The Road to Thermopylae: Ionian Revolt

While the Battle of Thermopylae gained legendary status almost immediately and more recently became popularized in modern culture through the film "300," too few people living today know the history leading up to it. Thermopylae was not an isolated event but part of a chain of events. The incident that triggered the first Persian invasion of 490 BC was the Ionian Revolt.

The revolt of Greek city-states of Ionia against the might of Persia triggers analogies with Star Wars. Modern (Western) sympathy is immediately drawn to the underdog -- the rebels -- fighting a presumably "evil" empire. But history is rarely as neat and unequivocal as Hollywood.

The Ionian Revolt was the child of a certain Aristagoras of Miletus, a tyrant who owed his position of privilege to Persia. Aristagoras, not content with ruling the wealthy city of Miletus, was tempted by prospects of even greater wealth when Naxian exiles requested his assistance in being restored to their wealth and positions. Thinking that by assisting them he could put himself in power in Naxos, Aristagoras sought Persians support for the expedition and received no less than 200 "Persian" triremes (i.e. ships manned by client-states) under a Persian commander. The attack began in 499 -- and was a miserable failure. The Naxians were intelligent enough not to try to fight 200 triremes at sea. They withdrew behind their walls and after 4 months the large expeditionary force was out of supplies. In the face of failure, no one had the resources to pay for the ships, crews, and troops, who they had expected to reward with loot.

Aristagoras feared Persian retribution for luring them into this debacle and, to save his own skin, decided to foment revolt among all the Greek cities of the Eastern Aegean then living under Persian rule -- after obtaining promises of aid from the still independent Greek cities. He went first to Sparta, where he tried to win King Cleomenes (known as unstable and inclined to foreign adventures) to the cause. Herodotus famously describes how he sought to ignite Cleomenes' greed with a map of the world in which Sparta is a tiny dot at the fringe and the Persian Empire stretches from edge to edge. All this would be his, Aristagoras suggested to Cleomenes. Hearing, however, that it was a three-month march from the sea to the Persian capital of Susa, Cleomenes indignantly dismissed Aristagoras and ordered him to leave Lacedaemon. When Aristogoras resorted to promises of up-front cash payments, Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo intervened saying: "Father, you had better go away, or the stranger will corrupt you." [Herodotus, Book Five: 51]

Aristagoras went next to Athens where he spoke before the entire Assembly. Again he conjured up images of Persia's immense wealth and assured the Athenians they could triumph because the Persians had become soft and effeminate. The Athenian Assembly made up of thousands of presumably educated (as well as uneducated) adult males proved easier to bamboozle than one Spartan girl. The Athenians agreed to send 20 triremes to assist the rebels with an unknown number of marines (hoplites) on board. (The usual number was 20 per trireme or in this case 400 hoplites.) The only other city on mainland Greek to provide assistance was Eretria, which committed five triremes to the common cause.

These forces proved sufficient for a daring attack overland on the Lydian capital of Sardis (present-day Sartmustafa in Western Turkey) in the spring of 498. The move was so unexpected, they caught the defenders flat-footed. The latter offered no resistance and fled to the acropolis. Then, whether intentional or accidental, the Greeks set fire to the city. The Persians and residents fled to the open market to escape the flames and there, allegedly, their numbers intimidated the Greeks into returning to their ships -- or, possibly, the Greeks had no stomach for the senseless slaughter of women and children after achieving the objective of destroying the city and its sanctuary.

This striking success rapidly encouraged other Greek cities to join the revolt. From the Bosporus to Cyprus cities declared their independence from Persia. This, of course, begs the question 'why?' While Aristagoras' motives for revolt were self-serving and Athenian Eretrian motives were venal, these subject city-states must have been driven to rebellion by other considerations. 

Suggestions that the cities were bled dry by Persian "tribute" or economically ruined by Persian trading monopolies won't wash; the archaeological evidence shows that these cities were building monuments and accumulating reserves of silver coinage. In short, they appear to have prospered under Persian rule. References to loss of liberty or independence, on the other hand, are a bit too vague to justify such a risky venture as revolt. 

