Female Property Ownership and Status in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta

Stephen Hodkinson
University of Manchester

1. Introduction

The image of the liberated Spartiate woman, exempt from (at least some of) the social and behavioral
controls which circumscribed the lives of her counterparts in other Greek poleis, has excited or horrified the
imagination of commentators both ancient and modern.1 This image of liberation has sometimes carried with
it the idea that women in Sparta exercised an unaccustomed influence over both domestic and political
affairs.2 The source of that influence is ascribed by certain ancient writers, such as Euripides (Andromache
147-53, 211) and Aristotle (Politics 1269b12-1270a34), to female control over significant amounts of
property. The male-centered perspectives of ancient writers, along with the well-known phenomenon of the
“Spartan mirage” (the compound of distorted reality and sheer imaginative fiction regarding the character of
Spartan society which is reflected in our overwhelmingly non-Spartan sources) mean that we must treat
ancient images of women with caution. Nevertheless, ancient perceptions of their position as significant
holders of property have been affirmed in recent modern studies.3
The issue at the heart of my paper is to what extent female property-holding really did translate into
enhanced status and influence. In Sections 2-4 of this paper I shall approach this question from three main
angles. What was the status of female possession of property, and what power did women have directly to
manage and make use of their property? What impact did actual or potential ownership of property by
Spartiate women have upon their status and influence? And what role did female property-ownership and
status, as a collective phenomenon, play within the crisis of Spartiate society? First, however, in view of the
inter-disciplinary audience of this volume, it is necessary to a give a brief outline of the historical context of
my discussion.

1
This article was researched and written during my tenure of an award under the Research Leave scheme of the U.K. Arts and
Humanities Research Board. I am grateful to the editors of this volume for their invitation to take part in the inter-disciplinary
colloquium on Women and Property and to my fellow participants in the colloquium for their stimulating and helpful discussion.
2
E.g., most recently, Pomeroy 2002, esp. 136-7.
3
Cartledge 1981; Millender 1999, 370-3; Hodkinson 2000, 94-103; Pomeroy 2002, 76-89.
Historical Background
From c.550 BC to c.370 BC, Sparta was one of the most powerful poleis in the Greek world. Her external
power was rooted in the creation of political and socio-economic institutions whose basis was the
organization of her male citizens into a cohesive elite body of homoioi (“Peers”) known as the “Spartiates.”
The Spartiates, who resided in the five modest-sized villages of Sparta itself, controlled a territory of some
8,500 square kilometers of the southern Peloponnese, dominating two numerically larger populations: the
free perioikoi (literally, “dwellers around”) and the unfree helots, who farmed the Spartiates’ landed estates
and performed personal and domestic service in Spartiate households. The Spartiates numbered some 8,000
male citizens around the year 480 BC (Herodotus 7.234). Subsequently, their numbers underwent a steady
decline: after Sparta’s defeat at the battle of Leuktra in 371 BC there were fewer than 1,000 Spartiates
(Aristotle, Politics 1270a29-31). The root cause of this decline was the growing concentration of property
and consequent impoverishment of ordinary citizen households, which left many Spartiates unable to deliver
the monthly dues to their common mess groups, membership of which was a requirement of citizenship.
Failure to produce the dues led to exclusion from one’s mess and the loss of citizen rights.
In the period after Leuktra Sparta lost over half her territory and rapidly declined to the status of a
second-rank power. This period also witnessed the decay of the civic institutions which had sustained her
classical citizen organization. By the early 240s BC male Spartiate numbers had apparently dropped to a
mere 700, of whom only 100 possessed significant resources (Plutarch, Agis 5.4). The following 20-25 years
witnessed two attempts led, respectively, by Kings Agis IV and Kleomenes III, to “recreate” the institutions
of Sparta’s classical citizen organization and restore Spartiate numbers through a redistribution of land into
state-controlled plots. Although ultimately unsuccessful, these attempts – often termed the “third-century
revolution” – are important both historically, for the role played by wealthy women, and historiographically,
owing to the “invented traditions” created by the revolutionaries regarding the character of Sparta’s classical
property system.

Private property-holding and female inheritance

According to these invented traditions, the revolutionaries’ property reforms were merely a restoration of
measures originally instituted by Lykourgos, the Spartans’ legendary lawgiver. Lykourgos, it was asserted,
had taken landed property into public control and divided it equally among Spartiate citizens, and these
arrangements had survived intact for several centuries until corrupted in the early fourth century. Thanks to
the influence of Plutarch’s “biographies” of Lykourgos and of Kings Agis and Kleomenes, this invented
tradition became the dominant image of Spartiate property ownership conveyed by antiquity to the modern
world. It exercised a remarkable hold over nineteenth- and twentieth- century scholarship (Hodkinson 2000,
9-64).
In recent years, however, scholars have turned away from the late evidence of Plutarch to the
contemporary sources for classical Sparta, which unanimously attest the existence of an essentially private
system of property-holding characterized by marked inequalities among the Spartiate elite.4 Briefly:
individual Spartiates held private landholdings, which were transmissible to their children (or other residual
heirs) by means of partible inheritance, but which the individual owner also had certain rights to alienate by
means of lifetime gifts or testamentary bequests, though not by sale. Spartiates also had private ownership of
a range of items of movable wealth: livestock, various kinds of valuables, and even foreign coinage (the last
was prohibited only for a brief period after 404 BC.) The polis maintained certain public rights over private
property. The most important of these rights has already been mentioned: the requirement upon all adult
males to deliver monthly dues, mainly in kind, to their mess groups.
The question of property-holding by Spartiate women is a matter of controversy, partly due to the
paucity and brevity of explicit statements in the ancient sources. It is clear, however, that women were

4
The following summary is based upon the extended discussion in Hodkinson 2000, 65-208.

2
significant holders of landed property. The key piece of evidence is Aristotle’s statement (Politics 1270a23-
5), made in the later fourth century, that,
… approximately [or “nearly” (schedon)] two-fifths of all the land is possessed by
women (esti tôn gynaikôn), both because of many heiresses (epiklêrôn) that appear,
and because of the practice of giving large dowries.
By “heiresses” Aristotle means daughters who inherited their parents’ property in the absence of any sons.
His reference to large landed dowries, however, indicates that even daughters with brothers could expect to
receive significant amounts of land at the time of marriage. Some scholars believe that these dowries were
voluntaristic marriage-settlements given by a girl’s parents, their size being a reflection of competition for
high-status marriages (Cartledge 1981, 98). My own interpretation is that the dowry was not merely a
voluntary gift but an anticipation of the daughter’s rightful share of the inheritance. My suggestion is that a
Spartiate daughter had rights of inheritance similar to the inheritance rights of daughters specified in the Law
Code of Gortyn in Crete (Link, this volume): namely, half the portion given to a son. 5 I have termed this
inheritance system “universal female inheritance,” inasmuch as every woman gained some landed inheritance
from her parents, either receiving a half-portion in a division with her brother(s) or inheriting as sole heiress
or jointly on equal terms with her sister(s). Aristotle’s comments above relate to inheritance of land. We do
not know whether Sparta’s inheritance laws reserved any items of property specifically for male heirs, as did
the Gortyn Code, which excluded town houses, the contents of untenanted country houses, and livestock
from the daughter’s half-portion. As we shall see below, however, there is evidence for female possession of
the full range of movable property mentioned above.

2. Women’s ownership and use of property

Female ownership and the kyrieia

What did female inheritance of property signify? Were women legally the owners of property in their
possession? We can gain some insight into these questions from one item in the list of the prerogatives of
Spartan kings provided by Herodotus in the later fifth century (6.57.4):
The kings are the sole judges of these cases only: concerning an unmarried heiress
(patrouchou te parthenou), to whom it pertains to have [her], if her father has not
betrothed her...
Herodotus describes the heiress by a different term (patrouchos) from that used by Aristotle (epiklêros).
There is reason to believe that Herodotus’ list of royal prerogatives stems from an official Spartan source
(Carlier 1977; 1984) and that his term is the authentic Spartiate one, whereas the Athenian-influenced
Aristotle has misleadingly borrowed the equivalent term used in contemporary Athens (Wolff 1957, 166-7;
Cartledge 1981, 97). The term patrouchos, a compound of patrôa and echein, means “holder of the
patrimony.” It corresponds to the term patrôiôkos in the Law Code of Gortyn. A patrôiôkos in Gortyn, as
long as she conformed to the laws specifying whom she was to marry, remained the legal owner of her
father’s property throughout her life, unlike the Athenian epiklêros, who ceded the property to her son(s)
when (t)he(y) came of age.6 The similarity of terms suggests that the Spartiate patrouchos enjoyed legal
rights of ownership over the patrimony comparable to those of her Gortynian counterpart. Likewise, on my

5
Gortyn Code 4.37-5.9, esp. 4.39-43 (text and English translation in Willetts 1967); cf. Ephorus, FGrH 70F149, ap. Strabo,
Geography 10.4.20. The grounds for this hypothesis cannot be fully discussed here; but, most strikingly, it can be shown
mathematically that – under a range of plausible permutations of family composition and survivorship postulated by historical
demographers for self-reproducing, “natural fertility,” pre-industrial populations – a system of inheritance in which daughters
inherit land at half the rate of sons will tend to produce a distribution of land-ownership between the sexes in which the proportion
owned by women is a little under 40%, precisely as Aristotle indicates (Hodkinson 2000, 100, and the calculations on p.111 n.69).
6
Gortyn Code 7.15 - 9.24. On the Athenian epiklêros, Harrison 1968-71, i.132-8; Schaps 1979, 25-42.

