Of all the earth, Pelasgic Argos is best, and Thessalian horses, and Lacedaemonian women, and men who drink the water of beautiful Arethusa.
Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, no. 1
Do knowledge and consideration of Spartan women change our overall view of Spartan society and institutions? In what ways were Spartans different from other Greek women, and how does this difference contribute to our ideas about Sparta as a whole? Studies of Spartan ethnicity have not heretofore used gender as a defining category, except in a negative way so as to exclude women.1 In this brief epilogue, I will attempt to remind the reader of some of the points made in the book and draw some conclusions. I will not review change over time, nor repeat the details, arguments, and citations of ancient sources that can be found in the preceding chapters.
Everyone in ancient Greece and every educated person in the western world even nowadays knows the name of at least one Spartan woman: Helen. Legends about Helen have helped shape the image of Spartan women. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was also wealthy, and she dominated men. Guilty of flagrant adultery, she nevertheless was able to subjugate her infuriated warrior husband. Although Aristotle does not mention Helen, he repeats most of these attributes in his denunciation of Spartan women and their effect on the community. He considered that gender relations in Sparta were the reverse of what they should be in a normal Greek society like that of Athens.
From earliest times, Sparta was known as a land of beautiful women—in Homer’s words, Sparte kalligynaika (Od. 13.412). Spending time out of doors in the nude meant that women were exposed to public scrutiny from the time when they were very young. They competed with their peers not only in formal athletic events, but also in the eyes of their beholders and in their own judgment. Young girls learned to evaluate the beauty of other girls, and to compare their own appearance with that of their peers. In Alcman, Partheneion 1 (57–58), the chorus decide that Agido is first in beauty, and Hagesichora is second. Three hundred years later, Theocritus captured the sentiment. The 240 girls who race in honor of Helen declare that when they compare themselves to Helen not one of them is faultless (Idyll 18.25). Lycurgus had outlawed cosmetics, but Spartan women had mirrors, proving there can be artifice in nature. Ancient mirrors that have been identified as Laconian had a convex disk which displayed the face, hair, neck, and cleavage (see Appendix). The user would have been able to dress her hair, care for her skin, and adjust her facial expression and posture. In Partheneion 1 (6, 21), the girls refer to Agido’s radiance and to Hagesichora’s silver face. When the color of a woman’s hair is mentioned, it is blonde, like Helen’s. The girls in Alcman’s Partheneia and the poet Megalostrata whom Alcman was said to love were all blonde.
Men also prized beautiful women and sought them as brides, even breaking some of society’s rules to win them. Unlike men in Athens where girls were secluded and veiled, Spartans will have had many opportunities to look over potential brides who were completely nude. Herodotus (6.61) tells the story of a young girl who was afflicted with dysmorphia (misshapenness).More than ugly, she may have been deformed, for her parents had forbidden her nurse to show her to anyone. The nurse was concerned that the daughter of fortunate parents was so disfigured: she carried her every day to the shrine of Helen at Therapne and prayed to the goddess to free the child from her ugliness. Helen appeared, and touched the child. Thereupon the ugliest girl grew up to be the most beautiful of all Spartan women. Helen’s magic had made her lovely (Paus. 3.7.7,Herod. 6.61). When the girl grew up her beauty, like Helen’s, became a curse and a cause for a bitter quarrel between men who had been the best of friends. Although she was married, the Spartan king Ariston, who had two wives already, conceived a desperate passion for her. Tricking his friend, he won the woman, who became his third wife. The competitive phrase “most beautiful woman” occurs in the story of the prostitute whom Cinadon was ordered to bring back to Sparta (see chap. 5). At the other end of the social scale, the wealthy Agiatis was lovelier than other Greek women (Plut. Cleom. 1.2, 22.1–2).“More beautiful than all the other women in the Peloponnese” also appears in the story of Xenopeithia, mother of Lysandridas, who had commanded Spartan forces at Thebes in the time of Agesilaus II.2
Lysander, who was famous for bending the rules of proper Spartan behavior, rejected the bride he had acquired at a “lottery,” and planned to marry a more beautiful one.3 Perhaps he married the homely woman after all, and his daughters took after their mother. They were unable to find husbands not only because their father was poor, but because, as their father said, they were “ugly” (aischrai: Plut. Lys. 2.5, 30.5).
In Sparta, beautiful people were highly esteemed: the best looking man and woman were most admired (Heraclides Lembus in Athen. XIII.566a = FHG III.168). Since Homer (Od. 6.102–7) described Nausicaa as towering over her handmaidens like a palm tree, and in the visual arts gods were depicted as taller than mortals, Greeks considered height an attribute of beautiful, noble women.4 Timasimbrota, who is mentioned in a fragment of archaic poetry, was as tall as a man, for she is described as resembling the golden-haired son of Polydorus in her noble stature.5 The Ephors fined King Archidamus for choosing a short woman, because it was expected that the children produced by the couple would look like their mother.6 Plutarch (Cleom. 38.5) described the heroic wife of Panteus, who accompanied Cleomenes’ family to Egypt, as tall and robust.
