Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society Sex Lives of Spartans About this episode When you hear the word Sparta, what do you picture?
Well, put aside the images of the rippling six packs for just a moment, as there's a lot more to this workout-obsessed state of the ancient world than you might imagine.
Joining Kate today to get to know the Spartans is the master of all things Ancient Greece, Helen King. You can check out Helen's book, Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies, here https://profilebooks.com/work/immaculate-forms/.
What were the Spartans views on same-sex relationships? Were they really as ripped as 300 made out? And did Spartan women invent the mini skirt?
This episode was edited by Nick Thomson and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media.
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Transcript 9,256 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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2:24 Kate Lister? Hello my lovely Betwixters! How the hell are you doing? Well, I'm fine, thank you very much for asking. And we are both here together to listen to Betwixter Sheets. But I do have to let you know, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects that you should be an adult too. And we have to tell you that, even though, quite frankly, you should have [bleep] worked out by now that this is a podcast of an adult nature. But, if you hadn't, well, that fair do's warning was for you. Right, on with the show!
3:00 Kate Lister? I don't know how your morning is playing out, but I am back in ancient Greece, seeing how the next generation of Spartan fighters' training is coming along.
3:10 Kate Lister? It's pretty brutal, but certainly more brutal than a zumba class, that's for sure. There's a whole lot of pain and endurance going on, and some of them are as young as seven. I mean, come on, lads, take a day off. And it's not just the fellas either, Spartan women are pretty hench too, you know. But what was all this excessive military training in aid of, anyway? With all this sweat and machismo, how did Spartan society take to same-sex relationships? Well, stick around and we will find out.
3:49 Speaker 06 What are you a calling man?
3:50 Speaker 07 Oh, money, of course.
3:52 Speaker 08 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:54 Speaker 07 I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.
4:06 Speaker 08 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
4:09 Speaker 09 Goodness, what beautiful time! Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.
4:17 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Let's address the elephant in the room right away. We've all seen the film 300 and all of those rippling biceps and abs. And frankly, if that's all you know about Spartan culture, you may not want to keep listening, you may want to hold on to that fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but was any of that based on what really happened to Spartans in ancient Greece? Did they really look that good? Did their elite views of what the human body is capable of influence their views on sex and sexuality? And did the Spartan woman invent the miniskirt? Joining me today is a friend of the show and an absolute master of all things ancient and Greek, Professor Helen King, and she is going to help us get to know the Spartans
5:02 Kate Lister? a little bit better. Shields and spears are ready, guys, let's do this.
5:12 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, it's only Helen King, how are you doing?
5:18 Speaker 10 I'm doing great, thanks, Kate.
5:20 Kate Lister? Well, thank you so much for coming back because we are going to talk about, this is a fascinating subject, the Spartans. Possibly of all the Greeks, of all the Greek culture, they have got that reputation, do I want to say sexy? I might say sexy, kind of like warrior-like, and maybe I'm just thinking of 300.
5:43 Speaker 10 We're all thinking of 300, we've never recovered from seeing 300.
5:48 Kate Lister? Is this a reputation that is well deserved? Were they a particularly sexy race? John, I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm getting well ahead of myself. We should first of all start with, before we get to 300 and were they sexy, who were they? Who were the Spartans?
6:03 Speaker 10 Okay, well, that's a great question. So the Spartans are just one of the Greek city-states. They're one of the big famous ones from classical Greece, the sort of 5th century to 4th century period, and they're the big rivals of Athens.
6:19 Speaker 10 So it's always Athens versus Sparta, but then Athens and Sparta unite together with other Greek city-states against Persia, who's like the really big enemy. As if you've seen 300, of course, the Persian king is the guy with all the piercings, uh, which are not very historical, but they're quite fun. So it's sort of Athens versus Sparta, the big enemies, but then sometimes they'll unite against Persia as the even bigger enemy.
6:46 Kate Lister? Right.
6:46 Speaker 10 That sort of summarizes it. So they're basically like any other, they're like any other Greek city-state, you know, they have their own territory, they defend it, they have their own army, they will sometimes unite with other city-states against another one, because they're always in flux, you know, Greek history is all about different city-states overcoming each other. The thing about Sparta is we actually haven't got a lot of archaeological evidence for it, rather less than for some other parts of Greece.
7:11 Kate Lister? I was gonna ask, does it still exist today? Can you still?
7:14 Speaker 10 It does, yeah. It does, it does still exist today, but it's not like Athens, where you go and you've got the Parthenon on the Acropolis, you've got all the big stuff. Modern Sparta is quite low-key, and that's one of the problems, because in Athens, they're always digging things up to build a new underground station system or something. So they keep finding stuff, archaeological stuff. Sparta has not been excavated to the same extent. Therefore, we don't know as much about it in terms of its material culture, its artifacts, its art and so on.
7:44 Kate Lister? And when were they knocking around, the Spartans? When was their heyday?
7:49 Speaker 10 The heyday seems to be anything from the 7th century B.C. up to the 5th century. So we know a lot more about them in the 5th century, because that's when Athens and Sparta went to war, so they start to talk about each other more, or at least Athens talks about Sparta. The other problem with Sparta is we haven't got much in the way of texts from Sparta, they don't write their history. We've only got what Athens says about it.
8:13 Kate Lister? Oh, and they were always fighting each other. That's a tricky one.
