Spartans

[burntcopper]

watched The Shield tonight - my absolute baby, I adore it so much. Not commenting because commenting is just...useless. It fucks itself up and is realistic about all its fucked-upness and subtext. (though Lemonhead? The boy is flexible. Flexible, I'm telling you. And he's probably meant to be.)

But have been watching the new series on Sparta, too. And am saying one thing : If any female has to go back to Ancient Greece and has to pick between being a Spartan woman or an Athenian one? Pick Spartan every fucking time.

Let's see, no rights, no education, barely ever seen, never mind heard, hardly ever step foot outside the home and totally controlled by your family and a non citizen, often married by 12, vs. trained to fight and do sports and keep yourself fit and toned throughout life, lots of freedom, encouraged to mix, run business, own land, take most of the decisions in the home, marrying age 18 (you could choose whether or not to marry), pretty much the only people seen out on the streets as the blokes spent their whole time in the mens clubs, expected to be vociferous and opinionated and lauded for the really good insults. I think I'll pick door number two, Alex.

Also, Sparta : every slasher's dream. A society where men and women basically lived apart, and both sexes were expected to be in a homosexual relationship before marriage, not to mention after, and though marriage was actively encouraged for the procreation of more male babies for the army (women outnumbered men due to the somewhat harsh training regime the boys went through), it sure as hell weren't no hetero thing.

Sparta. Nowhere near a paradise, but damn did they know how to treat their womenfolk.

Comments

Over-long comment

[poornapoleon.livejournal.com]

<puts ex-academic hat on>

I do have (quite) a few qualms about presenting Sparta as this proto-feminist state. I don't believe that women actually had real power in Sparta. Many of the supposed "freedoms" they possessed were linked to turning them into more effective baby-factories - that was certainly the point of having girls train (that, and apparently providing a prurient spectacle to men). They could own property, but that was probably tied in with the lack of manpower in the Spartan upper class, and legal ownership doesn't meant they could actually do anything with it in terms of management, etc. I rather think that for Spartan women, as for any other Greek women, their lives were supposed to revolve around their men.

The presentation of both Spartan and Athenian women was overstated, partly because the programme only actually talked about elites, without saying that they did so. The Spartan women talked about were those from the full Spartan citizen families, who formed a very small portion of the city's population - for most Laconian women life would be much more of a drudge. Likewise, the Athenian women who were kept most secluded were those from the wealthiest families - poorer women, whose husbands couldn't afford so many slaves, had to go out and about in the city, to do things like shop, etc., and thus fall short of the ideal to which they were conditioned to aspire.

And the other thing not got across was how much what we "know" about Spartan women comes from Athenian writers, many of whom are reporting rumours and old wives tales rather than confirmed facts. Think of what white Americans used to think black Americans did, or some of the things Protestants and Catholics have accused each other of in the past. So a lot of what Spartan women supposedly did may be exaggerated or wholly invented tales, pointing up the outlandish practices of Spartans, as compared to the sensible behaviour of Athenians.

I'll stop now