The real issue appears to have been Persian settlers/colonists that took land from locals, and -- emotionally more explosive -- conscription.  Peter Krentz in his excellent monograph on the Battle of Marathon notes that the Persian invasion of Scythia had entailed the conscription of tens of thousands of Greek sailors, and the Naxos fiasco had required as many as 40,000. [Peter Kretz, The Battle of Marathon, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) 70.] The Greeks on the Ionian islands and coast along with those in Cyprus may have believed that these demands were only the beginning. They may also have feared that the next target of Persian aggression was likely to be other Greeks. They may have wanted to avoid a fratricidal war fought in the interests of distant Susa. Then again, fratricidal war was the order of the day throughout most of ancient Greek history. Maybe they were simply swept away by the prospect of jumping on what appeared to be a winning bandwagon.

Whatever their reasons, joining the revolt was a mistake. Persia was a huge, centralized Empire. Like a supertanker turning, it took a little time to react, but once it was on course it was a juggernaut. 

The Persians caught up with the rebel raiding force at Ephesus and defeated it with heavy Greek losses. The survivors, however, managed to escape in their ships.  In Cyprus, this pattern was repeated, the rebels lost the land battle and the Ionians sailed back to their own cities leaving the Cypriot cities to face the Persians alone. One by one the Persians battered the Cypriot cities into submission by siege. Siege ramps and tunnels testify to the intensity of these sieges, and the loss of life must have been considerable, as the evidence suggests these sieges lasted for months.  The last stronghold fell in 496.

Meanwhile, after their retreat from Cyprus, the remaining rebels engaged in no further joint campaigns on land. Instead, the Persians started to pick off the rebel cities one at a time. In 495 the target was Miletus, where it had all begun, and the remaining rebels rallied to fight a naval battle. They pulled together 353 triremes off the coast of Miletus and in the Battle of Lade went down in ignominious defeat -- each blaming the others for turning tail and running first. Miletus fell in 494, and the other islands went down one by one until by the end of 493 there were no rebels left.

The Persians did not go gentle with rebels that resisted to the end. At each island, the victors formed a human chain and walked from one side of the island to the other collecting all the survivors. According to Krentz, "they castrated the best-looking boys, took the prettiest virgins for the king, and burned the cities and their sanctuaries." Those of either sex not pretty enough for "special treatment," were simply sold into common slavery. 

Unsurprisingly in light of this treatment, many islands capitulated on terms. These city-states avoided complete destruction and enslavement. However, the tribute owed to Persian was re-assessed and, tellingly, the cities were forced to agree to submit all future disputes to Persian arbitration. Darius apparently blamed the incessant Greek rivalries (the exiled Naxians who had talked Aristagoras into supporting a restoration attempt?) for the problems.

Darius also blamed the Athenians and Eretrians for meddling. Allegedly, he ordered a servant to whisper to him three times whenever he sat down to dinner: "Master, remember the Athenians." [Herodotus, Book Five: 106] Darius didn't. In 490, he sent an expeditionary force to punish both Eretria and Athens for the impudence of fostering rebellion in Ionia. But that is the subject of next month's post.

Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:

    

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Making of a Hero III - Leonidas and his Brother

It has become fashionable to denigrate the memory of Leonidas by associating him with suicide bombers (Cartledge) or by accusing him of murdering his brother. Thus Dr. Nic Fields in Thermopylae 480 BC: Last stand of the 300 dismisses Herodotus’ version of King Kleomenes’ death on the grounds that “the Spartans were notoriously abstemious” and concludes instead that: “It seems more likely that Kleomenes’ reign was cut short [sic] by murder, arranged and hushed up, on the orders of the man who succeeded him on the Agiad throne.” (p. 14)

There are a large number of problems with this thesis.  First and foremost, of course, is that there is not a shred of historical evidence for it.  Not one ancient source accuses Leonidas of fratricide.  Herodotus, as Fields notes, has a completely different version of events. So we are talking about nothing more than a modern commentator’s fabrication.

