Imagining Sparta: Monuments in Flesh

As a novelist, I have given considerable thought to what the Spartans in the Age of Leonidas might have looked like, as well as how they would have groomed themselves and dressed. From comments and correspondence, I gather that this is a topic of interest to many of my readers as well, so I thought it might be worth some joint speculation.

 

 

In terms of physical build, I have not heard of any archeological evidence based on skeletons, but would welcome any information you may have heard or read about. In the absence of such forensic evidence, I remain dependent on mixing ancient sources with modern experience and common sense.

Both Plutarch and – more importantly Xenophon – stress that Spartan youth (i.e. during the critical years of physical development and growth) were not allowed to eat “too much.” Xenophon speaks of “just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. [Lycurgus'] view was that boys under this kind of regime would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer, when so ordered; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. [Lycurgus] also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies did more to make them grow tall than one in which the food filled them out.” (Spartan Society:2) 

Plutarch, the less reliable source, writes: “The aim of providing [Spartan boys in the agoge] with only sparse fare is that they should be driven to make up its deficiencies by resort to daring and villainy. While this is the main purpose of their scanty diet, a subsidiary one is claimed to be the development of their physique, helping them in particular to grow tall. When people over-eat, their breathing is labored, thus producing a broad, squat frame. In contrast, if breath suffers from only slight delay and difficulty and has an easy ascent, the body is enabled to develop freely and comfortably. Good looks are produced in the same way. For where lean, spare features respond to articulation, the sheer weight of obese, over-fed ones make them resist it.” (Lycurgus:17).

It is startling the way Xenophon’s explanation of why the Spartans restricted the diet of youth to the necessary is focused on virtues very useful to an effective army in the field, while Plutarch’s speculation is more about cheating and “villainy.” Indeed, if one follows Plutarch’s reasoning, Spartan youth didn’t suffer any deprivation at all because they simply stole what they didn’t get in their official rations and the clever and better they were at theft, the fatter they would have become, defeating any “secondary” aim of improving the physique. 

Notable, however, is despite the different explanations of why the Spartans instituted a regime of sparse rations for youth, both authors suggest that it produced “tall” and (in Plutarch’s case) handsome men. Modern science, however, proves that too little food in fact stunts growth, not the reverse. Clearly the ancient commentators postulated a causal effect where there was none, but such a thesis would presumably have been based on two known facts: that Spartan youth ate less than their Athenian etc. equivalents and Spartans were, on average, taller than their enemies.

(The modern observer should take careful note of the fact that if Spartans were apparently on average taller than other Greeks, they probably did not suffer any real deprivation as children. Whatever “short” rations were common in the agoge, they were not so short that growth was in any way impeded since even if some youth may have been adept at theft, most would not have been.)

Returning to the theme of physical appearance, however, we clearly have a reasonable indication that Spartans were on average notably taller than most of their contemporaries. Since the ancient explanation (they received too little to eat as children) is implausible, we need to look for other possible explanations that would make the thesis (Spartans were generally taller) credible. 

Here the experience of modern Japan might be a useful corollary. As long as the Japanese diet was dependent almost exclusively on fish for protein, the Japanese were notoriously short; the introduction of meat led to the average height in Japan skyrocketing by roughly a foot in just two generations. If we remember that fish was the preferred food in Athens and the most readily available protein for all the island Greeks, while Spartans were envied for their rich pastures and game-filled forests, I think it is fair to postulate that the Spartan diet was more meat heavy than that of their major rivals. It is reasonable, therefore, to picture Spartans as unusually tall by contemporary standards.

It would be wrong to conclude, however, that they were broader as well as taller than their contemporaries. On the contrary, the ancient commentators stress that Spartans were slim, something they attributed to the fixed rations at the syssitia. Yet men who are too tall and too thin would have been incapable of marching long distances or fighting exceptionally well in a phalanx. So we are talking about lean, not skinny, men.

While it might be tempting to picture a Spartan in his prime looking something like a linebacker, I would caution that Sparta’s military successes were not solely a function of Spartan troops being able to push harder, but also march more rapidly (and move at night) and to cover difficult terrain. Likewise the emphasis on hunting, particularly for men in the reserves, suggests to me that Spartans were not excessively “top heavy,” but rather lithe and fleet of foot as well as broad shouldered and strong-armed. In conclusion, I postulate that Spartans had an all-round athletic build developed over decades of physical activity from sports and hunting to military drill and combined with a healthy, but protien-heavy diet that made them tough and lean but not stocky.

