Roles Of Women In Sparta Essay

Women in Sparta

In the Spartan community, everything was aimed towards the betterment of the society as a whole. Spartan boys trained as warriors beginning at the age of seven. The women were given the most important task: creating warriors.

From a young age, Spartan girls were trained in athletics such as running, wrestling, and other physical sports. While the boys were training to become warriors, the girls were trained to be healthy and athletic mothers. It was believed that a strong woman would give birth to strong baby, and would also have an easier pregnancy (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 14).

Unlike most other cities at that time, the girls did not have to dress modestly, and it was even acceptable for them to walk around naked. Lycurgus, the lawmaker, “did away with prudery, sheltered upbringing and effeminacy of any kind” (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 14). While this gave more freedom to the girls, it served another purpose: to encourage the boys training. The girls would poke fun at the boys during their exercises, which

would encourage them to make an effort to impress the girls, thus helping to improve their general performance.
It is important to note that the level of freedom given to the women was mostly just to improve the quality of sons they would produce, and to encourage the men in their training.

At the same time, the men’s lives were also revolved around producing more soldiers. Grown men and women seemed to have had the same level of freedom within their marital life. The main objective was to create the best possible warriors, so it was an accepted practice for a married Spartiate to conceive a child with another citizen they were not married to. “If an older man with a young wife should take a liking to one of the well-bred young men and approve of him” (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 15), he would allow the younger man to have sex with his wife so she would give birth to a baby that might have some of his traits. This worked both ways: men might give each other permission to sleep with each others wives if they believed it would bear a strong

child.
Despite their freedom to conceive with whoever they wished, the beginning of their marriage was surprisingly discreet: they were only allowed to meet in secret, at night. This would go on “long enough that some might even have children before they saw their own wives in daylight” (Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 15). They believed that men could wear out their reproductive capacities, and that meeting secretly would keep the relationship exciting and help with reproduction.
Today, the stereotype is that child-rearing is mainly a ‘woman’s job’, but the Spartans seemed to believe that it took ‘a village to raise a child.’ Plutarch did not say much about how the girls were raised, but the rearing and discipline of the boys was a community effort. Once the male children reached the age of seven, they would be moved into barracks. From then on, they would be brought up by each other, by their Eiren (an older boy who was chosen as leader), by older men in the community, but most of all, their older male lover (erastes).
Despite the actual intent behind giving their women more freedom, the result was that they were probably the women with the most rights in the classical age.