Philobiblon

We’ve lost their words, and are highly unlikely to be able to recover them, but we can at least remember their names:

Megalostrata, who is described by Alcman as “a golden-haired maiden enjoying the gift of the Muses”. He was reportedly madly in love with her, and she also reportedly had several other lovers attracted by her conversation. (Which might be taken as part of an eroticising tradition rather than fact – I suspect you didn’t mess with Spartan maidens.)

Cleitagora, whose name is used to identify a skolion (drinking song). She’s mentioned in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Lysistrata. (“Of all Greek women, Spartans alone drank wine not only at festivals but also as part of their daily fare.”)

They were roughly contemporaries of Sappho.

Among other notable Spartan women were the philosopher Chilonis, whose father Chilon was a follower of Pythagoras. (Of Pythagoras’s 235 disciples named by Iamblichus, 17 or 18 are female.

Cynisca was the first female star of the Olympics, her four-horse chariot, quadriga, winning in 396 and 392. Her name may be a nickname for a “tomboy”, and the names of her mother, Eupolia (“well horsed”) and her sister Proauga (“flash of lightning”) suggest a family interest.

Other Spartan women soon followed her lead, among them Euryleonis, who won the two-horse chariot race in 368.

(From Spartan Women, Sarah B. Pomeroy, OUP, 2002.)

It is interesting that down through the centuries Athens has been celebrated as the founder of “democracy” and Sparta reviled in the comparison, but if you were born female, there’s no doubt where you would want it to be in ancient Greece. You got to run around, ride horses, often become a heiress (all those soldiers getting killed off), and a great deal of general freedom in Sparta. (Well at least if you were a “proper” Spartan, not a helot.) In Athens, you got locked up in the house, and that was that.