Turning to grooming, let me start by dismissing modern artistic depictions of Spartans that show them as shaggy, unkempt men with scrawny, chest-long beards and wild, tangled hair hanging to their shoulders alà Richard Hook’s illustrations in Osprey’s The Spartan Army. Likewise, I reject descriptions such as those of Otto Lendle, who describes Spartans as stinking, filthy and slovenly. These images contradict the historical record and existing archeological evidence.

Herodotus, for example, makes a great point of how the Spartans groomed themselves before Thermopylae, and no one would be tempted to stress the beauty of Spartans as Plutarch does if they had been repugnant for their lack of grooming and hygene. More important, a statue fragment found in the heart of Sparta and dating from the early fifth century (commonly – or affectionately – referred to as Leonidas) shows a man with a clipped beard and neat hair. Earlier archaic artwork unanimously shows men with short beards and long, but very neat, “locks” of hair. (Note, for example the hoplites on the magnificent frieze of the Siphnian Treasure at Delphi dating from Leonidas’ lifetime, the Krater of Vix also from this period, and the figurines of known Laconian origin now displayed in the Museum of Ancient History in Berlin or pictured in Conrad Stibbe’s Das Andere Sparta.)

In addition to these sources, the admittedly dubious Plutarch claims Spartan men took particular care of their hair especially in the face of danger, and refers to an alleged quote from Lycurgus that long hair was preferred because it rendered a handsome man better looking, and an ugly one more frightening.

Whether the locks depicted in ancient sculpture were in fact braided or plaited is not possible to tell from the stylized nature of the evidence. However, it is physically impossible to keep long hair in neat, orderly strands when engaged in sports and other strenuous activities unless it is carefully confined in some way. Thus, practical modern experience suggests that Spartan men did braid their hair, something that is consistent with – though not definitely proved -- by the archeological evidence.

Braiding has the added advantage of being something that can be done quickly and alone if necessary, or done elaborately with help. Thus it could have been a means for men to express individual taste and personality within the rigid limits of the Spartan prohibitions against displaying wealth in dress or personal ornament. I personally like to think of conservative, “old-fashioned” men just braiding their hair to keep it out of their faces, while the “dandies” of Spartan society creatively braided their hair at diagonals or in crossing patterns etc. – as in Africa today. This gave a man a great deal of freedom for individual expression – all without breaking any taboos about the use of jewelry or other ornaments.

Experience Spartan Society more closely in my  Leonidas' Trilogy:

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The Importance of Being Pretty - An Excerpt from "A Peerless Peer"

In Greek mythology, Helen of Sparta was the most beautiful woman on earth and ancient Greek literature likewise often attributed particular beauty to Spartan women. Yet while no other historical Spartan woman is more quoted than Gorgo, the wife and queen of Leonidas, no source attributes particular beauty to her -- leading me to suspect she was not.  In the following excerpt from "A Peerless Peer" I describe Gorgo's discovery that she is not particularly pretty and what it means for the Agiad princess. 

 

Gorgo was seven when she was confronted by the fact that she was not considered pretty. The priestesses from the shrine to Helen at Therapne had all the girls between the ages of seven and fourteen muster on the Dancing Floor in order to select which ones would take part in the Heleneia this year. The selected maidens would be garlanded in flowers and walk in the procession, followed by flower-studded straw chariots carrying the prettiest maiden from each of the five villages of the city, to the shrine. There were usually twenty girls chosen as “flower girls,” and Gorgo was eagerly looking forward to taking part now that she was at last old enough. It never occurred to Gorgo that she might not be chosen; but when the priestesses walked along the rows of eager and expectant girls, pointing a finger at the girls they found worthy, they walked past her without a glance. The look on their faces was indifferently dismissive—as if she were no more worthy of consideration than a mule among horses. Gorgo was stunned.

