The Women of Sparta

Author(s): James Redfield

Source: The Classical Journal , Dec., 1977 - Jan., 1978, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Dec., 1977 - Jan.,
1978), pp. 146-161
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA

Note: I owe thanks for comments to Arthur Adkins, and to many

participants in the Princeton conference, especially Sally Humphreys
and Michael Jameson-and particularly to Marylin Arthur, whose
response from the platform provoked my "Prefatory Note."

Prefatory Note

In preparing this manuscript for publication I have not tried to chan

character; it is not a "finished" paper but a rough sketch of some idea
process. I here add a few words on two topics about which the paper its
silent: sources and chronology.
Herodotus and Thucydides tell us something about political arrangeme
Sparta, but nothing about the peculiar social system, founded on the
which, by contrast, is the main focus of later accounts. Arguing ex silen
might almost think that Sparta in the fifth century had none of the s
character attributed to it by later writers--except that a belief in whole
invention on such a scale strains credulity. Thucydides, at least, makes
that the Spartans of his day exhibited a specific personality-type, unlike
Greeks, and this implies some important peculiarities of culture and edu
It is simplest to believe that these peculiarities were in general those des
by Xenophon and his successors-although this does not make the
reliable in detail.
The problem of course, is that by the late fifth century-in the Socratic
circle, and probably also among the Pythagoreans-Sparta was treated as a
practical utopia; descriptions of the Spartan polity became one of the resources
of utopian exposition. Xenophon, Critias, and probably also Archytas, de-
scribed, not the Sparta they knew by observation, but the Sparta they thought
ought to be there. Later writers-especially the Stoics, to some extent also the
Cynics-continued this habit until, through Sphaerus of Borysthenes, a utopian
account of Sparta became itself a factor in Spartan politics, and a blueprint for
the revolution conducted by Cleomenes III (Plutarch Cleomenes 2). A version
of the whole amalgam appears in Plutarch's Lycurgus; this superbly detailed
account begins with an engaging admission that about Lycurgus nothing is
known. The Spartan polity, in other words, had "won its way into the
mythical" and we could recover little sense of the actualities of social life there,
were it not for Aristotle. Aristotle also may be inaccurate or misinformed, but
at least his account is founded on a denial that Sparta was a successful utopia,
and on a persistent effort to compare the myth with the actuality.
The problem becomes more complicated when we realize that the gap
between ideal and actuality must have been part of the reality of life for the
Spartans themselves. The Spartans, if only because they had to explain to each
other why they were different from other Greeks, became their own ideologists.
All accounts go back, ultimately, to these self-descriptions. But a people's

146

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 147

self-descriptions are themselves somewhat utopian or

counts of Sparta, in other words, should not be equated
an idealised Persia or of the naked Indian philosopher
distant place is used purely as a projective screen for G
were themselves Greek and formulated and enacted so
practical experience was one of the sources of the Greek
vice-versa. Perhaps in the fourth century, under the in
intellectual developments, the Spartan agoge became m
had been before. As early as the sixth century, I w
behavior was shaped by other Greeks' picture of what
be (cf. Herodotus V.92).
The Spartans, further, invented (although they did n
serve as charter for their institutions. We can, I think
history two tendencies which, while they have a com
historically somewhat at cross-purposes. The first is th
origins of institutions back into the heroic past, to g
authority, and associate them with the foundation of t
institutions were associated with one or another of th
Pindar Pythian I. 124). The other tendency conferred o
rational authority; instead of describing them as origin
period of disorder, to which they were the solution (
Thucydides I. 18.1), and gave them the standing of a w
therefore inalterable. This tendency is associated with
Then there were various more or less unhappy compr
sometimes associated with the Heraclid founders (as b
Theopompus was made a kind of second founder or re-in
by Plato). Furthermore the Spartan folk-history was
became a factor in Spartan political controversy. This t
King Pausanias' pamphlet (Strabo 8.5.5) and in Cleomen
origin of the ephors (Plutarch Cleomenes 10).
Recent writers have been much engaged in disentangli
tendency to treat their institutions as original; it has bee
lower the dates for their origins so that they make some
We should also, I think, disentangle ourselves from the
institutions as a coherent work of art; we should stop
"Lycurgan" reform take place? This question assumes
tions, or most of them, were created all at once, w
reasonable to suppose that they were created graduall
definitive form. Once we take this view we realize that
date the whole development in detail. Ideally we should
years from, say, 750 to 150 BC; on each visit we would
describe themselves and compare this self-description
would find, I suspect, continual change on both levels.
be reminded again and again that the Greek reading of
ours; at each visit we would find the Spartans describing
as a decline from some original perfection, whereas we
attempt to adapt political and social structures to a ch
In the present paper I have to a large extent avoided t

