[fanfan]

I was taught Spartan women ran everything, but if so, this info. I Googled doesn't sound all that exciting for either gender. :-)

"Marriage for a Spartan woman was an almost non-ceremonial event.

The woman was abducted in the night by her suitor, her head was shaved, and she was made to wear men's clothing and lye on a straw pallet in the dark.
From there on she would meet with her husband for almost entirely procreative reasons.

If she was formerly a girl, she became a woman through marriage. Any Spartan man could abduct a wife, which led to a system of polyandry (many husbands, one wife or vice versa) in Sparta.

When a child was born, the woman had little to do with it's upbringing, rather nurses handled the child's care (in addition, a female Spartan child was subject to the same tests of strength as a male child.)."

Hmmmm....

[SunkenCiv]

:') Yeah, "marriage by capture" is the translation of the term they used. Spartan society was referred to as being ruled by women even in its heyday, but it wasn't. Spartan society grew from some kind of commonplace Greek village into a fetishistic and quite sick police state, which not only treated its children (and citizens in general) quite brutally, it held neighboring peoples in bondage. Eventually the last king of Sparta (who took power through fraud and intrigue) led what was left of an already declining fascism into a series of unnecessary wars against Thebes, which proceeded to wipe the land clean of Spartans. Good riddance. The last (ex-)king wound up serving as a mercenary in Egypt, despite his advanced age, in an effort to raise money to support himself, his troops, and ultimately to restore Sparta. He failed.

The Spartans directed by David Portlock	The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse by Paul Cartledge

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