Spartan Women [Paperback]

Sarah B. Pomeroy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195130677 | ISBN-13: 978-0195130676 | Publication Date: July 11, 2002 | Edition: First Edition

This is the first book-length examination of Spartan women, covering over a thousand years in the history of women from both the elite and lower classes. Classicist Sarah B. Pomeroy comprehensively analyzes ancient texts and archaeological evidence to construct the world of these elusive though much noticed females. Sparta has always posed a challenge to ancient historians because information about the society is relatively scarce. Most existing scholarship on Sparta concerns the military history of the city and its heavily male-dominated social structure--almost as if there were no women in Sparta. Yet perhaps the most famous of mythic Greek women, Menelaus' wife Helen, the cause of the Trojan War, was herself a Spartan. Written by one of the leading authorities on women in antiquity, Spartan Women reconstructs the lives and the world of Sparta's women, including how their status changed over time and how they held on to their surprising autonomy. Proceeding through the archaic, classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, Spartan Women includes discussions of education, family life, reproduction, religion, and athletics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Spartan Women is a book that all ancient historians and classicists should add to their reading lists and personal collections. Sarah B. Pomeroy is already a scholar of great reputation in women's studies in the classical world, and this book adds to her reputation as a trailblazer in this dynamic field. Pomeroy has created a new classic that I predict will be part of the academic canon for years to come." --HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

"Sarah Pomeroy's new book is a pioneering and important work, a thorough and painstaking study by perhaps the leading scholar of ancient Greek women's history. Thanks to this groundbreaking book, historians are now in a much better position than perhaps ever before to treat the daughters of Helen not as exemplars or myths but as real human beings." -American Historical Review

"The book makes a valuable contribution to ancient Greek history and will immediately take its rightful place as the standard work in any language on a major but astonishingly long-neglected topic.... Pomeroy's female-oriented interrogation of the record is one that needed to be made, and in so doing she has significantly advanced our understanding of a critical--and diagnostically interesting--chapter in the history of women."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Spartan Woman is a landmark in the history of ancient women because it attempts for the first time to offer an account of the lives of both elite and non-elite Spartan women and to do so by sifting through a very difficult body of evidence.... In Spartan Women, readers will find an exhaustive survey of the available information on the subject."--New England Classical Journal

"The world's top scholar on women in antiquity examines the lives of citizen women in militaristic Sparta.... Her analyses of women's health, education, fitness, wealth, leisure, self-image, social prominence, and religious power are cogent.... Pomeroy's book offers the best current account of the central role of women in Spartan society.... Highly recommended."--Choice

"Spartan Women is a masterly synthesis of its subject that is not only enriched by nearly a generation's accomplishments in the historiography of women, but also informed by a wise empathy for its subjects. An invaluable resource for students of antiquity, this book will also be provocative reading for anyone fascinated by the variegated textures of women's historical experiences."--Thomas J. Figueira, Rutgers University

"Drawing in part on approaches to women's history adapted by feminist historians, Sarah B. Pomeroy offers the most detailed study of Spartan women to date. Her thematically-organized chapters stress how Spartan women differed from their contemporaries, especially Athenians. Her appendix describing and evaluating the full range of our fragmentary historical, literary, and material sources illuminates the special challenge that she undertook in writing this book."--Helene P. Foley, Barnard College, Columbia University

"Spartan Women is the first full-length historical study of its elusive subject ever published. This is not surprising. The sources--meticulously laid out here in a wide-ranging appendix--are a historian's nightmare. Through this minefield Professor Pomeroy moves sure-footedly, armed with encyclopedic knowledge, a papyrologist's precision, speculative courage, and what Dr Johnson memorably described as 'a bottom of good sense.' No one will ever say the last word on any aspect of Spartan culture; but Spartan Womenis a wonderfully thorough, sane, and for the most part convincing exploration of a controversial topic."--Peter Green, University of Iowa

About the Author

Sarah B. Pomeroy is Distinguished Professor of Classics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (July 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195130677
• ISBN-13: 978-0195130676
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Being feminine - Spartan style, July 26, 2004

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D. Roberts "Hadrian12" (Battle Creek, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spartan Women (Paperback)

This is a one-of-a-kind exhaustive study on the lives of Laconian women. As Sparta was a closed society, not a whole lot is known about how the men lived, and even less is known about its female denizens. The sparse availability of primary sources on Spartan women makes any study of them rather difficult.

Sarah Pomeroy has consolidated just about everything we know, we think we know as well as what we might hypothosize about knowing about the lady Spartans. This book is a well-researched treatise on what their lives were, or at least could have been like some 2,500 years ago.

Ironically enough for a militaristic state, Spartan women enjoyed myriad freedoms and rights that were denied basically all other women of the classical age. As we look in hindsight, these factors weigh in to give them much more historical interest than women in other Greek city states. Pomeroy does an excellent job of delineating these various traits that separated them from alternative Greek social norms.

This book is highly recommended for both aficionados as well as persons interested in historical women's studies. Either way, this text has a wealth of information that will elucidate the lives of both Spartan women as well as Spartan men.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sarah Pomeroys' Spartan Women, November 8, 2009

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J. Lindeen - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spartan Women (Paperback)

In Archaic and Classical Greece (800 to 500, and 500 to 330 B.C.E), there was but one place in the Greek world where women were approximately equal to men: Sparta. Girls were provided with an education that, intellectually, was at least equivalent to that of boys. In contrast to Athens, where girls were "given in marriage" by age 15 by their male guardians to someone at least twice their age, Spartan women had a voice -- a stong one -- in agreeing to the man they would marry. Certainly life was difficult in those times, but women engaged in athletics, hunted in the mountains, and managed the family property when their husbands were away on frequent and extended military duty. Battle deaths for Spartan soldiers were so high in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries that from one-third to 40 percent of property in Sparta was owned by women. Sarah Pomeroy is a leading scholar of the topic and the period, her book is the leader in this field, and I was delighted to receive a copy of it promptly and at a fair price. I recommend it most highly.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars first-rate work, August 22, 2011

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doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spartan Women (Paperback)

Much has been written on Sparta, in both contemporary history (The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, Sparta), and popular historical fiction (300, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae.) While women are addressed ancillarily in these works, little has been written about them specifically. Pomeroy does a magnificent job in righting this.

There is a dearth of primary sources on Sparta in particular, let alone women in ancient Sparta. (The Histories, Revised (Penguin Classics) devotes some attention, although his observations are questionable, Lysistrata (Dover Thrift Editions) is considered somewhat prejudicial; The History of the Peloponnesian War: Revised Edition (Penguin Classics) discusses much of early Spartan history, but demonstrates a typcial Greek attitude to women by its absence; On Sparta (Penguin Classics) and PLUTARCH: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans (Complete and Unabridged) are the most referenced.) Using these sources, as well as art and sociological metrics, Pomeroy writes as complete and detailed a history of women in ancient Sparta as one is likely to find.

To the ancient Greeks, Spartan women were an analomy: they were educated equally to men, they were encouraged to speak up, they had property rights. As a result, many ancient sources were prejudicial in their treatment of them. Pomeroy places these differences within the broader Spartan social context, arguing that given Spartan culture (one that as a matter of state policy subverted individual wants to those of the collective and the state), the treatment of and attitude towards women not only makes sense, but is to be admired. Her discussion of the education of Spartan women and the social roles of wife and mother were the strongest chapters in the book. Her discussion of elite and working-class women (Spartan, Helot and perioikoi) was not as tightly supported.

For those interested in classical history or women's history, I highly recommend this work.