34Chapter 2
(see document 2.5). Soldiers, for example, were
thought to fight more bravely when accompanied by
their male lovers. Many of these relationships were
formed in the gymnasia where men of the citizen class
trained for war or athletics. It was not uncommon for a
youth to become sexually involved with an older man
who then served as his mentor in intellectual as well as
athletic matters. Such arrangements were widely ac-
cepted. The Greeks, however, did not view homosexu-
ality as an orientation that precluded sexual relations
with women or a conventional family life. Furthermore,
homosexual promiscuity could ruin a man’s reputation
or lead to exile, and many regarded it as inferior to mar-
ried love.
As in many other cultures, Greek men and women
may have belonged in effect to separate societies that
met only in bed. If true, this would also account for the
widespread acceptance of lesbianism. Greek men may
not have cared about sex between women because it
did not raise the issue of inheritance. The term lesbianis
derived from the Ionic island of Lesbos, home of Sap-
pho (c. 610–c. 580 B.C.), a woman and the greatest of
Greek lyric poets. Europeans of a later age found her
erotic poems to other women scandalous, and their
renown has perhaps unfairly eclipsed the much wider
range of her work in the minds of all but the most de-
termined classicists.
Though Athenians, like other Greeks, were remark-
ably open about sexual matters, the assumption should
not be made that they abandoned themselves to de-
bauchery. Self-control remained the essence of the
ideal citizen, and sexual restraint was admired along
with physical fitness and moderation in the consump-
tion of food and drink. A man who wasted his wealth
and corrupted his body was of no value to the polis, for
the polis was always at risk and demanded nothing less
than excellence in those who would defend it.Sparta: A Conservative Garrison State
To moderns, Athens represents the model Greek
polis—free, cultivated, and inquiring—but to the an-
cients, and to many Athenians, an alternative existed.
Far away to the south, in a remote valley of the Pelo-
ponnese, lay Sparta. Sparta produced few poets and no
philosophers. Its unwalled capital, built on a raised
mound to keep it from the floodwaters of the river Eu-
rotas, was said to resemble an overgrown village. There
was no commerce to speak of, and long after other
Greeks had adopted money, Spartans continued to use
iron bars as their only currency. Because the SpartansDOCUMENT 2.4
The Role of the Athenian Wife
In this excerpt from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (Household
Management), Ischomachus tells Socrates how he began to
train his fifteen-year-old bride. His views reflect conventional
Athenian wisdom.Well Socrates, as soon as I had tamed her and she
was relaxed enough to talk, I asked her the follow-
ing question: “Tell me, my dear,” said I, “do you un-
derstand why I married you and why your parents
gave you to me? You know as well as I do that nei-
ther of us would have had trouble finding someone
else to share our beds. But after thinking about it
carefully, it was you I chose and me your parents
chose as the best partners we could find for our
home and children. Now if God sends us children,
we shall think about how best to raise them, for we
share an interest in securing the best allies and sup-
port for our old age.”
My wife answered, “But how can I help? What
am I capable of doing? It is on you that everything
depends. My duty, my mother said, is to be well-
behaved.”
“Oh, by Zeus,” said I, “my father said the same
to me. But the best behavior in a man and woman
is that which will keep up their property and in-
crease it as far as may be done by honest and legal
means....”
“It seems to me that God adapted women’s na-
ture to indoor and man’s to outdoor work.... As
Nature has entrusted woman with guarding the
household supplies, and a timid nature is no disad-
vantage in such a job, it has endowed women with
more fear than man. It is more proper for a woman
to stay in the house than out of doors and less so for
a man to be indoors instead of out.... You must
stay indoors and send out the servants whose work
is outside and supervise those who work indoors, re-
ceive what is brought in, give out what is to be
spent, plan ahead for what is to be stored and en-
sure that provisions for a year are not used up in a
month.... Many of your duties will give you plea-
sure: for instance, if you teach spinning and weaving
to a slave who did not know how to do this when
you got her, you double your usefulness to yourself.”
Xenophon. “Oeconomicus.” In Julia O’Faolain and Lauro Mar-
tines, Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks
to the Victorians.London: Temple Smith, 1973.