Nude inspections, thigh flashers and fights to the death: 15 things you need to know about the Spartans

In our minds, Sparta has become a near-mythical Greek city-state populated by the tough and single-minded ancient predecessors of today’s special forces troops. But as historian Andrew Bayliss outlines, its supposedly hyper-militarised society was stranger and more complex than its reputation suggests

A bronze Greek warrior statue and a costumed hoplite stand against a sunset sky with tall grass and stylised golden olive branches.

Published: May 3, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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1. The ‘Spartans’ were really called the homoioi

Although we know the citizens of the ancient Greek city of Sparta as the ‘Spartans’, they usually called themselves the homoioi. This can be translated as ‘equals’ or ‘similars’.

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As for outsiders, they usually called the Spartans ‘the Lacedaemonians’. This was because the city-state of Sparta – what the ancient Greeks called a polis – was actually called ‘Lacedaemon’.

2. All Spartan citizens were rich

Although ancient sources often describe their lifestyle as austere, Spartan citizens were all wealthy men. Every citizen was required to join a mess group, where he dined each night. To keep his place, he had to supply large monthly contributions of foodstuffs from his estates: roughly 45kg of barley, 3kg of cheese, 1.5kg of figs, a small amount of pork and 37 litres of wine.

Modern scholars have calculated that each Spartiate would have needed to own at least 15 hectares of land to meet his mess contributions. Such large holdings would have made them all properly wealthy by ancient Greek standards.

A stack of pale chunks of cheese and half a fig sit on top of a dark wood table

Every Spartan citizen needed to prove his worth through food contributions, including vast amounts of cheese and figs (Image by Getty Images)

3. They wore their hair long – and sported striking red cloaks

To reflect their relative equality as homoioi, Spartan citizens adopted a uniform appearance, keeping their hair long and dressing in red cloaks and tunics. Ancient sources claimed the Spartans’ long hair was designed to make handsome men more attractive and ugly men more frightening. Their red cloaks helped conceal bloodstains in combat.

In fact, this appearance was designed to project citizens’ gentlemanly status. This is because the ancient Greeks thought it was impossible for any man with long hair to perform manual labour, while producing the red dye for cloaks was incredibly laborious, a process that required the harvesting of more than 10,000 murex shellfish to produce just a single gram of dye.

4. This was not a ‘warrior’ society

Spartans are often described as ‘warriors’, but they didn’t spend all their time preparing for conflict as professional soldiers would. In fact, not one single surviving ancient Greek source describes the Spartans training for war.

Nonetheless, this was a militarised society in that all Spartan citizens were required to serve in the army until the age of 60. In addition, throughout their lives citizens were expected to share in communal activities, with citizens exercising and hunting together during the day. Training in athletics, wrestling and boxing would have kept the Spartans’ bodies strong, while hunting would have been useful in conditioning them to kill with bladed weapons.

The Spartans also dined together in their mess clubs each evening. Spartan citizens aged between 20 and 30 slept together in barracks each night.

5. They were parasites, who profited from slave labour

Citizens’ communal lifestyle was based on their ruthless exploitation of tens of thousands of enslaved people known as ‘helots’. These helots outnumbered their Spartan owners by perhaps as many as 10 to one.

The primary role of these helot slaves was, as Aristotle bluntly put it, to “farm the land for the benefit of the Spartiates”. By toiling on their masters’ estates in Laconia and Messenia, the helots produced the vast quantities of foodstuffs citizens needed to maintain their status atop society.

Three minimally clothed workers lean forward to pull a large wooden beam across open grassland, while a figure in red with a blue head covering stands behind them holding a whip.

A modern-day illustration depicting a Spartan man whipping his enslaved servants. Known as ‘helots’, they were expected to toil the land to provide foodstuffs for their much richer owners (Image by Bridgeman Images)

6. The helots were regularly hunted and subjected to violence

Each year, the Spartan authorities declared war on the helots. This meant the slaves could be slaughtered without incurring the religious pollution, or miasma, ancient Greeks believed resulted from an unlawful killing. In addition, helots were forced to wear dog-skin caps and coats. They were given a stipulated number of beatings, regardless of whether they had done anything wrong, to remind them they were slaves.

