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Sayings of Spartan women

penelope.uchicago.edu

71–80 of 224 posts

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that goes for every commentary on ancient societies. Unless it's explicitly about slaves and outcasts, it's about the at most 10% of the society that wasn't. At some point the Romans got more people to participate on their society, but that's centuries after any of that.

Do you have a source for this?

It's true. Just read any hisoty source for any historical period before modern times. See how many accounts you can find about the lives of "common people", which usually means slaves, serfs, etc. Even in modern times, you hear about Churchill or Lincoln, but where are the stories of the carpenters, or farmers, the milk maids or the nurses, the midwives or the factory workers? Who remembers their names, what they achieved, what they held dear, who they loved and married, and how they died?

Most of hisotry is about the people that hold all the power in their hands and most of the time their great deeds is to crush everyone else underfoot. We learn the dates and placenames of the great battles where king so-and-so defeated king such-and-such, but do we ever hear the names of the hundreds or thousands of their men who left their families and land to go and die a sad, senseless death?

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#72
post #7

On the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux. Long read but well worth it for interested people.

Great series! I came out with the feeling that the Spartans were like the genteel Antebellum plantation owners of Greece: seemingly noble and stoic, but in reality terribly cruel, corrupted, and decadent.

He recently appeared in the EconTalk podcast and its worth hearing too (will find the link). But they touched on Sparta and the thing that struck me was just how unequal - something like 5% or less of the population of Sparta (and it was a big state by Greek standards), only 5% were "free" - everyone else was a Slave.

The level of violence to stop that becoming an uncontrolled uprising must have been huge.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#73

It’s worth mentioning that Spartan women held huge amounts of wealth due to the violence within their society (men’s wealth would be inherited by their wives who would then remarry). According to Aristotle (who is very biased) the women lived lives of luxury. The point of this is that the women who extol the violence of men have a material self interest in the deaths of their men (minimally as a class, potentially in…

Some of the 5% of Spartan women who were full citizens, perhaps. However, Sparta was an extremely unequal society, with some 85% either slaves or helots (also slaves, but owned by the state, not individuals).

The named women aren’t helots and it’s unlikely the unnamed women would be helots either. I was under the impression The only group we refer to as Spartan are that minority population of elites as the rest were referred to as helots (who were also unable to serve in their military)

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#74
post #31

It’s worth mentioning that Spartan women held huge amounts of wealth due to the violence within their society (men’s wealth would be inherited by their wives who would then remarry). According to Aristotle (who is very biased) the women lived lives of luxury. The point of this is that the women who extol the violence of men have a material self interest in the deaths of their men (minimally as a class, potentially in…

It's worth noting that Aristotle was not a disinterested commentator on Sparta: he loathed the relatively high amount of freedom Spartan women had compared to Athenian women, and went out of his way to argue that when bad things happened to Sparta it had resulted from this. See, e.g., http://jsphfrtz.com/aristotles-interpretation-of-spartan-wom...

Yeah, he was super biased. For a number of reasons. I just kept it as a parenthetical because I think it’s fair to assume that they were relatively wealthy, more equal and powerful than their contemporaries, even if Aristotle is likely overstating the extent of these differences.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#75

An awful lot of those sayings are extolling "willingness to commit violence" as a virtue. That's not the sort of society I think we should emulate.

Potential violence != actual violence. The potential to commit violence can be reframed as strength. It's useful because it grants you negotiating leverage, regardless of whether you are the aggressor or defender. Can't defend yourself? Vae victis.

The capability to commit violence might be a strength in a world where violence is an unfortunate necessity, ie for defense of the common good. But unless it's paired with wisdom and reluctance (as the opposite of the willingness noted above and gleefully promoted by adherents to the Spartan mythos) that capability is mostly the tool of tyranny.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#76
post #47

An awful lot of those sayings are extolling "willingness to commit violence" as a virtue. That's not the sort of society I think we should emulate.

Who is suggesting we emulate it? Can't things just be interesting historically?

There's a subset of people who think (or at least act like they do) anything short of a strong condemnation of something they don't like is an endorsement.

Usually you see these people pop up when discussing societal norms in the 3rd world but they do pop up frequently enough to be noticed when discussing history.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this?

It's true. Just read any hisoty source for any historical period before modern times. See how many accounts you can find about the lives of "common people", which usually means slaves, serfs, etc. Even in modern times, you hear about Churchill or Lincoln, but where are the stories of the carpenters, or farmers, the milk maids or the nurses, the midwives or the factory workers? Who remembers their names, what they ach…

This is eloquent but silly. There is a lot of good research, and popular accounts of it, on the effects of population-level status and trends on historical events. Given the article topic I would suggest starting with Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1905125305?tag=fivebooks001-20

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great series! I came out with the feeling that the Spartans were like the genteel Antebellum plantation owners of Greece: seemingly noble and stoic, but in reality terribly cruel, corrupted, and decadent.

He recently appeared in the EconTalk podcast and its worth hearing too (will find the link). But they touched on Sparta and the thing that struck me was just how unequal - something like 5% or less of the population of Sparta (and it was a big state by Greek standards), only 5% were "free" - everyone else was a Slave. The level of violence to stop that becoming an uncontrolled uprising must have been huge.

Modern Gulf emirates have a similar ratio of citizens to guest workers. Western profesionnals are treated with respect, but manual workers from India or Philippines are basically slaves in everything but name.

How the history repeats itself, this time among hi-tech skyscrapers.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#79
post #7

On the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux. Long read but well worth it for interested people.

That is a very biased article that is playing up all the aspects of Spartan society that modern audiences would find repulsive for internet likes. At the end of the day it is not unlike the film it criticises (300) except it's going all the way to the other end and painting a portrait of a grim, evil empire. It is good to keep in mind that pretty much all ancient societies had norms and customs that we find repulsive…

> to depriving women of all human rights and treating them as chattel.

A wife was a chattel, as per law, up until the 20th century in a number of European countries.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#80
post #7

On the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux. Long read but well worth it for interested people.

His econtalk appearance was great:

https://www.econtalk.org/bret-devereaux-on-ancient-greece-an...

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