Sparta and Athenian women
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1. How do the women of Athens seem to be depicted compared to the women of Sparta? Compare the similarities and differences between the women and their lifestyles, at least as imagined/prescribed by Lycurgus of Sparta and Apollodorus of Athens.
The women of Sparta were given both physical and scholastic training. Athenian ladies, then again, were educated just how to compose and read and fundamental family employment, which generally was directed at home, for example, cooking, weaving, sewing, and spinning. With respect to Athenian and Spartan women marriage lives, was likewise bound to be not the same as each other as per their social orders. Athenian
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ladies were viewed as a weaker compared to men, they must be ensured at home and wasn’t supposed to step out of the house without their men. At very early age around 13 or 14, women got married according to their fathers wish. The men they get married are a stranger to them. Then again, the marriage life of Sparta women compared to Athens women was different. The women of Sparta got married at 18 age and they never married a stranger. They knew the men name and reputations. What's more, if their fathers picked an appropriate spouse for them, they have dependably had the rights to talk about it. The Athens women have fewer rights compared to the Sparta women.
Athenian women couldn’t acquire property while Sparta women could. Spartan women could own property and wealth. Concerning the status of women in the public eye, Athenian ladies had less flexibility and rights. The life of Athenian women was isolated due to the fact that their place was in the home. The women were supposed to be found at home more often in order to endure and arrange the salves to make the family unit, teach their kids and so on. Then again, Spartan ladies were acclaimed for their autonomy contrasted with other women of the Greek. Spartan women could go out at whatever point they need and had a free lifestyle. Although Sparta woman essential part was likewise bearing and bringing up their kids, the women of Sparta trusted that if a lady stayed solid and healthy, she would then perform her activity in a much better …show more content…
way. In spite of the fact that there are outrageous contrasts amongst Sparta and Athenian women, however, there are a few resemblances among these two groups of women. One of the common similarities is that both these women have to be married. Despite the fact of the age difference marriage between these two women still both these women marriages were arranged by their fathers. Sparta and Athenian women had a responsibility to give birth to a son. The principal obligation of Sparta and Athenian women were to deal with salves, home and educate their kids. At last, these two women who were from Greek wasn’t given permission to join the assembly. 2. How was the role of women different in Athens compared to the role of women in Sparta? What do you think the women’s roles were exactly and do you think they were okay with their roles as women? In the Athenian society, the women’s principal part was a reproductive and kid raising part.
Athenian women, similar to other Greek women, had a couple of lawful rights. Expanding concern about ladies and their parts in the society prompted the laws that isolated the women of Athens and firmly controlled the life of women. On the other hand, the role of Sparta women was to serve in the armed forces. For every one of their opportunities, a Sparta woman was as yet a method for delivering youngsters for their tribe. According to the women of Sparta, they were not given importance on how many children they can give birth to in fact the main concern was to give birth to the healthy boy in order to serve the military. The Sparta women had another different role which was they could inherit properties. When it comes to the educational role, Sparta women were more educated compared to Athenian
women. I believe that both these ladies of a various gathering of Greek had one noteworthy part which was to bring forth a sound and solid child which can battle in the fight. They ought to teach the child and care for their home. However, when taking a peek at Sparta ladies, they had a high ground contrast with Athenian ladies since Sparta women had a status for controlling their spouses. Dissimilar to their Athenian partners, Spartan ladies could lawfully possess the property and acquire and were better instructed. I think that since Sparta women were given more freedom, they were okay with serving their major role compared to Athenian women. 3. Who wrote these documents? Do you think the depiction of women in them reflected how women actually lived? Why or why not? Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B.Fant are the authors who have written these documents. Through these two authors, we came to know a lot about the women’s status and their lifestyle in two different groups of Greek. The Spartans and Athenian women had some similar roles such as giving birth to a healthy child but they also had different lifestyles. Spartan women were famous compared to other women of Greek and even had more freedom. I believe that according to that era, the depiction of women is absolutely correct. Since women were not given many rights and they had one responsibility which was giving birth to a son. The depiction of women of both these tribes reflected exactly how women lived and how they had responsibilities according to their laws and regulations.
Spartan women unlike the Athenian females were encouraged to exercise and become as fit as possible, Lykourgos had expressed his belief in a correlation between the fitness of parents and the fitness of the child. Xenophon dictates these beliefs;
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
In her book, Spartan Women, Sarah B. Pomeroy explores the fundamentals of Spartan women’s society and the significance they contributed to the country as a whole. While surrounded by Greek antiquity, the women of Sparta differed vastly from their Greek counterparts. Not only were they of a higher significance than Greek women but were also an attribute in the education and upbringing of the children of Sparta which was the goal of their society. Sarah Pomeroy explores how Spartan women were not only considered almost as equals to men, but in some cases, even more important.