Sometimes, helots were forced to drink large quantities of unmixed wine to show young men what drunkenness was like. At other times, helots were forced to perform ridiculous songs and dances. But from a modern perspective, the most disturbing risk faced by helots was surely the krypteia. This was a brutal rite of passage whereby the ‘smartest’ young Spartan adults were sent into the countryside armed with a knife and ordered to eliminate the strongest of the helots.

7. They (likely) had the world’s first compulsory state-run education system

Choosing the ‘smartest’ of the young adult Spartans would have been easy for the authorities. This was because every single Spartan citizen had been tried and tested by the city’s compulsory and brutal upbringing, which lasted from age seven to 30.

A state official known as the paidonomos or ‘boyherder’ oversaw this brutal regime. He had full authority to assemble the boys and punish them as he saw fit. To assist him in his boyherding, the paidonomos was given a staff of young adults called the ‘whip-bearers’.

If neither the paidonomos nor the whip-bearers were around, any free Spartan adult would oversee the activities of the boys. The Athenian writer Xenophon stated bluntly that: “Spartan boys are never without someone in charge of them.”

Several people in draped ancient garments sit, stand, or recline around a central figure seated on an elevated chair within a classical hall of tall columns and stonework, with a dog resting nearby.

Every citizen was tried and tested in a compulsory – and brutal – coaching system. This 1880s woodcut imagines a Spartan boy being shown a helot forced to drink unmixed wine (Image by Getty Images)

8. Pederasty was a key part of life

Youths in training were mentored by an older male, who was not one of the officials or a relative. But this was not mentoring in the modern sense. What we are talking about here is the ancient Greek practice of ‘pederasty’, a homoerotic relationship between a pubescent boy and an adult male.

The mentor was meant to choose his protégé for his character rather than his looks. However, there is considerable dispute amongst sources about whether these Spartan partnerships were sexual. Xenophon insisted these pederastic unions were chaste, and that Spartans actually considered sexual molestation of boys as unacceptable as incest.

But the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes regularly mocked the Spartans for their sexual interest in boys. For his part, Plato overtly rejected Sparta as a model for his ideal state – where pederasty was explicitly forbidden – because when it came to homoerotic affairs, the Spartans were “slaves to pleasure”.

9. Fat-shaming was socially acceptable

The food intake of Spartan boys was strictly limited. The Athenian writer Xenophon says the boys were provided with just enough food for them not to become “fat or sluggish”, but meagre enough for them to learn how to work hard without eating and make their rations last longer.

It was not just Spartan boys who were required to stay slim. The young Spartan men aged 20–30 who lived in barracks were also expected to maintain a healthy physique. Spartan officials reportedly inspected these young men in the nude every 10 days to ensure they had not grown fat.

A Spartan named Naucleides, who became “extremely corpulent”, was even made to stand in the middle of the assembly to shame him into changing his ways.

10. Spartan girls were known as ‘thigh-flashers’

Girls participated in sports too, including running, wrestling and jumping. The rationale was that they would grow strong enough to bear sturdy babies. But rather than competing naked like Spartan men and boys, Spartan girls protected their modesty by wearing short tunics. Nonetheless, these tunics exposed the tops of their legs, earning them the nickname ‘thigh-flashers’.

Several bronze figurines have been unearthed depicting Spartan girls running or dancing, their short-sleeved tunics hitched to expose their left thigh. Other bronze figurines depicting Spartan girls bare-breasted and wearing only triangular loincloths. These are thought to depict the girls preparing to wrestle.

In a grassy landscape with hills and a distant mountain, several nude or partially clothed figures interact in the foreground while a group of clothed onlookers stands behind them.