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 148 JAMES REDFIELD

ogy by treating Spartan institutions as a

Greek economic development. This proce
continued until it merged into the proce
the Hellenistic epoch. Throughout its lo
think, to certain thematic tensions. Thes
tension between an ideal of agricultural a
tional market in agricultural commoditi
between the pursuit of "economic" go
pursuit of "political" goods (status and
tension between an ideal of citizenship and
the citizen body (with the recurrent thr
international level, the tension between an
of hegemony and empire. In so far as w
characteristic local response to these contin
I propose) we can see as part of a single sy
times, some of which may not even have
The Sparta of which I speak was forme
Messenian wars; with Andrewes and Toy
change after the second Messenian war, i
later. Between this war and the wars
Tyrtaeus and Chilon-there is a blank spa
hundred years, and the Sparta we know

i. The Women of Sparta

From the time of Alcman's Agido and H
dreams, the women of Sparta come befor
were not, like the women of other Greek
textiles; instead they exercised and displa
Lac. Pol. 1.4, Pollux VII.55, Plutarch Ly
pito (the bearer of a noble Spartan name)
cent physical specimen; she could thr
(Lysistrata 80-84).
This physical exuberance has another asp
was Helen, and she retained a special sta
tophanes Lysistrata 155). A cult of Helen
power of Eros against the bonds of civili
women is a part of the tradition about t
played the part of Paris, and seduced a S
23.7). There is some (scattered and opaqu
were allowed certain sexual freedoms ev
propriety-that they could have, under ce
husband (Xenophon Lac. Pol. 1.7-9,
XII.6b.8).
This sharing of women, if it occurred, may be thought of as consistent with
the general Spartan attitude toward property: that it should be held privately,
but its use shared with others. Women would thus be in a category with slaves,
dogs, and horses (Xenophon Lac. Pol. 6.3, AristotlePolitics 1263a27-40). Or
it may be that sexual freedom is to be expected of women in a community of

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 149
warriors-if, as Aristotle says "the man who first made up
have had some reason when he joined Ares to Aphrodite"
29.)
The Spartan women indeed come before us as the fierce enforcers of the
warrior code. The majority of the anecdotes in Plutarch's Sayings of the
Spartan Women, for instance, convey in one form or the other the message
"with your shield or on it."
On the other hand, while the women enforce the code on others, they seem to
be subject to no code themselves. The anesis, indiscipline, of the Spartan
women was the commonplace ready reproach against Sparta, at least by the
fourth century (Plato Laws 637c). Aristotle says:

Furthermore the indiscipline of the women undercuts the organising

principle of the constitution and the happiness of the state. Just as the parts
of a household are a man and a woman, so it is clear that a city must be
thought of as divided nearly in half into a group of men, and another of
women, so that in constitutions where the women are handled badly,one
must think of half of the city as lawless. Which happened there. The
lawgiver wished the whole city to be strong; in the case of the men it
obviously is so, but he disregarded the women. They live in every sort of
intemperance and luxuriously. So that by necessity in such a city wealth
will be honored, especially if they are in fact controlled by women ...
And this is true of the Spartans; much is managed by women in their
regime. Indeed what difference does it make if women rule, or if the rulers
are ruled by women? It comes out the same. Then again while boldness is
not useful in daily life, but only in war, still even in this respect the women
of Sparta turned out very damaging-as became clear in the Theban
invasion. They were not the slightest use (as they might be in other cities)
but made more uproar than the enemy. . . . The fact that the women are
handled badly, as was said before, not only produces an internal disorder
in the constitution, taken itself by itself, but also contributes to avarice
(philochre-matia) .

Politics 1269b12-70a15

Aristotle says that the women were luxurious and intemperate (in contrast to th
ascetic men); they asserted themselves in political affairs (by seeking to contro
the male office-holders); they had a masculine kind of boldness (but were
lacking in true valor). Furthermore they made avarice a force in the state. O
every point we can make the same remark: the Spartan women were lik
men-like men elsewhere in Greece, and therefore unlike the men of Sparta
My aim is to illuminate this point which, from a Greek point of view
represents a re-allocation of sexual roles. The women, in my view, are crucial
to our understanding of Sparta, since their special position can be explained
only in terms of the peculiar Spartan solution to the relation between the privat
and the public spheres, between oikos and polis. This peculiar solution, I shall
suggest, was the key structural point about the whole Spartan system. We sha
return to this point, however, only at the end, after a digression which consti
tutes the body of the paper. Much of this digression is hypothetical; in the next

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150 JAMES REDFIELD
section I shall propose a schematic model of Greek
shall then see how the Spartan polity looks against th

ii. Greek Development.