3
interpretation that the dowries given to Spartiate women were pre-mortem inheritances, it would follow that
these too were the woman’s legal property.
These arguments have recently been challenged by Jean Ducat (1998, 393), who denies that Spartiate
women were properly owners of landed property in their possession, owing to the operation of the institution
known as the kyrieia: the legal guardianship of a woman by her nearest male relative or (within marriage) by
her husband. In response to Ducat, it should be noted that scholars are divided over the existence of the
kyrieia in Sparta: the few relevant texts are not fully explicit.7 But, even if we grant the existence of the
kyrieia, that does not in itself prove that the power of a woman’s kyrios extended into the sphere of property,
nullifying her legal ownership or controlling the use of her possessions. This is clearly demonstrated once
again by the evidence of the Gortyn Code, which abolished the economic control of the kyrios (e.g. 6.9-25;
Schaps 1979, 58-9; Link, this volume). In spite of the kyrieia, Gortynian women after the promulgation of
the Code legally owned and exercised personal control over their own separate property (e.g. 4.23-6). Gortyn
was not the only Greek polis in which a woman’s kyrios had no attested economic role. Manumission
inscriptions from Delphi, Naupaktos and Elatea, for example, attest women freeing slaves without any
reference to a kyrios (Schaps 1979, 49-50). The meager epigraphic evidence from Sparta does not include the
kind of documents which would furnish definitive proof of female independence from her kyrios in economic
affairs. But, equally, in none of the evidence for female possession or use of property is there any indication
of the controlling hand of a kyrios.8 Ducat claims that Spartiate women lacked the right to alienate their
property; but there is no ancient evidence to support this assertion. Aristotle (Politics 1270a19-21) states that,
while the Spartan lawgiver “made it dishonorable to buy or sell land in someone’s possession, he left it quite
open to anyone, if they wished, to give it away and bequeath it.” There is no differentiation here between
male and female owners, no hint that women did not possess the rights of gift and bequest. And, in writing
this passage, Aristotle surely had women very much in mind, since it is a mere nine words later that he
begins his statement (quoted above) regarding female possession of two-fifths of the land.
Given the available evidence, therefore, there are no grounds for regarding female property ownership
in Sparta as inferior in character to the ownership of property by men. I phrase this conclusion in a relational
manner, partly because in discussing female status we are dealing not with absolutes but with the status of
women in relation to that of men, partly because in most societies – and in Sparta, in particular –
“ownership” itself is not an absolute phenomenon. In addition to the prohibition of sale, the Spartan polis, as
already noted, exercised certain public claims upon private property: levies upon agricultural produce for the
common mess dues; common rights to make use of certain kinds of private property (helots; hunting dogs;
horses; surplus provisions on hunting expeditions); the practice of legitimized theft by Spartiate boys; and
(probably a relatively late introduction) taxation for military purposes based upon the extent of one’s
landholdings.9 It is interesting, in a relational context, that these public rights bore less heavily upon women’s
property than upon men’s, since they did not participate in the common messes or in hunting activities;
female exclusion from men-only activities meant fewer drains upon their personal resources.

Restrictions on women’s use of wealth

The argument that a woman’s property rights were unfettered by economic control from her kyrios might
appear to imply a degree of independence in the personal management of her possessions and a scope for

7
Against the existence of the kyrieia, Bickerman 1976, 20; Kunstler 1986, 48 n.102. Uncertain: Beasley 1906, 251-2. In favour:
Cartledge 1981, 99-100. The key texts are Xenophon, Polity of the Lakedaimonians 9.6; Polybius 12.6b.8; Sayings of Lakonian
Women, Anon 23, ap. Plutarch, Moralia 242b.
8
The only text which might conceivably be interpreted as implying a kyrios’ power over economic matters is Aristotle’s statement
(Politics 1270a26-9) regarding the marriage of an heiress: “But, as it is, one [i.e. a father] may give an epiklêros in marriage to any
person one wishes; and, if a man dies without making a will, the man he leaves as heir-apparent (klêronomos) gives her to
whomever he likes.” The passage, however, indicates no more than a temporary influence of the klêronomos over the devolution of
the heiress’s property; there is no hint of male control over the property itself.
9
For detailed discussion, Hodkinson 2000, 187-208.

4
deploying them which would have been the envy of women in certain other Greek poleis. The contrast seems
especially strong with the situation in contemporary Athens, where the legal authority of a kyrios was more
extensive, the epiklêros had no option except to preserve her inheritance intact for her son(s), a woman’s
personal ownership of her dowry was rather less clear-cut, and where in law women were not capable of
performing transactions beyond the value of a medimnos of barley.10
Whilst not wanting to deny the reality of this contrast, I would suggest that it was by no means as
sharp as might first appear. As regards independence in the management of property, law is not always a
perfect guide to practice. This point has been forcefully highlighted in Amy Louise Erickson’s detailed study
of women and property in early modern England. In spite of the operation of a common law system which
enforced male control far more strongly than the Athenian kyrieia – through the law of couverture, according
to which a woman’s property became on marriage legally her husband’s – “in practice wives maintained
during marriage substantial property interests of their own” (Erickson 1993, 19). As Martin King Whyte has
noted in his cross-cultural study of the status of women in pre-industrial societies, women in almost half of
the cultures within his study had more informal influence than would appear from the formal rules (Whyte
1979, 88). Likewise, in classical Athens the legal ceiling on transactions did not in practice prevent certain
Athenian women from engaging in more valuable transactions (Schaps 1979, 52-3). Within the household,
moreover, it is often the personality and temperament of its members as much as the law that determines the
role each plays in economic decision-making and activity (cf. Schaps 1979, 11). This is particularly so
because, as Lin Foxhall (1989) has emphasized, in everyday life households often operate as a single
economic unit, making collective decisions about their property and deploying it corporately, regardless of
who exactly owns it. There was, consequently, always the potential for a forceful Athenian wife to exercise
as much as influence over the management of the household property as a Spartiate wife who was willing to
give her husband a say in the deployment of her personal holdings.
The scope that Spartiate women had for the deployment of their economic resources was also limited
by two sets of factors which did not apply to Athenian women. The first set of limiting factors was structural
(Hodkinson 2000, 210-13). One such factor was the comparatively communal character of the helot servile
labor force, which comprised an indigenous population bound to their condition (unless by public decree),
rather than chattel slaves acquired through private commercial exchange: hence, unlike their counterparts
elsewhere, Spartiate women could not manumit their personal servants. Another factor was the comparatively
low level of liquidity within Spartiate household economies, stemming from the overwhelmingly agrarian
character of Spartan society and a relatively low level of market demand for agricultural products. The lesser
degree of liquidity in the economic framework was reinforced by a socio-political system which minimised
cash expenditures by excluding both private acts of communal patronage and public liturgies: hence there
were no opportunities for the types of euergetistic benefactions practiced by women in Hellenistic and
Roman Greece (van Bremen 1983; 1996). In keeping with these characteristics, Spartiate dowries (as we
have seen) consisted of land, whereas among upper-class Athenian families they normally comprised money,
furniture and other movable goods.
The second set of limiting factors was a series of specific restrictions placed by the Spartiate
community upon the deployment of personal resources in particular spheres of life (Hodkinson 2000, 214-
35). These restrictions (involving uniformity of upbringing and of personal dress and military equipment, as
well as limitations on food and feasting) were applied forcibly and extensively in the lives of Spartiate men.
Spartiate women were often depicted by ancient writers as being exempt from these restrictions (e.g.
Euripides, Andromache 147-53; Aristotle, Politics 1269b21-3). Recent research, however, has demonstrated
the distortions inherent in such negative representations by male, non-Spartan writers, which have their
origins in Athenocentric representations of the Spartan “Other” (Millender 1996, 215-86; 1999; Cartledge
1981). Despite the paucity of information about the lives of Spartiate women, there are signs of similar
restrictions upon their deployment of private resources. Spartiate girls underwent a uniform public education

10
Schaps 1979, 52-8; Todd 1993, 207-10; Isaios 10.10.

5
which included simplicity of dress (Cartledge 1981, 91-2; Ducat 1988, 386-91; Pomeroy 2002, 3-32). Adult
Spartiate women were not permitted to wear ornaments, to let their hair grow long, or to wear gold
(Aristotelian Polity of the Lakedaimonians, ap. Herakleides Lembos 373.13, Dilts).11 There were also
restrictions on the use of private wealth in wedding and funerary ritual – both of them “rites of passage” in
which women were closely involved (Foxhall and Stears 2000, 12-13). In contrast to the lavish expenditure
and public display involved in contemporary Athenian weddings (Oakley and Sinos 1993), Spartiate wedding
ritual was an austere secretive affair between bride and groom (Plutarch, Lykourgos 15.3-4). Spartiate burial
practices too were minimalist and uniform in character (Hodkinson 2000, 243-62), without scope for
expenditure on grave goods or accoutrements for the body of the deceased and without funerary inscriptions,
except for the simplest and most inexpensive monuments for “a man who died in battle and a woman from
among the hierai” (Plutarch, Lykourgos 27.2).12