8:17 Speaker 10 Bit of a bias issue there, I think. But what the Spartans appear to have had was an ancestral lawgiver, a guy called Lycurgus, who was supposed to be responsible for giving them all their customs and laws and everything, sometime in the distant, distant past. We don't know anything about him, except we do have a Life of Lycurgus by the Roman writer Plutarch, who was writing in the Roman Empire, so centuries ahead.
8:44 Kate Lister? Right.
8:44 Speaker 10 And quite where he got his information from remains a mystery. So there's a sort of a myth of this lawgiver who sets up the whole system in Sparta. We don't know how much of that has got any historical accuracy, or indeed when a lot of it was constructed as a story. So there's a really big source problem, which we'll keep coming up against.
9:04 Kate Lister? And I suppose when you've got a source problem, it creates a vacuum into which you can put any old thing that sounds interesting and flashy. They have a reputation that when you say something Spartan today, we mean like there's no frills, it's basic, but a bit more than that, like it's rough and brutal, like, oh, it's Spartan. Where did that reputation come from? And is that deserved?
9:28 Speaker 10 We're back to the source problem. So because we really don't have much in the way of Spartan artwork, we tend to think, oh, yeah, they didn't really like culture. They liked simplicity and sort of raw stuff. But actually, there are a few artefacts from ancient Sparta that survive, like some really beautiful mirror handles. Because ancient mirrors were sort of burnished metal and decorated handles. They were gorgeous. And you think, well, that doesn't look like Sparta. And then things like poetry and theatre, which we associate mostly with Athens. We do have names for a couple of Spartan poets. It's just that we don't have the evidence. The only poet we have evidence for is a guy called Alcmen.
10:10 Speaker 10 And he's most famous for songs which maidens would sing, young girls would sing as they sort of learnt to dance and sort of generally show off their gorgeousness. So dancing, there, you see, Spartans did dancing. They weren't that Spartan.
10:27 Kate Lister? No, they don't seem to have been that Spartan. So who, who's saying that then? Is that an Athens thing? Is that
10:34 Speaker 10 Yeah.
10:34 Kate Lister? them defining themselves against the Spartans? Like, we're all luxurious and beautiful and kind of sexy and they're just kind of, you know, living in mud huts?
10:44 Speaker 10 Yeah, exactly. It's, it's the Athenians trying to create an other against which they can set themselves. We're what a system should be like. We're a proper civilisation. They are just sort of raw, basic, mud huts, you know, crude. And of course, the other thing there is that the Athenian view of Sparta, which again, we have inherited, is that they're all about the army.
11:05 Kate Lister? Yes.
11:06 Speaker 10 The simplicity is all about military strength and not faffing about with things like poetry and theatre, because you've got to just get on with being a soldier.
11:16 Kate Lister? How true is that then? Because if anyone knew about fighting the Spartans, it would be the Athenians. So even though they're biased, they, they might have a bit of a insider knowledge of that one then. And they do have that reputation as being a bunch of badasses who you wouldn't want to come up against in a fight.
11:34 Speaker 10 Yeah. And I think, I think that's absolutely right. So I think that the Athenians were in awe of how good the Spartans were
11:41 Kate Lister? Okay.
11:41 Speaker 10 at war and therefore had to find some sort of theory as to why they were so good.
11:45 Kate Lister? Oh, yeah, oh, I see.
11:45 Speaker 10 Arts of being, yeah, arts of being, they devoted their entire lives to it.
11:49 Kate Lister? That's why they kicked our asses. Not, not just
11:52 Speaker 10 Exactly.
11:52 Kate Lister? we're not very good.
11:53 Speaker 10 Exactly. They were just, you know, they'd been training since the age of seven, allegedly.
11:57 Kate Lister? Does anyone else tell us anything about this military side of Spartans? Is it just Athenian writers?
12:03 Speaker 10 It's the Romans too, later on. The Romans were also very hooked on Sparta as a concept of a sort of totally military society. And it's interesting, there's a sort of odd flirtation with the idea of the military society. It's like, it's a really good thing. Really good at it, but it's not what we really want to be. That's not what being a proper human being should be about. We should have art and culture and theatre. It's a very difficult relationship there. They want to be like them, but they don't want to do the things that they do to get there.
12:34 Kate Lister? It's a very unfair the question I'm about to ask you, but how much of this do you think is true? Do you think that the Spartans really were this military, army-obsessed group of people? Or do you think that that is largely propaganda?
12:48 Speaker 10 I think they probably were. I know all we have from the ancient world is from other people talking about Spartans, but nevertheless, when you think about what we do know-ish, you know, it's always an ish here, there's a consistent story here and they were very good at fighting.
13:05 Kate Lister? Yes.
13:06 Speaker 10 As something went badly wrong in the fourth century and they lost a major battle to another city-state, Thebes, in three seven one B C, at the Battle of Luchtra. That was the big no for Sparta. They'd been doing really well till then and they then lost. So another thing which people in the ancient world, and indeed modern scholars, are quite interested in was why did it suddenly go wrong? And again, that's hard to answer. Is it just the Thebans got better at fighting? Or that the Spartans somehow lost it? And one of the things about this is the Spartans had a sort of class of people called the Spartiates, who were like the hardcore citizen Spartans. And there were not that many of them by the
13:50 Speaker 10 time that we get to the Battle of Luchtra in three seven one. There were only around a thousand, apparently, of sort of hardcore Spartans who'd had the full military training from childhood.
