PoeForward.com

POETRY: Ancient Classical Modern Contemporary

ANCIENT: Propertius Sappho Catullus

Propertius: Propertius Poems

HOME

POE

EVENTS

POETRY

GALLERIES

DEAD GIRLS

LIBRARY

ABOUT US

Book III.14:1-34

THE SPARTAN GIRLS

Propertius

I admire many of the rules of your training, Sparta, but most of all at the great blessings derived from the girls’ gymnasia, where a girl can exercise her body, naked, without blame, among wrestling men, when the swift-thrown ball eludes the grasp, and the curved rod sounds against the ring, and the woman is left panting at the furthest goal, and suffers bruises in the hard wrestling.

Now she fastens near the glove the thongs that her wrists delight in, now whirls the discus’s flying weight in a circle, and now her hair sprinkled with hoar frost, she follows her father’s dogs over the long ridges of Taygetus, beats the ring with her horses, binds the sword to her white flank, and shields the virgin head with hollow bronze, like the crowd of warlike Amazons who bathe bare-breasted in Thermodon’s stream; or as Helen, on the sands of Eurotas, between Castor and Pollux, one to be victor in boxing, the other with horses: with naked breasts she carried weapons, they say, and did not blush with her divine brothers there.

So Sparta’s law forbids lovers to keep apart, and lets each man walk by her side in the crossways, and there is no fear for her, no guardians for captive girls, no dread of bitter punishment from a stern husband. You yourself can speak about things without a go-between: no long waiting rebuffs you. No Tyrian garments beguile roving eyes, no affected toying with perfumed hair.

But my love goes surrounded by a great crowd, without the slimmest chance of getting an oar in: and you can’t come upon how to act, or what words to ask with: the lover is in a blind alley.

Rome, if you’d only follow the rules and wrestling of Sparta, you’d be dearer to me for that blessing.