What was it like to be a woman immersed in the military culture of Sparta? What family life was like in Sparta? What was it like to raise children in Sparta?
Why do we want to study what it was like to be a Spartan woman? Because in the future we will be reflecting on Plato’s Republic. In his utopia he describes some odd marital practices, controlled by the state, that may be similar to Spartan practices. Was Plato’s Republic actually a reflection on whether the Spartan social more were superior to the Athenian social mores? After all, Sparta did win the Peloponnesian Wars, Was Spartan culture seen as superior by some in Athens?
Script for this video, with more Amazon book links: https://www.slideshare.net/BruceStrom1/spartan-women-and-family-life-sayings-of-spartan-women-from-plutarchs-life-of-lycurgus
YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/q8kgoaaeCLg
We have already reflected on the life of a Spartan warrior, and if you were not a warrior you were a slave, for Spartans were not permitted to be merchants. https://youtu.be/_hYwZsxmC3s
Being a woman in any ancient warrior culture was a challenge, as depicted in Homer classic, the Iliad, where the basic plot line was two warriors, Achilles and King Agamemnon, who bickered over a concubine captured in raids in the Trojan Wars. https://youtu.be/bGHHD7XTvr0
Although all Greek city-states were defended by citizen hoplite forces, Sparta was unique in that her army was a permanent army, where all male citizens lived in military barracks from the age of seven until they were thirty years old, constantly honing their military skills. We discuss what is was like to fight like a hoplite in our Histories of Herodotus video. https://youtu.be/JjNcyLo54ko
Our major source is Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta. Unlike Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, who was definitely a real person, most historians agree that Lycurgus was likely a legendary founder figure, like Romulus and Remus of Rome, and that his life and achievements were a composite of many Spartans, perhaps over several generations.
Interestingly, the historian Will Durant states that the ideal age for marriage for a man was thirty, while a women was expected to be married by twenty, but this differs from other sources that state that most men marry at twenty and live with their wives at thirty. We must remember that the Spartans left us no works of literature, everything we know about the Spartans are memorialized by Athenian or other Greek and Roman authors, mostly Athenian. We can know only what the ancient sources tell us, supplanted by archaeology, inscriptions and coins, and these customs may have developed over time, our knowledge of ancient times will always be incomplete.
Our major source is Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta. Unlike Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, who was definitely a real person, most historians agree that Lycurgus was likely a legendary founder figure, like Romulus and Remus of Rome, and that his life and achievements were a composite of many Spartans, perhaps over several generations.
SPARTAN WOMEN, MARRIAGE, AND FAMILY LIFE
Plutarch said that Lycurgus proscribed “a tough regime of physical exercise for unmarried women, involving running, wrestling, discus, and javelin, so that when the time came for embryos to take root in their wombs, they would gain a healthy start in healthy bodies and develop well, while the women themselves would have the strength to endure childbirth and would cope well and easily with the trials of labor. Lycurgus removed their physical frailty, stopped them from spending all their time indoors, and in general got rid of their femininity; he made girls just as used to boys to parading naked, and to dancing and singing at festivals, with young men as spectators.” They were even encouraged to taunt young men!
The ancient world was a different world, their medical knowledge and cures were primitive. For example, I had appendicitis as a teenager, I would have died if I had lived in the ancient world. In the ancient world, parents often did not name their children until they were a few weeks old due to the high infant mortality rate. Only half of children survived to adulthood, some scholars estimate that only one in ten survived to a ripe old age.[1] Definitely, the Spartan emphasis on physical fitness for girls better prepared them for the rigors of childbirth, although we can only speculate on the degree.
Plutarch’s Lycurgus explains, “There was nothing shameful in the young women’s nakedness, never a trace of lewdness, but only modesty. On the contrary, nudity accustomed them to simplicity and made them admire physical fitness.” Plutarch says this was also done to encourage marriage.
Plutarch tells us about the crazy marriage customs of the Spartans, which reflected their extreme warrior culture. “The marriage ceremony involved the forceful abduction of the woman, who would not be a child, too young for marriage, but a woman in her prime, ripe and ready for it. The abducted woman was then handed over to the so-called bridesmaid, who would cut her hair very short, dress her in a man’s clothes and shoes, and leave her lying alone on a straw mattress without any light to see by.”[2]
This may have upset the uptight British historians a century ago, Will Durant prefaces this account by Plutarch by stating that their parents arranged the marriage before this staged abduction, and he adds that the woman is expected to resist so she can truly be seized, like she was a Homeric concubine! The footnote says the source is both Plutarch and another Englishman.
This would not upset ancient audiences nearly as much; abduction was seen by some as an acceptable method of courtship. We should also remember that the Trojan Wars themselves were started when Prince Paris of Troy kidnapped Helen of Sparta from her husband Menelaus.