It is a commonplace that the basis of economic de
tural productivity. I take it that in the early Greek
was not a matter of higher per-acre yields, but rat
toward the demand of an international market. La
from cereals (for which Greece is relatively unsu
crops could be exchanged for cereals in Egypt,
France-areas where cereals were produced chea
climate or the technology was lacking for the pro
oil.

If, I suggest, we focus on development through international exchange of

agricultural commodities (with some secondary development founded on such
other raw materials as metals and timber) we can avoid commitment to either
the "modernist" or "anti-modernist" pictures of Greek development. Greece
remained an agricultural nation; the one stable source of wealth continued to be
control of agricultural land and labor. We need not introduce such fictions as a
"new manufacturing class". Furthermore agricultural production for export
may have remained a rather modest proportion of the whole; the economic ideal
remained that of local autarky. Nevertheless the new productivity obtained by
exchange with the barbarian fringe was important, and by the middle of the
eighth century began to have an impact.
The development of international exchange meant a new fluidity of
wealth-in two senses. Objects of value were handled more impersonally
when they were employed in market-exchange transactions with strangers;
instead of being held for consumption and display within a closed social system
they were offered for sale and their exchange value became primary. In the
process goods of all types became fluidly exchangeable for each other-
especially agricultural produce against metal. (Such exchange must long pre-
date stamped coinage).
Secondly, wealth, now being pumped into the social system from the
outside, no longer was reliably distributed in accordance with social status; it
passed more fluidly from hand to hand, and some became rich while others
became poor. The new wealth thus produced a new fluidity in social relations,
well documented in the archaic poets, especially in Theognis. The result was a
certain ethical disorientation, represented in two recurrent archaic themes:
wealth is distributed arbitrarily and unreliably (in the terms of Theognis, it is
given and taken away by the daimoni) and wealth is no longer correlated with
arete.

In a pre-market economy wealth is a consequence of status. No one

money"-a craftsman may earn money, because that is the socially a
way for him to retain his role, just as a beggar begs for it. In marke
however, the trader encounters new risks and new opportunities. He
resources; if he loses them he loses the status of trader. If he succe
"makes money"-and makes his way in the world. Thus both we
poverty are reconceived: not as a consequence of his place in the wor

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 151
the outcome of his struggle with the world. In the process t
between wealth and social obligation. Wealth becomes a per
be exploited, a source of private power and an object of envy
into existence a private-property system, in which status is
degree the consequence of wealth.
I am suggesting that market-exchange at the Greek periphe
private property at the center. The issue is not the proporti
actually traded, but the impact on the social structure of the tr
place. This new source of wealth, I would suggest, brou
evaluation of all wealth. The typical rich man remained a lan
now with some fluid capital available for investment in the
But he was now thought of, not as the patron of the land, b
The old redistributive system had set limits at the top and
inhibiting saving, by demanding the use of wealth in displ
riches; by recognising that even the poorest had some claim o
by the community it had limited poverty. The small-holde
failed could go to his hereditary patron and, with proper defer
Private property, by contrast, produced new extremes of wealt
One result was the creation of a peasant class, and of the
represented in the Works and Days. The basileis, by claiming
community's surplus, in effect withdrew their protection
holders; in the process they gave up their distributional
(although they retained their jural power to adjudicate disp
ship). The peasant was thus liberated-and at the same time e
social fabric; he could rely only on the results of his own la
surplus he could accumulate through his own saving. The ide
thus brought down to the level of the oikos, conceived as a
against a surrounding chaos. A co-ordinate ideal was that o
the Hesiod peasant was instructed to "keep himself to himse
say, or as later Greek put it, to be apragmoin. Social relati
minimum.
Co-ordinate with the creation of the peasantry was a parallel transformation
of the upper stratum. Labor borrowed from the small-holding families began to
be replaced by chattel-slaves, imported from the barbarian fringe as an aspect of
the new exchange-network; co-ordinate with the private ownership of land was
the private ownership of labor. Entrepreneurial talent acquired a new impor-
tance, as did sheer good luck (see the legends which found Athenian family
fortunes on wealth found by chance, or arbitrarily granted by some barbarian
king). The heroes were thus converted into a land-holding bourgeoisie, subject
to the familiar contradictions of the bourgeoisie. Each oikos was left to its
independent economic fate; thus each was in competition with the others. At
the same time the propertied had collectively to maintain the conditions which
made their competition possible.
In archaic Greece these contradictions typically eventuated in the rise of a
tyrant. For the Greeks the specific Spartan institutional success was the avoi-
dance of tyranny (Thucydides I.18); in order to clarify the thrust of Spartan
institutions it is necessary to say something about the process by which
tyrannies happened.

