Athenians and Spartans

Athens and Sparta are the chief representatives of Ionian and Dorian ethnicity respectively. The primary sources for the women of these two cities in the classical period are more abundant by far than those for the women of other Greek cities. Women’s style of dress was used to characterize Dorians in general. Liddell & Scott define doriazo as ‘‘to dress like a Dorian girl, that is, in a single garment open at the side’’ and ‘‘to imitate the Dorians in life.’’ In other words the dictionary views Dorian ethnicity in terms of the dress or semi-nudity of Spartan women.

Obviously clothing, as well as the lack of it, marked differences between Spartans and other Greek women. Because Spartans spent time out of doors, they needed warm garments in some types of weather. The Dorian peplos was a heavier dress than the Ionian chiton, and had to be fastened on the shoulders by fibulae. This

Figure 17.3 Groom leads bride into the bridal chamber. He looks back at her but she casts her eyes down demurely. Athenian red figure loutrophoros. Sabouroff Painter. National Museum, Copenhagen, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities.

Figure 17.4 Spartan girl runner from Prizren or Dodona. Museum, London.

The Trustees of The British

Woolen dress is best called ‘‘Hellenic’’ for it had been worn by all Greek women in the archaic period (Hdt. 5.87, Harrison 1989: 42-4, 48). Like much else at Sparta, women’s fashions were conservative and austere compared to what Greek women were wearing in other cities. The special identity of Spartan women was more stable than most, due to Spartan xenophobia, endogamy, and lack of colonization. The light linen chitones of the Ionian style were new fashions in Athens. These dresses were made of imported fabric, reminiscent of Eastern luxury, and appropriate for citizen women living mostly indoors in seclusion, or worn in public by less respectable women. In Athenian art women are shown wearing either the Ionian chiton or the peplos, or both. Herodotos (5.87) explains that the change came about when a sole survivor of a battle returned to Athens and told the women that all their men had died. They killed the bearer of this devastating news with their pins, which were subsequently associated with aggression on the part of women. Thereafter the women were forbidden to wear fibulae, and instead wore the chiton that was sewn on the shoulders.

Figure 17.5 Hippodameia wearing woolen peplos pinned at the shoulders. East pediment, Olympia, second quarter of the fifth century. Olympia Archaeological Museum. Photo: Alison Frantz Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Figure 17.6 Scene of the women’s quarters showing a bride, her friends and family, and her guests. Athenian epinetron (vase placed over the knee when working wool). Circa 420. National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Photo TAP Service.

In fact the change in costume coincides with the loss of status and the increased seclusion ofAthenian women that I have posited for the late archaic period (Pomeroy 1975: 78). Indeed some of the jewelry dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis at Sparta resembles nails with very long spikes (Dawkins 1929). Wearing a Doric peplos meant always having a weapon to hand. Only when she was dressed in a man’s costume as a bride was a clothed Spartan woman disarmed. Regulations attributed to Lykourgos banned the use of gold, silver, and cosmetics at Sparta. Interestingly enough, it was the men who wore the only luxurious item of clothing: soldiers wore a short cloak colored by expensive crimson dye (Xenophon Lak. Pol. 11.3).

In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, produced in 411, a female delegate from each of the major cities participating in the Peloponnesian War comes to an assembly at Athens. Every woman embodies her ethnic stereotype. Even before she speaks, the Spartan representative is recognizable by her strapping physique, and agility. A life spent outdoors and good nutrition give her a clear complexion, not needing any artificial enhancement. The Athenian women are characterized as unreliable, self-indulgent, and interested in cosmetics and luxurious clothing. Their youth is encapsulated in a cursus honorum of religious duties which are ritual versions of domestic chores including weaving, grinding grain, and carrying baskets of butchers’ utensils (Lysistrata 870-4 Henderson). In contrast, the Spartan ambassador has a nostalgic vision of young girls racing like fillies beside the Eurotas (Aristophanes Lysistrata 641-5,130710 Henderson). The Athenian Lysistrata is intelligent and a good speaker, but like Athenian men, domineering, self-confident, and convinced of her right to act as leader of the group. The humor about the women (like that about the men) is often ethnically specific. The Athenians are eager to drink the wine, doubtless because it is not available to them daily as it was to Spartan women. Jokes about adultery are also directed against them. Plutarch reports that there was no adultery at Sparta, although of course he knew of two notorious cases of the king’s wife and the handsome stranger: Helen and Paris, and Timaia and Alkibiades. These, however, were exceptional.