posted
This thread is a tributary of this one, and is dedicated to debates on classical Sparta.
To avoid confusion, only one aspect of Sparta will be on the table at any given time, and the current topic is the Role of Women in Sparta.
Once this debate has run its course, and if it turns out to be productive (a debate needs at least two sides, so hopefully someone disagrees with me or with Lyrhawn), we can nominate a second topic and perhaps do one of these every week / 2 weeks, if any participants so desire.
To avoid 2000 word posts, I've also stuck most of my source material on this page. I'll add to it if more sources are brought up. You'll notice I'm particularly thin on the secondary sources; that's because Cartledge's book is the only one I have on hand which doesn't just repeat what Xenophon said, except slightly reworded.
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My view on Spartan women is that they were not considered categorically inferior as they generally were in other Greek cultures, but nevertheless were expected to remain passive or subservient in their role as Sparta's hoplite-producers. That is, they enjoyed many freedoms Athenian women could not dream of, but ultimately their first priority must have been to mother Sparta's next generation of soldiers, just as their husbands would have been expected to dedicate their lives to the craft of war. Sparta's ban on inscriptions on tombstones is a popular illustration of this; only fallen soldiers and mothers who died in labour were exempted from this rule.
Spartan women certainly did hold more influence than their Athenian counterparts, but Aristotle's description is exaggerated. Even if they did hold 2/5th of Sparta's land (extraordinary for Greece in those times), this is more likely because of the decreasing number of legitimate male full citizens available to accept inheritances. The oliganthropia, or shortage of male military manpower, is the reason Sparta was unable to defend itself from Thebes in 371 BC. While the female ownership of land may have contributed to young Spartan warriors falling to poverty and becoming unable to pay their dues to their syssition (and thus not being able to fulfil their obligations as a full citizen), it is unlikely that this was the main cause of Sparta's manpower shortage, or that women were in any sense 'running the city'. Further, to say that women were the source of Sparta's corruption or that they wallowed in luxury seems strange, since luxury goods were brought by men to Sparta, as spoils of war. Pausanias is a sterling example of a Spartan man who wallowed in luxury, though he definitely wasn't a 'typical' Spartan.
Some of the freedoms and 'privileges' of Spartan women were:
The right to own land, and manage estates especially in the absence of the husband.
Freedom from agricultural or domestic labour. The Helots (state owned unfree serfs which were allotted to Spartan families) did this work instead.
An education, which is said to involve activities like weaving and baking, but also had a physical component. It is unlikely that it was as rigorous as the agoge however, and Spartan girls would live with their mothers until marriage rather than moving to a communal barracks as the boys did. Some women were also literate.
Fewer gender role expectations when it came to exercise, public nudity (in processions, perhaps during athletics), even participation in the Olympics. (the first woman to win an Olympic victory was Kyniska, a Spartan woman)
Women had no military obligations and were not expected to live communally.
But to put things in perspective; Sparta considered the value of women to be their fertility:
The point is debatable, but most sources seem to imply that women had less no say in their marriage. In this respect, Spartan women enjoyed less liberty than their Athenian counterparts.
The marriage ceremony involves cropping the bride's hair short, dressing her up as a boy and laying her in a chamber to await her husband at night; and a ritual involving the 'capture' of the bride by the husband to be.
According to Xenophon, wives could be 'lent', or an older husband could invite another man to beget a son on his behalf. So in need of more warriors was Sparta.
Once a woman bears a son, that son belongs to the state and will leave home at the age of 7.
Considering there were civil disabilities against those who did not marry, it is not unreasonable to assume that women were either shamed or forced into marriage.
After all is said and done, women are excluded from all institutions of government.
Our sources on Spartan women are decidedly sketchy and few. We have to be careful what to infer, even from the information in the first list. To quote Cartledge,
quote:... a passage in Xenophon’s Lak. Pol. (9.5), apparently to the effect that no one would aska a legally adjudged coward (tresas) for the hand of any unmarried female in his household, seems to me to tilt the balance firmly in favour of the existence of the kryieia. [legal guardianship of a female by her nearest male relative, usually her father in the first instance and then her husband] If that is so, then we cannot automatically infer that ownership of property conferred on Spartan women personal independence, let alone political power.