Female expenditures: archaeological evidence

The above restrictions, although significant, did not remove all potential female uses of private resources.
Our ability to uncover permissible areas of female expenditure, however, is limited by the fact that our male
non-Spartan sources are primarily interested in the unusual and exotic aspects of the lives of Spartiate women
at the expense of their normal everyday use of resources.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the sphere of normal activity in which we can make most progress
in tracing women’s use of wealth is one in which the evidence is not literary but archaeological and
epigraphic: namely, the sphere of dedications and votive offerings made at religious sanctuaries. Even here,
however, as we shall see, there are problems of evidence which limit our capacity to recover female
expenditure. For the present discussion, I shall focus primarily upon dedications of objects in bronze – a
precious metal which survives in reasonable quantities and whose votive use indicates a not insignificant
material commitment – at two major Spartiate religious sites: the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia and the
sanctuaries (especially those of Athena) on the Spartan acropolis.13
In the period before 550 BC the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia provides indications of a considerable
number of bronze dedications by women. The most common type is votive bronze jewelry, especially pins
and brooches (fibulae). Temple inventories from sanctuaries elsewhere in Greece indicate that such jewelry
dedications were frequently attached to items of personal clothing, which no longer survive. Clothing
dedicated at Artemis Orthia was probably often quite expensive, to judge from the evidence of another
contemporary votive, the miniature lead figurines, which depict model textiles with ornate designs and
female figures wearing elaborate clothing (Foxhall and Stears 2000, 7-8). We are therefore dealing with
offerings of some considerable value.14 Such dedications were often made at moments of transition in the
dedicant’s life: a phenomenon attested by two bronzes from the late seventh century (a pin-head and a die)
inscribed with the name “Eleuthia(s),” a version of Eileithyia the goddess of childbirth, whose shrine lay
close by the sanctuary.15
After 550 BC, however, there is a marked decline in finds of bronzes of all types at the sanctuary and
after 500 BC the votive jewelry entirely disappears, as do jewelry motifs among the leads. The precise
interpretation of this change, however, is a matter of debate. Some scholars have viewed it, along with a

11
This classical evidence diverges from the indications regarding the archaic period, especially the poet Alkman’s reference c.600
BC to imported Lydian headgear (Partheneion 1.67-8, Page).
12
I.e. “holy” or “consecrated women.” For a defence of this MSS reading of the text against its frequent emendation to “a woman
who died in childbirth,” Hodkinson 2000, 260-2.
13
The following paragraphs present in condensed form my fuller discussion in Hodkinson 2000, 271-302, esp. 288-93. Note also
the study of Kilian-Dirlmeier 1984, esp. 12.
14
Early jewelry finds, especially from the Geometric and Lakonian I-II periods, also include items in gold and silver (Dawkins
1929).
15
Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.17.1; cf. Kilian 1978; Pomeroy 2002, 111-12.

6
contemporaneous increase in hoplite lead figurines, as a sign of a reorientation of the sanctuary towards male
concerns, following the creation of male public upbringing (cf. Kennell 1995, 136). However, even during
the sixth century hoplite figurines are outnumbered by those depicting human women; and during the fifth
and fourth centuries they decline in number, as do all the leads. Furthermore, the bronzes from the sanctuary
after 550 BC show few signs of connection with the male upbringing. Indeed, the decline of bronze jewelry
at Artemis Orthia is not a purely Spartan phenomenon, but forms part of a general decline of jewelry
dedications throughout the Greek world. There is no reason to believe that this decline signifies the end of
dedications of female clothing, since at sanctuaries elsewhere the evidence of temple inventories (a type of
document not extant for Spartan sanctuaries) indicates that such clothing dedications continue down until the
second century BC (Foxhall and Stears 2000, 4). However, since this clothing does not survive
archaeologically, the termination of bronze jewelry dedications has the unfortunate effect of eliminating this
proxy evidence for the deployment female resources at Artemis Orthia after 500 BC.
The finds from the Acropolis show marked contrasts to those at Artemis Orthia which reflect the
closer connection of its sanctuaries to the official life of the polis. Bronze dedications are less common
before 550 BC, but peak in the second half of the sixth century and continue strongly into the fifth. These
votives are less linked to female life-transitions and more formal in character, with a preponderance of
“converted” over “raw” offerings and a greater number of inscribed dedications.16 Jewelry votives are few
and confined to the later seventh century. Several of the dedications reflect areas of male activity, such as
war and athletic competition. This initial impression of female exclusion, however, is by no means the whole
picture. Several of the votives, especially the statuettes of Athena, could have been dedicated by either men
or women. Moreover, out of four inscribed bronzes (all from the fifth century) which bear the names of their
dedicants, three – a mirror and two bells – were dedicated by women. Female dedication of the bells is
noteworthy because it raises the possibility that a considerable proportion of the large number of uninscribed
bells dedicated at the sanctuary – more than 40 bronze examples and about 80 in terracotta – were also
dedicated by women. If so, then the Acropolis finds would indicate that a number of Spartiate women in the
fifth century were expending not insignificant sums on specially commissioned offerings at the central shrine
of the polis.

Female intrusion into male spheres of expenditure

My discussion thus far have concentrated upon spheres in which the capacity to utilise private resources, or
restrictions upon doing so, applied in a similar (if not identical) manner to both women and men. There is
important evidence, however, regarding two spheres which for much of our period were the domain of men,
but which came to witness the growing role of women. It is typical of the focus of our sources that both are
spheres of elite expenditure rather than of everyday life.
The first sphere is that of equestrian competition.17 Spartiate participation in chariot-racing contests at
the Olympic Games first becomes evident in the 540s BC, but grew exponentially in the second half of the
fifth century. In the years from 448 to 420 BC six different Spartiate owners between them won the four-
horse chariot at seven out of eight Olympiads. Chariot racing was the most expensive of sporting activities,
within the capacity of only the wealthiest persons; and the upsurge of Spartiate success was probably rooted
in the increasing concentration of landed property into a few hands. Spartiate chariot-owners were prevented
from celebrating their victories in Sparta itself, but they commissioned expensive victory monuments in the
sanctuary at Olympia for the eyes of international visitors. Despite the restriction upon display at home,
Olympic victories were a means of translating large-scale property ownership into socio-political power. An
Olympic victory was regarded as a gift of the gods (e.g. Pindar, Pythian 5.122-3; 10.10); the victor as

16
A “raw” votive is an unmodified object of real, secular use which may often have been used for a considerable time before its
dedication; a “converted” votive is an object produced for the specific purpose of dedication, a purposeful conversion of part of the
dedicant’s wealth (Snodgrass 1989/90, 291).
17
For a more detailed with full references, Hodkinson 2000, 303-33.

7
someone in their special favor, possessing an aura of invincibility, an ideal person for the leadership of state
enterprises (cf. Kurke 1993, 136-7). Their Olympic victories catapulted certain chariot-owners into
influential military or diplomatic positions. Thus chariot-racing became a sphere of competition among
wealthy Spartiates, with the capacity to threaten traditional hierarchies, especially the established power of
the kings, who (with one exception) stood aside from equestrian competition as an arena in which they had
much potentially to lose in case of defeat.
It was through one king’s reaction to the threat of Olympic success that women first broke into this
exclusively male sphere of activity. In the 390s BC King Agesilaos II “persuaded his sister Kyniska to breed
chariot horses, and showed by her victory that such a stud is a mark not of manliness but of wealth”
(Xenophon, Agesilaos 9.6). Xenophon portrays Kyniska’s success as resulting from her brother’s initiative
and as designed to undermine his rivals’ use of chariot-racing by highlighting its association with femininity
and with wealth. Even if Agesilaos did influence his sister, we should not underestimate Kyniska’s own role,
which was not restricted to fulfilling her brother’s agenda. Kyniska celebrated her Olympic victories with
two grandiose monuments. One was erected in the Altis, the heart of the Olympic sanctuary, contained
bronze statues of Kyniska herself, her charioteer, her chariot and team of horses.18 The other was a set of less
than life-size bronze horses in the pronaos of the temple of Zeus made by the famous sculptor Apelleas of
Megara.19 Kyniska’s victory monuments were extremely costly, about 3 talents at contemporary prices. Their
grandeur, which exceeded that of any previous victory monument, was reinforced by the most boastful of
epigrams:
Kings of Sparta are my father and brothers.
Kyniska, conquering with a chariot of fleet-footed steeds,
Set up this statue. And I declare myself the only woman
In all Hellas to have gained this crown.20
The kudos of Olympic success now extended beyond the bounds of male Spartiates to a woman, whose
victory celebrations broke new ground. Commemorations of Kyniska’s victories also broke the mould in
extending for the first time into Sparta itself, where a hero-shrine was erected to her (probably after her
death) in the centre of the polis at the Platanistas (Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.15.1). The placing of
the shrine is significant, as Jean Ducat (1998, 168) has noted: close to the Dromos, where the young girls ran;
close to the tomb of Alkman, the educator of young girls; above all, close to the sanctuary of Helen, model
for the young female Spartiate. The polis hence held Kyniska up to young Spartiate girls as a model woman.
Local commemoration of Kyniska’s success seems, indeed, to have preceded her death. The find of a small
Doric capital and abacus at the sanctuary of the Menelaion, inscribed with Kyniska’s name, suggests that,
unlike previous Olympic victors, she was permitted to celebrate her success in front of the citizen audience at
home.21 According to Pausanias (3.8.1), a number of other Greek women, especially from Sparta,
subsequently emulated Kyniska by winning Olympic chariot-race victories. One of these Spartiate female
victors, Euryleonis (winner of the Olympic two-horse chariot race in 368), went even further than Kyniska in
being commemorated with a statue on the Acropolis, the traditional locus for celebrating male achievement
(Pausanias 3.17.6). In his attempt to use his sister to oppose the challenge of chariot victories to the kingship,
Agesilaos thus opened the door for wealthy women to enter this male world and breach the traditional
restrictions on display imposed upon Spartiate men.22
The other predominantly male sphere which witnessed growing female deployment of wealth
concerns relations of patronage and dependence.23 Spartiate families established personal ties of dependence

