Athens vs Sparta?

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Dellarovere

We have been tought at school that Athens had been the spiritual, scientific and artistic city state while Sparta had been brave but rude, naif, and everything matching with a military regime, as if people lived only in the barracks.
This is absolutely false. Because Sparta gave rise to a significant spiritual and artistic creativity, which lacked the quantity and quality of the Athenean one, but it was all civilians' possession. In Sparta there have been cultivated the "art" of law and justice, epic poetry, sculpture and architecture, and the ideals of freedom and pride.
We have a very wrong immage about Sparta's everyday life:
Spartans had a skill in gymnastics, but at the same time they loved to be clean using water (instead of sand that Atheneans used), their cuisine was not complicated but there was no hunger (as with the poor classes of Athens), there were no gaps of difference in the way of life of people (as in Athens), and the most important of all:
Women had their own rights and ejoyed ahigh level of freedom. They had civil rights (entitled to inherite and obtain property), they were not resticted in the private compartment of the house (Gynaikonitis), they sould go wherever they wanted to with no restrictions, and they could exercise their bodies at the stadiums of Sparta, wearing short dresses and thus called Phainomirides (because their thighs were in public view) by the rest of Greeks, especially Atheneans who kept their women imprisoned in the house and they were allowed to go out escorted by a slave and always covered with a burgha kind of vail.
Definately Sparta where liberte' , egalite' et fraternite' have been first invented...

mavmar72

when do u mean? now or in the past?
if it is in the past, it is a hard choice!
Athens was the city of civilization : democracy, literature, theater, architecture, sculpture, pottery, painting, philosophy, and the list goes on... on the other hand, being a woman,i would not like it very much there because women were deprived from all those things i listed before....
Sparta was the city of warriors : training, basic education, not much to do with art but , on the other hand, in Sparta, men and women were "equal". Men were trained and respected as soldiers and citizens and women were trained, honored and respected as mothers of the soldiers and the power behind the men to do what they did....
There r many more things to say but i need the whole page to do that so.....
P.S. and so that there r no misunderstandings here, the real democracy was in Sparta although its regime was officially oligarchy (Pericles' democracy was for the few that were considered to be citizens of Athens : only men that had been born to Athenian parents)

SOULA K

in this time athens, cause its beautiful. in ancient greek in sparta cause it was the meaning of life, now days its just a village, nothing more

the_lipsiot

What now ?

Sparta - Athens is too hot and busy now.

Then ?

Neither - they were always at war, Athens was riven with plague and, the Acropolis may have been beautiful, but most people still lived in very basic conditions. Given the choice, I would have wanted to live an idyllic pastoral life out on one of the islands.

alexlascari

I would choose Sparta because Spartans were less complicated and more sincere. They kept their word, they were very brave, and very proud without being selfish. The perfect proportions.

haroula

sorry!!i would choose crete!!it's simply beautiful!!:)

The Stainless Steel Rat

This question does not really have a specific answer despite the "historical analysis" of Delarovere and others. As outsiders and long removed from those times we can chose as we please (your answers speak for them selves.) it is equivalent of asking today. "Who do you chose the USA or the USSR"? As to what and how the Athenians thought of the Spartans and vice versa is well documented in speeches and inscriptions and poems etc. They were opposites and for whatever reason they had adherents and friends and allies-fickle and ephemeral but ever present.

NICK A

I would choose Athens. Sparta for men was just one long life boot camp, with lots of male on male action, Not see you wife for the first 10 years in the light. Athens you can fight and live the good life. That is why sparta is a goat town, while Athens is something. :)

Raintrain

Sparta was brutal- Athens was the place to be.

Masta Habibi

none of them. god y would u want to live in any of them
jk
sparta
(madness???this is sparta!!!!!!)

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