Aristotle criticized the Spartan state primarily for the power that their women had, including how they owned property and their power over men. According to Plutarch, Spartan children were assessed at birth, and those judged to be unhealthy were left to die. This painting by Giuseppe Diotti shows a baby being judged.
Full Answer
What is the biggest problem with Sparta?
The biggest problem about Sparta, from a historical point of view at least, is that they left very few written records, and didn’t build grand architecture that we could then analyze. However, Spartan women enjoyed a degree of freedom, education and equality unparalleled anywhere in the ancient world.
What were Spartan women allowed to do?
Unlike many other Greek women, Spartan women were allowed to speak to their husband's friends. They could have their own property. They could even marry someone else if their husband was away at war for a very long period of time.
Did Spartan women ever participate in hazing?
Even Spartan girls were known to participate in this ritualized hazing. During certain religious and state ceremonies, girls would stand before Spartan dignitaries and sing choral songs about the young men of the agoge, often singling out specific trainees for ridicule in order to shame them into stepping up their performance. 4.
Why did Spartan society torture their young men?
It wasn't enough for Spartan society to see their boys tortured through verbal hazing, food deprivation, heartless living conditions, and having their fingers bitten. Naturally they also liked to see their young men physically beaten in a religious setting.
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How are women in Sparta treated?
Spartan Women and Marriage As adults, Spartan women were allowed to own and manage property. Additionally, they were typically unencumbered by domestic responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning and making clothing, tasks which were handled by the helots.
How did Sparta treat girls differently?
Sparta's view toward their women was more liberal than that of Athens. Sparta was by far the better of the two City-States in Ancient Greece to be woman. They had the freedom to mingle among the men, to own property, and the education that was not awarded to the women of Athens.
How did Sparta treat women and children?
Spartan women were famously proud of their children who were expected to honor the city-state through virtuous behavior. At the same time, women had the responsibility of running the farm or estate, managing finances, and operating businesses as the men were frequently away at war.
How were females treated in ancient Greece?
Greek women had virtually no political rights of any kind and were controlled by men at nearly every stage of their lives. The most important duties for a city-dwelling woman were to bear children--preferably male--and to run the household.
Did Spartans throw babies off cliffs?
Researchers say that the Greek myth that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly newborns off a cliff has not been corroborated by archaeological digs in the area.
Why did Spartan women shave their head?
TIL that Spartan women shaved their heads and wore men's clothes on their wedding days to help facilitate the transition of Spartan men from homosexual intercourse to heterosexual.
Why was it important for Spartan girls to have a healthy body?
Spartan girls could equally compete with the boys when it comes to athletics. A healthy body for Spartan girls was important, as this prepared them for their later role of child-bearing. 2. Athletics was heavily emphasized for Spartan females.
Why did Sparta give girls formal education?
Spartan girls were given formal education in order to train them to be productive members of society. This was also to prepare them to become wives and mothers of Spartan soldiers. Formal education for Spartan girls usually took place in the home. However, there were also public schools that catered to girls.
What was the Spartan event called?
An event called Gymnopaedia was frequently held for Spartan youths, to showcase their athletic prowess as well as their unclothed and toned bodies. Aside from Gymnopaedia, Spartan women also joined the Olympics and important wrestling competitions. 3.
What did the Spartan mothers do?
3. Spartan mothers served as the head of the household while the fathers and sons were away at war. At age 7, sons were taken away from their mothers and placed in agoge, a military training and educational system that all Spartan males must undergo through.
What are the Spartans known for?
The Spartans are known for producing fierce and strong warriors in battle. You may think it’s all there was to their civilization, as seen in movies like 300. But have you thought about how the Spartan women lived?
Did Sparta women own their own land?
Spartan women could also have their own property . According to the site Women in the Ancient World, Spartan women owned more than a third of the lands. They could freely discard the land if they want to, and daughters were also passed on inheritance along with their brothers.
Was Sparta a step ahead?
The Spartan civilization was a step ahead in regards to their treatment of women in the ancient world. About the author: Eliza Sullin is a college student and likes to read about world history. She did her best essay on History once about the treatment of women in Sparta and Athens.
What was the health of Sparta women?
It was thought in ancient Sparta that healthy, strong women would give birth to healthy and strong children. The physical exercise that the women would undertake would make them the true opposite of many women in Greece, ...
What were the benefits of being a Spartan woman?
Spartan women also had many other benefits bestowed upon them, unlike their ancient Greek counterparts. They were not expected to eat as little as possible, instead they were allowed to indulge more, and were allowed to drink wine just like the Spartan men.
What is the difference between Spartan women and Greek women?
The physical exercise that the women would undertake would make them the true opposite of many women in Greece, by comparison the Spartan women would be strong and athletic by nurture, whereas the Greek woman would only be athletic by nature, and even so would not likely realise it.
What was the Spartan woman's uniqueness?
Strong, physically fit and given more freedom than many other women in the ancient world , Spartan women were truly unique. Not only would a Spartan woman know how to fight and wrestle she would expect her offspring to learn the same, passed down from woman to woman, the ethics, morality, and life of a Spartan women was only possible at ...
What were the Spartan women?
Spartan women were strong, both physically and mentally. The Spartan woman was educated, with knowledge of the arts, music, war, philosophy and much more, she was allowed rights that no other woman of Greece was afforded. Spartan women were the alpha women of the ancient Greek world, they wielded the most power, ...
Why was motherhood important to Sparta?
Motherhood was an important role for a Spartan woman, it was in fact her primary goal in life. Much of the manual labour of everyday life would be carried out by the state owned helots, leaving a Spartan woman time to consider motherhood, prepare for it, and give birth to as many strong babies as she could.
