Athens Vs Sparta Research Paper

Around 600 BCE in a mountainous region, a ton of small civilizations survive, fight and expand between the valleys. Sparta and Athens, the two most powerful civilizations, were complete opposites and enemies. Some of their differences were trade and government, but the biggest and most important difference was how they treated women.

First, Spartans were not always so different. At one point in the Spartan history they were just a small, normal city-state. That was until the day the Spartans took over Messinia, a large fertile city state of about twice as many people as Sparta. You may ask, “How does one war change the history of a city state?” Well the answer goes back to how many people they conquered. Because they made the Messenians

Though all of Greece treated women badly (besides Sparta) it is believed that Athens was the worst for women treatment. The men say all these horrible things about women that are sometimes true, but are brought on by having to depend on men and then the men don’t take care of them. A well known story of this is that of Medea. The story shows this but it also shows that not all the men are bad because the king takes her in. Not some peasant, but a king, this may show that the upper classes had different views on women then lower classes do. Research (Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World, Third Edition) shows that this is true because girls in the upper and middle class started school at seven years old, but had to leave directly after learning numbers and literature. This may be a result of the men being scared that the women would become powerful if they had any more knowledge because a lot of the men were uneducated. Now that you have some background on the subject it is time get into the more organized part of the essay, the thesis. Spartan and Athenian women were different in tons of different ways three of those ways are, Spartan women could own land and business; Where as Athenian women were always owned by a man, Spartan women had legal rights, but just like Athens no political rights and last but not least