I like the way Cartledge roughly summarises the position of women in Sparta:
quote:To be consciously anachronistic, a modern feminist might perhaps approve their equal though separate education, which may have included an intellectual element; their frankness of utterance; their liberating attire; their freedom from sedentary and stultifying domestic chores; their control and management of their household(s); and above all their property-rights. On the other side, however, the modern feminist is unlikely to be over-impressed by the way in which Spartan women were trained to act, and obliged to look, like men; by their restricted or non-existent choice in the matter or manner of acquiring a husband; by the way in which they were 'seized' and 'had' as wives in the domicile of their husbands, who could 'lend' them for extra-marital roles by men who monopolized the political direction of a peculiarly masculine society.
(Sorry I am late with this by the way, Lyrhawn.)
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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I really don't disagree with the basic gist of the post. Though I think the fall of Sparta had as much to do with corruption and wealth as it did a shortage of manpower (considering they were really inextricably tied together).
Considering the status of women elsewhere in the world, and considering the restrictions placed upon men by Lycurgan reform, I think women had it damned good in Sparta. They controlled the vast majority of wealth before the smashing of Spartan society by the Thebans and their allies, and I blame both the women and men for corruption. Once they started to gather wealth to themselves, they were already screwed. Sparta was a land that followed the rule of law as a virtual religion, and one of the most important laws was making wealth illegal. Once they ignored that and actively went after money, they were just building their own coffin (well, funeral pyre).
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posted
Mmm. Yummy. If I weren't trying to prepare for a History of Science final I would get into this, but alas. Later though, definitely. Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Great Good luck on your exam, Dr. Strangelove.
Lyrhawn, I agree women had it pretty damn good materialistically (and overall in comparison to other Greek women), but I believe Sparta's marriage arrangements devalue or objectify women considerably. I would say the chief drawback of being a woman in Sparta was not being able to bring up your son, and being in a marriage which was more about duty and the will of the husband than about partnership. But yes, by ancient standards a woman's life in Sparta was relatively comfortable, if still repressed.
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Lyrhawn, I agree women had it pretty damn good materialistically (and overall in comparison to other Greek women), but I believe Sparta's marriage arrangements devalue or objectify women considerably. I would say the chief drawback of being a woman in Sparta was not being able to bring up your son, and being in a marriage which was more about duty and the will of the husband than about partnership. But yes, by ancient standards a woman's life in Sparta was relatively comfortable, if still repressed.
How is that unique to Sparta? Marriage arrangements between men and women were like that in most of the world for the 2300 years that followed Sparta.
Marriage arrangements by and large, until the end of Victorian times, were about subordinating women to the demands of their husbands. Spartan women had more rights and freedoms than many women worldwide had thousands of years later. I do agree that having their children taken at a young age to be raised by the state is a major drawback that makes all the other freedoms worthless, but we shouldn't undervalue them, or place undue burden on Sparta for a role that women shared in pretty much the entire rest of the world.
Besides, in talking about women and their lack of freedoms, it should be pointed out that men weren't exactly frolicking in meadows all day long. Women were subordinate to their husbands, but controlled the family finances and land. Men got to be in charge of a household that they were rarely ever habitating (you know all about barracks life), and they had to spend all day every day training for the chance to go out and possibly die. I'd say they were at least equal.
And both had the burden of child rearing. Well, biologically women will always get the shaft there, but producing a child put as much societal pressure on men there as it did women. It was the man's job to get a woman pregnant, failing to do so was a mark of shame, and they still have to find a friend to impregnate their wives. It wasn't a picnic for either party.
I think if we're going to talk about women being objectified or devalues, it's only fair to compare that to the world history of women, in which I think we'll find women in Sparta got far from the short end of the stick.
And the fall of Spartan society is a fine topic. Have you read Plutarch?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Yes I have. It's been over a year now though.
Yep, as I said, overall the position of Spartan women compared favourably to that of other Greek women; and I agree, with that of most women until recent history.
And the question of what constitutes gender equality in a place where men are expected to dedicate their lives to the state, is an interesting one. I think a lot of people would rather bear children than risk death in battle.
But what of government representation? Women were barred from the institutions of state.