18
Pausanias 6.1.6; Inschriften von Olympia 160; cf. Serwint 1987, 432-3.
19
Pausanias 5.12.5; Inschriften von Olympia 634; cf. Serwint 1987, 431-2.
20
Inscriptiones Graecae v.1.1564a; Palatine Anthology 13.16; cf. Ebert 1972, no.33.
21
Inscriptiones Graecae v.1.235; Woodward 1908/9, 86-7. Cf. also IG v.1.1567, a marble fragment bearing the name KYN…
along with a reference to the shrine of Hyakinthos at Amyklai.
22
For another account of Kyniska, Pomeroy 2002, 21-4.
23
Cartledge 1987, 139-59; Hodkinson 2000, 335-68.

8
over non-citizen dependants attached to their households, especially their helot servants. Spartiate women
were not completely excluded from such ties: for example, they controlled their own female servants.
However, they were excluded from heterosexual relations with helots, in contrast to Spartiate men, whose
sons by helot women were integrated into polis institutions (Xenophon, Hellenika 5.3.9) and were probably a
source of prestige for their citizen fathers. Prominent Spartiates also maintained extensive relationships of
guest-friendship (xenia) with leading men from other poleis. Operating in public and international contexts,
such relationships were exclusively male. Finally, as economic differentiation developed within the citizen
body, wealthy Spartiates increasingly established patronal relationships over poorer citizens. For most of our
period such relationships were confined to men, especially as they often took place within the male-only
institutions of the upbringing and common messes or involved relationships between public officials.
There is evidence, however, that by the mid-third century the wealthiest women had established
themselves as patrons of Spartiate men. The evidence concerns two royal widows, Agesistrata and
Archidamia, the mother and grandmother of King Agis IV, who are said to have been the richest persons in
Sparta (Plutarch, Agis 4.1). Plutarch claims that Agesistrata possessed a multitude of male dependants,
friends and debtors (ibid. 6.4). One indication of their patronal influence is that, when the two women threw
their weight behind Agis’ plans for reform, they summoned their male friends and exhorted them to join
(ibid. 7.3). One important factor behind this influence is that by this period (the 240s BC) many of Sparta’s
classical civic institutions had fallen into disabeyance and the former citizen-body of “Peers” was now
marked by huge socio-economic differentiation, thereby creating considerable opportunity for the
deployment of female wealth.

3. Property, status and influence

What impact did their actual or potential ownership of property have upon the lives and status of individual
Spartiate women? I shall consider both positive and negative impacts (controls over female marriage,
influence within the household, and influence outside the household, including on public life), taking
account, as far as the limited evidence permits, of variations in status and influence between women at
different life-stages (unmarried; married; widowed) and from different socio-economic levels.24

Controls over female marriage

First marriages
The Spartan polis imposed penalties upon confirmed bachelors - or at least upon bachelors who neglected to
sire children.25 There is no evidence of a similar law applying to women, but the position of a spinster was
regarded as a miserable condition, such as was visited on female dependants of men adjudged cowards
(Xenophon, Polity of the Lakedaimonians 9.5). The nature of a woman’s marriage was an important indicator
of her and her family’s status.
We saw earlier that the Spartiate inheritance system was one of “diverging devolution”: property was
passed down between the sexes, from a male owner to either a male or female heir or to a mixture of the two;
and similarly in the case of a female owner. The anthropologist Jack Goody (1976) has noted a high degree
of association between inheritance systems of diverging devolution and specific kinds of marriage practices,
several of which are evident in Spartiate society (Hodkinson 1989, 90-3; 2000, 406-9). Most relevantly for
our purposes, Goody notes a significant correlation between diverging devolution and a high degree of
control over female marriage: when women are inheritors and transmitters of property, it is important for

24
Although the sources mention certain cases of men initiating divorces, they provide no evidence about the position of the women
thus divorced. Similarly, they mention no cases of divorces initiated by women.
25
References in Cartledge 1981, 95; to which add Xenophon, Polity of the Lakedaimonians 1.8, which implies that co-habitation
was not necessary.

9
families that their daughters do not marry men of markedly inferior wealth. Strong formal control over
female marriage is certainly evident in Sparta. Although matrimonial rites included a symbolic marriage by
capture (Plutarch, Lykourgos 15.3-5), which was on one infamous occasion exploited by King Damaratos,
who carried off the woman betrothed to his kinsman Leotychidas (Herodotus 6.65), it is clear from
Herodotus’ account of this episode that it was Leotychidas’ method of acquiring a wife which was the norm
and that marriages were usually arranged by betrothal.26 The passages of Herodotus and Aristotle quoted
above indicate that, for an unmarried heiress, the arrangement of the betrothal was in the hands of her father
or (after his death) by the klêronomos, the father’s male next-of-kin.
The public face of an arranged marriage organized by the male representative of the household does
not of course tell the whole story and may obscure varying degrees of female initiative, influence, or at least
consent. Nevertheless, it is clear that wealthy Spartiate families typically arranged the marriages of
propertied daughters to gain maximum economic and socio-political advantage. One common tactic was the
practice of endogamy. Owing to the paucity of detailed prosopographical evidence about Spartiate lineages,
most information about specific endogamous marriages concerns women from the two royal houses, the
Agiads and Eurypontids, whose activities most attracted the attention of ancient writers.27 The marriages of
Anaxandridas II to his sister’s daughter (Herodotus 5.39), of Kleomenes I’s daughter Gorgo to her step-uncle
Leonidas (Herodotus 7.205), and of King Leotychidas’ daughter Lampito to her nephew Archidamos II
(Herodotus 6.71) are all examples of unions whose clear purpose was to consolidate the lineage’s property
holdings. When an endogamous marriage was not possible, the royal houses married their women to other
prominent lineages, as in the case of the marriage of Agesilaos II’s daughter Eupolia to a certain Chilon,
probably a descendant of the famous ephor (Cartledge 1987, 147-9). Similarly, in the case of exogamous
marriages of royal males, there were obvious advantages on both sides for such marriages to be contracted
with daughters from the most prominent non-royal lineages, as in the case of Agesilaos II’s own marriage to
Kleora, daughter of Aristomenidas, a prominent Spartiate with foreign connections (Pausanias, Description
of Greece 3.9.3).
The passion with which royal males sought socio-economically desirable brides, and non-royal
families to place their daughters within royal lineages, is illustrated by a set of interconnected episodes in the
mid- to late sixth century BC. As noted above, the Agiad king Anaxandridas II contracted a marriage with his
sister’s daughter which served to re-unite at least part of the royal properties. When the marriage failed to
produce an heir, Anaxandridas came under pressure to divorce his niece for another wife; but he refused to
dissolve this union. Herodotus records that he was fond of his wife, but another factor against a divorce was
surely the consequent loss of his wife’s share of the lineage’s property. Anaxandridas agreed to take another
wife only when he was permitted to retain her as well – a most un-Spartan practice, according to Herodotus
(5.39-40). His choice of a second spouse also showed sound socio-economic sense, since his new wife –
whose lineage (“the daughter of Prinetadas, son of Demarmenos”) Herodotus announces as if it were well-
known – evidently came from one of the most distinguished, and no doubt wealthy, families in Sparta. The
second wife produced a son, but then the first wife straightaway became pregnant; whereupon the kinsfolk of
the second wife disputed its authenticity so fiercely that the ephors were obliged to attend the birth. The value
this same kin group put upon achieving distinguished marriages for their womenfolk is further indicated by
the fact that another granddaughter of Demarmenos, Perkalos, daughter of Chilon – note again the probable
relationship to the famous ephor – was betrothed to Leotychidas, the leading member of the junior branch of
the Eurypontid royal house (Herodotus 6.65). Perkalos was such an attractive match that (as we have seen)

26
Cartledge 1981, 99-100; MacDowell 1986, 77-82; Ducat 1998, 396. It is strange that Pomeroy (2002, 45) appears to give
credence to the account of the Hellenistic writer, Hermippos of Smyrna (fr.87, ap. Athen. 555c), possibly influenced by the
propaganda of the third-century revolution (Marasco 1978, 120), according to which nubile young men and women found their
spouses by groping randomly in a darkened room, regarding it as “contradicting Herodotus.” Even Meillier (1984), who argues the
case for the credibility of Hermippos’ evidence, regards it as a pre-marital ritual of initiation, distinct from marriage proper.
27
For more detailed exploration of the socio-economic rationale of the marriages mentioned below, Hodkinson 2000, 101-3; 410-
13.

