"Scandalous" Spartan Women

In no other Greek city-state did women enjoy the same freedom and privileges of Spartan women. 

Only in Sparta did girls receive public education—in other city-states, most women were completely illiterate.

Only in Sparta were girls allowed to engage in sports.

Only in Sparta did women possess economic power and influence.

Scandalized observers from other Greek cities commented that not only did Spartan women have opinions, they also were not afraid to voice them in public; and worse still their husbands actually listened to them!

The freedom and greater respect for Spartan women began at birth with laws that required female infants and children to be given the same care and food as their brothers—in contrast to other Greek cities, where girls were frequently given less and lower-quality food. Like their brothers, Spartan girls were expected or required to attend the public school, although for a shorter period of time than the boys. At school they were allowed and encouraged to engage in sports. (And it was, incidentally, a Spartan who became the first woman to ever have an Olympic victory—by entering a chariot at the races.)

When girls reached sexual maturity they were not rushed—as were their sisters throughout the rest of the contemporary world—into marriage and childbed. On the contrary, the Spartan laws explicitly advocated marrying girls only after they had reached an age to "enjoy sex." The reasoning was simple: for young girls not yet psychologically ready for sexual intimacy, sex was an "act of violence." Nor were Spartan girls married to much older men as was usual in other Greek cities. It is estimated that most Spartan wives were only 4 to 5 years younger than their husbands.

With their husbands confined to barracks and on active service until the age of 31 and frequently called up for campaigns or engaged in political and civic duties thereafter, it was left to Sparta's matrons to run the estates. These meant that Spartan wives controlled the family wealth—and in effect the entire Spartan agricultural economy. A Spartan citizen was dependent on his wife's efficiency to pay his "dues" to his dining club. This economic power is in particularly sharp contrast to cities such as Athens, where it was illegal for a woman to control more money than she needed to buy a bushel of grain. What was more, Spartan women could inherit and so transfer wealth. Athenian women, by contrast, were never heiresses; all property passed to the next male kinsman, who might at most be required to marry the heiress in order to claim the inheritance. Economic power has always had the concomitant effect of increasing status. This is clearly evidenced by contemporary descriptions of Spartan women. They were "notorious" for having opinions ("even on political matters!") and—what was clearly worse from the perspective of other Greek men—"their husbands listened to them." Aristotle claimed that Spartan men were "ruled by their wives"—and cited the freedom of Spartan women as one of two reasons why the Spartan Constitution was reprehensible.

In a frequently quoted incident, the wife of King Leonidas was allegedly asked why Spartan women were the only women in Greece who "ruled" their husbands. Gorgo replied, "because we are the only women who give birth to men." In other words, only men with the self-confidence to accept women as equals were men at all.

Spartan women did not have a voice in the Assembly, nor were they required to spend 40 years in the army.

Last but not least, it is a frequent misconception that Spartan society was also blatantly homosexual. Curiously, no contemporary source and no archaeological evidence supports this widespread assumption. The best ancient source on Sparta, Xenophon, explicitly denies the already common rumors about widespread pederasty. Aristotle noted that the power of women in Sparta was typical of all militaristic and warlike societies without a strong emphasis on male homosexuality—arguing that in Sparta this "positive" moderating factor on the role of women in society was absent. There is no Spartan/Laconian pottery with explicitly homosexual motifs—as there is from Athens and Corinth and other cities. The first recorded heterosexual love poem was written by a Spartan poet for Spartan maidens. The very fact that Spartan men tended to marry young by ancient Greek standards (in their early to mid-twenties) suggests they had less time for the homosexual love affairs that characterized early manhood in the rest of Greece. Certainly the state considered bachelorhood a disgrace, and a citizen who did not marry and produce future citizens enjoyed less status than a man who had fathered children. In no other ancient Greek city were women so well integrated into society. All this speaks against a society in which homosexuality was exceptionally common.