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Spartan women were famous in ancient Greece for seemingly having more freedom than women elsewhere in the Greek world. To contemporaries outside of Sparta, Spartan women had a reputation for promiscuity and controlling their husbands. Spartan women could legally own and inherit property, and they were usually better educated than their Athenian ...
What is more, the Spartans used helot women to satisfy the state's human personnel needs: the 'bastards' (nothoi) born of Spartan fathers and helot women held an intermediary rank in Lacedaemonian society (cf. mothakes and mothones below) and swelled the ranks of the citizen army. It is difficult to determine whether these births were the ...
A depiction of an ancient Greek four-horse chariot, c. 530-520 BC. While most women in the ancient Greek world were kept in seclusion and forbidden to pursue athletic activities such as riding or hunting, Spartan women of the elite spartiate class [note 1] were trained to excel in sports.
Spartiate women, as well, were expected to remain athletic, since the Spartans believed that strong and healthy parents would produce strong and healthy children. Spartiates were expected to adhere to an ideal of military valor, as exemplified by the poems of Tyrtaeus, who praised men who fell in battle and heaped scorn on those who fled. Such ...
Spartan women were also literate and numerate, a rarity in the ancient world. Furthermore, as a result of their education and the fact that they moved freely in society engaging with their fellow (male) citizens, they were notorious for speaking their minds even in public. [ 152 ]
272 BCE – When Pyrrhus attacked Sparta, the women of the city assisted in the defense, assisted by Chilonis. [112] [113] [114] 272 BCE – Spartan princess Archidamia leads Spartan women in the construction of a defensive trench and in the aiding of the wounded in battle during the siege of Pyrrhus. [115] [116]
Unlike other Hellenic women, Dorian women were able to own property, manage their husbands' estate, and delegate many domestic tasks to slaves. Women in ancient Sparta possessed the greatest agency and economic power, likely due to the prolonged absences of men during military campaigns. [ 18 ]
However, Archidamia, speaking on behalf of the Spartan women, entered the Gerousia, "with sword in hand," and contested this proposal, questioning whether the Spartan women were "so faint hearted as to live after Sparta was destroyed". [5] Famously she asked "Spartans! I ask, by the memory of your race, Are ye worthy of the name!"