When we think of Greece today, we think of one united nation. However, Greece was not always this way. In ancient times, Greece was divided into over a thousand city-states with Sparta and Athens being two of the most prominent ones. Due to the division of Greece back then, each city-state had their own laws, their own government, their own military and their own way of life. As a result of these differences between Athens and Sparta, daily life was very different between the two city-states and because of their laws, governments and military, your quality of life in each state was very much dependant on which gender you were. For men, Athens was most likely the city-state that you’d want to be living in during this time and on the other hand, …show more content…
Male citizens in Sparta and Male citizens in Athens lived very different lives. In both Athens and Sparta, boys received an education starting at the age of seven. Even though males received an education in both city-states, the educations they received were fairly different. Males in Sparta would be taken from their mothers and homes at seven years old. The main purpose of their schooling was to prepare them to join the army full time. Spartan boys would be taught discipline, athletics, survival skills, hunting, …show more content…
Women in Sparta had freedoms and rights like no other city-state throughout Greece. Spartan women would receive an education and physical training. They were fed properly and could eat whatever they wanted because the credit was given to women for making Spartan men strong due to them being able to have healthy babies since they were treated properly. Not only were Spartan women given a good education and were nourished properly, they were also given rights and freedoms which Athenian women would never have. Spartan women had the right to apply for citizenship at the age of eighteen while women in Athens would never be granted citizenship. Spartan women also had the freedom to wander throughout their city-state unlike women in Athens who were forced to remain inside. In Sparta, women had the right to own property and the right to divorce their husbands without losing their wealth which Athenian women did not have. Also unlike Athenian women, Spartan women would not marry at a very young age. They’d generally marry between the ages of eighteen and twenty. The person they married would often only be a few years older than them. In Athens, women were often forced to marry an older man during their teenage years. Another benefit of being a woman in Ancient Sparta instead of Ancient Athens is that Spartan women were in charge of the household and the cooking and cleaning was not left up to them.
“reach them to endure pain and conquer in battle.” (Document 11). Sparta was especially known for their strong army force. From age seven, all boys were trained not to express their pain and become great soldiers on the battlefield. Unlike Sparta, Athens’ main focus was not on the military. “For we are lovers of beauty, yet with no extravagance and lovers of wisdom, yet without weakness.” (Document 9). Athens was essentially based upon the arts and intelligence. Instead of boys going through years and years of military training, Athenians learned subjects like literature, art, and arithmetic.
Ancient Greece today is most known for the culture: the gods, the dramas, how people lived. What most people do not realize is that there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of different civilizations spread throughout Greece that all had different forms of government. The three main ones were Athens, Sparta, and Miletus. Each was very different from the other. The most powerful out of all three was Sparta: a military based society. The Spartan government had a strong foundation that was all torn down by one bad leader.
Spartan women were allowed to own and control land. “Yet it does seem to be the case that Spartan daughters received as dowries one-half the amount of their parents’ property that their brothers received as inheritance.” (Pomeroy, Sarah B., Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. "Becoming a Spartan Woman." Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 143. Print) Whereas Athenian women only received one-sixth the amount that their brothers inherited. Spartan women inherited three times as more than their Athenian sisters. Spartan women were also allowed and even encouraged to be educated, whereas the education of Athenian girls was almost nonexistent. In Athens the majority of girls “… received merely a basic training in how to run the household, generally from their mothers. Girls may even have been discouraged from becoming literate in order to keep them “unspoiled.”( Garland, Robert. "The People." Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. 103. Print.) Whereas in Sparta the girls were educated at the state’s expense. “Specific lines of development were prescribed for Spartan girls as much as they were for boys. The educational system for girls was also organized according to age classes. (Pomeroy, Sarah B., Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. "Becoming a Spartan Woman." Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 141. Print) Spartan women were also allowed more freedoms in the way that they dressed than their Athenian counterparts. “In earlier times Athenian women wore the peplos, a long heavy woolen garment which revealed little of the figure beneath. In the middle of the sixth century B.C., the peplos was replaced by a lighter and finer garment made of linen called
Spartan women were considered fundamentally more advanced than other women of Athens, due to the way that Spartan women were reared. Spartan women were treated equally to men, and given freedom like the men were. They were given the opportunity to train with men, and were even slightly more educated than their male cohorts. Spartan women were exceptionally more advanced than other women during this age due to these factors, and are a great example of strong women within past civilizations.
In the Greek society women were treated very differently than they are today. Women in ancient Greece were not allowed to own property, participate in politics, and they were under control of the man in their lives. The goddess Aphrodite did not adhere to these social norms and thus the reason the earthly women must comply with the societal structure that was set before them. Aphrodite did not have a father figure according to Hesiod, and therefore did not have a man in her life to tell her what to do. She was a serial adulteress and has many children with many men other than her husband. She was not the only goddess from the ancient Greek myths to cause doubt in the minds of men. Gaia and the Titan Rhea rise up against their husbands in order to protect their children. Pandora, another woman in the Greek myths, shows that all evil comes from woman. Aphrodite, Gaia, Rhea, and Pandora cause the ancient Greek men to be suspicious of women because of her mischievous and wild behavior.
