A Warrior Society Ruled By Women? An Introduction to the Politics of Ancient Sparta
This is the second installment in our series exploring the history and practice of democracy throughout time and across places, peoples and cultures.
In the popular imagination, Sparta is often portrayed as the antithesis of Athenian democracy: a militarized, rigidly hierarchical state ruling an austere society. And in many respects, that perception is accurate. But the truth of Spartan government and politics is more complicated—and more instructive—than the pop culture caricature might suggest.
The Spartans were not without representative institutions or checks on power. Nor were they unfamiliar with the challenges of enfranchisement, civic virtue, or state-building. Their constitutional order may not resemble the liberal democracies we recognize today, but it offers a striking case study in how a society can channel political structure toward the pursuit of national cohesion and collective identity.
The Great Rhetra and the Mixed Constitution
At the heart of the Spartan political system was the Great Rhetra, a foundational law code attributed to the semi-mythical lawgiver Lycurgus. According to the historians Plutarch and Xenophon, Lycurgus fashioned a “mixed constitution,” blending monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic elements—a deliberate design to preserve internal balance and prevent tyranny from any single source. The governing apparatus consisted of four main components: the Diarchy, the Gerousia, the Ephorate, and the Apella.
The Diarchy was the dual kingship of Sparta. At the head of the Spartan state were two hereditary kings from separate royal families (the Agiads and Eurypontids) who ruled simultaneously. While we call them kings today, they were more akin to hereditary generals. Their political powers were limited and subject to checks from the other institutions we will discuss shortly. The kings were primarily employed as military commanders and also performed a number of religious duties on behalf of the state.
The Gerousia, or “Council of Elders” was the body principally responsible for drafting and initiating legislation. The body consisted of 30 members—the two kings and 28 men over the age of 60 who were elected for life. Members of the Gerousia were elected by acclamation, a peculiar form of voting whereby the loudness of shouts determined the winner—hardly the modern ideal of electoral transparency, but a nod to popular input nonetheless. The Gerousia wielded significant influence as, in addition to its legislative responsibility, it also served as the high court for capital cases.
The Ephorate was perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Spartan constitution. The ephors were five annually elected magistrates who held extensive executive and judicial power. They could indict kings, supervise education, manage foreign policy, and summon assemblies. Their term limits and collegial structure prevented any one ephor from dominating, and their role as watchdogs over the kings made them crucial to maintaining institutional equilibrium.
Finally, there was the Apella, Sparta’s citizens assembly. Composed of male Spartiates over the age of 30, the Apella met monthly to vote on proposals brought by the Gerousia. Its powers were limited to an up-or-down vote without amendment. Still, it was a space for citizen participation, and its role in affirming or rejecting policy gave the Spartan people a voice (albeit a constrained one). However, unlike the Athenian model, which made space for rhetoric, theater, and open debate, the Spartan political order was rooted in discipline, conformity, and silence.
This intricate system was praised by such eminent philosophers as Plato and Aristotle for its internal checks and balances. Despite its complexity, it produced a remarkable degree of political stability—at least among the ruling class—that held for several centuries.
A Culture Built on Military Discipline
The famous Spartan warrior culture was not an abstraction but the result of institutionalized training. Children were trained in military discipline and social obedience from an early age. When the son of a full citizen reached the age of seven, they entered the agoge, a state-run educational institution that was part school, part army boot camp, and was notorious for its harsh discipline.
The agoge was the core institution shaping the civic and ideological formation of Spartan males. Beginning at age seven, boys were removed from their households and placed under the supervision of state-appointed instructors. They were organized into age cohorts and subjected to a rigorous program of physical training, combat drills, endurance tests, and communal living. Personal hardship was deliberately cultivated: boys were expected to go barefoot, wear a single garment year-round, and steal food to survive—learning both stealth and the value of collective dependence. Discipline was enforced through harsh punishments, with beatings administered not only for disobedience but for any perceived lack of initiative or strength.
The curriculum also included music, dance, and choral performance—activities that reinforced rhythm, coordination, and unity—but the overarching goal was to instill absolute loyalty to the polis, cultivate courage, and prepare each boy to serve as a hoplite in Sparta’s phalanx. Upon completing the agoge, typically around age 20, the most promising young men were selected for advanced training or assigned to elite units.
Among the most controversial elements of this system was the krypteia, a secret rite of passage that functioned as both a final test of elite youths and a tool of state terror. Participants, typically the strongest graduates of the agoge, were sent into the countryside armed only with daggers and minimal provisions. Their mission was to operate covertly for extended periods, terrorizing the helot population and eliminating any who appeared defiant or threatening to Spartan control. Plutarch and other ancient sources describe the krypteia as a sanctioned campaign of murder against Sparta’s vast enslaved population, serving both as a training ground for psychological hardening and as a calculated means of suppressing potential rebellion.
This institutionalized violence reveals a dark truth at the heart of Sparta’s civic discipline—its emphasis on domination, surveillance, and obedience as civic virtues was the means by which the Spartans maintained control of a large and diverse non-citizen and enslaved population. The training of citizens was inseparable from the subjugation of others, and the cohesion of Spartan society rested on a foundation of coercion. The result was a hyper-disciplined—but potentially brittle—political order, one that depended on conformity and the ever-present threat of force.
