Spartan Women

Question 1

Spartan women: Role

Answer 1

• Played the role of child barers, mothers and managers of estates
• Expected to support military ethos
• Encourgaed to play active social role (more freedom than Athenian women)
• Educated to create proper mothers of warriors
• Child rearing practices highly valued, Spartan women were often wet-nurses
• Wives were shared
• Most honorable way for women to die was in childbirth

Question 2

Physical education and training

Answer 2

• Physical training was practiced in public naked
• Plutarch suggests girls participated in foot races, wrestling, discuss and javelin
• Purpose of intense physical training was to prepare women to bear children
• Only strong women could give birth to strong men
• Forbidden to wear makeup, jewellry, perfume or dyed clothes
• main garment was peplos - allowed freedom of moevement

Evidence:
- Bronze figurine of Athletic woman running

Question 3

Academic foundation

Answer 3

• Young Spartan girls remained at home with mothers but were educated
• Girls organised into bands for team games and choral singing
• Social education was the teaching of Spartan values i.e. courage, loyalty etc

Question 4

Marriage Customs

Answer 4

• Married at age 18
• Expected to marry within social class
• Ceremonies kept secret until child produced, if wife was barren new marriage arranged
• Womens husband called a tresente was worst thing that could happen as wife would also loose status
• It is believed men would choose wife and ‘capture’ her - symbolic

sources:

• Plutarch states they were married when they were ripe for it (late teens)
• Athenaeus described pre nuptial wedding feast where cakes in shape of breasts were eaten
• Plutarch states women shaved their hair and dressed in mens clothing. implication of chastity/subjection of female, eases man into sex with women (previous sexual relation ship occurred between older man and young boy ‘Peterasty’)

Question 5

Religious role

Answer 5

• Performed religious dances at festivals; Hyporchema (honor of Apollo), Caryatid (honor of Artemis)
• Artemis orthia cult in town centre was associated with childbirth
• Offerings were brought by women who were barren, pregnant or had survived childbirth
• Mothers of married girls made sacrifices to Aphrodite Hera

Evidence:
- Figurine dedicated to Artemis Orthia

Question 6

Land ownership

Answer 6

• Land was owned by Spartiate families and marriage alliances ensured that property remained within this group
• Spartan women owned and managed estates without male guardians (Xenophon and Aristotle)
• Accumulation of property left women very wealthy and some aboided male guardians
• Aristotle notes at the end of the classical period women owned 2/5 of the land