Several church councils reminded Christians that abduction was not an acceptable form of courtship, the last to proclaim this was the Council of Trent.
Seizing women for marriage was part of many ancient cultures. When in war a particularly hated city-state was conquered, it was common practice to slaughter the military age men and enslave the women and children, and many of the women would be enslaved as concubines. Early in the Peloponnesian Wars, Thucydides tells us the dramatic of how first the Athenian Assembly condemned the city-state of Mytilene to this fate, then changed their mind the next day, and how a furiously rowed trireme bearing this good news beat the previous day’s trireme just in the nick of time, saving the city of Mytilene!
Thucydides also tells of the siege of the Melians, whose men were executed, and her women and children sold into slavery at the hands of the Athenians late in the war, and how the Athenians worried they would suffer the same fate when they lost the war to Sparta.
Although the Trojan War legends assure us that Queen Andromache of Troy retained her honor when she was enslaved, that is her depiction on our YouTube thumbnail.
Another example of a massive abduction of women is the Rape of the Sabine women, which was a founding Roman myth where the ancient Romans abducted the women for wives from a neighboring tribe. Also, in the ending chapters of the Book of Judges, the men from the depleted tribe of Benjamin were permitted to mass abduct their wives.
But then Will Durant says something surprising, that if some adults of marrying age were unmarried, “several men might be placed into a dark room with an equal number of girls, and be left to pick their life mates in the darkness; the Spartans thought that such choosing would not be blinder than love.”[3] The source he footnotes for this is not Plutarch, but another historian named Athenaeus, a third century Roman historian in Egypt, two centuries after Plutarch.[4] What were his sources for this? Whether this was an actual practice or just stories spun over five centuries is impossible to say, but we do know for certain that the thought of a lusty young man competing and grabbing for his bride in a dark room is entertaining.
Plutarch’s Lycurgus does not want us to forget about the groom on his wedding night, “who was not drunk,” because Spartan men never get drunk, “but was sober as usual, having first dined in his phidition,” which is the military mess hall, “and then slipped into the room, undid the woman’s belt, picked her up, and carried her over to the bed. He spent only a short time with her before leaving quietly,” before returning to his barracks. This is what honeymoons in Sparta were like.
Spartan boys in their military training camps are never fed enough to thrive, so they must develop the stealth needed to steal the food to be healthy, and this need for stealth continues into their married life, except that they needed to be stealthy to visit their wives, rather than to cheat on them. Plutarch’s Lycurgus states that afterwards the young husband “would visit his wife secretly, taking every precaution out of embarrassment and fear of being seen by anyone in the house. Meanwhile his wife would be devising plans” “for them to meet without anyone else knowing about it.” Quite often there would be “children born before the men saw their own wives by the light of day.”
How crazy is this! Did this help or hurt the Spartan demographics? Plutarch opines that it helped increase the number of Spartan warriors, because when the Spartan “couples came together for sex, they were physically fertile and ready for love, rather than being sated and added from unrestricted sexual intercourse, so that every time they parted, a feeling remained in each of them which would act as a stimulus for desire and affection.”[5]
Modern and most other scholars disagree with Plutarch. The Spartan lifestyle encouraged rampant homosexuality and pederasty, perhaps more than a few men just didn’t want to be bothered sneaking around just to spend time with their wives. Modern historians are unanimous that Sparta always had problems replenishing her warriors, and the earthquake that struck and wiped out one entire military class when their barracks collapsed during the Peloponnesian Wars certainly did not help.[6]
Marriage in Sparta was not a private affair, and the state was very interested in her women bearing many warriors. You might ask, with all this separation and sneaking around, was adultery a problem? The answer is no, adultery was not only not a problem in Sparta; it was also almost impossible. Because, in Plutarch’s words, “Lycurgus banished the vain, womanish feeling of jealousy,” Spartan men were permitted to share their wives!
Plutarch imagines, “Suppose an older Spartan man with a young wife liked and approved of a young man of nobility and virtue: he could introduce him to her and then, once the younger man had impregnated his wife with his noble seed, he could adopt the son as his own.” Just like breeding a horse, I suppose, with the same concern for bloodlines. Plutarch continues, “Suppose a man of high principles admired a woman who was married to someone else for her modesty and fine children: he could prevail upon her husband to let him sleep with her, so that he could sow his seed in rich and fertile soil and produce excellent children who would be blood brothers of others just as fine.”
Then Plutarch says that Lycurgus says that the laws of the other Greek city-states regarding love and marriage are “stupid and hypocritical,” because while “people arranged for their bitches and mares to be mounted by the best male” dogs and horses of their neighbors, “they keep their wives under lock and key, claiming that they and they alone had the right to have children by them, whether they, the husbands, were idiots or dotards of invalids.” So, in Sparta, is adultery impossible, or is it simply legalized?
