Spartan Women

Rating:
Summary: Most interesting book I've read this year
Review: All those intriguing images of Spartan women from art and literature! Of course I wanted to know more about them. But how? Archaeologists and historians have interpreted such facts as survived, along with surviving propaganda written about them at the time – all of it in classical languages that I could not read – according to their own (and often quite male) biases. That is why I am so grateful for Sarah Pomeroy’s book. An expert on women and families in Ancient Greece, Pomeroy is also a resourceful scholar of the utmost integrity and common sense who works her way around and through the omissions and layers of bias to provide a portrait of Spartan women that is richer and more realistic than any hitherto available. This is the most interesting book I have read this year.

Rating:
Summary: Most interesting book I've read this year
Review: All those intriguing images of Spartan women from art and literature! Of course I wanted to know more about them. But how? Archaeologists and historians have interpreted such facts as survived, along with surviving propaganda written about them at the time – all of it in classical languages that I could not read – according to their own (and often quite male) biases. That is why I am so grateful for Sarah Pomeroy’s book. An expert on women and families in Ancient Greece, Pomeroy is also a resourceful scholar of the utmost integrity and common sense who works her way around and through the omissions and layers of bias to provide a portrait of Spartan women that is richer and more realistic than any hitherto available. This is the most interesting book I have read this year.

Rating:
Summary: Being feminine - Spartan style
Review: 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.