with luxury, for he writes that “even though he had been brought up by women,”Agis IV was not self-indulgent. In the Andromache, Euripides portrays Hermione as having a large dowry when she marries Neoptolemus, who is less affluent.
32. Livy 34.7 and n. 41 below.
33. For an egregious example, see chap. 1 on Cynisca.
34. Plut. Mor. 227f15, cf. Lyc. 15, Lys. 30.5–6; Ael. VH 6.6; Athen.13.555b–c citing Hermippus = FGrH IV.3 1026 F 6 = F. Wehrli,Die Schule des Aristoteles, suppl. 1 (Basel, 1974), fr. 87; Justin Epit. 3.3.8.
35. See further Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 60.
36. See further Schaps, The Economic Rights ofWomen in Ancient Greece, 43–45.
37. Lex Gort. = Inscr. Creticae, VIII.8–12.
38. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 95–98, argues against the majority of scholars—including most recently E. Karabélias, “L’epiclerat à Sparte,” in Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi, vol. 2 (Milan, 1982), 469–80; E. David, “Aristotle and Sparta,” Anc. Soc. 13–14 (1982–83), 67–103, esp. 88–89; and Anne-Marie Vérilhac and Claude Vial, Le mariage grec du VIe siècle av. J.-C. à l’époque d’Auguste,BCHsuppl. 32 (Paris, 1998), 111–12—that there never was a change in the rules governing heiresses in Sparta.
39. See further Schaps, Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece, 77–79.
40. See chap. 2 n. 33.
41. See above on the Lex Oppia, and see further Pomeroy, Goddesses,Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 162–63, 178, and Jane Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (London, 1986), 171–77.
42. See further Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, 71–73, 119.
43. Plut. Agis 4. See further Claude Mossé, “Women in the Spartan Revolutions,” in Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 138–53, and A. Powell, “Spartan Women Assertive in Politics? Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenes,” in Sparta: New Perspectives, ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 393–419. Powell (esp. 414–15) argues that the support of women was crucial to the reforms and that some of the stories about heroic women were shaped by contemporary political factions in ways designed to influence women’s opinion.
44. Plut. Agis 10. A. S. Bradford, A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C., to the Sack of Sparta by Alaric, A.D. 296 (Munich, 1977), 261, states only that he married the daughter of a Syrian ruler and had children. Probably her father was Seleucus Nicator: H. Bengtson, Die Strategie in der hellenistischen Zeit, Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrus-forschung und antike Rechtsgeschichte 32, 3 vols.(Munich, 1964–67), vol. 2, 46.
45. See chap. 3 n. 27.
46. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife (New York, 1999), passim.
47. Plut. Cleom. 37, Polyb. 5.37–39, and see further F. W.Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–79), vol. 1, 568–69.
48. Plut. Cleom. 38, and see chap. 1. Graham Shipley, The Greek World After Alexander, 323–30 B.C. (London, 2000), 440, comments that Plutarch’s use of vivid details indicates that “this may be a real episode, described for Plutarch by his sources.”
49. See further Bradford, A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians, 39.
50. Livy 32.38.3, 34.25.5.
51. Though Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 2, 420–21, and P. A. Cartledge and A. J. S. Spawforth,Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities (London,1989), 72, disbelieve the story, the existence of other robots and automatic devices in the Hellenistic period helps to lend credence to this one. For example, at the front of his parade, Demetrius of Phalerum had a mechanical snail that spit saliva (Polyb. 12.13.11).
52. Livy 34.31.11,14, 38.34.6, Plut. Philop. 16.4. Polyb. 13.6.3 states they were married “to the most prominent of the rest and the mercenaries.”
53. André Aymard, Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Confédération Achaienne (198–189 avant J.-C.) (Bordeaux, 1938), 35, followed by J.-G. Texier, Nabis (Paris, 1975), 57, 75, argues that marriages with Spartan wives and daughters were profitable inasmuch as women controlled two-fifths of the wealth. The figures given by Aristotle for women landowners need not have been true for the time of Nabis, especially after the redistributions under Agis and Cleomenes, but it is likely that Spartan women in Nabis’ time were still wealthy.
54. See further J.-G. Texier, “Nabis and the Helots,” DHA 1 (1979), 189–205. John Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy, Books XXXIV–XXXVII (Oxford, 1991), 92–93, makes the reasonable suggestion that Livy will not have understood the precise status distinctions between helots and slaves.
55. See Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 100–103.
56. Livy 34.35.7, see also Plut. Philop. 16.3. Aymard, Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Confédération Achaienne, 241 n. 50, argues that the Latin texts makes it abundantly clear that some of Spartan women willingly stayed with their new husbands. Linda Piper, “Spartan Helots in the Hellenistic Age,” Anc. Soc. 15–17 (1984–86), 75–88, esp. 87 n. 77, states (without citing any evidence) that none of the women chose to join her original husband.
57. See the laconic remark of B. Shimron, Late Sparta (Buffalo, N.Y., 1972), 121, that the forced marriages enjoyed “at least partial success.”
58. Thus Aymard, Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Confédération Achaienne, 241–42, who stresses the lucrative aspect of marriage to Spartan women.
59. In the same way, the kings were given a double portion of food so that they could offer it as gifts of honor.
60. For a different view see Jean Ducat, “La femme de Sparte et la cité,” Ktèma 23 (1998), 385–406, esp. 393, who criticizes Hodkinson’s interpretation of female inheritance and property rights and postulates the existence of kyrioi for women at Sparta, because they are mentioned in the Lawcode of Gortyn. Using the same evidence, J. Christien,“La loi d’Epitadeus:Un aspect de l’histoire économique et sociale à Sparte,” RD 52 (1974), 197–221, esp. 211, maintains that Spartan women enjoyed free disposition of their property.
61. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 99–103. On Plutarch and Hodkinson, see further Preface n. 11, and Appendix n. 90.
62. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 308, table 12.
63 “Some Observations on the Property Rights of Athenian Women,” CRn.s.20 (1970), 274–78, esp. 277.
64. “The Women of Sparta,” CJ 73 (1977–78), 146–61, esp. 158–60.
65. “Women and the Development of the Spartan Polis: A Study of Sex Roles in Classical Antiquity” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1983), 427.
66. “Die Frauen von Sparta,”Klio 75 (1993), 61–75, esp. 71–75.