The most well-known example being it’s famed Helen who left her Spartan husband for a Trojan love. In this talk, Ellen Millender, Omar & Althea Hoskins Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities at Reed College, and Fulbright University of Nottingham Scholar 2023-24, offers a reassessment of such popular images in order to illuminate the extent to which Sparta and its men were, as Aristotle claimed, ruled by women.