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+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Chris Curnow, Josephine Paolucci and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http:\/\/www.pgdp.net. (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"PHIZ\"\n\n(H. K. BROWNE)\n\nA Memoir.\n\n\n_From PUNCH, July 22nd, 1882._\n\n\"Phiz.\"\n\nHABLOT K. BROWNE, ARTIST. BORN, 1815. DIED, JULY, 1882.\n\n    The Lamp is out that lighted up the text\n      Of DICKENS, LEVER--heroes of the pen.\n    _Pickwick_ and _Lorrequer_ we love, but next\n      We place the man who made us see such men.\n    What should we know of _Martin Chuzzlewit_,\n      Stern _Mr. Dombey_, or _Uriah Heep_?\n    _Tom Burke of Ours?_--Around our hearths they sit,\n      Outliving their creators--all asleep!\n\n          No sweeter gift ere fell to man than his\n          Who gave us troops of friends--delightful PHIZ!\n\n    He is not dead! There in the picture-book\n      He lives with men and women that he drew;\n    We take him with us to the cozy nook\n      Where old companions we can love anew.\n    Dear boyhood's friend! We rode with him to hounds;\n      Lived with dear _Peggotty_ in after years;\n    Missed in old Ireland where fun knew no bounds;\n      At _Dora's_ death we felt poor _David's_ tears!\n\n          There is no death for such a man--he is\n          The spirit of an unclosed book! immortal PHIZ!\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\"PHIZ\"\n\n(HABLOT KNIGHT BROWNE)\n\nA Memoir.\n\nINCLUDING\n\n_A Selection from his Correspondence and Notes on his Principal Works._\n\nBY\n\nFRED. G. KITTON.\n\nWITH A PORTRAIT, AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.\n\nLONDON:\nW. SATCHELL & CO.,\n19, TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN.\n\nMDCCCLXXXII.\n\n\nLONDON:\nG. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,\nCOVENT GARDEN.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nTaking into consideration the ability of the Artist whose name has\nbecome identified with the works of DICKENS, of LEVER, and of AINSWORTH;\nand who has contributed in the course of the present century more\nlargely (perhaps with the single exception of CRUIKSHANK) to the\nembellishment of popular books than any other known illustrator; it\nwould seem an inexcusable omission, almost amounting to neglect, if the\nlife and labours of the late HABLOT KNIGHT BROWNE met with no more\nworthy recognition than the fleeting comments of the daily press.\n\nSuch, at least, is my opinion; and as a humble tribute to the memory of\nan able and industrious draughtsman, and fertile designer, I place on\nrecord the more generally interesting particulars of an honourable and\nexemplary career.\n\nTo Mr. W. G. BROWNE and Dr. EDGAR BROWNE, sons of the deceased artist,\nmy best thanks are due for a kindly interest in my work, manifested more\nespecially by the loan of many interesting letters dashed off on various\noccasions by \"Phiz\" in the wildest spirit of fun; and a willing consent\nto their appearance in print.\n\nI have also to acknowledge the courtesy of Messrs. H. SOTHERAN & CO.,\nfor permission to copy for publication a few letters written by \"Phiz\"\nto CHARLES DICKENS, which are now published for the first time. For the\nPortrait (copied from a photograph, perhaps the best of the very few now\nin existence) I am indebted to the Proprietors of _The Graphic_.\n\nAnd lastly, the Author desires to associate with this brochure the name\nof his friend, Mr. GEORGE REDWAY, who has rendered much valuable\nassistance in bringing it before the public.\n\nFRED. G. KITTON.\n\n25, PAULTONS SQUARE,\nCHELSEA, S.W.\n\n_August, 1882_.\n\n\n\n\nLIST OF PLATES.\n\n\nPortrait of \"Phiz\" (H. K. Browne)               FRONTISPIECE\n\nThe Departure                                To face page  8\n\nArtist's \"Fancies for Mr. Dombey\"                    \"    11\n\nSam Weller and his Father                            \"    14\n\nTail-piece to _Barnaby Rudge_                        \"    16\n\nDick Swiveller and the Lodger                        \"    20\n\nDeath of Quilp                                       \"    26\n\nThe Rioters                                          \"    30\n\nNOTE.--With the exception of the Portrait, and the \"Dombey fancies,\" the\nabove engravings are printed from electro-types of the original blocks,\nwhich were first published in _Master Humphrey's Clock_ (1840-1).\n\n\n\n\n\"PHIZ\" (H. K. BROWNE) A MEMOIR.\n\n\n\"Fizz, Whizz, or something of that sort,\" humorous TOM HOOD would say,\nwhen trying to recall the pseudonym that has since become so familiar by\nmeans of the innumerable works of art to which it was appended. At the\ntime HABLOT[A] KNIGHT BROWNE first used this quaint _soubriquet_, it was\ncustomary to look upon book-illustrators as second, or even third-rate\nartists--mere hacks in fact; and for this reason they usually suppressed\ntheir real names, in order to give themselves the opportunity of earning\nthe title of _artist_, when producing more ambitious results as\npainters. Occasionally, whether by accident or design, the subject of\nthis memoir would affix his real name to his illustrations; and the\npublic were consequently under the impression that the two signatures\nwere those of different artists, and were even wont to remark that\n\"_Browne's work was better than that of 'Phiz!