Young Spartans Exercising by Edgar Degas, c1860. Spartan boys would train in the nude, while girls wore loincloths or short tunics to cover up (Image by Bridgeman Images)

11. Spartan women developed a reputation for telling men what to do

No fewer than 40 sayings by Spartan women were recorded in antiquity, most of which are judgments by Spartan mothers on how their sons fared in combat. When one Spartan mother handed her son his shield, she told him bluntly, “Your father kept this safe for you, so either keep this safe or don’t exist.”

One particularly frightening Spartan mother went so far as to hitch up her dress to expose herself to her cowardly sons, before inviting them to “crawl back in” her womb. When another Spartan lad made the mistake of telling his mother that everyone in his company had been killed, she yelled, “So they sent you to announce the bad news to us?” She then bashed his brains in with a broken roof tile.

12. Aristotle deemed Sparta a gynaecocracy

Sparta was almost unparalleled in the pre-modern world as a city-state where women were permitted to own land. By the fourth century BC, women owned as much as 40 per cent of all the land in Sparta. The philosopher Aristotle complained that owning so much land allowed Spartan women to dominate their husbands, sons and brothers, effectively turning Sparta into a ‘gynaecocracy’ – a state where women held power.

The Spartan queen Gorgo would likely have agreed. When asked by an Athenian woman why Spartan women were the only ones who could rule men, Gorgo replied, “Because we are the only ones who give birth to men.”

A seated woman in flowing garments gestures toward a helmeted man holding a round shield, spear, and sword, while two unclothed children stand close to him and a dog looks up at the group in a classical domestic setting.

A Spartan woman gives a shield to her son in this 19th century painting. Women held a lot of power in Spartan society – an unfamiliar ‘gynaecocracy’ which bothered Aristotle

13. They doubled down to create a dyarchy

In truth, Sparta was not really ruled by women, it was ruled by kings. And in fact, Sparta was unique in having two kings from two separate royal houses – the Agiads and Eurypontids – reigning jointly. Sparta was not a monarchy, but a dyarchy.

The Spartans claimed this peculiar arrangement dated back to the 11th century BC when their first king, Aristodemus, died before his wife gave birth to twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles. Because the mother refused to reveal which one was the eldest son, the Spartans made them both kings.

14. But the real powerbrokers were officials known as ephors

The power of the Spartan kings was counterbalanced by five annually elected officials known as ephors (literally ‘overseers’). The ephors began each year by ordering Spartan citizens to ‘cut’ their moustaches and obey the laws. The authority the ephors held was such that they were the only Spartan citizens not required to rise when one of the kings approached.

The ephors also exchanged monthly oaths with the kings. The royals swore they would “reign according to the established laws of the state”, while the ephors responded, “While you abide by your oath, we will keep the kingship unshaken.”

Five seated figures in ancient Greek‑style robes hold long staffs and face one another as if debating, set against tall architectural columns.

An 1862 imagining of the ephors, the most powerful officials in Sparta. They managed all citizens – including the kings

15. Spartans didn’t always fight to the death

Famously, when King Leonidas learned that he and his men were going to be surrounded by the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, he sent the other Greeks away but ordered his 300 Spartans to remain at their posts. Leonidas and his men fought to the death.

After the battle, an epigram was set up to commemorate their sacrifice: “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that here, obedient to their orders, we lie.” It would be natural, then, to think that Spartan law required Spartans to win or die trying. But there were actually numerous battles and skirmishes when the Spartans made tactical withdrawals or ran away.

Sometimes, they even surrendered. When 120 Spartan citizens who were marooned on the island of Sphacteria near Pylos gave themselves up to the Athenians in 425 BC, the Athenians displayed the Spartans’ shields in the ‘Painted Stoa’, a covered walkway that housed artworks and war booty. Perhaps pointedly, the shields were situated close to a painting showing the Athenian general Miltiades defeating the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Today, you can see one of those captured Spartan shields in the Agora Museum in Athens.

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Andrew Bayliss is a classicist at the University of Birmingham. His latest book is Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower (Profile Books, 2025)

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