Spartan Society

Description

In 2002 the Fourth International Sparta Seminar was held at Glasgow University; sixteen of the papers from that seminar are published here in this well-presented and authoritative study. Their emphasis is on the institutions of Sparta, the role of cult in other areas of life, the women of Sparta, Spartan politics and the construction of the Spartan image or `mirage'. Specific subjects include the motif of snatching in Spartan culture, suicide, the Hyakinthia festivals, female property ownership, the death of women, Thucydides' descripton of the massacre of 2,000 helots, Xenophon and modern perceptions of Sparta. Cover Title Page Contents Introduction 1. Snatching and keeping: The motif of taking in Spartan culture 2. Suicide in Spartan society The nature of the Spartan kleros 4. The Hyakinthia of Sparta 5. Female property ownership and empowerment in classical and Hellenistic Sparta 6. The women of Sparta - and of other Greek cities - at war 7. Women's way of death: fatal childbirth or hierai? Commemorative stones at Sparta and Plutarch, Lycurgus, 27.3 8. The logic of terror: Thucydides, Spartan duplicity and an improbable massacre 9. The clandestine massacre of the helots (Thucydides 4.80) 10. Orestes at Sparta: The political significance of the grave of the hero 11. Xenophon's sons in Sparta? Perspectives on xenoi in the Spartan upbringing 12. Xenophon, Artemis and Scillus 13. Aristomenes of Messenia and his talismanic shield 14. Utopia on the Eurotas: Economic aspects of the Spartan mirage 15. The paradigm of democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment thought 16. Loyalty and liberty: Thermopylae in western imagination Index