_'\"\n\nIt is not, perhaps, generally known that the artist's first _nom de\ncrayon_ was \"NEMO,\" which to some extent bears out the above statement\nthat a book-illustrator was considered a \"nobody.\" Mr. BROWNE himself,\nin referring to the _Pickwick Papers_, gave the following\nexplanation:--\"I think I signed myself as 'NEMO' to my first etchings\n(those of No. 4) before adopting 'Phiz' as my _soubriquet_, to\nharmonize--I suppose--better with Dickens' 'Boz.'\" It is only on the\nearliest printed plates in some copies of the _Pickwick Papers_ that the\nsignature of \"NEMO\" can be faintly traced.\n\nHABLOT KNIGHT BROWNE, son of William Loder Browne, a descendant from a\nNorfolk family, was born on the 12th of July, 1815, at Kennington,\nLondon. He was educated at a private school in Norfolk, and from an\nearly age evinced a taste for drawing, which, being recognized by his\nrelatives, induced them to apprentice him to FINDEN, the well-known\nline-engraver. An anecdote is told of him during his apprenticeship\nwhich will bear repetition. Finding BROWNE very painstaking and\nconscientious, his master usually sent him with engraved plates to the\nprinter, in order that he might superintend the operation of\nproof-taking. As printers usually take their own time over such matters,\nthe youth found that this waiting the pressman's pleasure tried his\npatience too much. It therefore occurred to him that to spend the\ninterval in the British Museum, hard by, would be much more suited to\nhis tastes. On his returning with the proofs, FINDEN would praise the\nboy's diligence, little thinking what trick had been practised on him.\n\nLine-engraving, however, did not find much favour with the future\n\"Phiz,\" the process being too tedious; for FINDEN would probably occupy\nsome weeks to produce a small plate, which by the quicker process of\netching, could have been executed in as many hours. He accordingly\nsuspended operations in that quarter, and, in conjunction with a young\nkindred spirit, hired a small attic, and employed his time in the more\nfascinating pursuit of water-colour drawing, which he continued to\nfollow with remarkable assiduity until a few days before his death.\n\nThese juvenile disciples of the brush then worked hard at drawing in\ncolour. BROWNE paid his share of the rent in drawings, which he produced\nrapidly; indeed, there was a solemn compact between the co-workers to\n\"do three a day\"--they subsisting, meanwhile, on the simplest fare. At\nthis time he attended the evening class at the \"Life\" School in St.\nMartin's Lane, and was a fellow-pupil with ETTY, the famous painter of\nthe \"nude.\" It was BROWNE'S great delight to watch this talented student\nat work, and he considerably neglected his own studies in consequence.\n\nAt the age of seventeen, or thereabouts, he succeeded in gaining a medal\noffered for competition by the Society of Arts for the best\nrepresentation of an historical subject; and was again fortunate in\nobtaining a prize, from the same Society, for a large etching of \"John\nGilpin.\" Mr. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, himself an artist of no small\nability, remembers to have seen, in a shop-window in Wardour Street, a\ncertain print by a young man named HABLOT BROWNE, representing the\ninvoluntary flight of John Gilpin, scattering the pigs and poultry in\nhis never-to-be-forgotten ride.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBy the time he had attained his twentieth year he had acquired\nconsiderable facility with the pencil. CHARLES DICKENS, but three years\nhis senior, and with whom the name of \"Phiz\" is inseparably connected,\nhad just then made a wonderful reputation by his \"Sketches,\" which first\nappeared, at intervals, during 1834-5, and were afterwards published in\nbook form, illustrated by the renowned GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.\n\nIn 1836, there appeared in print a pamphlet of some forty or fifty\npages, entitled _Sunday under Three Heads--As it is; as Sabbath Bills\nwould make it; as it might be made_; \"By Timothy Sparks; illustrated by\nH. K. B.;\" and dedicated to the Bishop of London. The author was CHARLES\nDICKENS, whose satire was levelled at Sir Andrew Agnew and the extreme\nSabbatarian party, and had immediate reference to a bill \"for the better\nobservance of the Sabbath,\" which the House of Commons had recently\nthrown out by a small majority. The illustrations in this little work\nwere drawn by HABLOT BROWNE, and are very choice examples of\nwood-engraving of the school that existed half a century ago. Its\noriginal price was one shilling, but having become very scarce, it is\nnow worth more than its weight in gold.