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American women couldn't vote until the 20th century, how much do you really expect from Ancient Greece?
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quote:Besides, in talking about women and their lack of freedoms, it should be pointed out that men weren't exactly frolicking in meadows all day long. Women were subordinate to their husbands, but controlled the family finances and land. Men got to be in charge of a household that they were rarely ever habitating (you know all about barracks life), and they had to spend all day every day training for the chance to go out and possibly die. I'd say they were at least equal.
Sorry if I took that out of context. I think we're basically in agreement on this one.
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posted
I'm not sure how we could actively put value on gender equality back then.
The problem is we use 21st century values of gender equality on 6th (and beyond) century BC Greece, and it doesn't work.
If you try to create a stereotypical, or regionally accepted role for a man and a woman, then you can come close to seeing how individual cities and cultures stack up against some sort of average. The easiest thing to do is compare Sparta to Athens, where by any estimation, women are much, much more free, and men are much, much more subordinate, but not to each other, to the state. But Athens is by no means the paragon of average either. Their political instability, and rampant series of revolutions is in stark contrast to Sparta's overall multi-century political stability.
We'd have to get into a much larger discussion, and bring in Corinth, Megara, Athens, Thebes, and maybe even some major Greek cities not in mainland Ionian or Doric Greece like Syracuse, in order to assemble an overall picture of Hellenic society. I don't really have the right books on hand to judge anything more than a handful of cities, I'd have to make a few trips to the library, and school just ended .
But for all intents and purposes I think we do agree.
I'd be eager and fascinated if you wanted to collaborate in the future on some sort of project on gender norms and equality in ancient Greece.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
That would be neat. Hey how about this; when we can both spare the time, we set ourselves each a more focused question. We each write up a response, helping each other with research and critiquing papers along the way (my uni has a great arts library spanning many floors). I would say 'write one essay together', but that's harder than it sounds.
And who knows? If it works, we can do a blog or something.
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posted
My mail address is in my profile, so if you'd like to do this and have an idea as to what time frame would be convenient, feel free to email me.
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posted
Euripides, of course all of your comments on Spartan women apply to a relatively small percentage of all woman living in Spartan territory. The vast majority of both men and women (whether Perioeci or Helots), but especially women, were seen as little more than chattel.
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Euripides, of course all of your comments on Spartan women apply to a relatively small percentage of all woman living in Spartan territory.
Yes, I stand corrected.
For the purposes of this thread, let's define Spartan women as the wives and daughters of Spartiates; since that is usually the group of women historians are referring to when they write about Spartan women.
I would disagree that Perioikoi were considered to be "little more than chattel". Being the Spartiates' primary source of manufactured or traded goods, perioikic communities enjoyed a degree of autonomy. While there are always exceptions, the fact that many perioikoi stood by Sparta when she was invaded in 371 (while the Helots frequently revolted) attests to the fact that they enjoyed considerably better treatment than did the Helots.
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posted
Yeah, you're right... I kind of overstated my case there. However, based on the proposals of Sparta-admiring Socrates as reported by Plato and Xenophon, though the Spartiate class depended heavily upon the Perioeci, I imagine they viewed them as significantly inferior and unfit for the sorts of rights and freedoms of Spartiates.
posted
I don't think that's a given. Young people that flunked out of the agoge and schools that trained people to become Spartiates, or ones who just plain weren't picked to enter a military order weren't given full citizenship, and therefore because perioikoi themselves.
I don't think they saw them with a particular amount of disdain or inferiority just because of their status. Many perioikoi were well trained and fought alongside the Spartiates, but had far fewer rights in their sometimes democratic system. But then perioikoi are drawn from a wide array of people. Many of them were merchants, thus I'd imagine in the early Lycurgan Sparta, they weren't viewed too kindly.
It's hard to talk about a group as diverse as the perioikoi, with a timeline as vastly different at each end as Sparta's, and make far reaching assumptions.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Helots fought beside the Spartans, but usually as light infantry or missile throwers of some kind. But the perioikoi often fought as hoplites beside the Spartans, which is something special.
I'm definitely with you Lyrhawn on the perioikoi being very diverse. I think it's reasonable to assume they had cultures and institutions of their own, considering other Greeks referred to perioikic settlements as 'poleis', and that many of them were actually very remote from Sparta.
