Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 119
It is even questionable whether Sparta was a polis in the strict sense
of the term, both because it did not have an urban center that was
comparable to Athens and because the five villages that it comprised
retained a measure of autonomy.
All that we know about the Spartans suggests that their way
of life was ideologically antithetical to that of most other Greek
communities—so much so that Herodotos in his history treats them
as something of an ethnographical oddity. The Spartans were antithetical
to other Greeks foremost in the fact that the needs of the
family were subordinated to the requirements of the state. The only
categories of Spartans who were accorded the distinction of being
honored with tombstones that recorded their names were soldiers
who died in battle and (probably) women who died in labor, evidently
because each had laid down their lives in the service of the
state. Second, Spartan women enjoyed more privileges and exercised
more freedom than their counterparts in other Greek communities,
largely no doubt because their role as childbearers was valued so
highly. Third, Sparta was extremely conservative, as we know from
the fact that its constitution remained unchanged for hundreds of
years. It was a constitution that originated in the seventh century
b.c.e. and was attributed to a legendary lawmaker named Lykourgos,
though it probably continued to evolve for some two hundred
years. Sparta’s conservatism was due partly to the fact that its servile
population, known as helots, were ethnically homogeneous and
thus more likely to revolt and partly to the fact that it only minimally
engaged in trade. Fourth, Sparta was a militaristic society whose primary
objective from the seventh century b.c.e. onward was to foster
a high degree of conformity and discipline in its citizenry, largely
at the expense of cultivating other values. It therefore differed radically
from Athenian society, to which it is unflatteringly contrasted
in Perikles’ Funeral Speech, notably when he states, “We have procured
many opportunities for the mind to refresh itself from toil, by
holding games and annual sacrifices, and the elegance of our private
dwellings is a source of pleasure to us, which helps to banish misery”—not
like the Spartans, the argument runs, who never take time
off from the daily grind (Thukydides 2.38.1).
Perikles’ view notwithstanding, there were a good many Greeks
who admired the Spartan system, which they celebrated for its
good order or law-abidingness (eunomia). Sparta’s eunomia was
reflected in the fact that it avoided tyranny and enjoyed political
harmony for some four hundred years. Whether eunomia was also
a judgment upon the conduct of its citizens is not clear, though in