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Updated: May 14, 2025
They declared that they never would seek safety for themselves by going away, and leaving their fathers, husbands, and brothers in such danger. They commissioned one of their number, a princess named Archidamia, to make known to the senate the views which they entertained of this proposal.
Archidamia went boldly into the senate-chamber, with a drawn sword in her hand, and there arrested the discussion in which the senators were engaged by demanding how they could entertain such an opinion of the women of Sparta as to suppose that they could survive the destruction of the city and the death of all whom they loved.
It was Archidamia, the Spartan queen, Brave as her father's steel; She stood like the silence that comes between The flash and the thunder-peal. She looked in the eyes of the startled crowd; Calmly she gazed around; Her voice was neither low nor loud, But it rang like her sword on the ground.
In a word, they were little less masculine in appearance and manners than the men; and accordingly, when Archidamia went into the senate-chamber with a drawn sword in her hand, and there, boldly facing the whole assembly, declared that the women would on no account consent to leave the city, she acted in a manner not at all inconsistent with what at Sparta was considered the proper position and character of her sex.
For though he had been bred very tenderly, in abundance and even in luxury, by his mother Agesistrata and his grandmother Archidamia, who were the wealthiest of the Lacedaemonians, yet before the age of twenty, he renounced all indulgence in pleasures.
She sprang full-armed from the head of Jove rather a masculine origin, it must be owned. In Sparta women became soldiers as the democratic idea advanced. Princess Archidamia, marching at the head of her female troop to rebuke the senators for the decree that the women and children be removed from the city before the anticipated attack could come, is an example.
In the night the Lacedaemonians held a consultation to ship over all the women into Crete, but they unanimously refused, and Archidamia came into the senate with a sword in her hand, in the name of them all, asking if the men expected the women to survive the ruins of Sparta.
When they were entered, he commanded the gate should again be locked, and Archidamia, the grandmother, to be first introduced; she was now grown very old, and had lived all her days in the highest repute among her fellows. As soon as Amphares thought she was dispatched, he told Agesistrata she might now go in if she pleased.
At nightfall the Lacedæmonians at first proposed to send away the women to Crete, but they refused to leave the city. Archidamia even went to the senate-house with a drawn sword in her hands, and on behalf of the women of Sparta reproached the men for insulting them by supposing that they would survive the capture of their city.
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