The Spartan Alternative

Sparta and the Land Crisis

First Messenian War - 730-710 BCE

Colony at Tarentum

Tyrtaeus of Sparta and the Hoplite ideal

Spartans vs. Helots

Second Messenian War - 660-630 BCE

Ideal Hoplite State

Lycurgus the lawgiver - - Great Rhetra

Two Kings of Sparta – Agiads and Eurypontids

Gerousia - council of elders (Senate)

Ephors

Assembly – Apellai of the Damos

- each Spartan given an equal portion (kleros) of Messenian land

- contribute to meal at communal eating house (syssition)

- Spartan citizens (Homoioi) rule over Helots

The Spartan Legend

Spartan aceticism – the philosopher’s ideal	Spartan training – the agoge
Spartan brutality – the krypteia	Equality of lots – no public displays of wealth

Spartan Women – the exceptions to the rules

The beauty of Spartan women – Helen of Troy

The athleticism of Spartan women

The greed of Spartan women

Spartan women vs. other women; Spartan women vs. other men

The Expansion of Spartan Power

Sparta helps Elis regain Olympics from Pisa - 572 BCE

The Bones of Orestes and the Conquest of Tegea

The Battle of the Champions and the Defeat of Argos

The Spartans against the Tyrants – Spartans as Liberators

For Next Week:

Readings:

Buckley ch. 5 & 6	Aristotle, The Constitution of Athens §1-19
Plutarch – Solon	Herodotus I.126-7, V
Fornara # 15 (Drakon), 26 (Panathenaia), 30, 31 (Pisistratids)	Greek Lyrics: Solon (pp. 18-23)
Thucydides on Athens (II.15) and Pisistratids (VI.54-59)

In 2.15.16, Thucydides combines an accurate picture of the effects of synoikism with the attribution to Theseus. What evidence does Thucydides offer for the synoikism? In many Greek poleis, synoikism involved the physical relocation of the people; what evidence does Thucydides offer that his was not the case in Attica? How does Thucydides' story differ from Plutarch's in his life of Theseus?

What reflections are there in Draco's lawcode of the early stage of kin self-help, and what indications of the development of resistrictions on this? What rights did a man accused of homicide have?

How did Solon resolve the tensions in Athenian society? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the sources for Solon's work?

Compare Herodotus' account of Harmodius and Aristogeiton with that of Thucydides. Why does each historian tell the story? How do the accounts differ and in what do they agree? What political significance might the story have had in their day?

Spartan Women: Testimonia

Aristophanes (Athens c.445-c.385 BCE), Lysistrata 77-84

Myrrhine: Hey, hold it, here's the Spartan Lampito now!

Lysistrata: Lampito, darling, welcome, greetings from us all. What a gorgeous specimen, you lovely thing! What healthy skin, what firmness of physique! You could take on a bull!

Lampito: Is not impossible. I go to gym, I make my buttocks hard.

Calonice: I've never seen a pair of boobs like that!

Lampito: You feel them: like blue-ribbon ox, you think!

Euripides (Athens c.485-406 BCE), Andromache 590-605

Peleus (rebuking Menelaus): What? Can you belong with the men, you utter coward? You lost your wife to a Phrygian by leaving your house unguarded, believing you had a chaste wife in your house, when in fact she was an utter whore. Not even if she wanted to could a Spartan woman be chaste. They leave their houses in the company of young men, thighs showing bare through their revealing garments, and in a manner I cannot endure they share the same running-tracks and wrestling-places. After that should we be surprised if you do not train up women who are chaste? You should ask Helen this question seeing that she left behind Zeus of the Kindred in your house and went off on a revel with a young man to another country. Was it for her sake, then, that you led such a great throng to Troy?

