Lupercalia is one of the most ancient of the Roman holidays (one of the feriae listed on ancient calendars from even before the time Julius Caesar reformed the calendar) and is familiar to us today for two main reasons. It is associated with Valentine's Day and it is the setting for Caesar's refusal of the crown that was made immortal by Shakespeare, in his Julius Caesar.
Read more about Lupercalia.
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Somewhere I read that an Athenian woman asked a Spartan woman ( I think it was Leonidas’s wife Gorgo ) how it was that of all the women in the Greek world, the Spartans had the most liberties. The Spartan’s brilliant reply was;
” Because we make the best of men ”
Does anyone know where this story comes from? Thanks in advance.
patrick.vidaud@gmail.com
I think I heard a different version of that comment.
Someone once asked a Spartan woman why they were the only women in the world who could best or dominate men.
The Spartan woman replied “Because we are the only women in the world who produce them.”
That’s paraphrased from Mark Kishlansky’s “Civilization in the West.”