I'm going off topic, but I wonder if we can make a Spartan 'food chain':
posted
I'd put Perioikoi right below Spartiates, but you also have to consider that some foreigners lived in Sparta, or in Laconia, as perioikoi. They aren't necessarily distinct groups. Who were the Homoioi again?
----- As for the project. I was thinking we could each pick like four or five cities, and do a short workup of their gender roles following maybe a set 200 year timeline. Then we could get together and compare notes, and TRY to work up some sort of norm, or average of what the general gender role was at any given time (if in fact there is one).
Then we could use that timeline, with the definitions as a reference point for comparison to Sparta.
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posted
Ok that sounds good. I've never researched the less known cities in such detail, so it should be interesting. 6th and 5th centuries, perhaps? I think 6th to 4th might be interesting.
Is gender roles in history a particular interest of yours?
The homoioi, or 'equals' were full citizen Spartiates.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Gender roles isn't an area I've ever really given a massive amount of thought, though I do have to take a historical gender studies class in the next year for my "Women's Studies" credit.
It's just something I got to thinking about in this thread and a little bit in the last one.
What will really be interesting, is some of the more prominant cities, like Corinth, were Spartan colonies to begin with. It'll be fun to track what happened to gender roles when their societies diverged from each other.
I think, to put in perspective, it'd also be a neat idea to take a random sampling of 20th century earth, and pick say, six countries (say, America, Britain, China, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and India) in the year 1900 and examine their gender roles. How much did things really change from 5th century BC Sparta to 20th century wherever? Had we really come as far as we thought? Or has all the progress really just been since Seneca Falls?
This is something I might pick up for my independent study class I have to take in the winter of the next school year.
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posted
Okay. I guess we'll need a general survey of Dorian migrations as well, if we want to trace the spread of Spartan culture while comparing its gender roles to that of other Greek cities. I think some preliminary research is necessary before we choose exactly which cities we'll research.
That seems like a fairly good list for 1900; let's go with that.
Within the next couple of days, I could have a look through the books I have, and maybe drop by uni.
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posted
Agreed on Doric migrations and colonies. Might also want to check out Doric conquests in Asia Minor and elsewhere to see how they effected change there. I think for the sake of making this easier, we could leave out Aetolian Greece, and stick to Ionian and Dorian.
We should compile a list of the top ten poleis in Greece itself, and then try and track colonies in Greece and Italy, Asia Minor, the islands in the Med, etc. Once we map them out, we can begin investigating them. Have to track the timeline of the migration of Greek society as we go too.
Should be fun to watch the spread of Hellenic society. We could make some maps, and color code them by Dorian or Ionian, as far as the colonies go.
What I'd really love to do, is get someone with computer skills and create a map of the Med, starting at Spartan Lycurgan reform. Show all the Hellenic cities, color coded by culture (Doric/Ionian). Have a drag bar that moves the timeline forward, adding cities as they are founded or conquered (through influence or arms). Whenever you wave your mouse over a city, it gives you a basic summary of the city, but you can also click on it for a more detailed history with different tabs to show the different aspects of the city, such as gender roles, military, and economy. The status of the city would change as you drag the timeline forward.
But I have nowhere near the technical skill to do something like that. I think it'd be a great way to compile that massive amount of information in a really accessible format.
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posted
Is this to help with your gender studies unit? You probably want someone with some knowledge of Flash (and a certain amount of spare time). I could theoretically do one in Javascript that is equally as dynamic, but that would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
A less dynamic one without a scrollable timeline (replaced by a navbar with time periods, for example) would be simple, and I'd be willing to make such a map when we complete our research.
We should compile a list of top 10 cities not just based on their population or influence, but by their attitudes to gender roles as well. That is, we should give proportional treatment to smaller communities which might have unusual gender roles.
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posted
Ah, but that means doing all the research before we actually know who fits the description.
No this isn't to help in my gender studies unit, I haven't even signed up for the class yet, it's sometime next year, and I'm not even sure yet what the subject matter is. This is all just for fun .
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posted
Okay. Do you really want the scrollbar? I'll try and find out how easy it is in Javascript. My guess is it'll just be a bit time consuming.
