Differences And Similarities Between Sparta And Athens

In the 1960s, a man by the name of Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that humans have a natural notion of “raw and cooked” meaning that humans naturally categorize everything in nature as clean or unclean. The People of Ancient Greece possessed this typical human habit. When looking specifically at the people of Sparta and the people of Athens, this habit is very apparent. Each city-state thought the other was unclean because they were so different despite both being Greek. Although Athens and Sparta are comparable as being Greek and devoutly religious, there are notable contrasts when looking at the governments, sexual tendencies, women, physical city structures, and overall societies of both city-states. Before even looking at the people of Athens and Sparta or their way of life, there are many differences in the physical structure and …show more content…
To both Athenians and Spartans, religion was very important. Both city-states had annual festivals to worship or celebrate the gods. Religion was so important to Spartans that they vowed to not fight in the month of September because of religious reasons. Another interesting identical trait of the two city-states is the mentality of the “have” and the “have nots.” In Athens, the people were split up into four classes. These classes showed who was the wealthiest, which was an important trait to the Athenians. The “haves” were the people of the top three classes because they could participate in politics, and the “have nots” was the bottom class. Though Spartans didn 't have classes, they used the term “Homoioi” to describe the people who completed Agoge, and therefore were members and citizens in society. So to Spartans the “haves” were the “Homoioi” and the “have nots” were the people who didn 't finish the childhood training of