14:00 Kate Lister? Right.
14:00 Speaker 10 Whereas before, sort of end of the fifth century, four nineties, we're told there are around eight thousand of them. What was going on there? Now, they had to have some sort of property qualification. Was it that they just hadn't got enough property to qualify as a Spartiate? Were the sort of criteria? Too narrow, so not enough people qualified. Or was actually some sort of decline thing going on. So very hard to know, but something went a bit wrong by three, seven, one.
14:28 Kate Lister? So what was the sort of the power structure in Sparta then? I'd assumed that there was just one person, probably a king who was in charge and everyone else was a minion.
14:36 Speaker 10 It's a real mess, actually, Kate. It's a mixture of the three types of constitution in the ancient world, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy. So monarchy, yes, there's a king, but actually there are two. There are two royal families. I know, two royal families. So their concepts of whose family and who isn't really matter, which is funny in a society that's trying to play down the family. But there it really does matter. So two kings, then there's the sort of oligarchy element. So the Spartiates, the ruling elite, the full citizens, if you like, and they don't believe in elections. They do things by lot. They just pick a name at random for the magistrates, the ephors.
15:17 Speaker 10 They also run it. And then there's the democracy element, which is the sort of equality of all the Spartiates, though none is more equal than another. And also things like the public messes, the eating together in your barracks, sort of all chaps together, all equal. So there's a mixture, monarchy, aristocracy, well oligarchy, really.
15:38 Kate Lister? That is a mess, isn't it?
15:39 Speaker 10 It is a mess, yes.
15:41 Kate Lister? And did the two kings, were they related? Were they like brothers?
15:44 Speaker 10 Allegedly, it's always allegedly. The reason why there were two was that an earlier king, like a long, long time ago, had had two sons and couldn't decide which one was the heir. So he made them both. So they're sort of, they are related, but yeah, that was a long time ago.
16:00 Kate Lister? Sounds insanely complicated. No wonder they were so angry all the time.
16:05 Kate Lister? When you think about sort of how they're they're perceived in general culture and certainly within films, there's this idea that, and you can tell me how true this is, that at the age of like, I don't know, 10 days old or something, the little boys were taken away from their mum and they were just thrown into this military service and then they were just basically kicked by big men until they were better at fighting. And all the women, if they cared at all, were just like. Get on with it, you bunch of Jessies. But when you actually think about it, that isn't actually a sound basis for a system of government. You can't have a system where every single man is dragged away from home. I mean, well, maybe you could, but does that just mean the women were in charge? Was every single man, all of them, gone off doing military stuff?
16:48 Speaker 10 Well, that's what the Athenians would have us believe.
16:50 Kate Lister? Yeah.
16:51 Speaker 10 The whole thing rests on, these guys are so busy doing the fighting and the training, that they let women run things in a way they don't in other Greek city-states.
16:59 Kate Lister? Right.
17:00 Speaker 10 And that clearly, for the Athenians, that is a bad thing. Madness. Because Athenians think women, women don't have the vote, women have the place, you know, whereas the stories that Athenians tell about Spartan women have them as really badass women who are running the show because their men are too busy doing the fighting. It's probably, none of that's probably true. They also had a group called the helots. And the helots were like serfs, somewhere between serfs and slaves.
17:27 Kate Lister? Where are the slaves in all of this? Are they being trained in the military as well?
17:31 Speaker 10 Nope, absolutely not. So they're getting on with the everyday stuff and actually keeping the place going. So we don't know who they are. The helots, they might be another racial group that was subjugated by the Spartans, but they're basically not proper Spartans. And they do the work. And there's another lot who are sort of traders and people from other cities who happen to live in Sparta. And they're also involved in running the economy and so on.
17:57 Kate Lister? Yeah.
17:57 Speaker 10 So there's actually rather more going on to it than the Spartiates themselves. But allegedly, all the Spartiates are equal and they're all fighting together. And as you say, they start young. The story has them going to learn to fight from the age of seven and basically been torn away from their mothers and sent into barracks. Some scholars would say, yeah, but they probably went home in the evenings, which isn't quite the same.
18:23 Kate Lister? They left that out.
18:25 Speaker 10 Yes, so it's hard to know whether, you know, just how totally single minded this focus on military training was because of the nature of the sources. There's also an earlier stage, which is found in lots of Greek cities, that if they were not looking fit and healthy as babies, they could be thrown off the rock. Yeah, the throwing off the rock story. Now, the trouble with that is that the rocking question, there is no evidence of vast numbers of small bones at the bottom.
18:52 Kate Lister? Oh.
18:53 Speaker 10 So no evidence that, no, it is good, it is good, but it's not good for the sources. So no evidence that the place is full of evidence of bones. So actually, maybe they didn't throw them off. But then Athens too, you know, had a ceremony where shortly after birth, the father has to lift the child up from the earth to show that he's prepared to rear this baby, that it doesn't look iffy to him. So they're all quite into this. So this sort of, I don't know, eugenics, birth control after the event or something. This is actually a Greek thing rather than a Spartan thing.