\n\nThese early productions of BROWNE'S pencil at once introduced him to\npublic notice, and DICKENS showed his appreciation of their excellence\nby selecting him as the illustrator of the _Pickwick Papers_, which\nappeared during the early part of that year. It is well known to the\nreaders of Forster's _Life of Dickens_, that the idea of \"Pickwick\" was\nsuggested to the author by ROBERT SEYMOUR, whose tastes induced him to\netch a few plates of sporting subjects to which DICKENS was to supply\nthe text. Thus commenced that immortal work known as _The Posthumous\nPapers of the Pickwick Club_. SEYMOUR produced seven illustrations, when\nhe committed suicide, which obliged the publishers to make arrangements\nwith another artist. R. W. BUSS[B] succeeded SEYMOUR, and etched two\nplates, which DICKENS, who had by this time assumed the control of the\nwork, thought so unsatisfactory (as indeed they were), that he declined\nhis further services. Here a fresh opening was created, and WILLIAM\nMAKEPEACE THACKERAY competed with HABLOT KNIGHT BROWNE for the post;\nboth submitting to DICKENS' inspection some specimens of their work.\n\nThe choice fell upon \"Phiz,\" the artist whose ability has so admirably\nproved the wisdom of the selection; and THACKERAY thereupon determined\nto adopt another profession, with what happy results let _Esmond_\ntestify. Who could say whether _Vanity Fair_ would ever have been\nwritten had this mighty penman been chosen to succeed BUSS? It is\ncurious to note THACKERAY'S great anxiety to become an artist; he even\nwent abroad to study, but SALA tells us that \"Mr. THACKERAY drew,\nperhaps, rather worse than he had done before beginning his continental\nstudies, although at that time he actually supplied a series of etchings\nto illustrate DOUGLAS JERROLD'S _Men of Character_, which were prodigies\nof badness.\"\n\nWhen \"Phiz\" had been selected as the illustrator of the _Pickwick\nPapers_, his generous rival was the first to tell him the good news, and\noffer his congratulations.\n\n\"Phiz\" may now be said to have fairly commenced his career as a\nbook-illustrator. His sense of humour corresponded so exactly with that\nof DICKENS, that a mere suggestion enabled him to vividly represent the\nscenes described by the author. It has been remarked (and truly) that in\nmany cases the plates do not correspond with the text; but this can be\naccounted for. DICKENS, then an enthusiastic young author, and somewhat\nimpetuous in his demands for drawings, would arrive unexpectedly at\nBROWNE'S studio, hurriedly read a few pages of manuscript, and\nexclaiming, \"Now, I want you to illustrate that,\" would take an abrupt\ndeparture, carrying the manuscript off with him. As soon as the artist\ncould collect his faculties, he would try to recall the scene so hastily\ndescribed, and endeavour to put it on paper. DICKENS himself, in his\npreface to the _Pickwick Papers_, gives a similar explanation, viz.--\"It\nis due to the gentleman, whose designs accompany the letterpress, to\nstate that the interval has been so short between the production of each\nnumber in manuscript and its appearance in print, that the greater\nportion of the illustrations have been executed by the artist from the\nauthor's verbal description of what he intended to write.\" It is\ntherefore not surprising that a few errors, in such details as the\nnumber of boys in a procession,[C] or the dress of an individual, should\noccur.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nOf DICKENS' Novels, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ contains, perhaps, our etcher's\nmost vigorous productions, but the small woodcut illustrations in\n_Master Humphrey's Clock_ are very praiseworthy, and without doubt\nconduced greatly to the popularity of the book.\n\nThe illustrations in the _Pickwick Papers_ are on the whole inferior to\nmany which \"Phiz\" subsequently executed. But an exception must be made\nin favour of the artist's realization of the character of Sam Weller,\nthan which, even SEYMOUR'S happy invention of Mr. Pickwick did not more\neffectually ensure the popularity of DICKENS' comic epic and give it a\n\"deathless date.\"\n\nThe extraordinary demand for copies of the _Pickwick Papers_\nnecessitated a re-etching of the copper-plates, which, owing to friction\ncaused by the printer's hand, had become very much worn. This\nreproduction will account for any slight difference in the details of\nthe illustrations; for the repetition of subjects once etched, was a\ntask by no means congenial to the artist; and this no doubt induced him\nto say, some years afterwards, in a letter to one of his sons, \"O! I'm\na' weary, I'm a' weary of this illustrating business.\"\n\nArtists frequently experience great difficulty in realizing, to the\nauthor's satisfaction, the description of scenes and characters. An\nillustration is here given showing BROWNE'S various \"fancies for Mr.\nDombey,\" all of which failed to please DICKENS, who also expressed his\ndisapprobation of this artist's treatment of another subject in _Dombey\nand Son_. \"I am really distressed,\" writes he, \"by the illustration of\nMrs. Pipchin and Paul. It is so frightfully and wildly wide of the mark.\nGood Heaven! in the commonest and most literal construction of the text,\nit is all wrong. She is described as an old lady, and Paul's 'miniature\narm-chair' is mentioned more than once. He ought to be sitting in a\nlittle arm-chair down in the corner of the fire-place, staring up at\nher. I can't say what pain and vexation it is to be so utterly\nmisrepresented. I would cheerfully have given a hundred pounds to have\nkept this illustration out of the book. He never could have got that\nidea of Mrs. Pipchin if he had attended to the text. Indeed, I think he\ndoes better without the text; for then the notion is made easy to him in\nshort description, and he can't help taking it in.