10
King Damaratos seized her before the marriage was consummated. In these episodes we see a leading
Spartiate lineage attempting to further the status of its descendants by marrying its womenfolk into the two
royal houses, and royal males seeking to obtain marriages to women of high socio-economic status. We also
see the protection against divorce potentially afforded by a wife’s property-holdings.
The marriages above were among the wealthiest Spartiates. Our limited evidence does not provide
specific examples of marriages among ordinary citizen families, but there are generic indications that
concerns of property-ownership were significant at all social levels. One indication is the practice of adelphic
polyandry, attested by Polybius (12.6b.8), who says that it was a longstanding custom and quite usual for
three, four or even more brothers to have one wife (cf. Perentidis 1997, 25-31). Adelphic polyandry is
frequently associated cross-culturally with female property ownership (Leach 1955). The economic
background to its practice in Sparta must often have been brothers, concerned about excessive division of
their inheritance, pooling their resources to achieve a marriage with a woman of higher socio-economic
standing. Another indication is the permissibility of marriage between uterine half-siblings (homomêtrioi,
children of the same mother but different fathers).28 This practice allowed a woman’s sons and daughters by
different partners to be exchanged in marriage, with the effect of concentrating their parents’ properties.
To untangle the precise implications of these marriage maneuvers for female status is no easy task,
especially given the male-oriented character of our sources. We gain no sense of the women’s perspective
from Herodotus’ accounts of the marital maneuvers outlined above. The focus throughout is on the actions or
reactions of the men: Anaxandridas, the kin of the second wife, Damaratos, and the disappointed
Leotychidas. We are not even given the names of Anaxandridas’ two wives. Similarly, the sources’
statements about polyandry and uterine half-sibling marriage are uninformative about female perspectives.
We cannot determine the extent to which the women concerned were pawns in male economic and dynastic
games or active exploiters of their property rights to obtain advantageous marriages.
It is clear, however, that women without significant property-holdings were considerably
disadvantaged in the marriage stakes. The classic illustration is the daughters of the illustrious commander
Lysander, who were deserted by their suitors when the poverty of their inheritance became known.29 A
similar message comes across in other sources. In Plutarch’s account of the love story of Damokrita (Moralia
775c-e), her exiled husband’s property was confiscated so that his two daughters would be disadvantaged by
being deprived of dowries. According to an apophthegm in the Lakainôn Apophthegmata [Sayings of
Lakonian Women] (anon no. 24 = Plutarch, Moralia 242b), “A poor girl, being asked what dowry she
brought to the man who married her, replied, “The family sôphrosynê” [prudence, good sense].” The
implication is that her material contribution to the marriage was deficient. Indeed, Aelian (Varia Historia
6.6) claims that men who married undowered women were relieved of all public duties: the implication is
that this relief was compensation for foregoing the material advantage of a dowry.
Overall, therefore, their propertied condition was a major determinant of, and constraint upon, the
marriages of Spartiate women. The one significant qualification is that control over the marriage of heiresses
was less strong in Sparta than in certain other poleis. Herodotus’ statement (quoted above) indicates that
under certain circumstances the marriage of an heiress came under the jurisdiction of the kings, who
allocated her to her appropriate male next-of-kin. It is important to note, however, that the royal jurisdiction
applied only in the case of an unmarried orphaned heiress who had not been betrothed by her father
(Hodkinson 2000, 95). An heiress already married or even merely betrothed (including, according to
Aristotle, in her father’s will) was permitted to retain her existing or intended spouse, instead of being at the
disposal of the klêronomos as her next-of-kin. This is confirmed by the above case of Lysander’s daughters:
on their father’s death the men to whom they were betrothed, far from being expected to give way to the
next-of-kin, were fined when they abandoned the girls. Spartan practice here contrasts with the stricter laws

28
Philo, On Special Laws 3.4.22.
29
Apophthegmata Lakônika, Lysander no.15, ap. Plutarch, Moralia 230a; Plutarch, Lysander 30.5; Aelian, Varia Historia 6.4;
10.5.

11
in both Athens and Gortyn, where the next-of-kin had the right to marry the heiress, unless she was married
and already had a son (in Athens) or child of either sex (in Gortyn).30 In Sparta, moreover, as Aristotle
indicates, there was no obligation that the marriage even of an unmarried, unbetrothed heiress had to be with
her next-of-kin; if he so chose, the klêronomos could give her in marriage to any man whatsoever.

Remarriage of widows
We possess only limited prosopographical evidence regarding named Spartiate widows and what evidence
there is relates exclusively to the upper classes. Even this limited evidence, however, provides some
indication of the significance of the widow’s property-holding, alongside the question of her age, in
influencing her future marital status.
It seems that mature rich widows were often in a strong position to determine whether and whom they
remarried. This point is illustrated, above all, by the cases of three women who played prominent roles in the
third-century revolution. The first two cases are those of Archidamia and Agesistrata, respectively
grandmother and mother of King Agis IV. The ages of these two women at the time of their husbands’ deaths
are unclear;31 but when they emerge into the light of history in the late 240s, they appear as matrons beyond
childbearing age who had never remarried and who possessed great influence as the richest people in Sparta
(Plutarch, Agis 4.1). The third case is that of Kratesikleia, widow of King Leonidas II, who was almost
certainly beyond her childbearing years on her husband’s death c.235 BC.32 Kratesikleia, we are told, had no
wish to remarry, and she initially remained single; but about eight years later c.227 BC she chose to marry
one of the most reputable and influential citizens, in order to enlist his support for the political plans of her
son King Kleomenes III (Plutarch, Kleomenes 6.1). In the case of all these widows, their propertied status
clearly did not require their remarriage and probably enhanced their relative independence.
For younger propertied widows the situation may often have been different. Take a case
contemporary with those considered above: that of Agiatis, widow of King Agis IV. When her husband was
executed in 241 BC, Agiatis was still a young woman, probably in her early 20s with a young child (Plutarch,
Kleomenes 1.1). She was also heiress to her father’s large estate. She was given no choice about her
remarriage, since King Leonidas II (who came from the other royal house and had been behind her husband’s
execution) compelled her to marry his son Kleomenes. Agiatis’ specific treatment by Leonidas was clearly
exceptional and strongly influenced by the contingent revolutionary political circumstances of the era.
Nevertheless, Plutarch’s explanation of Leonidas’ actions (“He did not want to give the woman to anyone
else because Agiatis was an epiklêros of the large estate of her father, Gylippos”) implies that, as an
unmarried, unbetrothed heiress of child-bearing age, she was expected to remarry and fell legally under the
king’s jurisdiction. In forcing her to marry his own son, Leonidas was abusing his proper role, which should
have been merely to adjudicate between claimants from among her kin; but it seems that Agiatis had no
choice about whether or not to remarry.
The other case of a propertied widow of child-bearing age (our only case from the classical period) is
that of Eupolia, second wife of King Archidamos II. Eupolia was in her late 30s at least when the king died
c.427 BC.33 The “horsey” connotations of her name and that of her father Melesippidas suggest that she came
from a wealthy lineage.34 Her marriage to King Archidamos is a classic example of a dynastic marriage.
30
Harrison 1968-71, i.11-12 & Appendix I; Schaps 1979, 28; Gortyn Code 8.20-30. At Gortyn a childless heiress was allowed to
avoid the obligation only if she ceded half the inheritance to her next-of-kin (7.52-8.7).
31
On the fundamental problems regarding the identity of Archidamia’s husband and her date of birth, McQueen 1990, 168-70.
There is similar uncertainty regarding the dates of Agesistrata’s birth and of the death of her husband, Eudamidas II, which could
have been any time between c.260 and 244 BC (McQueen 1990, 170-4).
32
She had a daughter Chilonis, who was already married with two young children in 241 BC (Plutarch, Agis 17.1; cf. 11.5).
33
She bore another son, Teleutias, by her second marriage, who was probably born by 421 BC (he was surely at least age 30 when
he held his first attested command in 391 BC). Eupolia’s son by Archidamos, the future king Agesilaos II, was born c.444 BC
(Cartledge 1987, 21). Spartiate women probably married around age 18-20 (Cartledge 1981, 94-5). Even if Eupolia married at the
earliest possible age of 18 and gave birth to Agesilaos a year later, she will have been about 36 at Archidamos’ death.
34
Plutarch, Agesilaos 1.1. The names incorporate polos (foal) and hippos (horse).

12
Following Archidamos’ death, however, Eupolia married an otherwise unknown Spartiate named Theodoros
(Palatine Anthology 7.426): a marriage apparently down the economic scale, since her new relations were
poor (Xenophon, Agesilaos 4.5; Plutarch, Agesilaos 4.1). This could be a case of a rich and eminent widow
being able to flout normal expectations and marry her man of choice regardless of economic considerations,
although there are suggestions in the sources that Eupolia was, on physical grounds, not the most eligible of
spouses.35 At all events, her son by her first marriage, Agesilaos, was so sensitive to his mother’s
impoverished connections that, when many years later he inherited both the kingship and substantial
property-holdings from his half-brother King Agis II, he gave half this property to his mother’s relations
(Cartledge 1987, 115). Agesilaos’ action reinforces our perception that Eupolia’s remarriage was an unusual
one (on whatever grounds) and that women were normally expected to marry within restricted socio-
economic bounds. The episode also suggests that even an exceptional widow like Eupolia was expected to
remarry, in view of her continued capacity for reproduction, and probably also her status as a significant
owner of property.