19:28 Kate Lister? I've certainly, it's one of the first things I ever read about the Spartans as a small child, and it really upset me. I've just like, I'd never heard anything quite like it, was that they just left babies out on the hillside if they just didn't like the look of them. But like, when you actually think about that, that's a bit of a mad practice, if it's just any baby that you're like, nah, because babies are very precious commodities, especially if you're in the military. So I've always wondered just how true that was, or if that was part of that Spartan mythology of like, we're so hardcore, we're just gonna kill babies.
19:59 Speaker 10 Yeah, or it's the Athenians saying that the Spartans are so hardcore, but then the Athenians are doing it too. Exposure of infants all over the Greek world, if you don't think they're going to make it, is sort of normal. On the other hand, we also have evidence from things like Athenian vase painting of people with quite obvious bodily issues who were nevertheless alive. You know, they hadn't been thrown off a rock or thrown out onto the hillside or something. So there were people with disabilities in antiquity.
20:29 Kate Lister? Yeah. And there was still a character in the 300 film, wasn't there, who had a disability, had a hunchback. Not that that has to be historically accurate, but I'm just, just as we're on the conversation.
20:39 Speaker 10 You're getting us towards 300, aren't you, slowly but steadily?
20:42 Kate Lister? I can't help it. They're just so pretty. They have such nice legs.
20:47 Kate Lister? So the kind of idea that like every single man was out training all day long and just being beaten up. It's somewhat true, but probably if you went to Sparta, there would be like lots of men there. Maybe it was like a certain class of Spartans that were doing it. The other thing they have a reputation for is that it was brutal, this training. It was, I think I read somewhere, like when I was a kid, that they would drink blood and vinegar.
21:10 Speaker 10 Okay, I haven't met that one, but.
21:12 Kate Lister? No, that was probably like in the Lady Bird book of Greek history or something mad, but I do remember reading going ew.
21:17 Speaker 10 It's the sort of story you'd tell about Spartans, isn't it really?
21:20 Kate Lister? Yes.
21:22 Speaker 10 So the absolute classic one about the brutality has to be the story of the young, young boy in training. He's been sent off to do his military training. And one of the things they were taught to do was to steal things, which is an interesting form of education. We don't tend to get that today. They were taught to steal and the idea was that they could sort of live in the wild because they could find food somewhere. You know, sort of survival skills. And this young boy, for some reason, has got a fox, don't ask. I mean, I don't know why you put a fox up your, well, up your jumper, basically. He's got a fox under his clothing and they're saying, have you got something there? And he's like, no, absolutely not, nothing to see here. I'm fine. And meanwhile, the fox is busy biting him to death.
22:08 Speaker 10 And this is praised because the boy never cries out.
22:11 Kate Lister? Wow.
22:13 Speaker 10 Yes, so sticking a fox up your jumper and letting it eat you. You just don't react and that's the typical Spartan sort of thing.
22:23 Kate Lister? Wow. Part of the training as well was that they had to kill a slave. Is that true or is that my Lady Bird book of Greek history?
22:30 Speaker 10 It's, there's, there is evidence, this is group, the helots, the sort of serf type slaves that are the subjugated group in Sparta. There was supposed to be an annual helot cull where the Spartiates go out and just kill a few helots.
22:45 Kate Lister? Okay.
22:46 Speaker 10 Hmm. But again, you, it's not terribly wise move, is it? Bearing in mind that they're doing all the work.
22:52 Kate Lister? They're expensive. Yeah, you need them.
22:54 Speaker 10 You do need them.
22:56 Kate Lister? Oh, right, okay. So they're sent away and how long are they training for? From the age of seven until?
23:03 Speaker 10 Until they drop dead, really.
23:05 Kate Lister? They drop dead.
23:06 Speaker 10 I'm not sure they get a retirement. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure they get a retirement age. Once a spartiate, always a spartiate, really. The Spartiates are supposed to all eat together in a sort of public mess.
23:18 Kate Lister? Right.
23:18 Speaker 10 So it's like a barracks.
23:20 Kate Lister? Yeah.
23:20 Speaker 10 Sort of army system. They go through a special education system called the agoge, which is supposed to be playing down the importance of family and playing up the importance of state.
23:31 Kate Lister? Like a cult?
23:31 Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, it is really, it is. But again, that's what the Athenians are telling us. We don't know if it was actually a lot more fun if you were in it. I don't know.
23:45 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Helen after this short break.
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26:47 Kate Lister? Let's talk about Gaius then, because that's... They weren't allowed to get married, were they, the men, until quite late on? I'm going to say 30, but I might have just imagined that. So all these boys in together in their barracks, what was their attitude to same-sex relationships?
27:06 Speaker 10 Well, now, again, it depends who you believe.
27:08 Kate Lister? Yeah.
27:09 Speaker 10 So there is, there's evidence in terms of what other people say about them. Whenever I say there's evidence, it's not from Sparta. It's from someone else talking about Spartans, right? So there's evidence that they had sex with the older men and the younger boys, because of course, that's also what happens in Athens.
27:25 Kate Lister? Yeah.
27:25 Speaker 10 In Athens, there is an institutionalized pederasty, basically, where an older man and a younger boy have a relationship. And it's a sort of educational relationship where the older man teaches the young boy stuff about life, life, the universe and everything, acts as a mentor, a guide, and also maybe has sex with them, although whether that's actually anal or whether it's between the thighs is another one of those tricky ones. You know, how do you tell from a vase painting what, where everything actually is, you know?
