Women in ancient Sparta their wealth. He attributed the state's precipitous fall during his lifetime, from being the master of Greece to a second-rate power in less than 50 years, to the fact that Sparta had become a gynocracy whose women were intemperate and loved luxury. All Spartan women, not just the richest, would have taken advantage of helot labour to perform the domestic tasks that elsewhere in Greece would have fallen to free women. Activities such as weaving which were considered women's work elsewhere in Greece were not considered fit for free women in Sparta. Therefore, women were more preoccupied with governance, agriculture,
Women in ancient Sparta Sparta, and many steles featuring her were carved and displayed in the city. Cynisca, the first woman to win an Olympic victory, also had a cult in Sparta, the "only woman on record" to have been thus commemorated. Plutarch writes, in his life of Lycurgus, that only men who died in battle and women who died while holding a religious office should have their name inscribed on their tombstone. This would be consistent with the Spartan reputation for piety, though one translation (Latte) emended the manuscript to read instead that women who died in "childbirth" would have named memorials, a