Fields feels justified fabricating this story because, according to him, all Spartans (every last single one of them over hundreds of years) were “abstemious” and since none ever drank in excess, a Spartan king who drank too much is a historical (physical?) impossibility. Frankly, that’s a little much. Even Spartans were human beings, and human beings are fallible.  Furthermore, we are talking here about one of Sparta’s kings. Even if one could argue that peer pressure on an ordinary citizen would have been too great in Sparta’s overweening society to ever allow anyone to deviate too far from the norms, a Spartan king clearly had more leeway. The fact that Herodotos mentions the Spartans blamed his madness on his drinking habits actually underlines the fact that Kleomenes’ behavior was not considered normal in Sparta. Spartans, as a rule, were abstemious, Kleomenes was not. Fields’ argument is untenable.

Of course, Fields is not the first historian to conclude that the hero of Thermopylae was really a murderer on the run. Most accept the fact that Kleomenes might have had a drinking problem, but cannot believe that anyone would try to flay themselves alive.  Because they cannot imagine something so appalling and hence cannot accept Herodotus at face value, they feel justified in accusing Kleomenes’ successor of regicide, fratricide and patricide all at once -- since Kleomenes was not only Leonidas’ king, but also his brother and father-in-law).

Yet, as W. G. Forrest points out in his excellent, concise work A History of Sparta: 950 – 192 BC: “A recent psychological study has pointed out that the details of [Kleomenes’] final self-mutilation are in fact consistent with a paranoid schizophrenic suicide.” In short, as so often, the evidence is with Herodotus – not those, who lack the imagination to believe him. Yet even if we were to dismiss Herodotus’ version of Kleomenes’ death as implausible, would that justify pointing the finger at Leonidas?

W. P. Wallace in his excellent article, “Kleomenes, Marathon, the Helots, and Arkadia” (The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 74 (1954), pp. 32-35), suggests some plausible reasons why the Spartan state might have wanted to rid itself of Kleomenes.  Wallace presents some weak but nonetheless, cogent evidence that an Arkadian league formed at about this time and Herodotus also speaks of Kleomenes stirring up trouble in Arkadia.  Wallace argues that if Kleomenes was being successful in turning some of the Arkadian states against Sparta, then the Spartans may have felt he had to be taken out of circulation once and for all. But even this does not justify putting the blame for any surreptitious regicide on Leonidas.

People, who subscribe to this theory, argue that because Leonidas succeeded to the throne, he had the most to gain from murdering his brother, and so he must have been the man behind it. But Leonidas was Kleomenes’ heir at the latest from the day his elder brother Dorieus died, possibly from the day Dorieus departed Sparta. Why would he have waited almost 40 years until he was over 50 years of age to suddenly become ambitious and covet his brother’s throne? 

Did he, after serving Kleomenes almost his entire life, suddenly turn against him because of “troubles” in Arkadia? Surely Kleomenes had made other, more dramatic blunders, from Athens to Argos, that would have given Leonidas a pretext for murder -- had he been so inclined. But we hear nothing of Leonidas being disloyal after Kleomenes’ earlier debacles.

Another thing I would like to know from those who charge Leonidas with murder is what Gorgo was doing while her husband murdered her father? Gorgo, of all Greek women, is known for being outspoken. Are we to believe that she just stood by and let her husband kill her father without a word of protest? More: that after her husband murdered her father, she continued to be a loyal wife, assisting him and asking for his instructions as he marched out to his death?  Surely, the woman, who as a child had told her father not to take bribes, would have gone on record protesting her father’s murder and then avenging his death or scorning the murderer? (Think of the wrath of the Spartan princess Kleitamestra!)

Or are we to believe she was an accomplice? That she supported her murderous husband like some ancient Lady Macbeth?

If so, someone needs to provide an explanation of why Kleomenes’ only child and heir, evidently greatly favored by him as a child, suddenly wanted him murdered in a barbaric fashion. Trouble in Arkadia hardly seems a sufficient reason for such an appallingly unnatural sentiment. Indeed, explaining why Gorgo allowed her husband to kill her father is psychologically a great deal more difficult than explaining how a man as consistently unstable as Kleomenes came to commit suicide!