27:59 Kate Lister? And it's not shameful, there's, I mean, today there would be pitchforks and, you know, there'd be an absolute outcry about, about this and rightly so. But I'm just trying to get an understanding of, this wasn't like it was an open secret or people were ashamed of it. This was completely normal.
28:15 Speaker 10 Completely normal, yes, exactly. So, so in Athens, the point was that the young boy would eventually grow up and it's when, usually when he gets facial hair, that's, he's considered like he's going to be a man now. And then you stop the relationship. I know, I know. Then you stop the relationship and then he will go on to have relationships with women and eventually to marry. And then he will also find a young boy who will be his sort of protege. So it's that sort of system and that's Athens. So if Athens is saying, well, Sparta does this, yeah, Athens does it too. It has been argued by modern scholars that what's going on with the Spartan system is some sort of idea that the sperm of the older man is somehow making the younger boy big and strong.
28:58 Kate Lister? Oh my god.
29:00 Speaker 10 Sorry. Sorry, Kate.
29:03 Kate Lister? That's, that's a man thought that one up. That's, all right, go on, explain, explain to me the logic of that one then. There's always a logic, no matter how mad.
29:12 Speaker 10 Well, you know, it's this, again, we're back to the ancient Greek medical things, which I've talked about with you before. So the idea that semen is the superior fluid of the human body. You start with menstrual blood, which is a bit weird, and then that gets cooked in the body by your internal heat to make breast milk when you're feeding a baby. But if you're a man, you can heat it even more because men's bodies are hot and it becomes semen. So it becomes this superior fluid. And if you pass it on to someone else, that's got to be somehow good for them.
29:42 Kate Lister? Right, okay. Honest, my god. Right, so this is what they're doing. It's all completely normal. Can I ask, where are women featuring in this all boys together, my semen's magic world?
29:56 Speaker 10 Well now, so we've said already, women are powerful in Sparta, according to the Athenians, and that is supposed to be, according to the Athenians, one reason why Sparta is a bad thing.
30:07 Kate Lister? Terrible.
30:07 Speaker 10 You know, there are all these men busy fighting and the women have too much power. When the men and the women get together, marriage, this gets a bit tricky. So we've also got sources that say that there's a special marriage ritual where the bride shaves her head, dresses as a man.
30:25 Kate Lister? Right.
30:26 Speaker 10 And then her husband comes in to see her in the dark, which, yeah, could be interpreted to mean he's sort of more used to boys than he is girls.
30:35 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
30:36 Speaker 10 I'm sorry.
30:37 Kate Lister? No.
30:38 Speaker 10 I'm sorry.
30:38 Kate Lister? Oh, could you even imagine having that conversation with your fiance? You want me to do what?
30:44 Speaker 10 I think not, I think not. So, so there's, as an idea, a Spartan marriage is somehow not like normal marriage, Athenian marriage, you know, man, woman, negotiations between the two families. But even there, in Athenian marriage, the classic image on Vaz's painting is of the man clutching the wrist of the wife as he sort of leads her away, like, they're not holding hands, he's grabbing her by the wrist and pulling. So there's a sort of violence thing going on there. But then there's other things with the wife. So there's also stories that men would sneak out to impregnate their wives, sneak out from the barracks, get home secretly in the dark, you know, nip in, have a quickie, and then sneak back again.
31:26 Speaker 10 And the, the thing that we're told by Athenians here about why they do that is because if you don't have too much sex, your semen, here we go again, is stronger and your, because it's stronger, it'll make better babies.
31:41 Kate Lister? Right.
31:42 Speaker 10 So sneaking out to see the wife for a quickie, not very often, is going to lead to better babies. So again, we're on to eugenics, we're on to how to make really strong soldiers.
31:52 Kate Lister? Interesting, so they would be married and he'd still be in the army?
31:57 Speaker 10 Yes, absolutely, you're not going to get out of it for marriage.
32:00 Kate Lister? Military wives then?
32:01 Speaker 10 Military wives.
32:04 Speaker 10 Today we have military wives' choirs. Interestingly, Spartan women do a certain amount of song and dance as far as we can see.
32:10 Kate Lister? Do they?
32:11 Speaker 10 Yeah, so there's definitely some dancing going on.
32:13 Kate Lister? Okay, so I'm trying to wonder what it would be like. So if the men are all, you know, my semen is magical and special, would you like some? Is there any evidence, I ask in vain hope, that the women were having sex with one another? Is there any lesbian evidence at all?
32:29 Speaker 10 There are little suggestions lurking in the sources that women were also, because they were all around together, the men were rare. So what's a girl going to do? There are sources that claim that it's both sexes who are doing this.
32:42 Kate Lister? Oh, that's interesting because the evidence of women having sex with each other is pretty rare in the ancient world.
32:49 Speaker 10 It is, and it tends to be allegations rather than evidence. But, yeah. Oh, and then there's the group marriage. You mustn't forget the group marriage.
32:57 Kate Lister? Group marriage?
32:58 Speaker 10 Group marriage. There's been a suggestion that you should call it group marriage. I'm not sure it's really groups, but men could go out and get another woman pregnant other than their wife if the husband gave permission. So you say, you as a bloke say, really like the look of your wife, you know, any chance? And the husband would be able to say, yeah, sure, go for it. You seem like a nice guy.
33:21 Kate Lister? Why, why, why, why?
