Athens and Sparta were both great city-states in Ancient Greece. Their cultures, though, developed very differently through the years. They had different views on government, education, the arts, and the status of women. If I had to choose one of these city-states to live in, I would choose Athens.

First of all, I prefer Athens’s government to Sparta’s. Athens has a democracy while Sparta has a monarchy. I like the fact that the executive branch of government in Athens is the Assembly, which is made up of all Athenian citizens. Even though most people living in Athens weren’t citizens, at least many people had a say in the executive body of government. In Sparta, the five ephors were the executive body. Since there were only five, they couldn’t possibly represent the views of even a small portion of the people. I also prefer Athens’s legislative and judicial bodies to Sparta’s because the numbers of people in them are bigger. This means that you will probably represent a greater amount of the citizens when making certain laws, and you will get a fairer trial with between 301 and 1001 jurors (judges) than you will with just two judges (kings) in Sparta. Athens also put more emphasis on education than Sparta did, which I like. Sparta focused more on military training than on education. While training to become soldiers they did have some classes where they learned how to read and write, but discussion was discouraged and they never got a real education. In Athens, on the other hand, education was part of a boy’s citizenship training. An educated slave served as his tutor and companion, supervising a boy’s learning between the ages of eight and eighteen. Students learned grammar, music, and rhetoric—that is, the art of public speaking. Athenians prized a sound mind as well as a trained body, while Spartans prized mostly just physical strength and skills. One example of this is that when a baby was born in Sparta, he was brought before the ephors to be examined. Weak and sickly babies were put on mountainsides to die of exposure. I also don’t like the fact that basically from the time a Spartan boy was seven until the time he was sixty, he was in the military. I much prefer Athens’s way of doing it where the boys were only required to have two years of military training when they turned eighteen. The views on the arts were also different in Athens and Sparta. In Athens, young men were encouraged to participate in lively public discussions where questions on art, politics, and philosophy were debated. In Sparta, as I stated before, intellectual discussion such as that was discouraged. While art and literature held a huge place in Athenian education, they had little place in that of the Spartans. I also prefer the status and role of women in Athens to that in Sparta. In Athens, the mother trained her daughter in domestic skills. Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, the daughter married a man chosen by her parents. Spartan women, though, endured strict discipline and learned to defend Sparta. Spartan women were tough-minded, where Athenian women were quiet and lived in strict seclusion. Also, Athenian women were not allowed to participate except to occasional religious festivals. Spartan women took part in public group exercises and military drills. (I do not actually agree with the strict seclusion and such of the Athenian women, but it is about the only thing that I don’t like better about the Athenian views and culture.)

As you can see, the cultures, ways of life, governments, and most other things were very different in Athens and Sparta. I can not picture myself living back in that day in time, but if I did, I can only imagine myself in Athens. I think most things there would fit my needs and wants much better than the things in Sparta. Sparta may have been a great city, but…it just ain’t for me.