\"\n\nAs the tale proceeded, the artist more than compensated for his\nunsuccessful rendering of this incident; and with \"Micawber,\" in _David\nCopperfield_, he obtained the author's entire approbation, who says,\n\"Browne has sketched an uncommonly characteristic and capital Mr.\nMicawber for the next number.\" Again, with reference to an illustration\nin _Bleak House_, \"Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him\nsingularly unlike the great original.\"[D]\n\nOf the private life of \"Phiz\" little is known. His extreme nervousness\nand dislike to publicity was often misconstrued as pride; and DICKENS\neven had considerable difficulty in occasionally persuading him to meet\na few friends and spend a pleasant evening. When he did accept such\ninvitations, he invariably tried to seclude himself in a corner of the\nroom, or behind a curtain. His desire for a quiet, unobtrusive life,\ninduced him to pass most of his time in country retirement, all business\nmatters in town being transacted by an intimate friend.[E] Authors or\npublishers wishing to have a personal interview with \"Phiz\" were\ncompelled to visit him at his residence, a few miles from town, and many\nwere the _contretemps_ on dark nights as they crossed a bleak moor to\nreach their destination. His sons looked forward to the time when\nvisitors were expected, in order to hear the stories of wild adventure\nwhich generally befell them, and to laugh at their discomfiture.\n\n\"Phiz\" had been from his boyhood accustomed to horses, and frequently\nhunted with the Surrey hounds. To this circumstance is due the extreme\nfacility with which he delineated the horse in action in the hunting\nfield and elsewhere. At one time he contributed sketches to _The\nSporting Gazette_. This industrious artist was never known to take a\nlengthened holiday, but occasionally spent a few days at the seaside,\nwhere, no doubt, his pencil was fully employed. A letter, written while\nstaying at Margate, to his son Mr. Walter G. Browne (whom, for some\nunknown reason he styled \"Doctor\"), shows his innate sense of humour.\n\n     _Tuesday, June 19_, 6A, CRESCENT PLACE, MARGATE.\n\n     MY DEAR DR.,\n\n     \"I haave [Transcriber's note: haave has two macrons over the\n     a's to denote a very long a is the correct pronunciation]\n     my W. C. White:[F]--but I have no white _collars_--and\n     as I am swelling it about without a necktie--mine having\n     mysteriously disappeared, left behind in a bath\n     probably--perhaps it would be coming it too strong\n     to appear without collars also, and it is hardly warm enough\n     for it either. Your P.O. is from the Miscellany--to H. K.\n     Browne--from Mr. Barrett--Xtian name unknown--and no matter.\n     Any blocks that come, forward on. Send me a * * * * * *\n     before I return. I did some very good shades myself--of\n     myself--unconsciously--yesterday evening. The baths run\n     along one side of the High Street, flush with the\n     pavement--and I found when I had nearly finished my toilet\n     that the gas-burner was so ingeniously placed, that it was\n     impossible for any bather to avoid casting gigantic studies\n     of the nude upon the window blind.--This sort of thing.--\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Here follow several other sketches of the bather in various attitudes].\n\nHis appreciation of fun is thus referred to by DICKENS in a letter to\nMrs. Dickens, dating from the Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury. \"Thursday, Nov.\n1st, 1838.--We were at the play last night. It was a bespeak--'The Love\nChase,' a ballet (with a phenomenon!), divers songs, and 'A Roland for\nan Oliver.' It is a good theatre, but the actors are very funny. Browne\nlaughed with such indecent heartiness at one point of the entertainment,\nthat an old gentleman in the next box suffered the most violent\nindignation.\"\n\nIn 1837, \"Phiz\" accompanied DICKENS to Flanders, for a ten days' summer\nholiday; and in 1838 they went to Yorkshire, a journey which resulted in\nthe production of _Nicholas Nickleby_.\n\nThe following year he made one of a party of four, and visited, with\nDICKENS, MACREADY and FORSTER, nearly all the London prisons. These\njoint tours of Author and Artist could not fail to assist the\nrealization of the scenes they intended to depict.\n\nIt is an interesting fact in connection with the career of \"Phiz,\" that\nhe would never agree to draw from the living model,--all his\nrepresentations of moving crowds, and the various types of humanity,\nwhich his etchings exhibit, being drawn from recollection. He would\nsometimes make a few jottings in pencil--mere memoranda--when anything\nstruck him as being worthy of reproduction, but beyond that he depended\non his excellent memory. For example, he would go to Epsom on the Derby\nDay without taking a pencil even, and, on returning home, would draw to\nthe life exact portraits of any conspicuous or eccentric character he\nhad seen on the course.