Last but not least, what action or statement by the historical Leonidas and/or Gorgo justifies imputing to them the level of moral perversion inherent in fratricide and patricide?  What did Leonidas or Gorgo ever do or say to give historians the right to dismiss them as brutal, self-serving criminals? The arrogance is staggering.

It is sad that modern commentators feel compelled to propagate errant nonsense about a historical figure. To be sure, we know too little about the real Leonidas to know what sort of man he was, but that hardly justifies untenable accusations of sadistic fratricide just because we are uncomfortable with the disturbing but completely plausible explanation provided by Herodotus.  

Leonidas' relationship with his half-brother and father-in-law is portrayed in depth in my novel: "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer."

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Making of a Hero II - Husband and Father

Although Helen, the ultimate femme fatale, was undoubtedly a child of Sparta, few people nowadays think of love when they think of Sparta. Certainly, Spartan art lacks the plethora of explicitly erotic art that is found elsewhere in Greece. Yet the historical record suggests that love – in contrast to lust – was indeed a feature of Spartan society. Herodotus, for example, explicitly states that King Anaxandridas refused to divorce his apparently barren wife out of affection for her, and only reluctantly agreed to take a second wife.  Likewise, Spartan sculpture has a tradition of showing man and wife side-by-side in harmony and near equality (and strongly reminiscent of Egyptian sculpture, by the way).  Last but not least, Spartan law was the least misogynous among the ancient Greek city-states, and so it was the city-state in which women were most likely to be loved rather than despised. 

In such a society, a man's wife was not immaterial to his character. In Leonidas' case this was doubly so because his wife was the most famous of all Spartan women after Helen herself: Gorgo. Furthermore, she was Leonidas' niece.  

 Is there any indication of what their relationship might have been?

A Spartan Couple -- Side by Side

While we know that Leonidas was Gorgo’s uncle, we do not know when either Leonidas or Gorgo was born and so do not know the age difference between them.  Herodotus states that Leonidas was born only “shortly” after his brother Doreius, in which case he would have been roughly 60 years old at Thermopylae.  Likewise, according to Herodotus, Gorgo was only about eight years old in 500, which would have made her 28 when Leonidas died at Thermopylae, or 32 years younger than he.  

Such an age difference would have been unusual in Sparta, and there are several reasons why I believe this is unlikely. First, Leonidas’ performance at Thermopylae in the forefront of the most bitterly fought phalanx battles of history is improbable for a man of sixty.  Hoplite fighting was grueling even if it lasted only a few hours on a single day. Second, it would mean Leonidas had been nearly 50 when he married, again something that violated Spartan law and custom. Finally, it would mean that Cleomenes’ only child had not been born to him until he was over thirty, something which was also unlikely for a ruling king.

It is far more likely that Leonidas was not much more than 45 at Thermopylae, 45 being the age at which Spartan reservists were no longer called-up for front-line service (i.e. the age at which they were considered no longer fit enough for the rigors of hoplite battles.)  Likewise, it is very probable that Herodotus underestimated Gorgo’s age in his depiction of her encounter with Aristagoras, either intentionally (in order to discredit Cleomenes), or unintentionally (because he was unaware that Spartan girls did not marry until their late teens).  (In the rest of Greece, a girl was married as soon as possible after her first period, so any girl still in her father’s home was per definition a “child.”) It is far more likely, however, that Gorgo was a teenager rather than a small child in 500 BC. This would mean that about 15 years separated Leonidas from Gorgo.

While less unusual than a 32 year age difference, the age gap is still enough to mean that Leonidas would already have been in school by the time Gorgo was born, and make it unlikely that they spent much time together as children. The relationship would have been further complicated by the fact that Cleomenes was the son of Anaxandridas’ second wife, while Leonidas the son of his first. Leonidas’ full brother Doreius refused to serve Cleomenes and twice led expeditions abroad to set up colonies. While Leonidas appears to have been singularly loyal to Cleomenes, there is no indication that he was particularly favored or close to Cleomenes – except the marriage itself.

