Partheniae
（
παρθενίαι). A word meaning literally “children
of unmarried women,” but usually applied to a distinct class of citizens at Sparta
after the First Messenian War. The tradition goes that after the Messenian War had lasted a
number of years, the Spartan women sent an embassy to the camp to the effect that they were
weary of so long an abstention from the pleasures of married life, and representing also that
the State would suffer if the increase of population should cease. Their husbands, who had
taken an oath not to return home until the Messenians were conquered, sent back all the young
men who were in camp with permission to cohabit with the maidens at Sparta. The children thus
begotten were called
παρθενίαι; and after the return of the
army from the war, these were not treated as citizens, and therefore joined the Helots for a
war against the ruling class. This, however, appearing impracticable, they migrated to Italy,
where they founded the colony of Tarentum. (See Ephorus
ap. Strabo, vi.
p. 279, and cf. the article
Epeunacti.) Hesychius,
on the other hand, says that the Partheniae were the children of Spartan citizens and female
slaves; and Antiochus that they were the sons of those Spartans who took no part in the
Messenian War, and who were in consequence degraded to the position of Helots. See Grote,
Hist. of Greece, i. p. 332; iii. p. 519.
