Did the spartans have gay sex

That is an incredible accomplishment for a village with a fraction of the population of other Greek city-states. They were auxiliary hoplites in the Spartan military. They did not have the same negative attitudes toward homosexuality that some people in the modern world do.

Sparta was always struggling to keep its birth rate above replacement levels. The Spartans didn’t have religious or cultural objections to same-sex relationships. The Sacred Band of Thebes contain same-sex couples and defeated enemy forces far bigger than them.

Spartan laws made procreation a sacred duty Because of this, Spartan society placed an unprecedented emphasis on getting married, having sex and giving birth to children. Sparta did not accept immigrants and foreigners were not allowed into the city-state unless approved by the authorities.

Leave a comment. But they were not Spartans. They also ran the day-to-day affairs of their estates and the city itself. Likewise, the ability to abstain from sex for long periods of time on campaign was considered a virtue, and would lead to even more pregnancies when the warriors returned home.

To put it bluntly, homosexuality was illegal in Sparta, but not for the reasons you’d think. Yet at the same time, Sparta projected power beyond its borders throughout the Peloponnese and, at its height, beyond Attica and into Asia minor.

In city-states like Athens, Corinth and Thebes, parties were all men. Neither author denies that homosexual relationships were common among Spartan men, but they express different ideas about how the Spartans thought about this, mainly to push their own philosophical agendas.

Merchants were forbidden and even musicians had to be approved. They marched to war with Sparta. Philosophers and musicians of other city states wrote songs about Spartan women, idealizing them as the image of female perfection.

Unlike other women in antiquity, Spartan women were educated, literate and had rights, including land ownership. Sex was strictly with your wife, for the purpose of procreation. Homosexual attraction sometimes existed in the form of pederasty, which influenced ancient Greek and especially Spartan military practices.

On the night of their wedding, Spartan wives were expected to lie in a dark room and dress as a man - presumably to help their husbands make the transition from homosexual to heterosexual love. You have to understand that, since they were not educated, women in the Greek world were not considered good conversational partners.

Spartan hoplites. This is why Lykurgusthe legendary lawgiver of Sparta, forbade same-sex relationships. They did not have the same negative attitudes toward homosexuality that some people in the modern world do. The primary reason homosexuality was illegal in Sparta was because the ultimate duty of Spartan citizens was to produce more little Spartans who would grow up to become warriors.

This is why Athens famously got Sparta to back down at one point in the Peloponnesian War, after the Battle of Sphacteria when an Athenian force took several hundred Spartans hostage. But more importantly, Spartan women were intelligent and wielded real power.

Spartan women: Educated, literate, fetishized by the Greek world Spartan women were renowned for their beauty, as the women of Athens and Corinth did. [17] This usually consisted in romantic relations and mentoring by adult men with male youths. The prospect of losing that many full Spartiates was so unappealing to Sparta that its kings agreed to cease hostilities for a time in exchange for the release of those men.

Such was the nature of a closed, ultra-traditionalist society.