Spartan Women by Pomeroy Sarah B.;

Author:Pomeroy, Sarah B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2002-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

Free Noncitizens

There were several other categories of non-Spartiates living in Sparta. These included the perioikoi (dwellers about) who were free, but not citizens. They seem to have lived in poleis and had some sorts of civic organizations like other freeborn people in the Greek world beyond Sparta. Though some worked as farmers, the perioikoi as a whole shouldered a disproportionate share of craft and commercial endeavors, since Spartan men were trained to work only in the military and government,6 though, as we have mentioned, they did supervise their country estates. Perioikic men worked as craftsmen and merchants and did the jobs that male Spartans were not permitted to do. Perioikic men also served in the army, some holding positions of command. Presumably most perioikic women lived like other Greek women (but not like upper-class Spartan women), raising children, managing their households, and performing domestic labor in their own homes. Some probably worked in service jobs like baby nursing and prostitution (see below).

There were other free people at Sparta distributed in a number of categories that exceeded anything we know about social distinctions in any other Greek polis. This mass of people included helots who had been freed for performing good service (neodamodeis); mixed-blood members of the lower class who had been through the agoge and were elevated above the class they had been born into (mothakes); bastards born of helot mothers and Spartan fathers (nothoi: Xen. Hell. 5.3.9); and, at the top of these inferior ranks, those who had been born into citizen status but had been demoted for non-payment of the dues owed to their syssition (hypomeiones). 7 The men in all these categories were free and (with the exception of the neodamodeis) had been educated in the agoge, so they were able to undertake military service and thus compensate for the ever-dwindling supply of Spartiate men. Because they were Greeks and not foreign born, it was doubtless easier to grant them some social mobility. Thus, for example, helots might be given their freedom by the state in return for military service. We do not know if their wives were simultaneously liberated at all such occasions, but Thucydides (1.103.3) notes that after the helot rebellion in the 460s, rebels were free to leave Spartan territory, taking their wives and children. Helots could own private property and could purchase their freedom when the state offered them an opportunity.

Especially at times when the state needed funds, helots were encouraged to purchase their freedom at a set price,8 but we do not know if they had to pay for their wives as well, and whether the price was the same. Slaves in the rest of the Greek world also had opportunities to purchase their freedom, but they were not regarded as equals: the prices varied and had to be negotiated for each individual man, woman, or child.

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