She ran to the fountain house, clambered up on the stone trough, and gazed at her reflection in the water. But her image was shattered by the next helot girl who plunged an amphora into the water to fill it. She ran out again, starting for home, but at the agora she paused to look at her reflection on the burnished bronze face of a massive hoplon hung up for sale. Her face was distorted in the hammered, convex surface, and she ran on, frightened. She reached the Agiad royal palace by the back entrance and scampered into the stable yard, deftly dodging the men offloading hay from a wagon in the alley and ducking under the belly of one of her father’s chariot horses, who was being groomed at a spot that blocked her path to the kitchen stairway.

“You’re old enough to know better than that!” the startled groom scolded, frightened to think what would happen if the king’s precious child were kicked by the powerful beast. Fortunately the stallion was dozing contentedly in the sun, only barely interested in flicking at flies with his tail.

Meanwhile, Gorgo was already halfway up the stairs and running (now a little breathlessly) down the corridor of the helots’ quarters toward the inner courtyard and the private dwellings of the royal family. “Mama! Mama!” Gorgo called as she skidded around the corner into her mother’s chamber.

“Hush!” her mother admonished angrily. “You’ll wake your baby brother!” Her mother, as usual, was hanging over the cradle of her youngest child. Gorgo had lost two younger siblings already: one when he was a toddler and the other when he was just a few weeks old. The latter had been so sickly that everyone shook their heads and whispered that the elders wouldn’t accept him anyway. Now there was another baby brother in the cradle, and Gorgo found it hard to take an interest in him. To her he did not look any different from the others, red andwrinkled and squalling all the time. She did not really think he would live very long, either, so why should she pay him much attention? Obedient to her mother, however, she lowered her voice and whispered loudly, “Mama! They didn’t pick me.”

“For what? What are you babbling about?”

“To be a flower girl!” Gorgo insisted, utterly uncomprehending how her mother could forget something as important as this. “For the Heleneia!”

“Oh, that! I thought I told you not to bother? Besides, this year Demaratus will be making the sacrifice. It wouldn’t be seemly for you to be among the maidens in the procession.”

Gorgo frowned. She understood about the eternal rivalry between the two royal families of Sparta, and that it was important never to suggest that the rival line had some sort of precedence over her own house; but her mother was missing the whole point. “But mother, they didn’t even want me!”

“Of course not; something like that is only for pretty girls. Why, even that hussy Percalus did it.” Percalus was the Eurypontid queen, and Gorgo’s mother hated her with a bitterness that far exceeded the everyday rivalry between the Agiad and the Eurypontid rulers. As soon as the name Percalus arose in connection with the flower girls, Gorgo knew she would get no sympathy from her mother; so she gave up and ran down the hall to her grandmother’s chamber.

She was relieved to find her grandmother at her loom. Chilonis was an active woman and often away from the palace during the day. “Grandmama!” Gorgo called out as she rushed to fling herself at her grandmother, certain of a receptive hug.

Chilonis was caught a little off guard by the unexpected arrival of her granddaughter, but she managed to open her arms just in time. The impact of the seven-year-old was enough to almost knock her off the stool, however, and she found herself admonishing the child, “Not so rough! You’re too old for that!”

But Gorgo felt her grandmother’s warm arms close around her skinny body, and she knew the older woman was not really angry with her. She ignored the scolding, looked up into her grandmother’s square face, and pleaded hopefully, “Grandmama, I’m not ugly, am I?”

“No, of course not,” Chilonis assured her firmly. “Have some of the boys from the agoge been teasing you or something?” Chilonis, confident that this was just a childhood misunderstanding, even dropped her arms and turned back to her loom.

“It wasn’t the boys,” Gorgo told her urgently. “It was the priestesses of the shrine of Helen. They didn’t even look at me—for the flower girls for the Heleneia!” Gorgo’s distress, as well as her words, drew her grandmother’s attention back to her. She was looking up at her grandmother with wide-set eyes, and Chilonis registered that the child understood fully the difference between the taunting of children and the judgment of grown women. She sighed and took Gorgo back into her arms.

Gorgo understood that, too. It meant it was true: she was ugly. She clung to her grandmother in fright. She knew it was terrible for a girl to be ugly. Hadn’t her mother become queen because she was the prettiest maiden in Sparta at the time? And the same was said of Queen Percalus—that she was the prettiest maiden of the next “crop,” so pretty that King Demaratus had taken her without a dowry.

Chilonis could read Gorgo’s thoughts, and she freed one hand to ruffle the top of Gorgo’s head of unruly bright-red hair. “It’s all my fault, Little One. You take after me.”