How about this; we make a list of the 10 most influential poleis in Greece during the 6th to 4th centuries, and study the information on gender roles in those cities intently.
Then, as we do so, we will no doubt come across smaller cities with more unusual gender expectations (I don't know, say Lesbos? I actually don't know anything about the island) and research them afterwards to make sure our 'big picture' is accurate.
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posted
Heh, the project I'm employed at should be capable of creating visualizations like that at some unspecified time in the future. We're starting with more general 'network' tools, but the ability to map coordinate-specified nodes to a geography is definitely on the list, as in being able to provide arbitrary structured metadata on nodes in usable form.
posted
Oh wow, I think I've actually seen this before. I'm fascinated by this kind of software. I study architecture and now that the industry is increasingly digitised, visually oriented methods of mapping data are sometimes used as form generators or inspiration for the architect's work.
Are you on the 'people' page?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Lets see . . . nope, that page is pretty out of date. This is the larger project its part of (and I'm not on the people page for it, either): http://ivl.slis.indiana.edu/
One of the guys took my pic for it, so I think I'll make it onto the people page sometime in the next month.
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posted
This website introduced me to this sort of software; I'm sure you already know of it. It's called Visual Complexity, but I think that's a misnomer. It should be called Visual Simplicity, because it's all about turning a sea of raw data into a meaningful visual pattern.
Thanks for the link, and good luck with the project. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Getting back on topic (it was a fascinating tangent);
Lyrhawn, when would you like to work on this? Like I said I'm pretty much ok for the coming few weeks.
Also, shall we put the bi-weekly debates on hold (unless others would like to participate) for the duration of the project?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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It's not something I can devote a LOT of time to, but, if we took it slow, and I mean, on the order of like "This week you work on this city and I'll work on this city." I could theoretically be free to start on it the week of Christmas. If you want, we could start some planning next week. Something like, come up with a list of 10 major cities, then make a list of the questions we need to ask ourselves in examining these cities, then we can start making trees that track the progress of colonies that grow out of the 10 main cities, and in our studies, we can write down the names of other cities that strike our fancy. And then assign ourselves five each and compare notes every weekend.
Unless you have another idea?
I don't see why we can't still hold debates on a bi-weekly basis if we still have anything to debate about Who knows how long the project will take? I wouldn't want to deny the people of Hatrack their bi-weekly dose of Spartey goodness.
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posted
Ew. "Gates of Fire" must kick in some nasty advertiser alerts. I do not want to "find love now."
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No, unfortunately I haven't read much historical fiction set in the period. I did read Valerio Massimo Manfredi's The Spartan though, and loved it. I'll be sure to check Pressfield out next time I'm at the bookstore.
posted
Lyrhawn, I think I will have to postpone the research until next year. I forgot that the university library is closed until January the 2nd. I'm also a bit swamped at the moment.
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quote: I would say the chief drawback of being a woman in Sparta was not being able to bring up your son
Because the father was in charge of the child in the barracks? I'd say it was the chief drawback of being a parent. But then, I tend not to indulge in lazy sexism.
posted
The father would likely have had more contact with the son, especially since it was common for a boy to join his father's syssition when he came of age. And while the father would not directly supervise his son, men and boys often trained in the same areas. IIRC Xenophon mentions the elder Spartiates watching over the younger men train, making sure their diet was neither too lavish nor lacking. But yes, neither parent was able to bring up the child in any way familiar to us today.
You quoted only part of my sentence, so please stick some '.'s at the end. Thanks.
posted
Mothers were in charge of their sons until they were seven, I thought, then they went to bond/have sex with their mentor, who was not their father, as far as I know.
Any child who was imperfect in some way was thrown over a cliff.
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posted
Boys started living in barracks at age seven, where they began a regimen of training and education called the agoge. We don't know how established pederasty was in Spartan culture, but I would disagree on your second point.
Re: Throwing babies off cliffs Either that, or IIRC they were simply left exposed to the elements. Once again we don't know how established a tradition that was, whether it applied to all births and for what time period, etc.