Influence within the household

It is clear from the extent of women’s property ownership and the careful controls over female marriage that
a wife’s property holdings made, and were regarded as making, a major contribution to the household wealth.
To what extent did this give a woman influence within the household (oikos)?
The starting point for examining this question is the close association between wife and oikos within
Spartiate society. For Plato, the oikos was the primary sphere in which Spartiate women operated, with their
activities focused upon domestic care, management and child-raising (Laws 780e-781d, 806a). The two
wives of King Anaxandridas each retained her own separate household rather than being merged into a single
household (Herodotus 5.40). In itself, this association was not unusual within Greek poleis: evidence from
contemporary Athens indicates that women frequently (though not always) took responsibility for the
management of the household’s affairs, not least at times when its menfolk were absent.36 However, the
authority of Spartiate women within their households was probably enhanced by a smaller than usual age
difference between husband and wife and by the young husband’s residence away from home in the barracks
until age 30.37
This picture of close association between the Spartiate wife and her oikos was, however, overdrawn
by some ancient writers, who claimed that Spartiate men were effectively excluded from domestic affairs
(Plutarch, Agis 7.3). Similarly, some modern scholars (e.g. Kunstler 1987; Zweig 1993; Dettenhofer 1993;
1994) have portrayed Spartiate households as almost exclusively female-dominated domains within a largely
sex-segregated society, in which the men’s absence on military and public service left the women in charge
at home. A more realistic assessment is that Sparta’s foreign military campaigns varied in frequency and
were mostly brief; and that, “although the Spartan male spent the majority of his time engaged in public
activities, he must have taken an interest in the economic health of his oikos, on which his retention of
citizenship, his status in the community, and the future of his descendants depended” (Millender 1999, 372;
cf. Thommen 1999, 145). Male control over female marriage discussed above is testimony to this
perspective. As was also noted earlier, the right to buy and sell and to enter the agora to acquire household
necessities was an integral part of Spartiate citizenship. A similar image comes across in Plato’s depiction of

35
According to a number of sources (Plutarch, Agesilaos 2.3, citing Theophrastos; Moralia 1d; Athenaios, Deipnosophistai
13.566d), Archidamos was fined for marrying Eupolia, on the grounds that her short stature would produce not kings but kinglets.
Her son, Agesilaos, was indeed short and also lame, although the sources disagree about whether this was congenital or the result
of a childhood accident (Xenophon, Hellenika 3.3.3; Plutarch, Agesilaos 2.2; Nepos, Agesilaos 8.1). For divergent modern
opinions, Cartledge 1987, 20; Krentz 1995, 178; Shipley 1997, 73-4, 88.
36
E.g. the references and discussion in Schaps 1979, 15-16; Millender 1999, 372.
37
As noted above (n.34), Spartiate women probably married around age 18-20, a few years later than in many other poleis.

13
Spartiate-style timocratic man, whose love of wealth is focused, above all, within his oikos.38 We should
therefore view the direction of the affairs of the oikos as a compound of female and male interests.
One illustration is the set of legitimate sexual relationships which scholars normally term “wife-
sharing,” but which from the woman’s perspective might equally be called “man-doubling.”39 According to
our sole contemporary source, Xenophon (Polity of the Lakedaimonians 1.8-9),40
If a man did not want to cohabit with a woman, but nevertheless desired children of whom he
could be proud, he [sc. the lawgiver Lykourgos] made it lawful for him, when he saw a woman of
quality who had borne good children, to produce children by her with her husband’s consent. He
[Lykourgos] gave his sanction to many similar arrangements: for the women want to gain
possession of two households; and the men want to get for their sons brothers who are part of the
kin and share in its power but claim no part of its property.
Xenophon describes the initiation of such relationships purely in terms of an arrangement between the men
concerned. In contrast, certain modern scholars have tried to reinterpret the practice in terms of women’s
sexual freedom and their desire to initiate liaisons outside marriage (e.g. Kunstler 1987, 99). Both
perspectives are too extreme. Xenophon may provide an accurate description of the formal, public position;
but it is unlikely that many such relationships were initiated without the woman’s consent. As Xenophon
himself notes, women had a positive motive for actively undertaking a second relationship, which gave them
charge of a second household. On the other hand, to prioritize female initiative and explain their involvement
in terms of adulterous affairs is to ignore the realistic ancient concerns outlined in the passage, and especially
its atmosphere of common endeavor by the two men and the woman to increase both their individual
influence and that of the kin group without creating additional drains on household resources (cf. Ducat
1998, 396; Thommen 1999, 142). The collaborative role of wife-sharing/man-doubling within the long-term
social and economic strategies of both households is demonstrated by its linkage with the practice of uterine
half-sibling marriage, through which the woman’s sons and daughters by the two men could then intermarry,
in order to concentrate the properties of the two households and solidify their alliance.
Within this context of both male and female involvement in the oikos, it is plausible to suggest that
women’s contribution of property to the household gave them the capacity for varying degrees of influence.
Cross-cultural studies have suggested that female control over household property is correlated with
enhanced domestic authority.41 Ancient Greek and Roman sources contain several indications regarding the
pressure a rich wife could exert over her husband.42 Comparative evidence from classical Athens, where
women had fewer property rights than their Spartiate counterparts, indicates the significant initiative and
influence in household affairs that could nevertheless be exercised by well-dowered women.43 In Sparta,
where all women inherited and owned some landed property, one would expect wives at all economic levels
to be capable of exercising leverage within their households. This is precisely the role that Euripides in his
Andromache gives to the wealthy Spartan princess Hermione: her possessions are said to secure her freedom
of speech and she is able to lord her wealth over her husband (lines 147-53, 211, 940).
Certain aspects of Spartiate marriage practices probably also enhanced a woman’s economic
influence. Within the wife-sharing/man-doubling arrangement her property holdings were important to both
her households, since they would be shared by the children of both unions; the woman was the central focus
uniting the two households, especially if her children by her different partners subsequently intermarried.

38
Plato, Republic 548b; cf. Ducat 1998, 386.
39
I adopt the term “man-doubling” from Sarah Pomeroy’s term “husband-doubling” (2002, 39-40), since the second partner’s
relationship to the woman was not equivalent to that of her husband.
40
Cf. also Lakainôn Apophthegmata [Sayings of Lakonian Women], Anon no.23 (= Plutarch, Moralia 242b); Polybius 12.6b.8;
Plutarch, Lykourgos 15.7; Comparison of Lykourgos and Numa 3.3.
41
Sacks 1974; Whyte 1978, 106-7; 145-7. Although Whyte criticises Sacks’ conclusions on the grounds of her limited sample of
cultures, his own wider-ranging study produced similar, if somewhat weaker, positive correlations between these variables.
42
E.g. Plato, Laws 774c; Menander, Plok. fr. 333; Elder Cato, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta4 fr. 158.
43
Schaps 1979, 76-7; Gould 1980, 49-50; Foxhall 1989.

14
Adelphic polyandry also gave certain women an extended household management role over the affairs of
several men; the economic background to a polyandrous marriage must often have been that the woman was
wealthier than each of her individual male partners. Within polyandrous marriages, in particular, but also
within other households containing a majority of males, it may often have been the case that the menfolk
were unable to sustain their contributions to the common messes (and hence their citizen status) without
relying extensively upon produce from the landholdings of their wife or mother. This reliance would have
occurred more frequently within poorer households, for whom the mess dues were a heavier proportional
burden than for the rich; hence the capacity for female influence may have been especially strong within
ordinary Spartiate families.
These last considerations suggest that female domestic influence may have grown over time, since the
growing impoverishment of ordinary Spartiates from the fifth century onwards meant that a greater
proportion of male citizens had difficulty meeting their mess dues, implying a more widespread reliance
upon female resources. Growing impoverishment may also have increased the proportion of polyandrous
marriages and wife-sharing/man-doubling arrangements, as a means of spreading a woman’s fertility
between more than one man, thereby limiting the number of heirs (cf. Polybius 12.6b.8). The incentives for
such relationships may have intensified not only for poorer Spartiates, but also for richer citizens needing to
consolidate their wealth in a period when property-ownership was becoming more important relative to civic
performance as a determinant of status (cf. Hodkinson 1989, 95-7; 1993, 157-9). In addition, Sparta’s
declining citizen body will have meant that war casualties had a larger proportional impact upon the number
of male citizens (Ducat 1983, 164). One consequence will have been a proportional increase in the number of
widows, along with reduced opportunities for remarriage. The substantially freer rein which some propertied
widows possess for independent economic and social action is a phenomenon evident in many societies.44
Another consequence will have been increased inheritances for women. It is precisely in the later fourth
century, when male citizen numbers were low, that Aristotle commented on the considerable number of sole
heiresses and the large size of dowries, both of which would have followed from declining numbers of
inheriting sons. The paucity of evidence makes it difficult to trace the precise impact of these changes upon
women’s position within the household. However, Plutarch’s account of conditions before the third-century
revolution refers to “the honor and influence which they [women] enjoyed on account of their wealth” (Agis
7.4). The household in which the young (and possibly fatherless) King Agis IV was reared was one
apparently dominated by his mother and grandmother, rather than by a male guardian (Agis 4.1; cf. McQueen
1990, 171-2).