\n\nAs previously stated, BROWNE was extremely fond of water-colour drawing,\nand executed some thousands during his life; not unfrequently a day's\nwork would be represented by three or four of these productions. They\nwere not caricatures, as one might suppose, but rural scenes _a la\nWatteau_, and allegorical subjects. This fact controverts the statement\nmade in a daily paper, that \"unfortunately, without a text to\nillustrate, 'Phiz' never had half-a-dozen ideas in his head\" (!). For\nmany years he was a constant contributor of pictures--figure subjects of\na humorous and dramatic character--to the Exhibitions of the British\nInstitution, and of the Society of British Artists. Among his more\nambitious efforts was a cartoon of considerable dimensions, representing\n\"A Foraging Party of Caesar's Forces surprised by the Britons,\" which\nappeared as No. 65 at the Westminster Hall Exhibition of 1843. This,\nnotwithstanding the \"scratchy\" manner of its execution, displayed\nremarkable skill and abundant energy of design. At the same gathering\nanother cartoon was attributed to him, of which the energy bordered on\ncaricature; it was named, \"Henry II defied by a Welsh Mountaineer.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\nAt one time \"Phiz\" received an extraordinary commission to reproduce in\nwater-colour all his illustrations to the Novels of DICKENS. The Artist\nreminded his patron of the magnitude of the undertaking, but the request\nwas persisted in, and the work duly executed.\n\nHis love of bracing air induced him to pay frequent visits to the\nseaside; but on one occasion he lodged in a house not remarkable for its\nodoriferous nature; and, in order to produce a current of fresh air in\nhis bed-room, he opened door and window, and slept in the draught caused\nthereby. For many years before his death, he suffered from incipient\nparalysis, the result, no doubt, of this incautious act, and to which\nmay be attributed his disappearance from the art world some fifteen\nyears ago.\n\n\"Phiz,\" notwithstanding his crippled condition, still worked hard with\nadmirable perseverance, though his difficulties were increased by an\ninjury to his thumb, which compelled him to hold his pencil between the\nmiddle and fore fingers. His friends endeavoured to persuade him to draw\nhis pictures on a larger scale, in order that they might be photographed\nto the required dimensions, but, with one or two exceptions, he refused\nto act on this suggestion. He gradually lost that facility which\ncharacterized his work, and latterly yielded to proposals to illustrate\nboys' literature of a rather low class.\n\nThe time is past, no doubt, which encouraged the method of\nbook-illustration adopted by \"Phiz.\" It has given place to\nwood-engraving, and multifarious phototypic processes, that, perhaps,\nare commercially preferable, but from an artistic standpoint much\ninferior. We must, however, except the wonderful results some\nwood-engravers have produced from time to time, which etchers, even,\ncannot hope to excel.\n\nDr. Edgar Browne describes his father's indifference to the value of his\nwork, or the time and labour bestowed upon it:--\"He never understood the\nart of husbanding or developing his powers,--he never set to work to\nlearn any technical process; when he had a little leisure from\n'illustration' work, he used to start a picture 'to get his hand\nin'--generally taking some unimportant or trivial subject for this\npurpose. His facility of hand both in large and minute work was\nsomething marvellous. At one time, he produced a very remarkable series\nof sketches in chalk made during a tour in Ireland. They are scattered\nnow, but are as fine as anything he did, and are certainly the best\nrecords of a people who have practically vanished. He was astonishingly\ncareless about his work. Hundreds of original designs were thrown into\nthe waste-paper basket; apart from their local interest similar sketches\nhave found willing purchasers of late years.\"\n\nLike many other artists whose pecuniary reward had not been commensurate\nwith their ability,[G] he became the recipient of a pension. The kind\ninstrumentality of a few Royal Academicians obtained for him an annual\ngrant which had been previously enjoyed by the late GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.\n\nOn the 8th of July, 1882, the death occurred of the famous \"Phiz.\" At\nthe quiet village of Hove, near Brighton, where the last few years of\nhis life were spent, he succumbed in his sixty-seventh year to infirmity\nrather than old age. Almost forgotten as a man, his productions have\nremained in our memories, and will continue to do so as long as the\nworks of DICKENS and LEVER are read and appreciated. His remains were\ninterred at the extra-mural Cemetery, Brighton. The funeral was private,\nthe only mourners present being the four sons of the deceased, Dr.\nAmbler, Mr. George Halse,[H] and Mr. Robert Harrison.\n\nAs admirers of his artistic ability we place this Memoir as a wreath\nupon his grave.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nCORRESPONDENCE.\n\nThe following letters were addressed by the artist-humorist to his son,\nMr. Walter Gr. Browne:--\n\n\n      BLENHEIM CRESCENT, _Sept., Saturday, 3 o'clk._ P.M., A.D.\n     _1867_.\n\n     _My Dear Dr._,\n\n     I have nearly bursted my heart out, and proved, that my soul\n     or soles (I have two) is'nt--or an't--immortal,--by wearing\n     on 'em out running to and fro after yr.\n     _Balmorals_--Bootless errands! The wretched slave (of awl)\n     has but just brought them! I bristle with wrath! and could\n     welt him!