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 152 JAMES REDFIELD

Max Weber wrote:

It is the most elemental economic fact that the way in which the
disposition over material property is distributed among a plurality of
people, meeting competitively in the market for purposes of exchange, in
itself creates specific life-chances. According to the law of marginal
utility . . . this mode of distribution monopolises the opportunity for
profitable deals for all those who, provided with goods, do not necessarily
have to exchange them. ... This mode of distribution gives to the
propertied a monopoly on the possibility of transferring property from the
sphere of use as a "fortune" to the sphere of "capital goods"; that is, it
gives them the entrepreneurial function and all chances to share directly or
indirectly in the returns on capital ... "Property" and "lack of property"
are, therefore, the basic categories of all class situations.
"Class, Status, Party"
Small-holding peasants appear to be propertied-they own land-but this is
partly an illusion; they can retain control of their property only so long as being
"provided with goods", they "do not necessarily have to exchange them."
Since under early Greek conditions the parcels tended to be divided until they
reached some minimum size, small-holders tended to be on the edge of
subsistence. When a peasant had a bad year he had to borrow. "According to
the law of marginal utility" such loans were made on terms most advantageous
to the borrower. Such a loan, furthermore, is not productive capital, but is, in
effect, simply the sale of next year's produce in advance; since the loan is made
at interest the sale is made, in effect, at an artificially low price, and the peasant
will require an exceptional run of luck to recover his position. Otherwise he
will have to borrow again; agricultural debt by its nature accumulates. The
control of land thus comes into the hands of those who control lending capital;
the result is eviction, de facto serfdom, or actual slavery.
In the course, therefore, of rescuing the peasants from the penury into which
their conditions of production have brought them, the oligoi threaten the
peasants with dispossession. This conflict between the classes is exacerbated
by conflict within the oligoi. The members of the oligoi are in competition with
one another; they (or many of them) cannot afford to forego the advantages
offered them by their place in the economic system. It is the poorest among the
rich who must be most insistent on the rights of the rich over the poor.
Furthermore, since the law of marginal utility (whereby the rich are fated to
become richer) operates also within the upper stratum, property tends to concen-
trate in the hands of a very few within that stratum; this property, in turn,
becomes the basis of the political power of a few dominant individuals, who
cannot afford to give it up for political reasons. Increased pressure on those
threatened with exclusion from the oligoi produces, in turn, increased pressure
on the peasantry. Marginal members of the oligoi may even discover a
community of interest with the peasantry, when they find that in the course of
threatening others with dispossession they have themselves become disposses-
sed, in that their fortune consists of debts which they have no prospect of
collecting.
The obvious alternative to such progressive deterioration is to shift from the
economic to the political arena. Agricultural debt is a political fact in that it has

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 153

meaning only to the extent that it is jurally enfor

member of the oligoi gifted with charismatic talent or
peasantry against the political system. Such a man in
tyrant, who came to power under the slogans of the c
the re-distribution of the land.
The actual results of archaic Greek tyrannies, as far as I can tell, were less
radical than these promises. Some property was redistributed, but on the whole
existing property-relations were secured. The tyrant, after all, was usually a
member of the class whose power he replaced, linked to its members by ties of
kinship and friendship; more important, he needed to retain some rich house-
holds in order to enable the economic system to function at all. Under Greek
conditions the wealthy oikos is the only source of fluid capital; if the tyrant had
redistributed everything he would have been left with economic stagnation and
no tax base. That is why Aristotle says a city must consist of "free men, and
some who meet a property qualification. For there could not be a city entirely of
poor men, any more than one of slaves" (Politics 1283a17-19, cf. 1281a18-
19). Therefore the rich families, or some of them, after being set aside, were
co-opted back into the system.
This same point can be put another way: the tyrant was a solution to a
political problem which was shared, really, by all classes. He therefore perhaps
came to power with at least the grudging consent of members of all classes.
From this point of view the tyrant is a figure parallel to the law-giver; both come
to power in order to moderate the disorder caused by economic competition by
imposing on it a political order not the direct result of that competition. In both
cases the oligoi (although they need not admit it or even know it) require the
figure against whom they protest; he limits their political power, but in doing so
stabilizes the conditions of their economic power.
Spartan constitutional developments, in turn, are brought into the main
stream of Greek constitutional history when we see them as an effort to
eliminate class conflict within the Spartan citizen body. We can, I think,
against the background of this analysis see the Spartan eunomia as an early,
radical, and outstandingly successful response to the disorder generated within
the state by the development of private property. We shall also see that, as
under a tyranny, the basic socio-economic structure was preserved at the same
time that it was denied.

iii. The Spartan Eunomia.

