Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

would do so with such abandon that they might slap their heels against the bare skin of their buttocks. For, yes—and here the disbelief of foreigners would conventionally reach boiling point—it was the habit of Spartan girls, as they trained, to sport only the skimpiest of tunics, slit revealingly up the thighs. Sometimes—horror of horrors!—they might even disport themselves in the nude. Visions of female flesh, oiled and tanned, glistened in the imaginings of many a Sparta-watcher. The Spartans themselves, sensitive to the mockery that labeled their daughters “thigh-flashers,”33 would retort sternly “that there was nothing shameful about female nudity, nothing immoral in the slightest.” In fact, “since it encouraged a sense of sobriety, and a passion for physical fitness,”34 precisely the opposite. Yet, paramount though the requirements of Sparta’s eugenic program undoubtedly were, an aura of the erotic still clung to the training grounds nevertheless. The fertility of a future mother was best gauged, a Spartan might argue, by the glowing of her skin and the perfection of her breasts. Physical beauty—the long blond hair and elegant ankles for which Spartan girls were celebrated—provided the readiest measure by which moral beauty too could be judged. An ugly daughter, inevitably, would cause her parents alarm and distress. Desperate measures might have to be taken. So shockingly plain had one baby been, it was said, that her nurse, clutching at straws, had finally taken he...