Spartan Women Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Spartan Women - Term Paper Example This paper aims to analyze the historical, social and economic perspectives of Spartan rituals, practices and laws to prove that apparently the Spartan woman seems to have achieved a significant level of accomplishment maintaining their status equal if not higher to that of men, but a closer scrutiny of the same laws and other coherent practices imply that a woman`s status in Sparta is not a reflection of modernization but a reflection of the need of that time. Nonetheless some of the practices reveal the iniquitous practices imposed on woman even in the age of Spartan woman enlightenment. The paper will be divided into three sections, the first section will address the prevalent conditions of Sparta in that century and the apparent socio-political system dominating the state`s apparatus during that era, the second section will deal with various laws favoring woman which were enacted at that time along with a critical analysis of all those laws per se, and the third section will aim at analyzing the dire criticism woman enlightenment has to face in the context of downfall of Sparta. Sparta was the Greek city state of Peloponnesus which was created as an attempt to formulate a Hellenic society with a strong virtue. The historic moment that led to a drastic change in the constitution of this state was its victory over a small territory named Messenia. The ulterior motives behind the conquest for this territory are still unknown, as Cartledge (1981) puts it, but the results were definitely very productive. There were two major milestones that were achieved by Spartans at that time; firstly, they acquired a highly fertile piece of land suitable for agricultural practices and, the second achievement was a hold over an incarcerated labor force which was attained as a result of enslavement (Hanssen 2007). Thus, now it becomes crucial to analyze the social and political implications of war and