33:23 Speaker 10 Well, it's reducing the family, I think. That's what the sources from the Athenians and the Romans are trying to tell us, that this society doesn't really do family in the way that everybody else does. So it's like, we're in marriage, yeah, they have it, but it's not like our marriage.
33:38 Kate Lister? It's kind of weird.
33:39 Speaker 10 It's kind of weird. It's all kind of weird. And you could also, if you, if you couldn't get your wife pregnant, you could sort of pick a man and say, you look like you could do the job, you know, you look like you've got the magic semen. Would you like to come in and just do it for my wife? And that was fine. So I think this is again saying that they don't do the family properly.
33:57 Kate Lister? Okay. I'm leaning towards Athenian propaganda, but I mean, I could, I could be horribly wrong with that one. But let's talk about Spartan women in general, because they seem to have fascinated the rest of Greece and the ancient, well, the Romans certainly had a thing about them. They're kind of fetishized at the same time as being like, oh my God, this is awful. Like they're doing stuff and talking out loud. It's terrible. What is going on there? How are they perceived? Because you do get the sense that they were pretty hot.
34:28 Speaker 10 Well, so one of the great sources here is from the Roman Empire, Plutarch, sayings of Spartan women. He collected things Spartan women say. Okay. Now, if you bear in mind that Spartan attitude to words is quite interesting. So you talked about Spartan meaning basic, primitive, whatever, laconic, and the area around Sparta is Laconia. So this is the same thing. Laconic is Spartan. Laconic means that you just don't use very many words. You say something in a really short, pithy way. So the words of Spartan women, or the alleged words, have been preserved. And they're things like, "Come home with your shield or on it." Yes. "We are the only women who give birth to men." That's a good soundbite.
35:12 Speaker 10 It's not bad, is it? So this is the sort of thing, soundbites, laconic soundbites are really a speciality here. So that's the sort of thing Spartan women are supposed to say. They uphold the status quo. Right. They don't resist it. They're actually even more into the military culture than the men are. Yeah, yeah. Which is saying something. So yeah, they're very intermilitary. They're also supposedly have lots of knowledge about bodies. Okay. This is one of those, again, really interesting claims, you will love this, abortion, right? Right. Basic method of contraception in the ancient world, after the event, abortion. So there's
35:52 Speaker 10 this very famous play by Aristophanes, La Sistrata, in which the women sort of go on strike because the men are just failing to bring a war to an end. And there's a character in that called Lampeito, which is a Spartan name. And Lampeito says she can touch her buttocks with her feet when she jumps. Right. Now, don't try this at home, listeners.
36:17 Speaker 10 Well, I don't know, maybe you maybe you will, but it sounds challenging to me. So this is actually about doing a dance that she's showing. She's really fit. Spartan women are fit. You'd have to be. Hyperfit. Yeah. So she's saying, "We are really strong women. It's not just we're the women who give birth to men. We do that because we're really strong." Yeah, yeah. Good thigh muscles, that's what Spartan women have. So she's just saying that in a dancing context. "Look, I can do this thing. I'm really good at it." But then there's also a medical text, Hippocratic medical text, which talks about a slave girl who became pregnant.
36:52 Speaker 10 And she was employed as an entertainer, so we don't know whether that means a sex worker, probably. And because she was pregnant, she knew she wouldn't be able to do her job. So she went to her employer, who I assume is a slave owner, and said, look, I got pregnant the last time I did this. And the mistress of this enslaved woman goes to a family member who happens to be a Hippocratic doctor and says, what do I do? And the doctor says, tell her to jump up and down with her heels touching her buttocks. So the girl, I know, I know. So the girl does it and something plops out.
37:28 Kate Lister? Oh, no. Oh, right.
37:30 Speaker 10 Oh, she's only supposed to have been pregnant for six days. So it's absolutely no way, right?
37:35 Kate Lister? Yeah, yeah.
37:36 Speaker 10 Whatever plops out is supposed to look like the inside of an egg. Goodness knows what the Hippocratic doctor who witnesses this is supposed to be seeing. But people then link that with Lempito in the play, jumping up and down, and say, ah, this maneuver for abortion is called the Lacedaemonian leap. And Laconia, area where Sparta is, Lacedaemonian, another word for Spartan, the Lacedaemonian leap. So if you Google Lacedaemonian leap, you will find people saying, oh, Hippocrates describes the Lacedaemonian leap. Well, he doesn't. He talks about one girl jumping up and down. But then people have subsequently linked that to the play and said, oh, yeah, it's
38:17 Speaker 10 a Spartan woman who does it. So Spartan women are really good at this. They can control fertility.
38:23 Kate Lister? Wow. Do we have any evidence, not that they're doing this, this leapy thing, that sounds bonkers, but that they, that the Spartan women were more aware of medicine and better awareness of their body than anyone else?
38:36 Speaker 10 Well, again, if we go back to that Plutarch sayings of Spartan women collection, there's one in there about a young girl who's a virgin loses her virginity and decides to bring on an abortion and does it so quietly, no one realizes she's doing it. So it's like that boy with the fox up the jumper.
38:53 Kate Lister? Wow.
38:54 Speaker 10 It's that bearing pain without actually showing pain. That's what Spartans are known for.
39:07 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Helen after this short break.
39:24 Kate Lister? Hello Betwixters, I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
39:55 Speaker 04 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is, it's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
40:41 Kate Lister? Is it true that Spartan women were buried as warriors if they died during childbirth? Or have I mixed that up with someone else?