RAISING SMALL CHILDREN IN SPARTA
The Spartan state was intimately interested in the raising of future Spartan warriors. After a child was born, “it was not up to the father whether the child was to be brought up. Instead, the child was taken to an” assembly of the eldest men of his tribe. “They examined the baby, and if it was sturdy and strong, they told the father to bring it up, and assigned it one of the nine thousand plots of land; if it was flawed or deformed, they sent it to the place called Apothetai, the place of exposure, a rugged spot near Mount Taygetus, since death was preferable for both the child and the state” if it was weak and sickly.
Spartan nurses were also tough. Helicopter moms were forbidden in Sparta. Plutarch tells us that the nurses “train the babies to use their limbs and bodies freely by dispensing with swaddling clothes, and also not to be fussy and fastidious about their food, not to be scared of the dark or frightened of being left alone, and never to demean themselves with tantrums or tears.” Then Plutarch tells us that many people sought out Spartan nurses to bring their children up tough![7]
Like in nearly all societies, young girls and boys played together until the boys started their military training at age seven or so. Not much is said about how girls are raised at home. Dr Wikipedia, referencing a modern historian in the footnote, states that Spartan girls were taught music, dancing, singing, and poetry, and could participate in certain religious cults. Was there any education for girls outside the home? Who knows? Likely not.[8]
Spartan housewives were far more independent than Athenian and most other Greek women, because their husbands mostly lived in the barracks! That means that women ran the household, and since adultery was less of a problem, due to lax community norms, women were seen in public, unlike the cloistered Athenian wives.
Raising young Spartan children was a community affair, they were also raised by neighbors, who were free to discipline them. Pseudo-Xenophon tells us that “should any boy tell his father that he has been beaten by another, then it is a disgrace if the father does not give his son a further beating”. A Spartan father would trust that another Spartan would not to give their children any dishonorable order.”[9]
SAYINGS OF SPARTAN WOMEN
Spartan women are raised to encourage their boys to behave like men and raise their boys to be future warriors.
Plutarch collected Spartan sayings by both men and women, enjoy our favorites!
A Spartan woman, “as she was handing her son his shield and giving him some encouragement, said, ‘Son, either with this or on this.’” She was telling her son that he should either return carrying his shield, which means he did not break in fear and run from the battle, dropping his shield; or that he should be carried home dead on his shield.
When a foreigner once said, “You Laconian women are the only ones who control your men,” she received a Laconian reply, “That’s because we’re the only ones who give birth to men.”
Hearing that her son had died in battle, one Spartan mother responded, ‘Wasn’t it inevitable that, when he fought the enemy, either he would be killed by them, or he would kill them? To hear that he died in a fashion worthy of me and the city and his ancestors is pleasanter than if he were immortal but a coward.”
“Another Spartan woman killed her son, who had deserted, as unworthy of his country, saying: ‘He not my offspring.’”
“A Spartan woman, when she saw her son approaching, asked how their country was doing. When he said, ‘All the men are dead,’ she picked up a tile, threw it him, and killed him, saying, ‘Then, did they send you to bring us the bad news?’”
“When asked why dowry she was giving the man marrying her, a poor girl said, ‘My father’s common sense.’”
The following sayings demonstrate that the capture and sale of women as slaves was common in the ancient world, and that women made the best of a bad situation:
“A Spartan woman who was up for sale and was asked what skill she possessed, said ‘To be trustworthy.’”
“Another woman who had been taken prisoner and was asked the same question, said, ‘To manage a household well.’”
“When a woman was asked by somebody whether she would be good if he were to buy her, she said: ‘Yes, and even if you don’t buy me.’”
“Another woman was asked by the auctioneer what skills she had, she said, ‘To be free.’ When the man who bought her ordered her to perform services unfitting for a free woman, she declared, ‘You’ll be sorry that you didn’t refuse to make a purchase like this!’, and committed suicide.”[10]
We think we have problems, just imagine what it was like to be a woman living in the ancient world. She didn’t worry so much about retirement, she worried about whether about a possible future when some foreign army would swoop in, kill her husband either in battle or afterwards, and enslave her and her children, and the possibility she and her daughters would be the concubine of an enemy soldier!
[1] Robert Garland, “The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World”, lectures recorded by The Great Courses, (www.thegreatcourses.com, 2012).
[2] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, translated by Robin Waterfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 1998, originally 100+ AD), Chapter 3, p. 22-23.
[3] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume 2, Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966, 1939), p. 84
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenaeus
[5] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, pp. 23-24.
[6] Kenneth Harl, The Peloponnesian War, Teaching Company, 2007.
[7] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, pp. 24-25.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta
[9] Xenophon, in collection of writings of “Plutarch on Sparta,” Spartan Society, translated by Richard Talbert (New York: Penguin Classics, 1988, 2005), Chapter 2, p. 201.
[10] Plutarch on Sparta, collection of writings, Sayings, pp. 184-188.
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