Plato (Athens, 427-347 BCE), Laws 805a-806c

ATHENIAN: And, mind you, my law will apply in all respects to girls as much as to boys; the girls must be trained exactly like the boys. And in stating my doctrine I intend no reservation on any point of horsemanship or physical training, as appropriate for men but not for women. In fact, I give full credit to the tales I have heard of ancient times, and I actually know that at the present day there are untold thousands, one may fairly say, of women living round the Black Sea--Sarmatian women, they are called--on whom not horsemanship only but familiarity with bows and other weapons is enjoined no less than it is on their husbands, and by whom it is equally cultivated. Besides, here is a consideration I would submit to you. If such results are feasible, then I say the present practice in our own part of the world is the merest folly; it is pure folly that men and women do not unite to follow the same pursuits with all their energies. In fact, almost every one of our cities on our present system, is, and finds itself to be, only the half of what it might be at the same cost in expenditure and trouble. And yet, what an amazing oversight in a legislator!

CLINIAS: Why, so it would seem, sir, though a good many of our present proposals are at variance with our customary systems. However, your proposal to let the argument take its course, and not to decide on our verdict until it has reached its end, was most apposite--and in view of it, I feel self-condemned for my present observation. So pray go on with your exposition according to your own mind.

ATHENIAN: Well, Clinias, my mind, as I have already said, is that if the feasibility of our proposals had not been sufficiently established by actual facts, there might have been some ground for disputing the theory. As it is, an opponent who refuses our proposal a hearing must surely take a different line. Such tactics will not deter us from insisting on our principle that there must be the completest association of the female sex with the male in education as in everything else. In fact, we may treat the matter from some such standpoint as this. If women are not to take their part along with men in all the business of life, we are bound, are we not, to propose some different scheme for them?

CLINIAS: To be sure we are.

ATHENIAN: And which of the various systems now recognized can we prefer to the comradeship we are just imposing on them? The system followed by the Thracians and many other peoples, that the women till the fields, look after the flocks and herds, and perform menial offices, exactly like slaves? Or the practice universal in our own part of the world? You know what our own customs in this matter are. We 'pack' all our belongings, as the phrase goes, 'into one' house, and make over to our women the control of the store closet and the superintendence of the spinning and woolwork at large. Or should we perhaps vote for the via media, which you take, Megillus, in Laconia? Your women are expected in their girlhood to take their share in physical training and music. When they have grown up, they have no woolwork to occupy them, but you expect them to contrive a composite sort of life, one that calls for training and is far from being unworthy or frivolous, and to go halfway with the work of medicine chest, store chamber, and nursery, but to take no share in the business of war. The consequence is that if circumstances should ever force them to a fight for their city and their children, they would prove quite unequal to playing an expert's part with the bow, like Amazons, or any other missile weapon. They could not, could they, even copy our goddess by taking up spear and shield with the mien of doughty protectors of a harried motherland, and so strike an invader with alarm, if with nothing more, by their appearance in martial formation? As for the Sarmatian women, yours, while they lead the life they do, would never venture on imitating them at all; by comparison with women like yours, theirs would pass for men. Let him who will applaud your legislators in this matter. I can only speak as I think. A legislator should be thorough, not halfhearted; he must not, after making regulations for the male sex, leave the other to the enjoyment of an existence of uncontrolled luxury and expense, and so endow his society with a mere half of a thoroughly felicitous life in place of the whole.