When King Agesilaus was asked what advantage Lycurgus had brought to
Sparta he answered: "the despising of pleasures"; when asked about the
plainness of Sparta he replied: "from this style of life we reap a harvest of
liberty". (Plutarch Lac. Apoth. 210a). In these as in so many other anecdotes
the key facts about Sparta are cultural, and have to do with the restriction of
consumption. Thucydides finds a place for this point in the history of archaic
innovations which introduces his history (1.6). In early times everyone went
armed, as the barbarians still do. The Athenians and Ionians first went unarmed
and adopted more relaxed and luxurious habits. The Lacedaemonians, in turn,
were the first to limit the luxury of clothing, so that the rich had the same style as
the poor; they were also the first to exercise naked. In Thucydides these points

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154 JAMES REDFIELD

are part of the account of the process

acquired a periousia, that is to say, of
distinguishes three stages: pre-develop
and post-development (Spartan). The
collectively rejecting its fruits.
For the fourth and third century write
most important fact about them, as it
"spartan". The philosophers saw the tr
over nature. In this tradition self-denial
For the Spartans, I would rather sugge
means to a political end, and was inst
perceived as a danger to the state.
Sparta in the eighth century was one o
villages extended its control, first ov
Messenia, then founded one of the m
expansion is likely to disrupt received s
was a Spartan who said "money makes
meaning was this saying to be allowed
reached its crisis at the time of the se
demands for the distribution of land
Spartan response was the institutiona
rationalisation of the political role of c
The leading idea of the new political or
or rather the overlap of multiple aut
another (Plato Laws 691d), an exchange
which each party swore to uphold the a
15.7), a relation between council and ass
will, eventually, consent to the propo
whole was called by Archytas (Stob
explains: "one rules and is ruled in a par
in other oligarchies, offices were exch
also true that those who had authority
"the lesson most studied at Sparta: to
215d, cf. 21 1c, Agesilaus 20.2, Xenop
metaphor was that of a functioning or
the parts:

She is not walled with words, this Lacon city,

But when fresh war may fall upon the troops
Counsel rules and the hand completes the act.
Ion of Chios fr. 63 (Nauck)

This diffusion of authority goes far to explain the defensive caution of the Spartan
state (cf. Thucydides 1.70.2-4). Where so many had to consent, action could only
follow an overwhelming consensus. The political system was thus designed to
secure consensus by ensuring that without it the state could not function at all.
In Tyrtaeus the call for solidarity is founded on a myth opposite to the Athenian
myth of autochthony: the myth of conquest. Zeus brought the Spartans to the
Peloponnese (fr. 2 Diehl); under King Theopompus they extended their conquest

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 155

to Messenia (fr. 4). This original conquest must, in

Dorians do not remain in arms they will become hom
Spartan state is thus conceived as an occupying army,
is force of arms.
I do not think it fanciful to see here the influence of the experience of western
colonisation. The west-Greek states were originally armed camps set up in
hostile territory; the first generation of settlers, I would imagine, had a high
degree of solidarity imposed upon them by the risks they undertook. The memory
of this solidarity formed the moral basis for an "aristocracy of the first arrived" of
the descendents of those who had pledged their lives to the state and to each other.
In a number of places Greek colonists acquired, along with territory, control
of an aboriginal population-the Kallikyrioi at Syracuse, the Bythinians at
Byzantium, the Mariandynoi at Heracleia Pontica. These peoples were "be-
tween freedom and slavery" (Pollux 111.83); they were not chattel-slaves, since
they retained their social organisation and could not be dispossessed from their
land, but they were regarded as a population which, having collectively
surrendered in battle, had lost political and economic liberty.
Such peoples are sometimes compared to the Spartan helots. I would like to
suggest that the status of the helots was in fact modelled on these colonial
examples, and that the institutionalization of helotry followed the experience of
colonization. We can, I think, see in the Spartan myth of conquest a re-
importation of the colonial ethos into the mainland. In the Spartan version,
further, the solidarity characteristic of the founding generation was in-
stitutionalised by a myth which froze the moment of initial conquest into
permanence and a quasi-ritual which re-enacted it. In these terms we can, I
think, understand the perpetual war declared annually by the ephors on the
helots (Aristotle fr. 538 Rose) and the hunting of the helots by the krypteia as an
element of ephebic training. The Spartans were perpetually conquering their
subjects; the helots were perpetually surrendering. In the Greek tradition
freedom is the privilege of the victor and slavery the burden of the vanquished;
in this sense at Sparta it was true that "the free man is most free and the slave
most a slave" (Critias fr. 37 Diels).
It is often said that the Spartans were forced to maintain their military
organisation in order to maintain their repression of the helots. On the other
hand ancient writers saw clearly that the helots, an internal enemy, were the
great weakness of the Spartan state (Plato Laws 776cff, Aristotle Politics
1269a36-39). The Spartans, I am suggesting, did not find the constant threat of
revolt too high a price to pay for the military organisation which it motivated,
since this military organisation secured their social solidarity.
The military organisation sorted the citizens, both young and adult, into
numerous identical groups-the agelai, the sussitia-each of which
functioned as a microcosm of the state. Each had its own hierarchy, each
demanded performance and distinguished between those who performed better
and worse, and everywhere the rules were the same. The sussition, says
Persaeus, was "a little polity" (apud Athenaeus 140f). In general every elder
stood as parent to each of the younger men (cf. Xenophon Lac. Pol. 2.10, 6.1).
Spartan life was a constant formation and re-formation of groups, and in each