Influence outside the household

To what extent did women’s capacity for domestic influence, founded upon their ownership of property,
extend to influence outside the household, upon the society at large? Here we need to distinguish two
different (though sometimes overlapping) modes of influence: influence based upon domestic authority and
exercised through the household; and influence exerted directly by women acting independently outside the
household.
The first of these modes is notoriously difficult to analyze because female influence is usually hidden
behind the external face of the household, which is normally represented by its male head. Without
documents emanating from within the household, there is usually no way of knowing the extent to which a
man conducting household business is implementing his own personal decisions or those hammered out in
intra-household discussion involving its female members. It is also easy to ignore the broader societal
significance of female domestic influence through “the assumption that the foundations of power in Greek
society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is ‘less important’” (Foxhall 1989, 22).
Spartiate women could not hold political office or vote in the assembly. However, even on matters of public

44
E.g. for contemporary Athens, Todd 1993, 209-10; medieval and early modern England, Mate 1999, 37-8, 78-9; Erickson 1993,
156-222.

15
policy, many key decisions were taken not in open council or debate but through private negotiations which,
although conducted between males, would have been potentially susceptible to household influence (cf.
Cartledge 1987, 139-59; Hodkinson 2000, 335-68).
One ancient commentator who cannot be accused of underplaying the public impact of female domestic
influence is Aristotle (Politics 1269b23-34). Having criticized the license given to women and their lives of
luxury, he continues,
An inevitable result under such a constitution is that esteem is given to wealth, particularly if they
do in fact come to be female-dominated; and this is a common state of affairs in military and
warlike races,… for all such people seem to be in thrall to sexual relations, either with males or
with females. That is why this state of affairs prevailed among the Lakonians, and in the days of
their supremacy a great deal was managed by women. And yet what difference is there between
the women ruling and the rulers being ruled by women? The result is the same.
Aristotle locates female influence within the context of esteem for wealth, although the characteristically
compressed nature of his argumentation leaves a certain vagueness about the precise social mechanisms
through which these factors are linked. The implication seems to be that women pressurize their menfolk to
acquire wealth, and that female possession of wealth gives them a hold over their men and some control over
public affairs, as the powers behind the ostensible rulers (Saunders 1995, 152).
The historical merits of Aristotle’s arguments are difficult to evaluate. His perspective is clearly
distorted by the influence of negative representations of Spartiate women by male, non-Spartan writers,
which – as noted earlier – are rooted in Athenocentric representations of the Spartan “Other,” in this case
through the portrayal of an “upside-down” world in which men are dominated by women. Nevertheless, his
arguments show an appreciation of the relevance of household relationships to the wider society which is rare
among classical commentators, who typically maintain an exclusive focus upon the public, male-orientated
face of contemporary affairs. A case in point is King Agesilaos II’s appointment of his brother-in-law
Peisandros as admiral in 395 BC, a disastrous selection which led to the destruction of Sparta’s naval empire.
Xenophon (Hellenika 3.4.29) criticises the appointment, but leaves the reasons for it unexplained. It is left to
Plutarch (Agesilaos 10.6) to explain that Peisandros was appointed to gratify his sister, Agesilaos’ wife
Kleora. Plutarch’s explanation has, probably rightly, found favor with modern historians (e.g. Cartledge
1987, 146-7; Krentz 1995, 193), since it fits well with Agesilaos’ interest in solidifying an alliance with
Kleora’s father and his Theban contacts and with other occasions on which he conducted his policies through
family connections.45
The case above provides some hint of a historical reality behind Aristotle’s hyperbolic comments. Just
occasionally we get a similar indication from a classical source, as in a fragment from the fourth-century
historian Theopompos reported by Athenaios, Deipnosophistai (609b):
Theopompos in Book 56 of the Histories [writes that] Xenopeitheia, the mother of Lysandridas,
had been more beautiful than all the other women of the Peloponnese. The Lakedaimonians put
her to death along with her sister Khryse, at the time when Lysandridas himself, the enemy of
King Agesilaos, had been defeated in civil strife and when Agesilaos had procured his exile by
the Lakedaimonians.
As Anton Powell notes, this is a case “of Spartiate women taken all too seriously as political influences in the
early fourth century.” In this episode Lysandridas’ mother and aunt were clearly implicated in his political
activity, “too formidable to be left alive as a source of agitation” (Powell 1999, 409-10). The absence of
reference to Lysandridas’ father or any other male relative suggests a case of two mature widows exerting
their personal influence in support of their male kin. Xenopeitheia and Khryse thus appear as forerunners of
the better-attested cases of female support for younger male kin during the third century revolution. We have
already noted the case of Agesistrata and Archidamia summoning their male friends and exhorting them to
join King Agis IV’s plans. Subsequently, when Agis commenced his plans for a redistribution of land by

45
Cf. Xenophon, Agesilaos 11.13; Cartledge 1987, 139-59.

16
putting his personal landholdings into a common pool, his mother and grandmother did so too and were
followed by their relatives and friends (Plutarch, Agis 9.3). Like Xenopeitheia and Khryse, they too were put
to death the moment that Agis was out of the way (20.2-5). Similarly, Kratesikleia, the widowed mother of
King Kleomenes III, “provided him with unstinting subsidies and shared his ambitions,” remarried to aid her
son’s cause and then volunteered to go to Egypt as a hostage in exchange for King Ptolemy III’s financial
help. She too ultimately met her death there in the aftermath of Kleomenes’ own death in a failed coup
(Plutarch, Kleomenes 6.1; 22.3-7; 38).
The activities of these third-century women, although made in support of male kin, attest a significant
degree of independent female influence, arising directly out of their wealth. As we have seen, Agesistrata and
Archidamia are said to have been the richest persons in Sparta (Plutarch, Agis 4.1). Agesistrata had
independently acquired a multitude of male dependants, friends and debtors, owing to which “she had great
influence in the polis and took a large part in public affairs” (6.4). She and her mother played a significant
role in the development of the revolutionaries’ schemes (6.1-7.3). Although the plan for the redistribution of
property was originated by the young Agis and gained the support of certain of his peers, more mature and
weighty backing was needed. The first step was the recruitment of Agis’ maternal uncle, Agesilaos; but this
was just a step towards acquiring the backing of the ultimate patron: “As soon as Agis had won over
Agesilaos, he straightaway sought with the aid of his uncle to persuade his mother, who was a sister of
Agesilaos” (6.4). As Powell (1999, 394) has pointed out, the normal roles are reversed: “the male as
intercessor approaches the powerful female.” In the event, Agesistrata and her mother Archidamia took some
persuading, but were finally convinced by the combined arguments of the two men. They then took a
patronal initiative, urging Agis on and using their influence to recruit their male friends and their wives.
As the revolutionary proposals became known, other Spartiate women came out in opposition to the
proposals, partly because they would be stripped of their luxury, “but also because they saw that the honour
and influence which they enjoyed in consequence of their wealth would be cut off” (7.4). Lacking, however,
the power of Agesistrata and Archidamia, they appealed to the other king, Leonidas II. At this point the
controversy moved into the exclusively male political arena of the Assembly and Council of Elders. Even in
this period there were limitations beyond which independent female initiative could not go. However, one
incident from a generation earlier indicates that Spartiate women, when united, could sometimes intervene in
the male political sphere, at least regarding a matter which concerned them directly. During Pyrrhos’
invasion of Lakonia in 274 BC,
the Lakedaimonians at first wished to send their women to Crete, but the women opposed this,
and Archidamia came into the Council of Elders with a sword in her hand and reproached the
men on the women’s behalf for proposing that they should survive while Sparta itself perished
(Plutarch, Pyrrhos 27.2).
The women had their way, though it is unclear whether they would have done so without the leadership of
Archidamia, the daughter and sister of a king.
To what extent was direct female influence a new phenomenon in the third century or present already
in the classical period? A major difficulty in answering this question is the limitations of the evidence. We
know about the activities of certain third-century women through Plutarch’s Lives, and because his main
source, Phylarchos, as a partisan of the revolution, had the motivation for describing internal Spartan affairs
and a strong interest in stories involving women.46 In contrast, most extant sources for earlier periods focus
primarily upon Sparta’s external rather than internal affairs and upon the public male sphere. Even with these
limitations of evidence, the activities of Kyniska and subsequent female Olympic chariot-race winners, along
with the fragmentary information about the political involvement of Xenopeitheia and Khryse, provide some
suggestion of a growing female external impact in the fourth century, even if it had not yet reached the extent
subsequently achieved in the third.