The agoge not only trained boys for war, but also inculcated loyalty to the state. Upon graduation, Spartan men were expected to regularly attend communal messes, common kitchens and dining spaces where male citizens shared meals. This practice reinforced egalitarianism and solidarity within the citizen class.
This intense social regimentation supported a system of governance that could function with limited deliberation. Debate was minimized; consensus was enforced. In Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, Sparta is praised for creating citizens who “placed honor above life.” But this cohesion also meant little room for dissent or reform—a fatal rigidity in the face of later demographic and military decline.
Who Were the Citizens?
Spartan citizenship was highly exclusive. Only full Spartiates—adult males born to Spartan parents, having completed the rigorous agoge military training and maintained their contributions to the common mess (syssitia)—were considered full citizens. These citizen-soldiers were legally and culturally distinct from all other groups in Laconia. Yet they constituted a strikingly small portion of the population—at the height of Spartan power, estimates suggest there were no more than 10,000 adult male citizens, with that number dwindling over time to fewer than 1,000 by the third century BCE .
Two large subordinate populations existed beneath the Spartiates. The first were the perioikoi (“those who dwell around”), free non-citizen inhabitants of the many towns surrounding Sparta proper. They were allowed to conduct commerce, own land, and serve in the military (often as hoplites), but were excluded from political decision-making and denied the privileges of Spartiate citizenship. They played a vital role in the Spartan economy, operating the workshops and trades forbidden to full citizens by Lycurgan custom. Though often seen as loyal allies, the perioikoi retained a distinct status and were not integrated into the political life of the polis.
Below even the perioikoi were the helots, a class of state-owned serfs tied to the land, primarily responsible for agricultural labor. Helots vastly outnumbered citizens and were a constant source of fear and potential rebellion, which led to brutal control mechanisms and ritualized violence against them, including the infamous krypteia.
Other marginal groups included the mothakes (sons of helots or foreigners who were raised alongside Spartan boys in the agoge but not granted full citizenship) and neodamodeis (freed helots who earned limited rights, often through military service). Despite their contributions, these groups rarely attained political influence or social parity.
This narrow definition of citizenship contributed directly to Sparta’s long-term decline. As the number of full Spartiates shrank due to battlefield losses, economic barriers, and the strict inheritance requirements tied to communal dining, the state’s ability to field armies and govern effectively eroded. The inflexibility of the Spartan constitution—lauded by ancient admirers for its rigidity—ultimately proved its undoing. The system failed to adapt to demographic pressures, and without mechanisms to incorporate new citizen stock from among its loyal allies or the broader population, Sparta’s vaunted military supremacy collapsed alongside its civic base.
The Uncommon Power of Spartan Women
Militarism was not the only peculiarity that marked Sparta out from other ancient Greek states. It was also remarkable for its striking gender dynamics. To outsiders—especially Athenians—Sparta was notorious as a place where women wielded unusual freedom and influence. In fact, classical writers like Aristotle and Herodotus often mocked or derided Sparta as a “gynecocracy,” a society ruled by women. But what did this really mean?
In legal and economic terms, Spartan women enjoyed more rights and autonomy than their counterparts elsewhere in the Greek world. Thanks to inheritance customs and the frequent wartime absences (or deaths) of male citizens, women came to control as much as two-fifths of Sparta’s land by the fourth century BCE. This concentration of wealth gave elite women significant economic clout—a reality that unsettled many ancient commentators. Spartan women had public voices that their Athenian counterparts lacked.
Women also played a vital civic and ideological role. They were not marginal or invisible, but central to civic life—both as stewards of property and as cultural standard-bearers. While they could not vote, hold public office, or attend the Apella, Spartan women were expected to be full participants in the social reproduction of the state’s military values. They trained physically alongside men and received formal education. The famed sayings of Spartan mothers, collected by Plutarch, celebrated mothers who told their sons to “come back with your shield or on it”—embodying a vision of civic virtue as maternal duty. This idealization of Spartan womanhood would prove an essential component of the city’s self-image and survival.
To be clear, this was not gender equality in the modern sense. Women's freedom in Sparta was bound up in their function as reproducers and supporters of the warrior elite, not in any recognition of inherent political rights. Nonetheless, their relative prominence—and the deep unease it provoked in other Greek societies—offers a compelling counterpoint to the more restrictive gender norms of the classical world.
Then and Now: Spartan Rhetra vs. American Constitutionalism
Sparta’s constitution was never democratic in the sense we understand it. Its participatory features were restricted to a narrow few. Its coercive social order relied on brutal subjugation. And yet, it was a form of republicanism—of collective governance, bounded by law, where different institutions checked one another’s powers and decisions were not made by a single man.
In its mix of monarchy, aristocracy, and popular consent, the Spartan system provided one of the earliest examples of a mixed government, a concept that would later influence Roman thinkers and, eventually, early modern theorists of constitutionalism—including the men who framed the Constitution of the United States.
For modern readers, the Spartan model serves less as a template and more as a cautionary tale. It shows the power of civic education, the strength of institutional balance, and the dangers of exclusivity. Committed as we are to broadening participation and defending democratic norms, we can learn from Sparta not what to emulate, but what to guard against: a democracy that serves the few, built on the backs of the many.
Building on the Spartan Legacy
As we continue this journey through the varied histories of governance, we should absorb these lessons so that we may strive to improve our own institutions and secure a democracy that values participation, justice, and equity for all—not only for ourselves, but for our children.