The most remarkable thing about Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas I of
Sparta, is that we know anything about her at all. Herodotus
and other ancient Greek historians are far more likely to mention
Persian queens than the wives of Greeks – not because Persian
women were more powerful than their Greek counterparts, but because
Persians had several wives, and so it was sometimes useful to record by
which of them a certain Persian figure had been born. Since
Greeks had only one legitimate wife, there was no need for such
clarification when it came to prominent Greek citizens. Even
the names of Spartan queens are rarely mentioned. We do not
know, for example, the names of either Leonidas' mother or his
stepmother, the "second wife" who caused all the trouble in the Agiad
family in the second half of the 6th century BC.
The near complete absence of Greek women in ancient history (as opposed
to Greek mythology and drama) is a function of the fact that ancient
historians were predominantly Athenian males from the classical or
Hellenistic periods. Athenians of these periods did not think
women should be seen – much less heard – in public.
Women had no public role and so no business in politics or
history. As Pericles said in one of his most famous
speeches, "The greatest
glory of a woman is to be least talked about, whether they are praising
you or criticizing you." (Thucydides, History of the
Peloponnesian War, 2:46.) Gorgo was, by that standard, a
hopeless piece of scandal.
The first time she is recorded opening her mouth, she was already
interfering in the affairs of state. She told her father to
send away the powerful tyrant Aristagoras, who requested Spartan
military aid for his planned rebellion against Persia.
Gorgo's father, King Cleomenes, had already told Aristagoras that his
proposal was "improper" and asked him to leave Sparta, but Aristagoras
then started to offer Cleomenes bribes. As these became ever
larger, Cleomenes appeared to be weakening until his daughter
intervened, saying: "Father,
you had better go away, or the stranger will corrupt you."
Gorgo allegedly offered this advice at the tender age of "eight or
nine." Even if, as there is good reason to believe, Herodotus
exaggerated her youth to make her father seem foolish, it would be
hardly less remarkable if a maiden of 18 or 19 had done what Gorgo
did. In no other Greek city but Sparta would a female of any
age have been allowed to be present, much less heard and heeded, at a
meeting between heads of state. Gorgo's advice was
all the more remarkable because it was good. It was Athenian
aid for the Ionian revolt that brought the wrath of Persia down on
mainland Greece, leading some people to quip that it was easier to
bamboozle thirty thousand Athenian men than one Spartan girl.
Ironically, had the Athenian Assembly been as wise as Gorgo, then Gorgo
might not have lost her husband twenty years later at Thermopylae.
Perhaps the fact that she was genuinely and exceptionally bright
explains why as a wife, too, she was consulted and her opinions
respected. This is evidenced by the incident in
which a blank wax tablet was sent to Sparta from the exiled king
Demaratus, then at the Persian court. "No one," according
to Herodotus, "was able
to guess the secret until… Gorgo, who was the wife of
Leonidas, divined it and told the others that if they scraped the wax
off, they would find something written on the wood underneath. This was
done; the message was revealed…" (Herodotus,
The Histories, 7:239.)
There is little doubt, then, that Gorgo was clever, but what else do we
know about her?
It
is safe to say that Gorgo was probably not particularly
pretty. Had she been, it would have been mentioned by
someone. The beauty of other Spartan women, notably Helen
and Demaratus' mother, is legendary or at least recorded. Some people
have suggested Gorgo was ugly based on her name – which conjures up the
mythical Gorgon, a female beast with snakes for hair, so hideous that
all who looked at her turned to stone. But this seems to be
taking things too far in the other direction. It is hard to
imagine a truly ugly woman being so well loved by either her father or
her husband – or so well adjusted and
self-confident. Furthermore, we are told that men "made
advances" to her, which also seems inconsistent with an unattractive
woman. Gorgo was probably simply "ordinary," and so her looks
were not worthy of comment.
