Spartan Women: Accius, fr. 31-32

Spartan Women Don’t Care About Babies

Name: Accius  Date:   170 – 86 BCE Region:   Umbria [modern Italy] Citation:  [quoted in Cicero, Tuscan Debates 2.36]

Often, authors will use depictions of other nations as a mirror for their own society. Here, Spartan women are stereotyped as a foil for Roman gender roles for their rejection of motherhood.

There’s nothing like this among the Spartan women.

For them, exercise and sunshine and dust and hard work

And military training are more important

Than common pregnancy.  

Spartan Women Don’t Care About Babies

Nihil horum similest apud Lacaenas virgines,

Quibus magis palaestra Eurota sol pulvis labor

Militia studio est quam fertilitas barbara.

Accius [Lucius Accius; 170 – 86 BCE, modern Italy]  was a freeborn child of a freedman parent. He was born in Pisaurum, Umbria [modern Italy] but later moved to Rome. He wrote several tragedies based on Greek myths, but only fragments remain of them.