Diet reflected ethnic difference. The height of Spartan women probably resulted not only from heredity and eugenics, but also from their generous food rations. Spartans were the only Greek women who were well fed and drank wine. Aristophanes alludes to Cleitagora, a Spartan woman poet whose name was associated with a skolion, or drinking song. A Laconian vase depicts women at at a mixed symposium. Dionysus was a god of women in Sparta.7
Since wine drinking by women was not approved of elsewhere in Greece, the practice took on a negative connotation among critics of Spartan women. In Plato, Laws (637C), the Athenian Old Man talking to the Spartan criticizes Spartan women for licentiousness. This gratuitous and stereotypical criticism follows praise of moderate drinking by Spartan men at symposia and may allude to women’s intoxication.8 It was known that Spartan women drank wine as part of their regular diet, but there is no evidence that they were less temperate than Spartan men.9
Women’s style of dress was used to characterize Dorians in general. Doriazein means “to dress like a Spartan girl” and connotes nudity or semi-nudity. The standard Greek-English dictionary gives the meaning “dress like a Dorian girl, i.e. in a single garment open at the side,” and gives doriazo as an equivalent of dorizo “imitate the Dorians in life.”10
Clothing, as well as the lack of it, marked differences between Spartans and other Greek women. Because Spartans spent time out of doors, they needed warm garments in some kinds of weather. The Dorian peplos was a heavier woollen dress than the Ionian, and had to be fastened on the shoulders by fibulae. This heavy dress had been worn by all Greek women in the archaic period. Spartan fashion was conservative. The light gauzy dresses of the Ionian style were new fashions. Herodotus explains that the change came about when a sole survivor of a battle returned to Athens and told the women that all their men had died.11 They killed the bearer of this devastating news with their pins, which were subsequently associated with aggression on the part of women.12 Thereafter the women were forbidden to wear fibulae. Indeed, some of the jewelry dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia resembles nails with very long spikes.13Wearing a Doric peplos meant always having a weapon to hand. Only when she was dressed in a man’s costume as a bride was a woman disarmed.
As we have mentioned in chapter 3, Gorgo is the first Spartan woman who is reputed to have drawn attention to the special identity of Spartan women. When she was asked by a woman from Attica, “Why is it that you Spartans are the only women who can rule men?” she replied, “That is because we are the only ones who give birth to men.”14 In this story, the interlocutor assumes the special identity before Gorgo replies. About a century later, another royal woman, Cynisca, emphasized her uniqueness by declaring, “I am the only woman in all of Greece to have won this [Olympic] crown.”15We have also mentioned the anonymous Spartan woman who was equally conscious of her ethnic distinctiveness: When an Ionian woman was proud of something she had woven (which was very valuable), a Spartan woman showed off her four well-behaved sons and said these should be the work of a noble and honorable woman, and she should swell with pride and boast of them (Plut. Sayings of Spartan Women 241.9). We observe, in passing, the competitive nature of the Spartan’s retort.
That Spartan women were taught to speak and were encouraged to do so distinguishes them from Spartan men, who did not debate in law courts or in their General Assembly, and from Athenians and other Greek women, who were expected to remain silent and by no means to speak to men. In the Oeconomicus, Xenophon describes a young wife who was brought up so that she might see and hear and speak as little as possible.16Having an enlightened view of marriage, her husband describes how he taught his wife to converse with him. More than five hundred years later, Plutarch cautions: “the words of a modest woman must never be public property. She should be shy with her speech as with her body, and guard it against strangers, Feelings, character, and disposition can all be seen in a woman’s talk. . . . A wife should speak only to her husband or through her husband.”17
According to several criteria that may be applied to assess the status of women, Spartans were distinctive.
Spartans must have been among the healthiest of Greek women. There are no reports that they suffered infanticide, as did some male babies. We have seen that a baby girl who was distressingly ugly or even malformed was reared. The nutrition of Spartan women was superior and their reproductive health was a matter of public concern. Prohibition of the use of cosmetics eliminated exposure to toxic substances. Marriage at a mature age produced healthy children for healthy mothers.
Consistent with the concern for women’s health, of all Greek women only Spartans were given physical training as were men. They also studied mousike (music, dancing, poetry).
The nudity of girls for athletics had sexual consequences, and girls and women alike were free to engage in homosexual relationships. Xenophon and Plutarch depict heterosexual intercourse as also desirable and pleasurable for both partners, and declare that constraints on the frequency of intercourse are beneficial for husband and wife alike.
Women exercised some control over their own reproduction. According to Plutarch, Timaea thought she knew whether her child was fathered by her lover Alcibiades or by her husband. According to Xenophon, women took the initiative in husband-doubling arrangements for the sake of producing children who would inherit from more than one father. According to Cicero, Spartan women were in charge of their own fertility.