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 156 JAMES REDFIELD

group the same norms were reinforced.

be taken to describe the fate of devian

In Lacedaemon anyone would be ash

tent, or to exercise with him at the w
choose up to play ball such a one finds
dance he is sent down to the most disg
must give way, and where they sit mu
and must keep the girls who are relat
complaints on his cowardice, and must
the fine for that as well; he may not
blameless-or else he must endure the blows of his betters.
Lac. Pol. 9.4-5

In such a society the penalties for failure to conform are much greater than
rewards for successful initiative; the result at Sparta was a characterist
character-type: hard-bodied, ascetic, miserly, and laconic. The Spartans
tough and self-contained, but not in the least individualistic; their adheren
the law was entirely bound up with their fear of the disapproval of their fell
and obedient as they were, they found it difficult to take orders from an
other than another Spartan. Thus their virtues did not travel; as the Athen
say: "each of you when he goes abroad uses neither his own customs nor
customary in the rest of Greece" (Thucydides 1.77.6). The stress was not
personal excellence, but on solidarity, and their solidarity walled them w
their own state; all strangers were in principle enemies (cf. Thucyd
11.39.1).
If we read this defensive solidarity as a response to the threat of disruption
produced by economic competition we can, I think, give a socio-economic
interpretation to the familiar contrast between Athens and Sparta-as set out,
for instance, in Pericles' Funeral Oration. Athens, which had been trained in
the hard school of tyranny and civil war, internalised the market; it had learned
to tolerate diversity (Thucydides II.37.2) and institutionalize competitive self-
interest (II.40.1). It rejoiced in luxury (II.38) and debate (II.40.2). It had made
itself the marketplace of Greece (II.38.2) and its political ethic was a market-
ethic; everything was permitted which was agreed to. Authority was cen-
tralized in the assembled people "which is the law at Athens" ([Xenophon]
[Link]. 1.18); democracy was a government of men. At Sparta, by contrast,
the market was distrusted, along with its characteristic instruments: money and
persuasive speech. Authority was diffused, and all who ruled were subject to an
impersonal (although unwritten: Plutarch Lycurgus 13.3, cf. Aristotle Politics
1270b29-31) law which denied them the right of self-assertion.
The Spartans were to some important degree insulated from the economic
sphere and the market. Xenophon says flatly that they were forbidden to make
([Link]. 7.2) or possess ([Link]. 7.6) money. Later, however, he says that
in his own day Spartans had come to flaunt their gold ([Link]. 14.3).
Thucydides (V.34.2) makes it clear that in the fifth century Spartans could buy
and sell.
The Spartans were, however, discouraged from selling land (Aristotle Poli-
tics 1270a21-22) and this prohibition was in relation to some land absolute

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 157

(Aristotle fr. 611.12). More important, the rents

raised, neither could they be sold or evicted (Epho
Priene apud Athenaeus 657d, Plutarch Inst. Sp.
other words, while they owned land, could not exp
source of tyranny was thus eliminated. Neither d
aliens-the necessary middle-men of a developed G
tions were pushed away into the periphery, es
community of Cythera, which functioned as a so
(Thucydides IV.53, cf. IG 12 p. 176).
Within the political class the Spartan social order
chrematia and substitute for it philotimia. Compet
pressed, but transformed, so as to become itself a fo
is the socialization of egoism; the man ambitious fo
neighbor in achieving the aims set by the group. T
lence" (Xenophon Lac. Pol. 4.2) called by Xenop
political kind of strife" (ibid. 4.5) was a competiti
We may, however, ask how completely economi
from Spartan society. Writers of the third century a
that the Spartans held all property in common, or
reporters (Xenophon, Plato, Ephorus, Aristotle) u
property was privately held, and that some Spartan
them the key point is that inequality was masked by
life, as it were, in uniform. "Why would anyone
asks Xenophon, ". .. when their style of life is sim
Plato Laws 696b). Ephorus says that the lawgive
truphF by seeing to it that "the rich got the sam
nourished in public" (70 FGrH 149). "Wealth an
distinction," says Aristotle (Politics 1294b26). The
but were homoioi, "similars." Wealth was exclude
denied public visibility.
Wealth and poverty, private property, and econo
eliminated but repressed from sight. These thing
familiar revenge of the repressed. The best statem
Socrates' account in the Republic of the timocrat
Sparta as his model here, when he says that this stat
the warriors take no part in farming or trade and jo
enslaved their perioeci and servitors (547c). (Cf. als
of intelligence and speech [547e, 549a], savagery t
crafty war and hunting [548a, 549a]). Socrates
Such men will be avid for wealth, and savage
gold and silver, in as much as they possess
treasuries where they can deposit such things in
have the enclosures of their houses as (if you all
nests, where they can spend money on their w
like-and their expenses will be great.
Quite true, he said.
So also they will be miserly with their wealth, in
not possess it openly; they will be ready to spen