The fact that Leonidas was, after the departure of Doreius, Cleomenes’ heir apparent provides the most logical explanation of Leonidas’ marriage to Gorgo.  Gorgo clearly presented the Spartan state with a problem since the most important duty of Sparta’s kings was to lead her hoplite army – something no woman, not even a Spartan woman, could do.  This does not, however, mean that the throne could not be transferred – like other property – from an heiress to her husband or son.  Sparta’s inheritance laws were notoriously woman-friendly, allowing for heiresses to inherit.  Therefore, the Spartans must have worried that any man who married Gorgo would claim the Agiad throne, if not for himself then for his sons by Gorgo. By marrying Gorgo to his half-brother and closest male relative, Cleomenes avoided any of these potential problems.

In short, the marriage of Gorgo and Leonidas was almost certainly dynastic; the marriage need not have involved any kind of inclination or affection on either side.  But the case is not quite that simple.  

First, as the closest male relative of Cleomenes, Leonidas would have been well-positioned to claim the throne without taking Gorgo to wife, if he had found the marriage objectionable.  Certainly, if he were the kind of man, as some historians claim, who was capable of committing fratricide and regicide to lay claim to the throne in 490, than he need not have gone to the trouble of marrying Cleomenes’ daughter. He would have found ways of disposing of her as well as her father.  

Second, while Spartan law did not give women any official say over their husbands, it hardly seems likely that Gorgo, who went down in history as outspoken even in matters that did not directly concern her, was going to meekly accept a man she did not want. In short, while there is no evidence of strong mutual attraction, there is good reason to believe that both parties to the marriage found it acceptable.

There are two incidents in the historical record, however, that hint at something more than a marriage of convenience. The first of these is the famous scene in which Gorgo deciphers the significance of the apparently blank writing tablets sent by Demaratus.  The way the scene is written, it is clear that Demaratus has sent a message to the Spartan state – not to Leonidas personally. But “no one” could figure out what the blank tablets meant until Gorgo suggested scraping the wax off them.  The importance of this scene is two-fold. First, it is further evidence of Gorgo’s cleverness, but secondly,  it shows that Gorgo was present when affairs of state were being discussed. A message to Sparta would most likely have been sent to the ephors or the Gerusia. If Gorgo was present when either of these bodies were meeting, it could only have been because Leonidas was willing to let her be present – a clear sign of respect.

And Gorgo returned the compliment.  When asked by a foreign woman why Spartan women were the only women in the world who “ruled their men,” Gorgo allegedly said it was because Spartans were the only women who gave birth to men.  Her classically Laconic answer went straight to the heart of the matter, accurately diagnosing the low status of women elsewhere in the Greek world as the product of misogyny.  Only Spartan men, Gorgo implied, were man enough not to be intimidated by strong, out-spoken women. That is not the answer of a woman, who thinks little of her own husband.

This second incident is revealing for another reason as well.  Since most Greek women were confined to the back of their own houses and rarely set foot outside except for weddings, funerals and assisting in the childbirth of relatives, it is hardly likely that Gorgo’s allegedly Attican interrogator was outside of her own four walls, much less outside her city.  The woman who asked Gorgo about the strange power of Spartan woman was in her own environment; Gorgo was the outsider. That means that Leonidas took Gorgo with him when he traveled abroad.  That, in turn, suggests a far closer relationship than a conventional marriage. 

Unfortunately, the only exchange between Leonidas and Gorgo that has been passed down to us it is little more than ideological drivel.  Allegedly, Gorgo asked Leonidas for his “instructions” or “orders” as he marched away to his death and he told Gorgo to do her eugenic duty to “marry a good man and have good children.”  This text-book exchange is so stereotypical that it is very probably spurious, intended to give greater credence to the ideology contained by putting it into the mouths of heroes by Spartan propagandists centuries after both Leonidas and Gorgo were long dead.