Property at Sparta was real property. It is impossible to discuss the Spartan economy and to exclude women. Women controlled real property including immovables, for Xenophon declares unambiguously that the wife who duplicates husbands wants to get possession of two oikoi (gynaikes . . . boulontai katechein). By the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, some of the wealthiest Spartans were women.
Spartan women are rarely depicted as passive. Plutarch reports marriage by capture, but this ritual was an enactment of a previous arrangement and came as no surprise to the bride. She was carefully prepared ahead of time. In his description of the wedding, Xenophon draws attention to the wife as an active partner. The phrase epei . . . gyne elthoi (“after the woman goes”: Lac. Pol. 1.5) appears in his first sentence about marriage. In contrast, in descriptions of the marriage ceremony in Athens, where the father or guardian gives the bride to the groom, who takes her, the verb commonly used is lambano (take, seize).18 Furthermore, as we have noted, Xenophon mentions the personal ambitions of the woman who wants to control two oikoi.
Women also understood and enforced societal norms. They not only spoke, but jeered at cowards and bachelors. In some cases they wielded the power of life and death over their adult sons. Women also tested newborn male babies, and female babies were simply turned over to them. Though we cannot generalize from the activities of priestesses, some of them regulated the behavior of men. At least by the Hellenistic period, the Priestess of Orthia controlled the intensity with which the boys were whipped, especially when she saw that a man wielding the whip was showing favor to a particular boy. Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women give many examples of women’s leadership and control over men throughout Spartan history.
Because of their influence and authority in society as a whole, to study Spartan women is not only to learn women’s history, but also to have a more complete knowledge of Spartan history.
1. E.g., Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge, 1997), and J.-P.Vernant, “Entre la honte et la gloire: L’identité du jeune spartiate,”Métis 2 (1987) 269–99, repr. in L’individu, la mort, l’amour (Paris, 1989), 173–209, the latter a study of the development of self-identity in the young Spartan male, and see Preface n. 5, above.
2. He was also called Lysanoridas. See Theopompus in Athen. 13.609b = FGrH 115 F 240.
3. Hermippus of Smyrna = Athen. 13.555b–c = FGrH IV.3 1026 F 6 = fr. 87 (Wehrli). C. Meillier, “Une coutume hiérogamique à Sparte?” REG 97 (1984), 381–402, esp. 388–89, suggests that this story was invented to discredit Lysander. See further chap. 2 n.32.
4. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1994), 306.
5. PMGF 5, fr. 2, col. ii.17–18. For other interpretations of these fragmentary lines, see M. L. West,“Alcmanica,”CQ 15 (1965), 188–202, esp. 189–90.
6. Athen. 13.566a–b; Theophrastus in Plut. Ages. 2.3, De educ. puer. 1d.
7. Robert Parker, “Spartan Religion,” in Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success, ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1988), 142–72, esp. 151.
8. Thus N. R. E. Fisher,“Drink,Hybris and the Promotion of Harmony in Sparta,” in Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success, ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1988), 26–50, esp. 29–30.
9. For Spartan temperance: Critias fr. 6 (Diels-Kranz) = Athen. 10.432d, and Plut. Lyc. 12.7.
10. LSJ s.v.Doriazo.
11. Herod. 5.87. On the fictitous nature of this aetiology, which emphasizes the cruelty of Athenian women, see Thomas J. Figueira,“Herodotus on the Early Hostilities Between Aegina and Athens,” AJP 106 (1985), 49–74, esp. 50, 56–57 = Excursions in Epichoric History: Aeginetan Essays (Lanham,Md., 1999), 35–60, esp. 36, 41–42.
12. See further I. Jenkins,“Dressed to Kill,” Omnibus 5 (1983), 29–32.
13. Dawkins, AO, 382–83 and pl. CCII. Dawkins published another bronze fibula in “Artemis Orthia: Some Additions and a Correction,” JHS 50 (1930), 298–99 and pl. XI.1.
14. Plut. Sayings of Spartan Women = Mor. 240e5; cf. Plut. Lyc. 14, and Sayings of Spartans, 7e13.
15. See chap. 1.
16. Xen. Oec. 7.6, 10, and see further Pomeroy, Xenophon, Oeconomicus, ad loc. Laura McClure, Spoken like a Woman (Princeton,1999), 164–68, discusses the negative reflections of Spartan’s women’s outspokenness in Athenian literature and in Aristotle.
17. Advice to the Bride and Groom, 31–32, and see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., Plutarch’s Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife (New York, 1999), 38, 41, 42, 53, 104, 106, 119–20, 126, 151, 160.
18. On the ekdosis in the Greek world, see most recently A.-M.Vérilhac and C. Vial, Le mariage grec du VIe siècle av. J.-C. à l’epoque d’Auguste,BCH suppl. 32 (Paris, 1998), 254–58.