It can be argued that nothing distinguished Sparta more from its neighbours than its then unique relations between the sexes that was unique in the Ancient World. The key features were an austere or “prudish” disdain for explicit, pornographic or mercenary sex on one hand, and an open and acknowledged respect for female sexuality on the other. Spartan sexual relations were furthermore enshrined in Spartan law as well as Spartan tradition, and justified as the best way to ensure healthy children.

The archaeological evidence for Sparta suggests so far that, just as ancient commentators described, there were no brothels within the city of Sparta itself.  Spartan men interested in purchasing sex had to travel to one of the outlying perioikoi communities.  Even more telling is the almost complete absence of pornographic depictions on artifacts, such as are abundant in both Athens and Corinth.  On the other hand, some of the most important and lovely pieces of Spartan sculpture depict couples sitting side-by-side.  Regardless of who the figures were intended to depict (Helen and Menelaus, Chilon and his wife, a Spartan king and his queen), what is significant is the greater importance given to depictions of a man and wife side-by-side, i.e. in partnership, compared to depictions of sexual intercourse.  This is particularly notable when one considers that female nude figurines appear in Sparta in the Archaic period, whereas it was not until the Hellenistic period that the female body was shown nude in other parts of Greece.  The naked Spartan figurines reflect the fact that Spartan girls and women exercised in the nude, and so the female body was familiar and not an overtly erotic image.

Contemporary literary sources from Sparta itself are almost non-existent, but the poems of Alkman, written in the second half of the 7th century BC, are an important exception.  Among other works are the lyrics of songs written to be performed in public at festivals by girls’ choruses.  Alkman also wrote poetry expressing his own adoration of the Spartan girls he worked with.  He was considered by ancient scholars the first “love poet” – a notable distinction for the poet whom the ancients also viewed as “the most Spartan”!  None of Alkman’s texts can be classed as pornographic, but many modern commentators assert that because the texts of the lyrics, designed to be sung by girls’ choruses, praise the girls’ beauty, that the songs were lesbian in nature.  This is nonsense.  Boys’ and men’s choruses sang about bravery and girls about beauty -- because those were the virtues that each group, respectively, was expected to strive for and which their elders wanted praised at public festivals.  What the texts – and the fact that Alkman was so revered in Sparta – do tell us is that the Spartans enjoyed light-hearted music and tributes to female beauty in a public context – not merely in the back alleys of the red-light district.

In contrast to these sparse, native records, ancient observers of Sparta in the Archaic and Classical periods generally have a great deal to say about Spartan sexual relations.  Herodotus, for example, is always happy to provide some juicy little story about a man who covets a close friend’s wife, or who steals a rival’s bride just before the wedding, or the king who loved his barren wife so much that he refused to set her aside even for the sake securing the succession to his throne.  Notably absent in all these tales is a single mention of a Spartan with a male lover.

Xenophon, an Athenian who served with the Spartan army and sent his sons to the Spartan agoge, describes at length three aspects of Spartan sexuality in the Classical period.  First, he explains that Spartan laws required men and women to marry in their physical prime and not when too young (for girls) or too old (for men) and that they should be initially restricted in their sexual contact so as to not to become “satiated” but rather to enjoy sex together. Note that there is explicit emphasis on the desirability of the female partner enjoying sex as much as the male.  Second, Xenophon explains that Sparta’s laws allowed a wife of good repute to have a sexual relationship with another Spartiate of good character.  Although Xenophon stresses that this is to take place with the husband’s consent, it is obvious that this was not always the case.  And third, he describes at great length the practice of youths still in school having an elder mentor to guide and advise them, but he stresses emphatically that this relationship was not as “elsewhere in Greece.”  On the contrary, according to Xenophon, Sparta’s laws made it just as disgraceful for an older man to molest a boy as for parents to have sexual intercourse with their children or brothers with their sisters.

Aristotle, writing later still, has even more to say about the greed and avarice of Spartan women. Indeed he goes so far as to attribute Sparta’s decline to the power and wealth of her women – stating that undisciplined females are always the result in warlike societies, which do not esteem homosexuality.

In conclusion, contemporary sources suggest that Sparta was not a particularly homo-erotic society and certainly there was no institutionalized homosexual behaviour up to the mid-5th century BC.  On the contrary, in Sparta women’s sexuality was not only recognized but respected and to a degree encouraged.  Rather than being something frightful and dangerous, which male relatives needed to vigilantly guard (as in the rest of Greece), female sexuality was a positive factor, which contributed to healthy children and so to the well being of the state.