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Daily Life in Ancient Greece: What it Was Like to Live in Athens and Sparta

daily life ancient greece sparta athens
The Parthenon in Athens. Credit: Paolina27/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0

Daily life in ancient Greece varied by the city-state. In Athens and Sparta, people lived according to such contrasting traditions that it almost seems as though they were from different countries entirely.

Despite the fact that they shared the same heritage and language, ancient Athens and Sparta were wildly different, with clashing lifestyles, cultures, and values.

Often, the two city-states were not on the friendliest of terms.

The Spartans were warriors, disciplined and strong, and always ready to die for their homeland—hence the word “spartan,” which is also used today, meaning someone who lives an austere life and is indifferent to pleasures and luxuries.

Athenians, on the other hand, were educated, and those who were not soldiers were philosophers, politicians, writers of tragedies and comedies, musicians, and sculptors.

Growing up in Sparta: a life of self-denial

daily life ancient greece athens sparta
The “Vatican Amphora.” Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public domain

Life in Sparta was one of simplicity and self-denial. Children were children of the state more than of their parents. They were raised to be soldiers, loyal to the state, strong and self-disciplined.

When a Spartan baby was born, soldiers came to the house and examined it carefully to determine its strength. They bathed the baby in wine rather than water to see its reaction.

If a baby was weak, the Spartans would throw it off a cliff (the Kaiadas) or take it away to become a slave (helot).

The city-state—not parents—decided the fate of children, and nurses, who provided their primary care, did not coddle the babies at all.

A mother’s softening influence was considered detrimental to boys’ education, so a Spartan boy would be taken from his mother at the age of seven, and soldiers would put him in a dormitory with other boys to train them to become soldiers.

The boys went through harsh physical training and deprivation to make them strong. They marched without shoes and went without food.

Boys in Sparta learned the art of battle and to endure pain and survive through their wits. Older boys willingly participated in beating up the younger boys to make them tough.

Once they turned twenty, young Spartan men had to pass a rigorous test to graduate and become full citizens, as only worthy soldiers gained aristocratic citizenship.

If they failed their tests, they never became citizens but became perioeci, the middle class.

If the young men passed, they continued to live in the barracks and train as soldiers and were also required to marry in order to produce a new generation of young Spartans.

The state gave them a piece of land that was farmed by slaves. The income supported them as full-time soldiers.

At the age of thirty, they were allowed to live with their families but they continued to train until the age of sixty at which time they retired from military service.

Girls and women were given freedoms in Sparta

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Wounded Amazon. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

Girls were also taken from their homes at seven and sent to school. There, they learned wrestling, gymnastics, and fighting.

Spartans believed that strong mothers produced strong children, so women were allowed to exercise and were even given the same portions of food as their male counterparts, something unheard of in Athens.

Women in Sparta also had to pass the citizenship tests at around eighteen to twenty years old. If they did so successfully, they were assigned a husband.

To prepare for the wedding night, their hair was cut short, and they were dressed in male clothing.

After spending their wedding night together, the Spartan man then returned to his all-male barracks, where he often had lovers. Men and women did not live together but met occasionally for procreation.

Since they were living alone most of the time, Spartan women enjoyed much greater freedom and independence than women in other Greek city-states.

They were allowed to walk around in the city and transact their own affairs.

Life was not as easy for girls in Athens or the rest of Ancient Greece

In Athens, however, girls and boys were brought up much differently. While boys went off to school at age seven, young girls continued to stay at home until they were married, rarely ever leaving home.

Girls were not formally educated, but some mothers did teach their daughters to read and write.

Others learned to dance or play an instrument although a good family did not consider musical instruments to be proper for girls.

A young girl was to assist her mother in the home. If asked to help, she was also required to work in the fields.

daily life ancient greece athens sparta
Women weaving and working with fabric, as depicted on a lekythos by the Amasis painter. Credit: Public Domain

Instructing a young girl on her future role as a mother was very important. All girls learned domestic jobs such as weaving, working with textiles, taking care of children, embroidering, and cooking.

Girls were restricted to their homes and often could only leave during specific festivals.

Traditionally, girls in Athens would marry at an extremely young age, by about fourteen or fifteen years old and then would live in their husband’s home.

Once married, the young wife would mostly live at home only interacting with the household.

Education in ancient Athens resembled current schooling

The boys of ancient Athens went to school at seven years of age. They did their work on wax-covered tablets with a stylus.

Subjects were similar to those taught today, and boys in Athens were taught math, including fractions, addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication.

They learned the words of Homer and how to read and write, and they had music instruction that usually included learning to play the lyre.

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Boxers on a Panathenaic amphora in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Credit: /Wikimedia Commons/

Physical education and sports included the use of the bow and arrow and the sling, while competitions in wrestling and swimming were also conducted. The more wealthy learned to ride horses.

By age fourteen, boys were promoted to another school for their teenage years. By age eighteen, all boys were expected to attend military school, from which they graduated at twenty.

From the age of thirty and onward, they could participate in politics. It was also around this age that they usually married.

Life in ancient Athens was different than in the rest of Greece

Men were the only people considered citizens, so they were frequently seen around the town conducting their business along with slaves.

Men went to the market, met with friends to discuss politics, and went to temples to worship. Interestingly, it was men who did all the shopping and errands outside of the home.

Athenian men had a special room in the house just for themselves. This room was for lounging around and entertaining male guests; no women except for slaves and entertainers were allowed inside this room.

Contrary to Spartan men, the educated, well-to-do Athenians were very much interested in the arts, philosophy, and aesthetics.

Architectural masterpieces like the Parthenon and the Erechtheion, as well as the many statues of Praxiteles and Phidias, stand as proof that Athenian men were more cultivated in their daily life than many in ancient Greece, especially their Spartan counterparts.

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