40:48 Speaker 10 No, you've got it because there's this basic parallel between women who die in childbirth and men who die in war as equivalent. And that, again, is a Greek thing. To actually bury them like that is another matter, who knows? But the idea of those are the two ways that a man and a woman defend their country. Women produce babies, more soldiers. Men die in battle. So it isn't really a Spartan thing. It's actually what all Greeks do. It's just that the Spartans are used to sort of big it up. So remember, it's not just people who think Sparta is really weird, who are trying to defend Athens as the proper civilized place. There are also people who think, who live in Athens and think Athens is a bit rubbish.
41:33 Kate Lister? Yeah.
41:33 Speaker 10 And we could do a lot better if people liked Sparta. So there's always people who are Athenians who go and stay in Sparta, have friends in Sparta, hang out in Sparta, live in Sparta, because they think it's better.
41:46 Kate Lister? Yeah.
41:47 Speaker 10 So the the opposition between the two is is quite interestingly connected.
41:52 Kate Lister? And Spartan women were said to be able to exercise, weren't they? They would they would have their keep fit regimes as well, possibly in the nip.
42:01 Speaker 10 In the nip, indeed. So again, one of the few things we have from Sparta in terms of artefacts is this beautiful little statuette of a young girl who could be dancing, could be running, hard to know, her legs are sort of like she's on the move and she's got a really short skirt on and one breast bare. And this thing about the short skirt, lots and lots of sources talk about the Spartans as women exercised wearing this short thing. They were known as thigh flashes, which is rather wonderful. Spartan women are thigh flashes.
42:36 Kate Lister? Wow.
42:37 Speaker 10 They wear the short skirt and sometimes, yeah, they will exercise completely in the nude. And the trouble with that is, it's such an image. It's a good excuse to show naked women, right?
42:47 Kate Lister? Yeah.
42:47 Speaker 10 You know, that's, there's an awful lot of those. So that means we have fairly modern works of art, like there's one by Degas showing Spartan girls exercising and he's got them in the nude, because it's a great excuse to show naked girls.
43:00 Kate Lister? Yeah.
43:01 Speaker 10 So, yeah, who knows where the truth is there? But again, the the purpose of the exercising is not because they want to be sportswomen or because they just want to do it because it's fun. The purpose of the exercise, according to our ancient sources, is always to have better babies, stronger babies.
43:19 Kate Lister? Yeah.
43:20 Speaker 10 It's all about the military again.
43:21 Kate Lister? Build that pelvic floor.
43:23 Speaker 10 Build that pelvic floor, yes.
43:25 Kate Lister? Is it significant?
43:28 Kate Lister? Is it significant then that Helen of Troy was actually Helen of Sparta? She was Spartan, the face that launched a thousand ships.
43:38 Speaker 10 Yeah, it's quite a shock to the system, isn't it? Because you're brought up on this idea of Spartan as primitive and basic and, you know, ugly, horrible. And then you find out that the most beautiful woman in the world was actually from Sparta. Wow, those exercise regimes are clearly doing them good.
43:54 Kate Lister? Yes, they must have done, right? I mean, is that, I mean, Sparta sounds like it was known for beautiful women, or at least women that were, you know, they exercised, they took care of their bodies and they were depicted as such as well.
44:08 Speaker 10 Yes, and think back to the fact we actually have mirrors from ancient Sparta. You know, they cared what they looked like, they looked at themselves. It's the more vain, maybe, than what we think.
44:19 Kate Lister? Yeah.
44:19 Speaker 10 It's fascinating, Spartan women are doing pretty well here.
44:22 Kate Lister? They are, aren't they? And Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world and she was from Sparta. She didn't get kidnapped, did she? She went quite willingly.
44:31 Speaker 10 She did indeed, so she wasn't a faithful woman?
44:33 Kate Lister? No, no, and a Spartan woman should have been a bit more faithful than that, really.
44:37 Speaker 10 Should have been staying back home and having those babies, really.
44:41 Kate Lister? Let's think about 300 now, because I've been circling that one for a while. That depicts our very modern understanding of what Sparta's like. And I thought it was really interesting that it went full into that military stoic, the ripped bodies and all the rest of it. It's still with us, this idea of the Spartans. Do you think it's ever going to change? Are we ever going to accept a Spartan that is less than a military genius?
45:12 Speaker 10 Wouldn't it be fun to make a film about a Spartan who really didn't like fighting?
45:18 Kate Lister? It was completely, completely rubbish.
45:21 Speaker 10 Yeah, completely rubbish, a hiding fox is up his jumper. I just really didn't want to do it.
45:26 Kate Lister? Hated the outside, hated the rain, it's shit.
45:28 Speaker 10 Hated it, hated it, wrote poetry in his spare time. I think it would be great, but three hundred, okay, the six packs, the oiled bodies.
45:37 Kate Lister? They wouldn't have looked quite like that, would they?
45:39 Speaker 10 Probably not. I don't think anyone looks quite like that.
45:42 Kate Lister? Nobody actually looks like that.
45:44 Speaker 10 But it's a great movie, not least because it's, it's really very aware of all those sayings of Spartan women. You know, we have with your shield on it. And also there's a point, the famous point where King Leonidas chucks these Persian envoy down the well.