--but--no--I won't--he may want his calf's skin\n     whole, to mend his own _Bad-morals_!!\n\n            *       *       *       *       *\n\n     I rush! I fly! to the Gt. W. R. Station!----!!!!\n\n     [Illustration]\n\n     I sink--breathless into the arms of the astounded\n     clerk--point to the boots----\n\n     _My-mouth_ faintly whispers \"_Wey-mouth_ in his pen-adorned\n     _Ear_!!\" and--and--\"Bless me! where am _I_?\"--and, and--I\n     wish--you may get 'em!\n\n            *       *       *       *       *\n\n     If you visit Portland again, make a note of any\n     peculiarities of spot--convict dress, &c.--as I have a\n     touching bit of horse-y sentiment (!) connected therewith,\n     which will do for _Spg. Gazette_.--I should think you ought\n     to find painty bits--within walking distance--say--right or\n     left ten miles?\n\n            *       *       *       *       *\n\n     Yrs. affecty.,\n\n     DAD.\n\n     _Sunday._\n\n     Really, my dear Walter, I thought you _did_ know better than\n     to disturb my devotional frame of mind on this blessed\n     Sabbath morn by forwarding me such a thoroughly worldly and\n     evil-thought-producing thing as a wretched milliner's\n     bill!!!--The wretch must wait--he gorged L5 not long before\n     I left home.--The greediness of some men!!\n\n     The Pic. Gall. circular I return--as you may like to enquire\n     about it--the doz. others, \"cheap bacon\"--\"patent teeth and\n     everlasting gums,\" &c., &c., &c., &c., &c. I shall manure\n     the grounds of Colyton with ----.\n\n     I think you might get some background material for coast\n     scenes down here.\n\n     Yr. affec. Dad,\n\n     H. K. B.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n     69, BLENHEIM CRESCENT, NOTTING-HILL, _Saturday_.\n\n     MY DEAR DOCTOR,\n\n     I send the Tenpounder, may it reach you in safety!\n\n     The Commander has returned. I sent you a paper containing\n     the important news, which, however, may _not_ have reached\n     you, although I don't think it contained any remarks upon\n     the \"Hemperors personal appearance,\" &c., &c., &c.\n\n     Tom is in the bosom of the family for a few days.--His Pipe\n     is tuned differently now to what it used to was, for he now\n     declareth that St. John's is \"a jolly school!\" He seems to\n     get on very well indeed, and has brought home what Dr. Lowe\n     calls a \"well-earned prize.\"\n\n     He laments daily over the supposed loss of 4_d_ invested in\n     a letter to you--from school--as it was directed, he\n     says,--21, Rue _Mussel wine_--I express doubts of its having\n     reached you--and he groans aloud over the Bull's eyes it\n     _would_ have bought!----\n\n     I am (at _present_) _on_ a Sporting Paper--supported by some\n     high and mighty Turf Nobs, but, I fear, like everything I\n     have to do with, now-a-days, it will collapse--for--some of\n     the Proprietors of the Paper are also Shareholders, &c.,\n     &c., in the Graphotype Co., so they want to work the two\n     together.--I hate the process--it takes quite four times as\n     long as wood--and I cannot draw and express myself with a\n     nasty little finiking brush, and the result when printed\n     seems to alternate between something all as black as my\n     hat--or as hazy and faint as a worn-out plate.--If on wood,\n     I should like it well enough--as it is--it spoils 4 days a\n     week--leaving little time for anything else. O! I'm a'weary,\n     I'm a'weary! of this illustration business.----\n\n     Tom is just off to the R.A., as it is not likely I shall go\n     much before it's close. I will get him to write you a\n     critical description of all the wonderful works in Turps,\n     Varnish, and \"Hile.\"\n\n     Yr. affectionate Dad,\n\n     H. K. B.\n\n     _Monday Morning, 25 m. 40 s. p. 11_ A.M.\n\n     MY DEAR WALTER,\n\n     There is a man playing \"Home, sweet home\" upon the key\n     bugle--it is too much for me--my heart yearneth--I feel I\n     must write just a line or two--especially as it is raining\n     hard--and I don't exactly know what to be at.\n\n            *       *       *       *       *\n\n     Splendid effects yesterday evening--sun-set, twilight,\n     crescent moon--stormy clouds,--tide out--reflections--dark\n     fishing-craft--very good--quite the thing for you.\n\n     There are no people here at present--decidedly nothing\n     Belgravian--chiefly masculines--from the Saturday to the\n     Monday sort--it striketh me--a few I think have strayed here\n     from Southend--I saw this sort of thing [_see page 29_] on\n     the Grand Promenade--which looks like it.----\n\n     There was a great wind yesterday--Boreas had been taking\n     concentrated essence of ginger--It fairly took me off my\n     legs once as I was walking along the cliffs to Broadstairs,\n     luckily for me it blew _off_ the sea--and I was brought up\n     short by some railings in this wise--[_see page 22_]\n     _otherwise_ I should (_no doubt_) have been carried across a\n     5 acre field of _Cloveria Trifolia Browniensis_.