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158 JAMES REDFIELD

through their avidity, secretly harv

children truants from the law, in as
through consent but under compul
Muse-the Muse of reason and phi
548b-c

Plato saw that the philotimia can regulate only visible public life. The
Spartan thus became a double man, disciplined and ambitious in public,
avaricious and self-indulgent in private (cf. Aristotle Politics 1270b34-35).
"They made each man's door-sill the limit of his personal freedom," says
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (20.13.2).

iv. Property at Sparta.

It is tolerably clear that the Spartan polity was a super-structure built on the
normal Greek sub-structure: that of private property. The basic unit of society,
at Sparta as elsewhere, was the oikos, centering on a married couple and
owning land. Taxation at Sparta was handled in a conventional fashion by the
eisphora, an assessment on real property (Aristotle Politics 1271b13-16);
citizens sometimes owed debts to the state (Herodotus VI.59). For all its
regulation of public life the state left property in private hands. Most important:
there was a minimum property qualification for active citizenship; Sparta was
thus distinguished from a genuinely archaic society like that of Crete (Aristotle
Politics 1271a26-37).
Wealth was, at all periods for which we have any evidence, unequally
distributed among the Spartans. Herodotus can speak of individuals who were
"by nature well-born and had attained the first category in possessions"
(VII. 134). Since wealth was inherited some were born rich, some poor. In
theory this should have made no difference to public life, but in fact, while
status was secured by success in public competitions, status was also conferred
by wealth. Sparta was, as Aristotle says, as much as any oligarchy two cities,
one of the rich, one of the poor: "all have not equal possessions and all are not
similarly agathoi andres" (Politics 1316b9- 10). In spite of the limitations on
consumption there were opportunities for display-by entertaining strangers,
for instance (Xenophon Memorabilia 1.2.61), by raising horses (Xenophon
Hellenica VI.4. 11, Pausanias VI.1.7) and racing them at the games (Buck
Greek Dialects no. 71). Even at the sussitia, while all contributed, the rich
made special contributions (Xenophon Lac. Pol. 5.3; Athenaeus 141, citing
Sphaerus and Molpis).
Status, further, gave a claim to authority, to power; to the degree that status
was derived from wealth, power tended to belong to the few wealthy
families-which, as M. I. Finley notes, is the implication of Aristotle's remark
that election to the gerousia was dunasteutik-n (Politics 1306a18).
All this would have made little difference if property had been stable. In fact
it was not, and by the fourth century the situation had become critical.

It has come about that some of them possess a great deal of wealth (ousia),
some very little. So the land has come into the hands of a few.
Aristotle Politics 1270a16-18

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 159

In contrast to these large estates, the remainder of th

subdivided, and the poor became more and more num
these found it increasingly hard to maintain member
citizenship (ibid. 127 la34-37). The number of citizens
century "perhaps 100 owned land" (Plutarch Agi
restriction of property provoked the familiar counte
came to Sparta under the leadership of a king who exp
entire property-holding class (Plutarch Cleomenes 10
The Spartans, in other words, suffered, in spite of a
contradictions of a property-holding class; the memb
economic competition with one another, destroyed th
class over its inferiors. We may ask, however, what
competition take at Sparta?
One simple answer is that wealth brought power, and
sold. Certainly bribery was endemic at Sparta, perhap
other economic opportunities. No doubt the bribery of
ephors (Aristotle Politics 1270b9-10) helped to distrib
suspect that it was more than balanced by the bribe
1271a3); as in other states, so at Sparta, power belong
wealthy and wealth came back to the powerful.
By this and other means certain Spartans accumulate
of others. Since, however, land could not be sold, this
land came to belong to a few. Aristotle again provid

It is because the law is badly arranged. For to bu

property is made ignoble-which is a good pro
given the liberty to bequeath or devise; necessarily
same this way as the other. Nearly two-fifths of t
women, the heiresses having been numerous, and b
dowries. And yet it would have been better if there
a few within set limits. As it is one can give an hei
wishes, and if a man dies leaving no will his
whomsoever he wishes. And so it happens that alth
support 1500 horse and 30,000 hoplites they do n
Politics 1270a17-31