Women had very few rights, they lived as prisoners, serving men 24 hours a day. Women were sheltered from society, restricted to their husbands and their husbands houses, crying out for help and justice but there is no one to there to hear their screams. In the play Antigone when the title character had to sneak out of the house to meet up with Ismene. Ancient Greek men ruled a lot like over protective fathers with teenage daughters. Men were also scared of women gaining confidence and begin thinking on their own or worse taking action or speaking out against men, like in the play Antigone where Antigone confronts Creon by burying Polyneices after Creon strictly stated that no one bury him. If someone were to bury him, the whole Polis would stone them to death. When Creon found out that someone buried Polyneices, he did not even consider that it could have been a women that did it.
There isn’t enough literature from this time period from the lower and middle classes of society, and the view of women we have comes from writings of the upper class males. As much of an enigma that the women of Athens were, it is clear that “women were for the most part legal nonentities,” (O’Neal 117) that were denied any association and participation in the intellectual life of their city. The women were not involved in getting an education, and never learned to read or write. O’Neal writes, “The principal spokesmen of fifth century Athens, Pericles and Thucydides, disdained Athenian women.” (O’Neal 117) Based on their writing, and on surmountable evidence, it can be assumed that women had only two roles in Athens - a wife, or a mother. A girl was ideally married at 14 or 15 years of age, and there was necessity that the bride was a virgin, otherwise she was shamed and sold into
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.
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.
When you think of ancient Greece, you probably think of togas, polytheism, epic heros, and olives. But do you how women were treated or veiwed? There is quite a lot of evidence displayed throughout manyplays, epics and other documents. Oedipus the King and The Odyssey are two ancient Greek works of literature that exemplify their society perfectly. Ancient Greece was a patriarchial society where women were treated as objects and sex symbols and misogyny was often present.
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.
Much like world war two when men went away to serve in battle, the women took care of the property and managed the home. Spartan Husbands spent most of their time with other men in the military barracks; since the men were rarely home, the women were free to take charge of almost everything outside of the army (Fleck). Women owned forty percent of land in Spartan society. In comparison, Athenian law did not allow a woman to participate in a business transaction involving anything that’s value exceeded the sum of money equivalent to that needed to feed a family for five to six days. Thus, why Athenian women had no control in owning property. Also, if she wanted to buy groceries at the local market, she would needed the approval of a male guardian (father, brother, husband). An Athenian woman could have owned a slave, yet she would have a lacked the authority to sell them away. This power again was given to the males of the household. She might have had a claim to land as well, yet she would not even have had the right to use it let alone sell it. In ancient Athens, then, it is probably better to speak of rights and not of ownership when it comes to women’s
Greek and Roman women lived in a world where strict gender roles were given; where each person was judged in terms of compliance with gender-specific standards of conduct. Generally, men were placed above women in terms of independence, control and overall freedom. Whereas men lived in the world at large, active in public life and free to come and go as they willed, women's lives were sheltered. Most women were assigned the role of a homemaker, where they were anticipated to be good wives and mothers, but not much of anything else. The roles of women are thoroughly discussed in readings such as The Aeneid, Iliad, Sappho poetry, and Semonides' essay.
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
Greek women, as depicted as in their history and literature, endure many hardships and struggle to establish a meaningful status in their society. In the Odyssey, Penelope’s only role in the epic is to support Odysseus and remain loyal to him. She is at home and struggles to keep her family intact while Odysseus is away trying to return to his native land. The cultural role of women is depicted as being supportive of man and nothing more. Yet what women in ancient Greece did long ago was by far more impressive than what men did.
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.
Euripides, one of Ancient Greece’s most famous playwrights, could be considered as one of the earliest supporters of women’s rights. With plays such as Alcestis and Medea, he clearly puts an emphasis on the condition of women, and even integrates them in the Chorus of the latter play, a feat that was not often done in Ancient Greece. Throughout the years, it has been argued that the two central characters in each of those plays offer conflicting representations of women in those times, and I can safely say that I agree with that argument. I will expand on my view by pointing out an important similarity between Alcestis and Medea, followed by a key difference, and will finish it off by contrasting them with the Ancient Greek depiction of an “ideal woman.”