Gorgo frowned and looked up in indignation. “But you’re not ugly!”

Chilonis smiled faintly. “Thank you, but that’s not what your grandfather thought. Your grandfather would not have been half so reluctant to take me to wife if he had found me more attractive. And had I been a beauty like your mother or Percalus, then he would no doubt have visited my bed more often—no matter how difficult his first wife, Taygete, made life for him at home. No, my child, there is no point denying it: I was never considered a beauty, and you seem to have taken after me rather than your own lovely mother.”

Gorgo, still frowning, thought about that. She had never thought of her grandmother as in any way deficient. She certainly wasn’t ugly the way some old women were. She was not pock-marked, she had all her teeth, and she had no warts or birthmarks or other deformities. She had a pleasant face and hair the color of bay horses, now streaked with gray. Gorgo did not think it was so bad taking after her grandmother, if it meant she was like her in other ways as well. “Am I as clever as you are, too, Grandmama?”

Chilonis laughed at that and ruffled her hair again. “You are twice as clever as I ever was, child.”

Gorgo broke free of her grandmother’s arms, but only in order to be able to face her more firmly. “Don’t make fun of me!” she demanded, frowning more fiercely than ever. “Papa says you can write poetry and do geometry and read the language of the Egyptians!”

Chilonis laughed again. “I tried to learn hieroglyphics from an Egyptian merchant one winter, but without much success, I fear. And I can teach you geometry if you like, but it was my mother who was really clever at mathematics. She was a student of the great scholar Pythagoras.”

“Daddy says all his brains come from your side of the family,” Gorgo insisted, still trying to come to terms with not being pretty, talking herself into being proud that she took after her not-pretty grandmother.

Chilonis understood, and so she did not contradict this statement. Instead, she suggested that Gorgo and she go out for an excursion. Gorgo eagerly agreed.

It was a hot, sunny day and the air over the city was laden with fine dust: stirred up by the supply wagons trundling through the narrow lanes, kicked up by the herds of boys at play, and blown in desultory clouds from the drill fields across the river. Chilonis turned the chariot away from the river and headed north, past the ball field surrounded by its moat and plane trees. She took the northwest road leading gently up into the narrows of the Eurotas valley. As Chilonis drove she explained to her granddaughter, who had fallen silent and appeared to be brooding again, “The fate of pretty women is not always pretty. Take the most famous of all Spartan princesses, Helen. When she was still a girl, she was abducted by Theseus and had to be rescued by her brothers. Then she was coveted by so many men that her father held a contest among her suitors to auction her off to the one who found his favor. Because of her irresistible beauty she was abducted yet again, this time by a foolish foreign prince, and held captive for ten years in Asia. Even if she was, as some say, seduced rather than abducted, she must still have suffered to see the horrible war she caused. 

"In contrast, her less attractive cousin, Penelope, was courted by and married to the good Odysseus, the man of her own choice. You see,” Chilonis continued, as she drew up the chariot before a small and ancient monument showing a woman wrapped in a himation, “it is said that on this very spot Penelope pulled her shawl up over her head to indicate to her pursuing father that she went willingly with Odysseus.”

Gorgo stared with new interest at the ancient statue in the shade of the simple Doric temple. “Is that how our custom of stealing brides started?” she wanted to know.

Chilonis smiled, pleased by the notion. “Yes, maybe. I don’t think anyone knows, but it could go back to Penelope. After all, Helen was given to the man of her father’s choice and then turned adulterous—whether by force or free will. Penelope married the man of her own choice and was true to him—a much more Spartan pattern.” This said, she clicked her tongue to the team, and they continued on their way out of the city into the surrounding well-cultivated countryside. …

Gorgo seemed to consider everything very carefully, her brows drawn together in concentration. Then she nodded solemnly. “You don’t act unhappy. And I cannot change it, can I?” She looked up as if hoping for one last promise of things getting better.

Chilonis shook her head and laid a hand on her granddaughter’s fragile shoulder. “No, you cannot change the color of your hair or your eyes, nor can you make your mouth small and full and red. You will never be a great beauty; but if you have the sense to know that a woman is more than a façade and that her value is not in the beauty of her exterior but in the soundness of her mind, body, and character, then you will discover that men who share these qualities—like the good Odysseus—will recognize those qualities in you.”

 

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