When Aristotle complains of free bequest he is not complaining that some

male heirs were disinherited in favor of others; on the contrary he complain
just below that inheritances were too much divided (ibid. 1270b4-6). Aristo-
tle's complaint is not that heirs were too few, but too many, and that they
included women. Real property was transferred from one patriline to another at
the time of, or as a result of, marriage.
Marriages were certainly involved in both status-ladders, that of perfor-
mance and that of wealth. We remember Xenophon's account of the coward
who can neither marry nor give in marriage. No doubt the occasional marriage
of a brilliant young warrior to a woman wealthier than himself helped to
distribute the wealth. But Aristotle's account is all the other way; the law that
the rich marry the rich (itself a corollary of the law of marginal utility) applied a
Sparta also.

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 160 JAMES REDFIELD

Because every aristocracy is an o

advantage of their position (pleonect
Sparta the property comes into the h
can do pretty much whatever they
marriage-relations they want.
Politics 1307a34-38

The women of Sparta thus became the counters in the competitive relation
between oikoi at Sparta. By advantageous exchange of women the rich adde
to their riches; by using money to capture women with land they were able t
turn money into land. The women were thus the vehicles by which land cam
into the hands of the few, and many were deprived of land and citizenship. The
transfer of property through women thus led to oliganthripia.
Women, of course, are not only counters but also actors in the transactions of
marriage-exchange. On the status of the oikos depended the Spartan women's
own marriages, and those of their sons and daughters. In these terms we can,
think, better understand the fierce enforcement of the public norms by th
women, and their avarice. They demanded of the men that they increase the
status of the oikos by every means: by performance, and by acquisition. The
were not, however, themselves subject to the norms which they enforced; the
enforcement could thus be unequivocal, while their avarice could be un
bounded.
Legend asserts that the women had rejected the law (Aristotle Politics
1270a4-6). This legend means, I suggest, that the women were the vehicles of
the repressed aspect of Spartan life; they completed the system by enacting
those values-the values of property-which had been denied visibility. To the
degree that the energies of the men were absorbed into competitive public life,
the women were left in charge of the private sphere. Since they were concealed
from view, the public norms could not be enforced on them. The women were
thus undisciplined. They spoke for everything which Sparta in theory rejected
but in practice required. By voicing the demands of the private households they
motivated masculine competition-and competition has its uses. By maintain-
ing those households they gave the competitive warriors a refuge from competi-
tion, a "private nest."
The public world of the Greeks was always restricted to men; a man's public
relations were with men, and his relations with women were private relations.
The question of women, however, became critical only when property became
private. Polis and oikos then became adversaries, in the sense that economic
motives-philochrematia-were seen as anti-social. The developed city-state
was, among other things, a solution to this problem. Its ideology was founded
on the observation that property can be held only by those who finish wars on
the winning side, and that the self-aggrandizement of the individual therefore
presumes his membership in a successful collectivity of warriors. The ideal of
citizenship further asserted that each of these warriors was in principle equal to
every other; the city-state superimposed this equality on the inequality con-
stantly regenerated by economic relations, and sought politically to mediate
between the two.
From this point of view we can see the Spartan polity as a somewhat extreme
enactment of general Greek ideas, and we can see why the Spartans were

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 THE WOMEN OF SPARTA 161

generally admired (if not imitated) by the Greeks, e

adopted Sparta to their own ends. The Spartans politi
war-the political activity par excellence-as the con
The consequence was a devaluation of economic activ
like Spartan discipline, was a gesture of loyalty to the
The Spartans were admired for this loyalty-for all it
cruelty-because the polis was everywhere in Gree
values (which were therefore denied to women).
From the point of view of Plato and the utopians th
only halfway to perfection (cf. Plato Laws, 805d-806c
view we can see the two solutions as parallel, but co
would have made the polis and the oikos coalesce; th
state into a gigantic household by eliminating propert
Laws) making property a consequence of citizenship,
By this solution the women would have been incl
disciplined. The Spartans, by contrast, separated polis
the citizens from economic life, and by entrusting
functions-notably masculine education and comm
trusted to the oikos. By this solution the women wer
social life, and also liberated; they became something
without becoming citizens. They were of the polity
This Spartan response, whatever we might say abou
success; it was for centuries stable, powerful against
ally respected. Certainly the maintainance of a privat
certain anomalies, not least of which was the peculiar
the tensions around women and marriages. Eventually
the property-system to the point of crisis. No social s
without tensions, and none has lasted indefinitely; fo
the utopians, we can say that their system was accep
and proved habitable.

JAMES REDFIELD
University of Chicago

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