In summary, Leonidas was the son of a man who defied the ephors for love of his wife, Leonidas' mother. He married voluntarily a young woman, who had already established a reputation for being outspoken and politically astute. He included her in contexts where affairs of state were being handled. He traveled with her abroad. He had at least one child with her. And he may have explicitly urged her to marry again and found a new family after his own death. A love story? Not necessarily, but it has the makings of one….

Leonidas' relationship and marriage with Gorgo is an important component of the second book in my Leonidas Trilogy: A Peerless Peer. 

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A Spartan Arranged Marriage?

 In my last entry I discussed Spartan sexuality and its impact on sexual relations and marriage. One of the most famous marriages in Spartan history was the marriage of King Leonidas to his niece Gorgo.  She was the daughter of his half-brother Cleomenes and it is usually assumed that the marriage was purely political and dynastic. Yet given what we know about Sparta -- and Gorgo -- I think we can assume she had something to say about it. In A Peerless Peer I speculated a little. Join me in eavesdropping on a conversation between Leonidas and Gorgo.

Leonidas looked over at [Gorgo], but she was looking down self-consciously at her hands. “Just when did you come up with this idea that I should marry you?”

She shrugged a little awkwardly. “It just sort of evolved … You know, when girls reach a certain age, they start looking at boys and speculating about which ones might make good husbands. We’re expected and encouraged to do that. And, well, I looked just like the others did, but the boys all seemed so …” she shrugged and then admitted, “scrawny and silly and oversexed. I realized I wanted someone like you, so I looked at the older men. But most of them were already married, and there was none I liked as much as you. It dawned on me that I didn’t want someone like you, I wanted you.” 

Leonidas looked at her skeptically. “You carried me home on your shoulders when I was lost, remember? You let me ride your colts so I could win races. You put your arm around me and made me feel wanted when everyone else ignored me. And best of all, you never seemed to notice that I wasn’t pretty.” She looked down as she said this, ashamed to meet his eyes, because tears were forming. 

“Because you are pretty, Gorgo. You are one of the prettiest girls in Lacedaemon. Who told you otherwise?” 

“My mirror, for a start!” Gorgo told him sharply, looking up to see if he was mocking or pitying her. He met her gaze and she found herself adding practically, “No one ever picks me to welcome home returning heroes or Olympic victors!” 

“Weren’t you waiting for me when I came back from Corinth?” 

“I cheated and rode ahead of the official welcoming event. Surely you noticed?” 

Leonidas laughed and put his arm over her shoulder, drawing her to him. “At the time, I thought nothing of it. You were always a bit wild and self-willed.” 

“Is that very bad?” 

“No,” Leonidas told her simply. “When did you decide to force the issue by going to the ephors?” 

Gorgo looked up at him uncertainly. His arm felt wonderful around her, and he seemed anything but hostile, and yet he was hardly acting like a lover, either. Just like her favorite uncle. “Well, my father started teasing me about who he was going to marry me to. One day it would be one tyrant, and the next day another. It was just a game to him. He liked to see me get angry and indignant. He liked to frighten me.”

“I had no idea.” Leonidas sounded upset—and that suggested a depth of sympathy Gorgo had not expected from any man. 

“Grandma says I provoked it. She says I shouldn’t have humiliated him in front of Aristagoras the way I did. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since. In the last few years we fought a lot, and I often accused him of being fickle and ineffective. He drives me crazy with his cynicism and plotting.” Leonidas snorted, because he agreed entirely. Gorgo continued, “But I suppose I shouldn’t tell him what I think of him as bluntly as I do. If I were him, I wouldn’t want me as a daughter, either,” she concluded honestly, making Leonidas laugh and hold her more firmly. She looked up at him uncertainly. 

“Go on. When did you decide to go to the ephors?” 

“After a particularly ugly scene with my father, when he said he had already sent word to Aristagoras offering me to him. Oh, Leo! If you knew the way that man looked at me! With hate in his eyes! He hated me just for being a girl and for hearing him plead with my father and then for speaking out. The thought of being married to him was unbearable! “Of course,” Gorgo admitted in a calmer tone, “I should have known Aristagoras would never agree to the marriage, since he despised me; but at the time, I was so upset I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, trying to think what I could do. I knew I had to tell someone who could stop my father. But who had that power? My father doesn’t listen to anyone anymore, not even Grandma or Nikostratos. Then I thought of the ephors, and I realized they were the only people in all Lacedaemon who had the power to prevent my father from doing anything. I thought if they could force your father to have two wives, surely they could stop mine from giving me away to a foreigner. 

