Welcome to Gaia! ::

Heres a question my Western Civ teacher asked our class: If give a choice would you have rather lived in Athens or Sparta, and why? (And if you want go ahead and add any other Greek city/state in the relevant time period)

Athens. I like literature, poetry, art, that sort of thing. It would be nice to be born and raised in Sparta, for the sheer manliness of it, but the culture is lacking.

Most societies at the time were xenophobic in their own way, some more than others.
And yes, I have in fact read Lycurgus' Reforms. And before you call me on inhumaness and idealized history, remember the same holds true for Athens. I know exactly how the Spartans were raised. But I have also studied Athens as well. Their lovely symposiums were not as great as contemporary history would like us to believe. I have heard many women express that they would have prefered to be one of the " courtesans" because many would believe they took part in the discussion blah blah. Yeah, not so much. My advisor studies the greek polis and they weren't so nice as previously believed. While they may start the evening with inteligent discussion, they often ended up drunken orgies where the servant boys and the flute-girls were raped. Not always, I am not naive enough to believe that, but it happened apparently quite often. (I have seen art on vases that support that, it was a wee bit graphic)
Yes the women may have had liminal influence in Athens, yet there is a reason they were always called white-armed. Its takes leaving the house to be anything other than a pasty white. They were prized for their weaving and household arts etc. I prefer to work out. While I apologize that I would rather live in a overtly brutal society. I see it as more honest. Sure they left their infants to die if they were deformed or weak, I see that hardly any different than abortion now. The two societies in history I study the most is the Spartans and the Celts. Yes they are barbaric, but I don't use that word as negatively as you. I realize most people do not agree with my opinions, I am fine with that. But please don't asume I do not know what I am talking about when I say I prefer Sparta to Athens. And while you say our society has evolved from Athens and Rome, realized our military is much more like Sparta than most people realize. And that is were I fit best in our society.
On another note, most of the plays that come to mind when you say that plays showed women had more power were considered comedies for precisely the reason they seemed to show women with power. Not to mention the women were not allowed to go see such plays. You say that the lack of women's rights in Athens is just a subjective piece of history, I disagree. I have found many things that convince me otherwise. Aristotle claims that "woman is a mutilated or incomplete man" and he therefore supposes women to have less soul than men. He says "the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying." And to top is off, he says "silence is a women's glory." In the play Lysistrata (the first that comes to mind when you mentioned plays) has this line. "if once we let these women get any semblence of a start, before long they will be adept at every manly art." Wow, tell me that isn't a fear of women having power. Perhaps the biggest joke of all in Athens after the presentation of Lysistrata was that women could have conceived and organized such a bold plan for ending the Pelopennisian War.
Hesiod even spoke down upon women, "Don't let a woman, wiggling her behind and fluttering and coaxing take you in; all she wants is your barn: a woman is just a cheat."
Sparta may have been violent and brutal, even to their own. But they treated their women better than that. After all, as 300 said and was truly the thought, Spartan Women gave birth to real men (wow never thought I would quote THAT movie in a historical debate, but that part is historically based). Thats why they let women work out in the arenas, thats why they were given a fair portion of the food. Strong women gave birth to strong men.
I apologize for the length on my reply, I could go further on about women in Athens, we spent a great deal of time in my last course studying the position of women in Athens. I have a nice little essay here on just that subject which I drew upon for several on my examples just now. I know Sparta was not what most people would consider as a preferable place to live, but I consider it such. I know (to the same degree we can know anything in history) the conditions, but I also know (in the same regard) how Athens was. And I would have chosen Sparta. I would have also chosen the Celts over any society in that area, or the ancient German tribes over the Romans they fought. Thats just how I am.

It depends on the time period, I suppose, though a woman's rights and abilities were very restricted all through ancient times. I voted for Corinth. It's nice and centrally located, you could get to Athens in a day, it was famous for bronze-work and pottery, and after Alexander, Corinth was the jewel in the crown of the Macedonian holdings in Greece.