46
Cf. Gabba 1957; Africa 1961; and Powell 1999, 401-15, including the suggestion of a Spartan source.

17
 As we move back to the later sixth and fifth centuries, the evidence for independent female influence
declines still further, despite the fact that in Herodotus we have a source by no means uninterested in female
action and very interested in Sparta’s internal politics and society. Yet women appear largely as pawns in his
references to the marital wheelings-and-dealings discussed above; and only one historical Spartiate woman
appears briefly as an independent actor: Gorgo, only child of King Kleomenes I and wife of Leonidas I. That
Herodotus met her in person in her later life is suggested by the personal nature of one of his stories: as an 8
or 9 year-old girl, she was present at a private meeting involving her father, and successfully warned her
father not to be corrupted by attempts at bribery (Herodotus 5.51). But this episode does not say anything
significant about female influence; and, as an heiress, Gorgo was conventionally married in her teens to her
male next-of-kin, her step-uncle Leonidas (Herodotus 7.205).47 Herodotus records another episode involving
Gorgo after her marriage (7.239). The exiled king Damaratos had sent a secret message to the Spartans by
writing it on the wood of which the tablet was made, hidden under the normal writing surface, the covering
layer of wax. On receiving the blank tablet, the Spartans could make nothing of it until Gorgo worked out the
secret and advised them how to find the message. The episode shows that a king’s wife was privy to such a
matter of state and could proffer independent advice; but, if that was the best tale that Gorgo could tell
Herodotus about her public role, it hardly indicates the kind of female influence evident in later centuries.

4. Female property, status and the crisis of Sparta

Over the course of this essay we have seen that their ownership of property had varying and changing effects
upon the position of different women in diverse contexts of Spartiate life. We have noted variations in
women’s abilities to make use of their material resources, variations in their control over their marital lives,
and variations in intra- and extra-household influence. There were also variations in female capacities
between each of these different spheres, illustrating a central point made in the cross-cultural study of Martin
King Whyte (1978) - and before him by Robert Lowie (1920, 187) - that female status is not a unitary
phenomenon but typically varies in different areas of life. As Whyte has also observed, a high degree of
female control over property may have positive benefits for women’s status in certain aspects of life but have
little or no impact in others (1978, 145-7). Even an Agesistrata was married conventionally to her nearest
kinsman. In addition, women’s capacity to control and deploy property is itself a variable affected by other
factors and developments, and therefore subject to change. During the 300 years or so of Spartan history
covered in this paper women’s legal property rights appear to have remained the same; but, as we have seen,
their capacities to utilise their property did change and develop, with certain important consequences. In this
final section I want to explore briefly the broader societal context for these changes and developments,
incorporating a variable explicitly omitted from Whyte’s study: socio-economic differences.48
We saw earlier that the close association between Spartiate women and their households probably
entailed a fair degree of influence over its affairs. As far as the Spartan polis were concerned, this influence
was not in itself problematic. Recent work has rightly noted the important role played by women in the stable
functioning of Spartan society (e.g. Redfield 1977/78; Ducat 1998). In particular, women had a direct interest
in their menfolk’s observance of the established norms of behavior within the communal institutions of
Spartiate society. The public performance of its males affected the prestige of the household, including the
status of its female members, and its capacity to contract socially and materially advantageous marriages for
its children. During Sparta’s heyday there was, consequently, a broad identity of purpose between civic

47
Gorgo will have about 17 or 18 when Kleomenes died in 491 BC; Herodotus’ statement that Leonidas’ marriage to Gorgo was
one reason why he gained the throne implies that they were already married at Kleomenes’ death.
48
One of the self-acknowledged limitations of Whyte’s cross-cultural method is that for each of the societies covered in his study
the social practices recorded represent “the customs of the largest part of the indicated cultural group, which usually means the
commoners rather than the elites or despised minorities” (1978, 18).

18
interests and the concerns of propertied women for the well-being and success of their households.
Household and community, moreover, were linked in particular ways within the lives of Spartiate women.
The essence of Sparta’s classical organization had been the establishment of a common way of life which
minimized the daily impact of differences of birth and wealth. This common way of life was applied most
thoroughly to Spartiate men. But the women too had their own communal upbringing (Pomeroy 2002, 3-32);
and the key purpose of that upbringing was to prepare them for their adult roles which, although largely
conducted in the context of their households, revolved around the essential civic function of bearing and
rearing children. Those non-Spartan writers who viewed Sparta’s distinctive marriage practices in terms of
female sexual license misinterpreted this essential civic function as an escape from civic control. On the
contrary, in their household roles as mothers and as enforcers of the Spartiate code, women made essential
contributions to the biological and social reproduction of the citizen population and to the civic solidarity of
the Spartiate polis.
As noted earlier, however, during the course of the classical and early hellenistic periods the Spartan
polis underwent an ongoing social crisis which revolved around growing differences in wealth. Spartiate
society became increasingly plutocratic in character, as the rich gained an increasing monopoly over both
economic resources and socio-political power (Hodkinson 2000, 399-445). As the impoverishment of
ordinary Spartiate households intensified, many lost their citizen status. The final consequence was the
greatly reduced and sharply stratified citizen body of the mid-third century, comprising a mere 700 male
citizens, of whom only about 100 possessed significant landed resources (Plutarch, Agis 5.4). In view of their
significant contribution to Spartiate society, it is inconceivable that Spartiate women played no part in the
development of this crisis, especially given the observable increase in female influence. We must, however,
beware of the tendency, evident in certain historical explanations of the greater prominence of women in
Greek cities in the hellenistic and Roman periods, to view the increasing centrality of female activity in a
rather narrow fashion: in terms primarily of civic decadence, regression and decline.49 This is a failing of
several of the ancient sources, for whom female prominence and wealth entail the dominance of softness and
luxury, in contrast to the discipline of Sparta’s civic institutions (e.g. Aristotle, Politics 1269b12-39;
Plutarch, Agis 4.1). The connections between Sparta’s civic crisis and the increasing participation of women
in activities and spheres that were formerly exclusively male need to be viewed in broader socio-political
context.
Limits of space forbid a full analysis of the increasing socio-economic differentiation which underlay
the Sparta’s civic crisis.50 Although it had various structural causes, it also involved the direct agency of
wealthier households, who actively engaged in a variety of activities aimed at differentiating themselves from
ordinary Spartiate households or at accumulating property at their expense (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1307a34-6).
Both male and female members of wealthy households were implicated in these activities. Many of them
were conducted publicly by the male household head. However, adult female members of the household must
often have been involved, in varying degrees, in shaping household decisions (such as about marriage
alliances) or in their subsequent implementation (for example, in the storage of illegal gold and silver
currency after its temporary prohibition in 404 BC). Some activities, such as the wife-sharing/man-doubling
arrangements, required women’s active participation. Others related directly to property owned by women as
well as men: for example, the deliberate underpayment of taxes (eisphorai) on landholdings (Aristotle,
Politics 1271b10-17). Finally, there were the spheres of activity, such as chariot racing and personal
patronage, which were originally male preserves but in which women became increasingly involved.
The background to this female involvement was the increasing separation between rich and poor
households and, with it, the growing significance of wealth relative to civic achievement as a determinant of
status. Such a plutocratic environment diminished both the ties binding rich Spartiate males to their poorer
“Peers” and the barriers separating them from their wealthy female counterparts. (Diminished, not

49
Cf. van Bremen 1996 for a critique of such interpretations.
50
For more complete discussion, Hodkinson 2000, 399-440.

19
extinguished: certain aspects of Spartiate life still divided along gender lines, especially politics and warfare.)
By using their wealth in formerly male spheres, wealthy females could now begin to access new forms of
personal status. In addition, the reduced value of male civic achievement for household status weakened the
former identity of purpose between the interests of the polis and those of wealthy women.
Amidst these changes, however, some women – indeed, most women – lost out: namely, the female
members of the majority of ordinary Spartiate households. The plutocratic environment of fourth and third
century Sparta diminished the ties between wealthy and poorer Spartiate women. The latter may, as
suggested above, have gained some increased measure of domestic influence; but this was surely outweighed
by the impoverishment of their households, which led at best to a vastly decreased social significance and at
worst to their exclusion from full Spartiate status. Ordinary Spartiate women also suffered from the collapse
of Sparta’s civic institutions. The abandonment of the male public upbringing by the mid-third century at the
latest (Cartledge and Spawforth 1989, 42; Kennell 1995, 11-14) must have entailed the parallel abandonment
of its female counterpart, which had previously leveled the upbringing of women from diverse backgrounds
and had emphasized, as we have seen, the essential contribution of all women to the community’s biological
and social reproduction. The aim of the revolutionary proposals of King Agis IV in the 240s was to reverse
many of the changes outlined above: to level out wealth through a redistribution of land and a cancellation of
debts, and to re-establish the primacy of citizen bonds through a restoration of the austere discipline and
common way of life. Most women of wealth lobbied strongly against the reforms, persuading King Leonidas
to take up their cause. Spartiate men too had their say: the poor through the Assembly, the rich through the
Council of Elders. The one element of the Spartiate population conspicuous by its absence from the historical
accounts, unable to air its separate voice, was the bulk of ordinary Spartiate women.
The contribution of women to the crisis of Spartiate society was, therefore, not an independent
phenomenon: neither a case of female dominance over the ostensible male rulers, as Aristotle asserted, nor of
feminine luxury undermining male austerity, as Plutarch implies. It was rather a product of the changing
roles of a minority of the female Spartiate population, women from wealthy households, rooted in
fundamental changes which affected the overall socio-economic character of Spartiate society.

20
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