--I am glad\n     to say I was also of service to humanity yesterday--I heard\n     the shrill shrieks of a child and a woman's cry for help\n     behind me--I turned--and saw there was not a moment to lose,\n     the wind had caught a poor child--'s hat (and woman's too)\n     and bore it rapidly to the edge of the cliff--with my usual\n     agility I bounded over the rails fencing the cliff--and\n     saved--yes, saved the child--'s--'at!--another puff and it\n     would have been in the deep, deep sea--the blue, the fresh,\n     &c.--Stout mama thanked me politely, and turning to her\n     husband (who, of course, had come up too late to be of any\n     use--those husbands _always_ do)--she remarked \"That the\n     vind had blown both her and her child's 'at hoff and if\n     she'd know'd it--she wouldn't have brought the young-un\n     hout.\"\n\n     I dare say humanity is amusing here when the place is\n     full--there seems a good deal of \"os\" exercise--and\n     basket-carriage driving on Sundays--which is good to\n     behold--this gentleman [_see page 25_] was driving with\n     supreme self-content--having one rein all snug and tight\n     under his pony's tail--luckily the beast did not seem to\n     have any kick in him--so _perhaps_ he got safe back to\n     Margate.\n\n            *       *       *       *       *\n\n     Yr. affec. Dad,\n\n     H. K. B.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration]\n\n     _29th Sept. 1868._\n\n     MY DEAR DOCTOR,\n\n     I have sent you a couple of canvasses--if you put little\n     Clara's head on one of them, you will immortalize her and\n     yourself too.\n\n     Also therewith you will find a Surplice, and if you will\n     only \"hold forth,\" next Sunday, in the Grande Place of\n     Colyton--I will guarantee to say that the simplicity of yr.\n     vestment and the flowing eloquence of yr. tongue will draw\n     out--(as irresistibly as the Piper did the children) the\n     congregations of the \"High\" Church and the Conventicles\n     which will--one and all--rush forth for to see and to hear,\n     and admiringly surround you!--If windy, you might take this\n     for yr. text--\"What went ye forth for to see?--\" A reed\n     shaken by the wind? &c., &c.\n\n     There must have been a splendid _Sea on_ at _Sea-ton_, these\n     last few days,--_tons_ of _sea_, eh? As \"I took my walk\n     abroad\" this morning--I saw the Serpentine in all its\n     grandeur--and observed several vessels in distress--some\n     clipper yachts on their beam ends--the waves were\n     prodigious--great rollers--two especially--one a six horse\n     fellow--t'other a steamer--crunching and grinding--levelling\n     and sweeping all before them!\n\n     Have you seen the Doge of Colyton yet? or any of the Dog-es?\n\n     By all means cultivate the acquaintance of the Doge's\n     kinswoman. Miss P---- (pray give my love to\n     her)--fac-similed on the stage or in a novel, she would be a\n     \"tremendous hit.\"\n\n     I hope you are not belying the _good_ character I have given\n     of you to the boys--and are doing Elephant, Tiger, and\n     Rhinoceros[I] to their perfect satisfaction--though,\n     considering yr. predecessor--it will test your utmost\n     powers, not to be a wretched failure, possibly--much the\n     same sort of thing--as your attempting to sing a comic song\n     immediately after the Great Vance!!! Good Night,\n\n     Yr. affectionate Dad,\n\n     H. K. B.\n\n\nThe following notes have been selected from the unpublished\ncorrespondence of \"Phiz\" with CHARLES DICKENS:--\n\n     MY DEAR DICKENS,\n\n     I have just got one boot on, intending to come round to you,\n     but you have done me out of a capital excuse to myself for\n     idling away this fine morning.--I quite forgot to answer\n     your note, and Mr. Macrone's book has not been very vividly\n     present to my memory for some time past. I think by the\n     beginning of next (week) or the middle (_certain_) I shall\n     have done the plates, but in the scraps of copy that I have\n     I can see but _one good_ subject, so if you know of another\n     pray send it me. I should like \"Malcolm\" again, if you can\n     spare him.\n\n     Believe me,\n\n     Yours very truly,\n\n     HABLOT K. BROWNE.\n\n     Charles Dickens, Esq.\n\n\n     _Sunday, Sept._\n\n     MY DEAR DICKENS,\n\n     Can you conveniently send me the subject or subjects for\n     next week by Thursday or Friday? as I wish, if practicable,\n     to start for Brussels by the Sunday's boat--a word in reply\n     will oblige,\n\n     Yours truly,\n\n     HABLOT K. BROWNE.\n\n     Charles Dickens, Esq.\n\n\n     P.S.--Upon second thoughts I send you the enclosed\n     epistle--(if you read it, you will find out why)--the\n     writer thereof is \"Harry Lorrequer,\" alias \"Charles\n     O'Malley\"--to whose house I am going.\n\n     H. K. B.\n\n\n     P.S. Second--A fortnight's furlough would suit me better\n     than a week, if it could be managed, as I should like to\n     return by Holland.\n\n     MY DEAR DICKENS,\n\n     I am sorry I cannot have a touch at battledore with you\n     to-day, being already booked for this evening--but I will\n     give you a call to-morrow _after church_, and take my chance\n     of finding you at home.\n\n     Yours very sincerely,\n\n     HABLOT K. BROWNE.\n\n     Charles Dickens, Esq.\n\n     33, HOWLAND STREET.