Spartan men were not allowed to live with their wives until age 30. Spartan society didn't discourage romantic love, but marriage and childrearing were both subject to some peculiar cultural and governmental constraints. The state counseled that men should marry at age 30 and women at 20.
Even then, they continued to live in soldiers' barracks, where they ate, slept, and trained with their classmates. A man could not live at home with his wife and family until he was 30 years old. At the age of 60, Spartan men could retire from the army.
At age 20, Spartan males became full-time soldiers, and remained on active duty until age 60.
Since Spartan marriage customs (from the early archaic and into the mid-classical period) forbade dowries and there was no religious component to the marriage ceremony, the Spartan marriage practice may have in fact amounted to elopement.
A Spartan man was considered to have graduated from the agōgē at age 30, at which time he was expected to have been accepted into a syssition and was permitted to have a family. He would also receive a kleros, an allotment of land farmed by helots.
In Athens and Sparta, homosexuality was practiced to various degrees, and its status was somewhat “complicated,” according to Plato's Pausanias. In Thebes, on the other hand, it was actively encouraged, and even legally incentivized.
“No man was allowed to live as he pleased, but in their city, as in a military encampment, they always had a prescribed regimen,” he wrote. As Cartledge writes in Spartan Reflections, it wasn't until age 60 that Spartans finally were allowed to retire from the army—provided that they lived that long.
7. Spartan men were not allowed to live with their wives until age 30. Spartan society didn't discourage romantic love, but marriage and childrearing were both subject to some peculiar cultural and governmental constraints. The state counseled that men should marry at age 30 and women at 20.
Sparta stands out as an important city-state in Ancient Greece because of the way it treated its women; Spartan women enjoyed more freedoms and held greater control over their own lives. However, this came at the price of harsher marital and familial duties, which both society and the state expected of them.
Sexuality, Marriage, & Motherhood
Unlike girls in other city-states who might marry as young as 13 or 14, a Spartan woman usually continued her education until 18 or 20 and only then considered proposals by suitors brokered by her father or older brother.
However, at the age of 7, the boys of Sparta were obliged to leave home to join sternly disciplined groups under the supervision of a hierarchy of officers. The mother's softening influence was considered to be damaging to a boy's education. From age 7 to 18, they underwent an increasingly severe course of training.
The strongest and bravest became captains. Girls also learned Spartan values, but their upbringing was less strict. All male Spartan citizens became soldiers at age 20. Men retired from soldiering at age 60 and could then become elders.
That's right, a Spartan citizen was expected by law to be fit enough for hand to hand combat, in full bronze armor, under the blazing heat of the Mediterranean sun up to the same age people in the modern world are typically adjusting their knee braces before shuffling through the doors of a buffet.
Spartan boys would enter this stage at age 7 and remain until they were 14. Training within the Paides mostly focused on cultivating basic skills, such as reading, writing, and music, as well as constructing their own beds. Trainees would also take part in exercises that would promote military prowess.
Spartan girls were not allowed to join but were educated at home by their mothers or trainers. Boys entered the agoge at the age of 7 and graduated around the age of 30 at which time they were allowed to marry and start a family.
Sparta was a highly militarized society, and its citizens were trained from a young age to become skilled warriors. Women in Sparta were no exception. They were expected to be physically fit and strong, and were trained in sports, hunting, and other physical activities.
It is likely that girls were simply given into the care of their mothers immediately after birth, though there is not enough evidence to say whether this was the case throughout Spartan history. Female Spartan babies were as well fed as their male counterparts – in contrast to Athens, where boys were better fed than ...
In Ancient Sparta
The only goal of Spartan marriage was reproduction, and there were many cases of agreements being made for children to be conceived outside of just the husband and wife. If a husband was very old he may choose a young man to impregnate his wife on his behalf.
Life as a Female Spartan
Because Spartan men were totally devoted to military matters, Spartan women were expected to oversee all other aspects of life. Life as a female Spartan meant a life devoted to producing and raising children (to the age of seven), running households and managing business affairs.
Most young Greek women would be married at about the age of fourteen to a man roughly twice their age. Prior to the marriage ceremony the couple would probably have met only a few times, and while the bride would normally be a virgin, the husband almost certainly was not.
Median age of U.S. Americans at their first wedding 1998-2021, by sex. In 2021, the median age for the first wedding among women in the United States stood at 28.6 years. For men, the median age was 30.6 years.
This seems to have been rare in practice, and adulterers were more commonly prosecuted, ransomed for money, or physically abused. The physical abuse and humiliation of adulterers is depicted in several surviving ancient Greek comedies.
Othryades (Ancient Greek: Ὀθρυάδης) and Othryadas (Ancient Greek: Ὀθρυάδας) was the last surviving Spartan of the 300 Spartans selected to fight against 300 Argives in the Battle of the 300 Champions. Ashamed by surviving his comrades, he committed suicide on the field following the battle.
Clothing, arms, and armor. The Spartans used the same typical hoplite equipment as their other Greek neighbors; the only distinctive Spartan features were the crimson tunic (chitōn) and cloak (himation), as well as long hair, which the Spartans retained to a far later date than most Greeks.
What Spartans soldiers do for fun in war camps? Boys would compete in athletic events such as running and wrestling, as well as choral dance performances. Notably, paides were expected to steal food for themselves and for their eirēn, and were probably underfed as a means of encouraging this.