46:01 Kate Lister? Yes.
46:02 Speaker 10 And says, this is Sparta. Wonderful moment. And before he does it, what does he do? He looks at his wife, Gorgo, and she gives him a short, a little bit of a nod, a little bit of an eyebrow. Yep, do it. It's the woman supporting the male ideal. The woman who's actually the power of Sparta. I think that's really fun. And there really was, you know, there really was a scene in which, in history, where Persian envoy turns up and the Spartans kill the messenger. I mean, you never kill the messenger, right?
46:33 Kate Lister? No, that's no.
46:34 Speaker 10 Never, never. Basic diplomacy.
46:37 Kate Lister? So as a final question then, if I could time travel you back to ancient Sparta in its heyday, where would you want to go? What would you want to find out? You can come back again, but you've only got like a few hours.
46:49 Speaker 10 It's very hard, isn't it? So I think I'd be really quite interested in seeing what it's like in, in the court. So the fact they have two kings, two royal families at the same time. And I would want to be hanging out in the court, probably not as one of the rulers, but I could quite fancy being a waiting, a waiting girl.
47:07 Kate Lister? Oh, yeah, yeah.
47:07 Speaker 10 Just, you know, behind the scenes, seeing what's going on there, observing, because I really want to know how those two royal families function. Because ideally, they've got two kings at a time. One is in charge of war and the other one's in charge of keeping things going at home while they're out doing the war. How does that work? You know, what if one of them isn't much good at the job they're supposed to have? But it's fascinating. And can I tell you the story of Alcibiades? Please. Okay, so Alcibiades, incredibly famous Athenian general, who supposedly had a fling with the wife of one of the Spartan kings. I would love to know what's going on there. She's supposed to have said, this is Queen Tymyra, wife of King Aegis.
47:50 Speaker 10 She's supposed to have said, oh, the kid's definitely Alcibiades' kid. How did, why does she think that? So is this suggesting knowledge of contraception? Or just that she didn't actually have sex with her husband very much? Or what? Because Alcibiades, Athenian general, gets into trouble in Athens for allegedly some ritual act. Might be he profaned the Eleusinian mysteries. There's a whole story there. Might be that he was responsible for the mutilation of the herms, which is where these square cut statues with a sort of head were found at crossroads and things in ancient Athens. And they all had an erection, a large erection. I see.
48:33 Speaker 10 So it's like a garden gnome, think garden gnome, but with a very big hard on. I'm sorry, Kate, I just, I knew, I knew this would go with you. So, okay. And so one morning, the Athenians wake up and all the erections have been knocked off. No. Yes, no penises. So who did that? And because Alcibiades was a bit of a lad, and because some people didn't like him, because he was actually also a wizzy general and a sort of sex on legs type character, they reckoned it was him. Now, he'd already left. He'd left with the fleet to, as part of the war against Sparta that was going on at that time, this end of the fifth century. And they sent a ship to say, come back home.
49:15 Speaker 10 We need you to stand trial for possibly knocking the erections off the herms. Exactly. And, and he, obviously, he's not an idiot. He said, well, below that. And he went to Sparta and said, hello, I'm Alcibiades, the leading general of Athens. Would you like me to be your military advisor? Because I know a thing or three. Smart move. And so he did. So while he was there, he's supposed to have had a fling with the queen.
49:40 Kate Lister? He sounds like a right chance for, doesn't he?
49:43 Speaker 10 He, yeah, he was. And then when he fell out with Sparta, he went to Persia, the ancestral enemy of the whole of Greece, and said, hello, I know a thing about the Spartans and the Athenians. Could I be your military advisor? And they went, yeah, that'll be nice.
49:56 Kate Lister? Scallywag.
49:58 Speaker 10 Yeah. I need to know what's going on, particularly with this, this thing with the, with the king. What was going on there? Do you really have a relationship with the queen? Was it his baby?
50:07 Kate Lister? Did he really knock the willies off all the gnomes?
50:09 Speaker 10 Did he really knock the willies off the gnomes? Exactly. I really need to know.
50:13 Kate Lister? Now I need to know too. Oh, Helen, you have been wonderful to talk to you. You always are. And if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you?
50:22 Speaker 10 Well, the most recent book is Immaculate Forms, which is coming out in the US on the 28th of January, having been out in the UK since September. I have a blog called Mistaking Histories, all one word, and just, yeah, Google me. I'm all over, I'm afraid.
50:37 Kate Lister? It's absolutely fabulous that you are. Thank you so much. Will you come back and talk to us again?
50:42 Speaker 10 I certainly will, Kay. It's always a real, real pleasure.
50:50 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Helen for joining us. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . We've got episodes on crack doctors with the Cautionary Tales podcast and Valentine's Day in Ancient Rome, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Nick Thomas and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music by Epidemic Sound.
51:34 Speaker 05 Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost.
51:41 Speaker 04 We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America.
51:48 Speaker 05 We're talking ghosts caught on camera.
51:50 Speaker 04 Demonic possessions.
51:51 Speaker 05 Cursed mirrors.
51:52 Speaker 04 Bigfoot.
51:53 Speaker 05 Poltergeists.
51:54 Speaker 04 Exorcisms.
51:55 Speaker 05 Near-death experiences.
51:56 Speaker 04 Unsolved mysteries.
51:57 Speaker 05 Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world.
52:04 Speaker 04 Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.
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