Answer by Ellen Millender
Herodotus is actually one of our most important sources on Spartan women, albeit with a number of caveats. First, we have to remember that he, like most of our surviving sources on Spartan women, was not a Spartan and composed his history in the context of Athens’ long struggle with Sparta for hegemony in the Aegean. Although he was from Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, he was very likely influenced by fifth-century Athenian democratic ideology and the corresponding Athenian treatment of Sparta as a kind of ‘barbarized’ other. In addition, like many of our sources on Spartan women, he focuses on female members of the two royal dynasties, the Agiads and the Eurypontids.
Even with all of these warnings, Herodotus provides us with important details about the Lacedaemonians’ (i.e. the Spartans’) sexual and marital mores as well as on the social status of Spartan females. In his accounts of Sparta’s kings, for example, Herodotus suggests that Spartan males had control over matrimonial matters and that Spartan females had no more control over the marital process than their Athenian counterparts (5.39-40; 6.57.4, 61-63.1, 71.2). This evidence on royal marital practices supports the existence in Sparta of the kyrieia, the legal guardianship of a female by her nearest male relation, usually her father or his closest male heir before her marriage and then her husband. Herodotus, moreover, provides evidence of close-kin marriages arranged by both royal dynasties, such as the unions between the Agiad Anaxandridas II (reign c. 550-520) and his niece (5.39–42), between the Agiad Leonidas I (reign c. 490-480) and his half‐niece, Gorgo (7.205.1), and between Lampito, daughter of the Eurypontid king Leotychidas II (reign c. 491-469), and her half‐nephew, the future king Archidamos II (reign c. 469-428/7) (6.71.2).
This evidence on close-kin marriages is very important for a number of reasons, beginning with its support of the current scholarly belief that all Spartan women, and not just those of the royal houses, could inherit, possess, and use wealth in their own right through a process known as ‘universal female inheritance’. Spartan women’s ability to inherit even in the presence of male siblings – with their portion being half of what sons received – had important implications for their status and influence in Spartan society. Spartan women’s inheritance and possession of wealth made them valuable commodities on the Spartan marriage ‘market’, since the Spartiate male’s status and privileges as a citizen rested upon his mess dues and ultimately his possession of sufficient agriculturally‐productive property to make these monthly contributions. The dependence of citizenship status on the ownership of land and the consequent interest in acquisition and retention of wealth accounts for both royal dynasties’ close-kin marriages that primarily aimed at the concentration of property. Through such marriages, the Eurypontid and Agiad dynasties attempted to maintain and increase their political and economic power at the expense of one another as well as of other elite Spartiate families by means of marriage and inheritance.
While it is likely that Spartan women’s relative economic power and independence gave them a degree of influence and leverage in their respective households, Herodotus only recognizes such female influence in his various accounts of royal Spartan females. Their high birth and wealth together enabled them to acquire political and economic influence, which was essentially passive in nature, but which certain Spartan princesses and queens were able to translate into active interference in the political realm. One such female was Gorgo, the only child and heir of the powerful Agiad Cleomenes I (reign c. 520-490) and later the wife of Leonidas. According to Herodotus, this princess’s wealth and privileged position explains her marriage to Cleomenes’ successor, Leonidas I (7.205.1). Her obvious advantages might likewise account for her influence during her husband’s reign when, according to Herodotus, she decoded a message sent to Sparta regarding the Persians’ plans (7.239.4).
Herodotus, finally, also demonstrates how various Spartan queens influenced dynastic succession through their beauty (6.61–2), sexual activities (6.63, 65.3), and reproductive abilities (5.39–42.2; 6.52.2-7; 61.1–2). Together with his treatment of the Agiad princess Gorgo, these accounts suggest that female members of the royal houses had opportunities to exercise at least passive political influence thanks to the hereditary nature of Spartan kingship and the key roles that females necessarily played in marital alliances and reproduction. Whether or not the other Spartan royal women featured in Herodotus’ Histories were able to convert such dynastic and economic sway into real political influence over the Spartan kings is another matter.
Recommended further reading:
Millender, E. G., ‘Spartan Female Luxury? Wealth, Τρυφή, and Sparta’s “Loose” Women’. In S. Hodkinson and C. Gallou, eds., Luxury and Wealth in Sparta and the Peloponnese, 97-118. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2021.
Millender, E. G. ‘A Contest in Charisma: Cynisca’s Heroization, Spartan Royal Authority, and the Threat of Non-Royal Glorification’. In E. Koulakiotis and C. Dunn, eds., Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World: Discourses, Practices and Images, 34-63.Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
Millender, E. G. ‘Spartan Women’. In A. Powell, ed., A Companion to Sparta, 500-524. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018. (available online in most libraries)
Millender, E. G. ‘Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Woman’. In S. Hodkinson and A. Powell, eds., Sparta: New Perspectives, 355-91. London: Duckworth, 1999.
Paradiso, A. ‘Gorgo, la Spartana’. In N. Loraux, ed., Grecia al femminile, 107-22. Bari, 1993.
Powell, A. ‘Spartan Women Assertive in Politics?: Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenes’. In S. Hodkinson and A. Powell, eds., Sparta: New Perspectives, 393-419. London: Duckworth, 1999.
Thommen, L. ‘Spartanische Frauen’, MH 56 (1999), 129-49.
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