Who were the women of the Greek world?
Spartan women were the alpha women of the ancient Greek world, they wielded the most power, and in many ways had the most equality afforded to them by the state of Sparta. While the Spartan woman was much more free than Greek women, she still had a regiment to conform too, just as a Spartan man did. Sparta had a map for each citizen and they were ...
What were the problems of women in farming?
To these difficulties, the Spartan state added unnecessary, callous and brutal conditions of poverty, malnutrition, violence, murder and rape.
Who cooked the meals in Syssitia?
In the syssitia, at least, the meals are cooked and catered by helot slaves (Plut. Lyc. 12.5, 12.7). In the former case, we are told explicitly by Xenophon that it is slave labor (he uses the word doule, “female slave,” which clearly here must mean helot women) which does this.
Did the Spartans change Lycurgus' laws?
So the Spartans never changed Lycurgus’ laws, which had been declared perfect by Apollo himself. Subsequently, the Spartans accorded Lycurgus divine honors, and within Sparta he was worshiped as a god. The role Lycurgus serves in the sources is as the perfect, infallible founder figure.
Was Sparta a good place to be a woman?
Sparta was a good place to be a woman only if that woman was a member of the tiny elite upper-class of the spartiates. That upper-class is far more visible in our sources, but it is by no means representative of what life was like in Sparta.
Did Gorgo lead Sparta?
This has been an odd creep in Gorgo’s pop-culture identity over time – to be clear Gorgo never led the Spartans, much less the Greeks. The Death of Leonidas resulted in a regency for her son, but the regent was Pausanias, who was actually the achitect of Spartan victory.
Why did Sparta and Athens use women as tools for bearing children?
Some people would argue that this freedom was only due to the need for extensive child birth, but freedom is freedom. Sparta’s view toward their women was more liberal than that of Athens.
Who said only Spartan women give birth to real men?
Women of Sparta held the chore of child birth with high esteem and with as a great honor. The wife of Leonidas, Gorgo was recorded by Herodotus saying “Only Spartan women give birth to real men [6].”. Her saying this would show the pride they took in child birth.
What was the difference between Sparta and Athens?
Sparta was a military state and was heavy with pride for their strength in battle. While Athens’ culture was one of art, philosophy, and democracy. The men not only lived completely separate lives from one another, but their women did too. Athens and Sparta treated their women differently.
What was the Athenian women's festival?
Thesmophoria: Women’s Festival. Athenian women were no better than slaves to the men that surrounded them. They were not allowed to speak or even be seen in public. They lived most of their lives inside of their homes preparing meals and tending to the house.
Which city-state was the best to be a woman?
Sparta was by far the better of the two City-States in Ancient Greece to be woman. They had the freedom to mingle among the men, to own property, and the education that was not awarded to the women of Athens.
Did Sparta give women freedom?
Even with out the ability to have citizenship, they freedoms that Athens would not give their women [7]. Sparta gave their women a freedom that was rare in Ancient Greece. Men of Athens would look down on this freedom and even some of the great Athenian poets like Aristotle would degrade Sparta for this freedom.
Did women have freedoms in Sparta?
Even without any freedoms, they were allowed to be citizens of Athens [1]. Spartan Dancing Woman. Women in Sparta had freedoms that most women did not have in these ancient times.
Why were the Spartans underfed?
The boys were also intentionally underfed so they would become accustomed to the hunger and thirst that accompany the military rations on the battlefield. Additionally, the Spartans were, as you could guess, pretty serious body shamers who were not interested in fat soldiers.
Why did Sparta take severe measures to keep the Helots subservient?
In recounting one such failed insurrection, Xenophon says the underclasses of Sparta hated the upper class so much that they "would be glad to eat them raw.". Because of this very real (and deserved) fear of their perpetual underclass, the Spartans took severe measures to keep the helots subservient.
What were the Spartan elites known as?
The elite ruling class of full Spartan citizens were known as Spartiates, or Homoioi (meaning "those who are alike," as they each enjoyed equal status, similar to the English term "peerage"). The Spartiate elite, ethnically Doric men who had completed the brutal agoge training regimen, enjoyed quite a lot of privilege within Spartan society, not the least of which was total control of the government and exemption from all manual or commercial labor. All such work in markets or fields was carried out by perioikoi or helots.
What was the most important tool the Spartans had for keeping the Helot population in check?
Perhaps the most important tool the Spartans had for keeping the helot population in check was a sort of secret police called the krypteia, made up of young men undergoing the rigorous training necessary to become full citizens and hoping to prove their willingness to kill for the state, thereby earning higher military positions upon the completion of their training. So basically a super cool combination of the SS, the Hitler Youth, and, like, JROTC.
Why did the Spartans bathe their babies in wine?
Immediately after birth, Spartan boys were bathed in wine, as they believed this would make the babies hardier. Then the child would be taken to the gerousia, the council of Spartan elders, for inspection.
What was the Spartan society like?
Ancient Sparta was an incredibly stratified society, with strict class divisions drawn along social, gender, and ethnic lines. At the top of the heap (well, below the two kings and various oligarchs) were full citizens — ethnically Spartan men who had completed a rigorous initiation ritual — followed by free non-citizens called perioikoi who were basically a merchant class, and at the very bottom were the helots, a state-owned serf class (with various subclasses for non-Spartans sprinkled in the hierarchy here and there).
What was the Krypteia's training?
They focused on stealth, working as small groups and individuals, and stalking the fringes of Spartan society rather than protecting the city proper.