Aristotle (Athens, 384-323 BCE), Politics 1269b-1270b

[1269b][1] The Laconians were entirely surrounded by hostile neighbors, Argives, Messenians and Arcadians. For with the Thessalians too the serf risings originally began because they were still at war with their neighbors, the Achaeans, Perraebi and Magnesians. Also, apart from other drawbacks, the mere necessity of policing a serf class is an irksome burden--the problem of how intercourse with them is to be carried on: if allowed freedom they grow insolent and claim equal rights with their masters, and if made to live a hard life they plot against them and hate them. It is clear therefore that those whose helot-system works out in this way do not discover the best mode of treating the problem. Again, the freedom in regard to women is detrimental both in regard to the purpose of the constitution and in regard to the happiness of the state. For just as man and wife are part of a household, it is clear that the state also is divided nearly in half into its male and female population, so that in all constitutions in which the position of the women is badly regulated one half of the state must be deemed to have been neglected in framing the law. And this has taken place in the state under consideration, [20] for the lawgiver wishing the whole city to be of strong character displays his intention clearly in relation to the men, but in the case of the women has entirely neglected the matter; for they live dissolutely in respect of every sort of dissoluteness, and luxuriously. So that the inevitable result is that in a state thus constituted wealth is held in honor, especially if it is the case that the people are under the sway of their women, as most of the military and warlike races are, except the Celts and such other races as have openly held in honor passionate friendship between males. For it appears that the original teller of the legend had good reason for uniting Ares with Aphrodite, for all men of martial spirit appear to be attracted to the companionship either of male associates or of women. Hence this characteristic existed among the Spartans, and in the time of their empire many things were controlled by the women; yet what difference does it make whether the women rule or the rulers are ruled by the women? The result is the same. And although bravery is of service for none of the regular duties of life, but if at all, in war, even in this respect the Spartans' women were most harmful; and they showed this at the time of the Theban invasion, for they rendered no useful service, as the women do in other states, while they caused more confusion than the enemy. It is true therefore that at the outset the freedom allowed to women at Sparta seems to have come about with good reason, [1270a][1] for the Spartans used to be away in exile abroad for long periods on account of their military expeditions, both when fighting the war against the Argives and again during the war against the Arcadians and Messenians; but when they had turned to peaceful pursuits, although they handed over themselves to the lawgiver already prepared for obedience by military life (for this has many elements of virtue), as for the women it is said that Lycurgus did attempt to bring them under the laws, but since they resisted he gave it up. So the Spartan women are, it is true, responsible for what took place, and therefore manifestly for this mistake among the rest; although for our own part we are not considering the question who deserves excuse or does not, but what is the right or wrong mode of action. But, as was also said before, errors as regards the status of women seem not only to cause a certain unseemliness in the actual conduct of the state but to contribute in some degree to undue love of money. For next to the things just spoken of one might censure the Spartan institutions with respect to the unequal distribution of wealth. It has come about that some of the Spartans own too much property and some extremely little; owing to which the land has fallen into few hands, and this has also been badly regulated by the laws; [20] for the lawgiver made it dishonorable to sell a family's existing estate, and did so rightly, but he granted liberty to alienate land at will by gift or bequest; yet the result that has happened was bound to follow in the one case as well as in the other. And also nearly two-fifths of the whole area of the country is owned by women, because of the number of women who inherit estates and the practice of giving large dowries; yet it would have been better if dowries had been prohibited by law or limited to a small or moderate amount . . .[ Also it would have been better to regulate by law the marriage of heiresses…. ] But as it is he is allowed to give an heiress in marriage to whomever he likes; and if he dies without having made directions as to this by will, whoever he leaves as his executor bestows her upon whom he chooses. As a result of this, although the country is capable of supporting fifteen hundred cavalry and thirty thousand heavy-armed troopers, they numbered not even a thousand. And the defective nature of their system of land-tenure has been proved by the actual facts of history: the state did not succeed in enduring a single blow, but perished owing to the smallness of its population. They have a tradition that in the earlier reigns they used to admit foreigners to their citizenship, with the result that dearth of population did not occur in those days, although they were at war for a long period; and it is stated that at one time the Spartiates numbered as many as ten thousand. However, whether this is true or not, it is better for a state's male population to be kept up by measures to equalize property. The law in relation to parentage is also somewhat adverse to the correction of this evil. [1270b][1] For the lawgiver desiring to make the Spartiates as numerous as possible holds out inducements to the citizens to have as many children as possible: for they have a law releasing the man who has been father of three sons from military service, and exempting the father of four from all taxes. Yet it is clear that if a number of sons are born and the land is correspondingly divided there will inevitably come to be many poor men.