“But I foresaw that they might ask who I wanted instead. And I thought, why not tell them the truth? Why not name you, since you were free to marry? Uncle Leo! Don’t be angry with me anymore. Please! I know now that it was stupid of me. Grandma explained to me how stupid it was—how I put you in an impossible situation by naming you. But I didn’t mean to pressure you. Please don’t be angry.” She looked up at him and tears spilled out of her eyes, the emotional strain of the whole situation too much for her. 

Leonidas reached up his free hand and wiped her tears away. “How can I be angry at you for using your brains to serve your heart?” He paused to reflect on what he had just said, and then added, “As I said to Hilaira not so long ago, you are by far the cleverer of the two of us; and if you honestly think that being married to me would be a good thing, then who am I to disagree?” She swallowed and waited for the “but.” Instead, Leonidas continued, “So I’ve decided we should get married.” 

Gorgo started. “Just like that? But what do you want? I mean, why have you refused for the last month?” 

“Stubbornness. Ask anyone. It is my greatest weakness.” 

Gorgo frowned. Leonidas was infamous for being stubborn—or tenacious, if one wanted to word it more positively. “But what do you want?” Gorgo insisted. 

“That’s just it, Gorgo. I want to be married and start a family; and when I started thinking about all the young maidens down there,” he nodded in the vague direction of the city, “the bold ones flirting and preening and the shy ones blushing and awkward, I just couldn’t imagine being married to any of them. Hilaira has tried to interest me in one or another of them often enough, poor thing. But when I thought about being married to you, I realized it would be the simplest thing in the world.”

Gorgo looked at him, unsure if that was a compliment or not. “But you know that in addition to being stubborn to a fault, I am notorious for being law-abiding. I will not break the law, even for you.” 

“But what law? Your father married his niece—” Gorgo started to protest at once, and Leonidas held up his hand to silence her. 

“Lycurgus’ laws say it is illegal to marry a girl too young to enjoy sex.” Leonidas looked her straight in the eye. 

Although she blushed slightly, she met his gaze and said very steadily and deliberately, “You will not be breaking the law if you take me to wife.”

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Understanding Gorgo - "...only Spartan women give birth to sons."

If "with it or upon it" is the most famous quote attributed to Spartan women, the claim that only Spartan women "gave birth to men" is the second most famous. It is also materially different from the anonymous and vague versions of the "with-it-or-upon-it" quote.  First, it is specifically attributed to a real historical character (Queen Gorgo, the wife of King Leonidas of Thermopylae fame). Second, the context is explicit. According Plutarch, who recorded the sayings, Gorgo was asked by a woman from Athens "why it was that only Spartan women ruled their men." The greater detail and the fact that the exchange almost certainly took place in Athens (since Athenian women could rarely leave their homes much less their cities), increases the credibility of the quote and the probability that it was said -- if not by Gorgo -- by a real Spartan woman.

But what on earth does it mean? I've had many people dismiss the quip as "sheer nonsense." Yet the answer was far more than a witty retort; it was a profound commentary on the differences between Athenian and Spartan society. 

Readers need to keep in mind that at no time in Spartan history was Sparta “ruled” by women. Spartan women were hardly Amazons who scorned men and took to the battlefield themselves.  Spartan women could not vote in the Spartan Assembly, and they could not be elected to office, not the Gerousia, the ephorate, or other lesser positions. Every contemporary of Gorgo knew this, so the question was never meant to suggest Spartan women had political power, but rather that they had influence over their menfolk to an exceptional, indeed “unnatural,” degree.

