Cairetw,

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!

At the well known play “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes, the female hero of the play want to pout an end in the war between Sparta and Athens. Aristophanes stated clearly the difference of the two female worlds, the world of Sparta and the world of Athens. The Spartan women are outside the walls of an oikos. They are more muscled as athletes, than malleable like a waving Athenian girl, with firm body and dark skin color.

We do no have, practically, no major evidences for a Spartan woman’s life during the period of classical times. It is from the linguistic confirmations that we have a number of knowledge concerning the current matter of discussion, which are from the 4^th century. The text facts are by, first, Xenophon and his minor work Constitution of the Lacedaemonians (Const. Lac. 1.1), Aristotle is next and his Politics (II, 1, 14-15), and Plutarch is the last one with his Lives, Lycurgus (14 - 15, 3-4).

Xenophon stated the role of a Spartan female: the reproduction: “First, to begin at the beginning, I will take the begetting of children. In other states the girls who are destined to become mothers and are brought up in the approved fashion, live on the very plainest fare, with a most meagre allowance of delicacies. Wine is either witheld altogether, or, if allowed them, is diluted with water. The rest of the Greeks expect their girls to imitate the sedentary life that is typical of handicraftsmen -- to keep quiet and do wool-work. How, then, is it to be expected that women so brought up will bear fine children?

[4] But Lycurgus thought the labour of slave women sufficient to supply clothing. He believed motherhood to be the most important function of freeborn woman. Therefore, in the first place, he insisted on physical training for the female no less than for the male sex: moreover, he instituted races and trials of strength for women competitors as for men, believing that if both parents are strong they produce more vigorous offspring.”

It is a life above all the rest of the Greek woman, which were closed in their houses waving. They had a life equal with their men Plutarch gave more details! That nudity is not unethical because is the athletic nudity. The Spartan girls with the use of an athletic life, they had physical power and had a body full of strength as Aristophanes’ Lambito.

As far as the use of wealthy by the women of Sparta, or the desire that had for leisure, we can have some clue by the words of Xenophon or may better by Aristotle. They stated that women by the use of their erotic art they manage to gain the two thirds of the whole country (Politic. II, 9, 14-15)! Dowries and heritages were the most usual and powerful weapons from a woman for wealthy!

Nikolaos Cleomenes