Whatever her looks, Gorgo was the quintessential Spartan woman in
spirit. She was educated, self-confident, outspoken and
involved in the body politic. She was neither vain nor
materialistic. She showed Spartan scorn of
affectation when she thought Aristagoras had no hands because he let a
slave dress him, and when she accused an elegantly dressed man of not
being able "to play
even a female role."
This second quote is again very telling because it suggests Gorgo was
familiar with theater – something an Athenian woman would
almost certainly not have been. Athenian women, as we have
seen above, were not supposed to be seen or talked about. It
was a disgrace for them to be seen even standing in the doorways of
their houses, much less at the marketplace. How then should
they have been tolerated in the crowds that attended Athenian
theater? While it is just possible to imagine them
(veiled and heavily escorted by their male relatives) attending
tragedies, the sexual explicitness of Athenian comedies is utterly
unimaginable if respectable Athenian women were expected to be in the
audience. Gorgo's reference to "playing a female role,"
however, makes it very clear that she had seen plays performed.
There is even a chance that she saw these plays performed in
Athens. We know that Leonidas' short reign began
with the Persian invasion that led to the Battle of Marathon and ended
with the Persian invasion that crushed him and his 300 at Thermopylae
before continuing on to burn Athens to the ground. In short,
Leonidas' entire reign was dominated by the Persian threat and the need
for the Greek city-states to unite against the common enemy.
It is reasonable to postulate that Leonidas spent a good deal of his
time lobbying for support among the other important cities, especially
in Athens. The very fact that he was elected the commander of
the coalition forces, including nominal command of the Athenian fleet,
suggests that the leaders in other cities were familiar with
– and trusted – him. It is not fanciful to
hypothesize that on at least one of his trips to Athens, he took Gorgo
with him.
The evidence that Gorgo traveled to Athens is corroborated by her most
famous quote about only Spartan women producing
men. An Athenian woman is said to have asked her
why "only Spartan women
rule their men." Since it is inconceivable that
an Athenian woman would have traveled to Sparta, the only place where
such an exchange could have taken place was in Athens itself.
The thought of Gorgo in Athens is rather like that of the Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur's court. She must have been a sensation
– and one imagines Leonidas, with his dry sense of humor,
enjoying every minute of it! For example, note that the
Athenian woman asked why only Spartan women "ruled" their men, implying
that Gorgo had been seen giving Leonidas advice – and he had
been seen to accept it, just as Cleomenes had done before
him. As Gorgo's response makes clear, that willingness not to
discount good advice just because it came out of the mouth of a woman
is what made Spartan men more manly – at least in Gorgo's
eyes! Understandably, perhaps, Spartan men, who measured
their virility more on the battlefield than in the debates of the
Assembly as in Athens, were less worried by the words of women.
But we should not picture Gorgo as a shrew. Gorgo's role was
that of advisor, companion, and lover. She is not depicted
telling Leonidas off (as she did her father), but rather helping him
solve the mystery of the apparently blank wax tablet and obliquely
bragging about his masculinity. And while other Spartan
queens (notably Helen) are accused of adultery, Gorgo is portrayed
rejecting unwanted advances. She was the mother of at least
one child by Leonidas – his son and heir, Pleistarchos – and there is no
reason to believe this was their only child. The fact that
Pleistarchos was still very young at his father's death suggests the
opposite: that there had been elder children who either had died or had all
been female.
When Leonidas marched out to die at Thermopylae, Gorgo asked him for
instructions. His answer was a final compliment to her. He
said: "Marry a good man
and have good children." Not sons,
children. Leonidas wanted Gorgo not to mourn him but to be
happy, and he valued daughters as much as sons – probably
because he had learned from Gorgo the importance of clever and loyal
women.
Award-winning
novelist Helena P. Schrader writes biographical novels on Leonidas and
Gorgo. She also has published three other novels that will
draw you into a colorful and intriguing Sparta unlike the conventional
clichés. Helena Schrader holds a PhD in History
and works as a Foreign Service officer.