As Gorgo’s answer likewise illuminates, Spartan women did not live separate, lesbian lives, disconnected and divorced from their male relations and focused on themselves.  The image of Spartan women living apart and satisfying their sexuality among themselves is a modern myth, based on the patently false misconception that Spartan males were “far away” “most” of the time.  In fact, ancient wars were short affairs and only conducted during the campaign season, so that Spartan husbands were never gone more than a few months of the year and that very rarely. (Not until the Peloponnesian war did Sparta campaign year after year; throughout the archaic period Sparta was at war only sporadically with many years of peace in between.) Furthermore, the barracks and messes at which Spartan men ate were much closer to the temples, markets and public buildings at which the women congregated than the work-places of most modern (commuting) husbands.

On the contrary, Spartan women viewed their role as completely integral and indeed traditional.  As Gorgo’s reply underscores, a Spartan woman’s principal contribution to society – like that of her Athenian counterpart – was to produce the next generation of (male) citizens.  There was nothing odd, offensive or sinister about respectable women in the ancient world identifying with the role of mother.  The idea that women might have other societal functions other than wives and mothers is a relatively new historical phenomenon and far from accepted in many parts of the world from Afghanistan to Africa.

As Gorgo so brilliantly summarizes the situation, the difference between Spartan women and the women in the rest of the ancient world was not one of a fundamentally different role, but rather a difference in the way men viewed that role.  

Athens was a virulently misogynous society. Its greatest philosophers viewed women as “permanent children” and the doctors attributed everything from stomach illness to asthma in women to a “wandering womb,” for which the best cure was sex (with the woman’s owner/husband of course.) Women could not inherit property, nor indeed control more money than was needed to purchase a bushel of grain. They were largely uneducated and almost all were illiterate, so it is hardly surprising that their educated, usually significantly older husbands considered them congenitally stupid. The discrepancy between the education and maturity of husbands and illiteracy and tender age of wives was aggravated by the fact that female children were fed less nutritious food in smaller quantities than their brothers.  They were also denied fresh air and any kind of exercise. The result was females stunted both physically and mentally, married as soon as they became sexually mature, and usually dead by the age of 30 or 35. In short, Athens' laws and customs condemned women to ignorance, stunted grown and an early grave – assuming they were allowed to live at all.

There is little doubt that in Athens far more female infants were exposed than males. As it was aptly put in an Athenian law case, even a poor man would raise a son, while even a rich man would expose a daughter. The archaeological evidence supports the historical record; Athens suffered from a severe demographic imbalance in favor of males, something that is most similar to sex ratios in China and India where the systematic murder of female infants (either as embryos through abortion or after birth through exposure or neglect) is still widespread.

Sparta did not suffer either from the misogyny that created the imbalance in the population or from the consequences. Furthermore, Spartan girls received the same food as their brothers, attended the same school as their brothers until puberty, receiving thereby not only the same level of education but the opportunity to exercise in the fresh air. Spartan law also prohibited the marriage of girls "before they were old enough to enjoy sex," yet encouraged men to marry before the age of thirty ensuring that there was a far smaller age difference between the partners in Spartan marriage than in Athenian ones.

Returning to Gorgo's retort, her wit was razor sharp in noting that it was Spartan society as a whole, but particularly the men who had created the Spartan constitution, that had enabled women to enjoy the freedoms they did. This is how I put this exchange n context in Book III of the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Heroic King:

Eukoline shoved her veil off her head and turned on Gorgo to ask in a tone that mixed disapproval with amazement, “Why are you Spartan women the only ones who rule your men?” She did not mean it as a compliment.

“Because we are the only women who give birth to men!” Gorgo snapped back.

“As if I hadn’t given birth to two sons?” Eukoline retorted indignantly. “Athens has five times the number of citizens Sparta has!” she added proudly.

“Athens has 40,000 males who think that making clever speeches is the pinnacle of manliness.” All Gorgo’s pent-up anger at what she had seen since her arrival [in Athens] boiled over. “That’s why they are afraid to educate their daughters and keep their women in the dark ― physically and mentally!” Gorgo could not resist adding, “Sparta’s men prove their manhood with their spears and need not dismiss good advice just because it comes from the mouths of women!”

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