{"id":69268,"date":"2022-05-06T01:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T05:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69268"},"modified":"2022-05-05T09:54:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T13:54:26","slug":"qotd-the-spartiates-were-quite-possibly-the-least-productive-people-to-ever-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/05\/06\/qotd-the-spartiates-were-quite-possibly-the-least-productive-people-to-ever-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;&#8230; the <em>Spartiates<\/em> were quite possibly the least productive people to ever exist&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>I think it is worth stressing just how extreme the division of labor was [in ancient Sparta]. <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i0D#Helot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Helots<\/em><\/a> did all of the labor, because the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i0D#Spartiates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spartiates<\/a><\/em> were quite possibly the least productive people to ever exist (the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i0D#Perioikoi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">perioikoi<\/a><\/em> presumably also produced a lot of goods for the <em>spartiates<\/em>, but being free, one imagines they had to be compensated for that out of the only economic resource the <em>spartiates<\/em> possessed: the produce of <em>helot<\/em> labor). The <em>spartiates<\/em> were forbidden from taking up any kind of productive activity at all (Plut. <em>Lyc<\/em>. 24.2). Lysander is shocked that the Persian prince Cyrus gardens as a hobby (Xen. <em>Oec<\/em>. 4.20-5), because why sully your hands with labor if you don&#8217;t have to? Given the normal divisions of household labor (textile production in the Greek household was typically done by women), it is equally striking that not one of Plutarch&#8217;s &#8220;Sayings of Spartan Women&#8221; in the <em>Moralia<\/em> concerns weaving, save for one \u2013 where a Spartan woman shames an Ionian one for being proud of her skill in it (Plut. <em>Mor<\/em>. 241d). Xenophon confirms that <em>spartiate<\/em> women did not weave, but relied on <em>helot<\/em> labor for that too (Xen. <em>Lac<\/em>. 1.4). <\/p>\n<p>Bret Devereaux, <a href=\"https:\/\/acoup.blog\/2019\/08\/23\/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-ii-spartan-equality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Collections: This. Isn&#8217;t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality&#8221;, <em>A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-08-23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think it is worth stressing just how extreme the division of labor was [in ancient Sparta]. Helots did all of the labor, because the Spartiates were quite possibly the least productive people to ever exist (the perioikoi presumably also produced a lot of goods for the spartiates, but being free, one imagines they had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62,1526,7,41],"tags":[1457,1026,605,1151,43],"class_list":["post-69268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-quotations","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-microeconomics","tag-slavery","tag-sparta","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i1e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73456,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69268\/revisions\/73456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}