Athens and Sparta are both infamous Greek city states. Both could not be more different, yet similar in the way they governed their own city state. Another, main difference was the women’s rights and roles in the system. Athenian and Spartan women both were considered to be second to their male counterparts. Spartan women had more rights than Athenian women. Through, research realizing that the Spartan women were slightly greater role than Athenian women.
Unlike other Greek city states, women played an integral role in Spartan society as they were the backbone of the Spartan economic system of inheritance and marriage dowry and they were relied upon to fulfill their main responsibility of producing Spartan warrior sons. These principle economic systems affected wealth distribution among Spartan citizens especially among the Spartan elite class. Spartan women led a completely different life than women in most other ancient Greek city states, as they were depended upon to maintain Spartan social systems. In a society where the state is more involved in home life women had freedom of movement and they were permitted to communicate with men who were not their husbands. Women had domestic responsibilities including the maintenance of homes and farms when the men were on campaign, while the typical Greek female responsibilities such as weaving were delegated to slaves. Girls were raised much like Spartan boys as they were made to go through physical training insuring their success in fulfilling their most important role in society, child-bearing. The few primary sources on Sparta and Spartiate women, namely Aristotle, Plutarch, Herodotus and Xenophon were historians who lived after the prominence of ancient Sparta; therefore, the facts regarding the women’s influence in social, economic and political issues must be carefully interpreted and analysed with help from secondary sources.
Both Sparta and Athens were Greek city-states. Sparta was a strict military ruled city-state where the people established themselves as a military power early. However Athens was more of a political city-state that was more involved with their economical stature than their military forces. Still changes from the Persian wars would change the powers of the city-state and somewhat unite them.
Athens and Sparta were both city-states in Classical Greece. While Athens embraced democracy, Sparta was a dictatorial fierce warrior state. Sparta was a militaristic community, Athens was a freethinking, and commerce minded city-state. Modern societies have modeled their government organizational structure and military discipline practices from lessons learned of these ancient city-states. There is much is to be praised regarding Classical Greece for their courage, their progressive thinking and the birth of democracy. However, I think it is important to remember that in both cases, Athens and Sparta were able to sustain their lifestyle on the backs of countless slaves, non-citizens and women and that there is a darker and less romantic side to the past.
...litary end even the women in Sparta would have been affected by the military ways of life almost as much as the young men. From childhood they were being primed to raise a family, they were taught in the ways of mid wifery, learning the correct manner in teaching the future young men of Sparta and keeping themselves fit to produce fit children.
Athens was a much more superior polis compared to Sparta because the Athenians invented new ideas and creations that supported the people, such as democracy, the Athenians led the Delian League, and Sparta created the Peloponnesian League after the Athenians created their alliance, and the Athenians changed the ways of their government many times to suit the people, and the Spartans did not.
...imately men were in command in all situations: Ischomachos’s wife says, “For my guarding and distribution of the indoor things would look somewhat ridiculous, I suppose, if it weren’t your concern to bring in something from outside (Oeconomicus, VII 39).” This suggests that even though the wife was the indoor household manager, she was still obeying her husband’s orders that were the driving force of her own agency within the oikos.
Women in the ancient world had few rights, they differed from country to country or, in the case of the women of Athens and Sparta, from city-state to the city-state. The women of the city-states of Athens and Sparta had profound differences in their roles in the political and the daily lives of their families and their cities. When it came to the difference in levels of power and the rights of women, Sparta was a leader in its time. At the same time, their rights as citizens were almost the same. While they did not take an active part in politics, they had opinions and ideas like women all over the world. Their thoughts, deeds, and opinions rarely recorded or if they were, the male historians or philosophers of the time recorded them. What were roles did the women in ancient Athens and Sparta? Were they citizens, did they have personal freedoms? On the other hand, did they in a time when the beginnings of democracy were happening were they less than a second-class citizen? The misogyny and patriarchal societies continued throughout the ancient and classical periods only beginning to change in the Hellenistic era.
Gender Roles in Ancient Greek Society Throughout history, the roles of women and men have always differed to some degree. In ancient Greece, the traditional roles were clear-cut and defined. Women stayed home to care for children and do housework while men left to work. This system of society was not too far off the hunter gatherer concept where women cared for the house and the men hunted.
Like the Athenians, women were expected to bear sons. Boys were taken away from their mothers at the age of seven and put under the control of Spartan leaders. The boys were taken to live in military camps and were “subjected to harsh discipline to make them tough and given an education that stressed military training and obedience to authority”. For most of the Spartan men’s lives, they lived in these camps, and trained for battle. Once the males turned 30, they were allowed to vote in an assembly. They were able to marry and live in their own homes, but had to remain in military service until the age of 60. Spartan women, unlike Athenian women had more control and power in society. Woman like men contributed in physical activities because it was “thought that is both parents were strong their children would be more