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posted
Yes, leaving a baby in the woods to die was much better. Can you point me to research where it is unclear that pederasty was a part of Spartan/early Greek culture? I(sorry, that sounded more antagonistic than I meant it...I have just seen more than less of this info in cursory searches) The ritual of marriage itself(the woman cutting her hair and pretending she is a boy) seems to point to it, as well. I wonder if mothers came up with some sort of secret plan, which went undetected by historians, to have their abandoned babies "found" moments later by another woman, who then adopted him.
It would make a good story, anyway.
[ December 23, 2006, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
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posted
No offence taken. I don't disagree that pederasty was an institutionalised part of Spartan adolescence, just not at age 7. Cartledge (yes I'm very fond of this historian's work) writes that it began when the boy was 12, and ceased when he was married. Pederasty was a part of Dorian tradition and Sparta and Crete were known to be exceptional in the degree to which they accepted it. I don't however, have any evidence which suggests that pederasty before age 12 was unacceptable; so hence my wishy washy conditional statement. Sorry I wasn't clear.
And I'm not entirely sure where the number 12 comes from. If anyone knows, I'd be glad to find out.
This is the passage from Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans [2.12-14] regarding pederasty:
quote:I think I ought to say something too about men's love for youths, since this is also related to their education. Well, some of the other Greeks, like the Boeotians for instance, live together, man and boy, as if they were married, or, like the Eleians, win the youth by means of favours; on the other hand there are some who entirely prevent potential erastai from conversing with youths.
Lykourgos' [for those not familiar, Sparta's legendary law-maker] views were in contrast to all of these, for, if a respectable man admired a youth's character and tried to make him a friend in all innocence and associate with him, he commended this and considered it the finest form of education; but if someone appeared to desire a boy's body, he thought this to be quite disgraceful and laid it down that at Sparta erastai should refrain from molesting boys no less than parents refrain from sleeping with their children and brothers with their sisters.
I am not surprised, however, that some people do not believe this; for in many cities the laws do not oppose passionate attachments to boys.
Xenophon of course is an admirer of Sparta, and it's thought that this purist impression of Spartan pederasty was based on the homoerotic leaning of his host Agesilaos II.
Here is another passage on the subject, from Plutarch's Life of Lykourgos [1.18]
quote:Whether a boy's standing was good or bad, his lover shared it. There is a story that once when a boy had let slip a despicable cry in the course of a fight, it was his lover whom the magistrates fined. Sexual relationships of this type were so highly valued that respectable women would in fact have love affairs with unmarried girls. Yet there was no rivalry; instead, if individual males found that their affections had the same object, they made this the foundation for mutual friendship, and eagerly pursued joint efforts to perfect their loved one's character.
And Cartledge's analysis, from his Spartan Reflections (pp86-87)
quote:After the age of twelve the boys' training regimen is said, almost incredibly, to have become even tougher. [...]
This intensified period of training extended between the ages of twelve and eighteen, up to the threshold of manhood. It was thus principally as a manhood-ritual that the Spartans, like some other better documented non-state societies, institutionalized the practice of pederasty. The agoge provided a hospitable framework. From the age of twelve, that is to say, a Spartan boy became eligible, or rather was officially obliged, to take a lover, an older male lover, usually a man who belonged to the youngest grade of adult male warrior citizens (the eirenes) and was not yet married. What might be considered child-abuse and legally actionable behaviour in our society was thereby not only officially approved but legally enforced in Classical Sparta. Precisely how boys and young men paired off, we do not know, although there is good evidence that at least the sons of the Spartan elite did not have total freedom in the choice. Nor do we know, because the sources are riddled with arriere-pensee [I had to look that up; 'mental reservation'], exactly what was the nature of the physical-sexual element in these relationships, although I am now more than ever convinced that Erich Bethe's original hypothesis of anal copulation (Bethe 1907) was right. [...] The overall aim of this ritualized pederasty is, however, clear, namely to foster the initiation and ease the incorporation of the youths into adult Spartan society as fully-fledged citizen warriors.
There is more on the subject in that book.
quote:I wonder if mothers came up with some sort of secret plan, which went undetected by historians, to have their abandoned babies "found" moments later by another woman, who then adopted him.
It would make a good story, anyway.
Definitely. And thanks for the book recommendation Elizabeth. My book store didn't have a copy but I've put an order in. Can't wait.
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