Spartan_Citizenship

Spartan Citizenship In Sparta, as in the rest of Greece, the production of legitimate children was of paramount importance. The practices of Sparta differed greatly however in what was considered a legitimate child. Under the Lycurgan reforms legitimacy as a product of marriage was not the issue it was in the rest of Greece. Any child born of Spartan parents was in every manner a citizen. As a result, and due to the totally structured society in which the Spartans lived, status was theoretically equal amongst all Spartan citizens. The function of the Lycurgan reforms was to ensure the continuation of the pure Spartan bloodline and to maintain their physical superiority. In order to accomplish this, Spartan attitudes towards many of the functions of marriage, as displayed in the rest of Greece, were very different. Plutarch observes that Lycurgas compares the breeding of strong and able children to the breeding of horses and dogs and that ‘they [the rest of Greece] forget that where children are born of poor stock, the first to suffer from their poor condition are those who possess and rear them, while the same applies conversely to the good qualities of those spartan, children, land, child, status, lycurgas, legitimate, strong, sparta, rest, production, produce, plutarch, marriage, lycurgan, greece, considered, citizens, xenophon, women, woman, wealth, state, spartans, result, parents, order, one, much, male, husband, greek, function, equal, born