Impressions of Athens and Sparta As Greek city-states during the Archaic and Classical periods (800-323 BCE), Spartan and Athenian daily life shared some commonalities and was divergent in other ways. Both societies enjoyed the same mild Mediterranean climate, where snow is limited to mountain ranges and year round humidity is relatively low. Three websites that I visited each described the same style of Greek home, making no distinctions between Sparta and Athens. I found the British Museum’s cut-away view to be the most informative and was surprised at how modern the Greek home design was for the time. Check it out if you’ve not come across this yourself (http://www.ancientgreece.co.uk/dailylife/challenge/cha_set.html). For this week’s post, I thought to explore the roles of women, of men and how children were raised and educated. Spartan and Athenian Women Both Spartan and Athenian women were expected to raise their children, oversee their households and were barred from politics. …show more content…
While Athens had its share of military folks, they also had Aristotle and other great thinkers as well as business minds that made Athens’ regional commerce successful by leveraging their maritime power. Athenian boys were taught a wide range of topics to prepare them for future roles in their society. Meanwhile in Sparta, boys (girls as well) were given a quick eugenic fitness text as infants to weed out the weak. At seven years, it was off to Agoge, Spartan’s military factory machine. Spartan soldiers were expected to live in military barracks until age thirty and dine somewhat exclusively within their Syssitia, a military dining club. Where I see Athenian fathers walking home after a day at the Acropolis, perhaps thinking about their next symposium (drinking party), I also see the Athenian father, far from home, weapon in hand, ready to do battle (Brand, n.d.; Halsall, 1999; The Greeks,
“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.
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 spouses lived apart and often only met on rare occasions with the intent to procreate (Blundell). This tactic was used, because they wanted men to always be focused and training to be great soldiers, and not having to worry about family life would lessen the stress for the men (Blundell). Spartan women were given the role of taking care of the household, children, and the families finances (Blundell). However women in Spartan culture, were not brought up to do chores around the house, such as cooking or cleaning (Powell). The reasons behind that was they wanted the girls to focus their education on being physically strong and mentally strong (Powell). The women knew that when they started a household they would be given a helot or slave to take care of the small tasks around the home (Powell). Spartan women’s role in the household, gave them greater independence to be able to perform the activities they wanted to, and gave them the opportunity to be away from the
In Athens, women had no rights at all. The men would run the town, and women were left at home to keep the house clean and take care of children. If these ranks of society suddenly went away in these two Greek city-states, no one would know what to do. The citizens of Sparta would not know how to harvest fields or run a household because their whole lives were focused on either preparing them to fight in the military or actually going off to war. The Spartan military would probably also not be as strong because all men would not be required to fight.
In the home, Athenian women were treated like slaves with no rights. Married women were not people under the law of the Athenians any more than a slave, as they were shifted from one male’s authority to another throughout their lives, powerless to affect anything except through the intercession of another male (To Have Power or to Not Have Power: Athenian vs. Spartan Women). Also, when other males occupied their home; women we told to evacuate the male quarters. Women lived secluded in their own quarters, kept out of the lives of their husbands, working endlessly at the loom or some other repetitive chore. They competed for their husband’s affection against prostitutes, hetairai, and slaves of both genders, including those within their own household. By contrast, Spartan girls exercised publicly alongside boys(and often in the nude) (Fleck).Thus, Spartan women were rarely confined to the home. This is because of the abundance of a workforce and male children serving in the army from seven to
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.
Sparta and Athens - Explain and Contrast 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.
The Lacedaemonians were not content with simply sending aid to Sicily; they also resolved to take the war to the Athenians. The Corinthians, the Spartans, and others in the Peloponnesian League sent more reinforcements to Syracuse, in the hopes of driving off the Athenians; but instead of withdrawing; the Athenians sent another hundred ships and another 5,000 troops to Sicily. Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies were able to decisively defeat the Athenians on land; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which was able to defeat the Athenian fleet when they attempted to withdraw. The Athenian army, attempting to withdraw overland to other, more friendly Sicilian cities, was divided and defeated; the entire Athenian fleet was destroyed, and virtually the entire Athenian army was sold off into slavery.
"When in Rome, live as the Romans do; when elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere." Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a Roman or Greek? Well, Ancient Greece and Rome have influenced American society throughout the Roman Republic, Greek architecture, and Greek Olympics. There are many interesting facts you should know about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome! Did you know that the first Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C. at the Greek city of Olympia? Or that the Colosseum received millions of visitors every year, and is the most famous tourist attraction of Rome? You can learn many things about how American society has been influenced by the Ancient Romans and Greeks.
One of the greatest responsibilities a woman had in Classical Sparta was giving birth to the Spartan males. Through physical training when a young teen with the Spartan boys, the women needed to be healthy and strong to produce healthy children capable of going through the agoge training. “…By athleticism they made sure that their children would be up to the standard of physical fitness demanded by the Spartan system.” (H.Michell, Sparta). The Spartan mother would prepare the young Spartans prior to the agoge; she would have minimal interaction and supply minimal clothing and
Sparta was a city-state based on strict military ruling, at the age of seven a young Spartan would start out training and be trained into killing machines. When a Spartan baby is born, high elite Spartan soldiers would observe the baby to see if it was healthy and strong, if not the baby was ill and weak so it would be taken up a mountain and left there to die. This is just one example that shows how Sparta only wants a strong army and doesn't care about anything else. Strict rules of the government made it so that every Spartan was trained to be physically and mentally fit for war.
Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave and kept under a close eye to prevent insurgence (History of Greece:The Golden Age of Greece). Additionally, Sparta had strict and trained soldiers that underwent intense physical exercising and instruction.