\n\n     MY DEAR DICKENS,\n\n     I shall be most happy to remember not to forget the 10th\n     April, and, let me express a _dis_interested wish, that\n     having completed and established one \"Shop\"[J] in an\n     \"extensive line of business,\" you will go on increasing and\n     multiplying such like establishments in number and\n     prosperity till you become a Dick Whittington of a merchant,\n     with pockets distended to most Brobdignag dimensions.\n\n     Believe me,\n\n     Yours very truly,\n\n     HABLOT K. BROWNE.\n\n     Charles Dickens, Esq.\n\n     I return you the Riots with many thanks.\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\n     _Sunday Morning._\n\n     MY DEAR DICKENS,\n\n     Will you give me some notion of the sort of design you wish\n     for the frontispiece to second vol. of _Clock_?[K]\n     Cattermole being put _hors de combat_--Chapman with a\n     careworn face (if you can picture that) brings me the block\n     at the eleventh hour, and requires it finished by Wednesday.\n     Now as I have two others to complete in the\n     meantime--something nice and _light_ would be best adapted\n     to my _palette_, and prevent an excess of perspiration in\n     the relays of wood-cutters. You shall have the others to\n     criticise on Tuesday.\n\n     Yours very truly,\n\n     HABLOT K. BROWNE.\n\n\n     Charles Dickens, Esq.\n\n     How are Mrs. Dickens and the \"Infant?\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[A] Pronounced _Hab-lo_, after a Monsieur Hablot, a captain in the\nFrench army, and a friend of the family.\n\n[B] It was Buss who illustrated Mrs. Trollope's Serial Story, _The Widow\nMarried_, which was published in _The New Monthly Magazine_, 1840.\n\n[C] See _Dombey and Son_, Vol. I, p. 113--\"Doctor Blimber's Young\nGentlemen.\"\n\n[D] Leigh Hunt.\n\n[E] Mr. R. Young, who also undertook the precarious task of \"biting in\"\nhis plates.\n\n[F] Water-colour white.\n\n[G] Publishers frequently availed themselves of his facile pencil, and\nwould instruct him to furnish illustrations for books already in the\npress, for which he was often inadequately paid.\n\n[H] The Sculptor, and an old coadjutor on _Once a Week_. He is also the\nauthor of _A Salad of Stray Leaves_ now in the press, which contains a\nfrontispiece by \"Phiz,\" the last design from his pencil. This he\nexecuted under some difficulties, for owing to an attack of rheumatism\nin his hands, the design--teeming with fancy--had to be made on a large\nscale, and afterwards reduced by the process of photography.\n\n[I] A favourite game with the children.\n\n[J] _The Old Curiosity Shop._\n\n[K] _Master Humphrey's Clock._\n\n\n\n\nA LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS ILLUSTRATED BY \"PHIZ.\"\n\nTo enumerate all the works illustrated by \"Phiz\" would be a next to\nimpossible task, for \"their name is legion.\" No artist was so popular or\nso prolific as a book-illustrator, with the exception, perhaps, of\nGeorge Cruikshank. It may fairly be questioned whether the works of\nCharles Dickens, with which the name of \"Phiz\" is most intimately\nassociated in our minds, would have achieved such notoriety without the\naid of the etching needle so ably wielded. Mr. John Hollingshead, in his\nessay on Dickens, says:--\n\n\"The greater the value of a book as a literary production, the more will\nthe circle of its influence usually be narrowed. The very shape, aspect,\nand garments of the ideal creatures who move through its pages, even\nwhen drawn by the pen of the first master of fiction in the land, will\nbe faint and confused to the blunter perception of the general reader,\nunless aided by the attendant pencil of the illustrative artist. For the\nsharp, clear images of Mr. Pickwick, with the spectacles, gaiters, and\nlow crowned hat--of Sam Weller, with the striped waistcoat and the\nartful leer--of Mr. Winkle, with the sporting costume and the foolish\nexpression--more persons are indebted to the caricaturist, than to the\nfaultless descriptive passages of the great creative mind that called\nthe amusing puppets into existence.\"\n\nIt was not the fame of Dickens only that was enhanced by \"Phiz,\" for the\nnumerous illustrations in the works of Charles Lever, Harrison\nAinsworth, the brothers Mayhew, and a host of minor novelists were\nexecuted by his unwearied hand. It was Dickens, however, who introduced\nhim to public notice, in a pamphlet, now very scarce, entitled _Sunday\nunder Three Heads_, embellished with four delicately executed engravings\ndrawn by \"H. K. B.\"\n\nIt was his succession to Seymour as the illustrator of the _Pickwick\nPapers_, that really excited public interest in the youthful artist, who\ncreated, pictorially, the second hero in the work, the inimitable Samuel\nWeller. Those who are familiar with the original edition of the\n_Pickwick Papers_ will remember with some amusement, the artist's\nintroduction of the indefatigable \"Boots,\" as represented in the yard of\nthe \"White Hart\" Inn, Borough. The identical Inn exists at the present\nday. \"Mr. Pickwick in the Pound\" is another amusing plate, where the\nlaughing, jeering crowd of spectators crowned by a jubilant and juvenile\nchimney sweeper, the braying of a jackass in the ears of the astonished\nhero, who sits somewhat uncomfortably in a wheelbarrow, are incidents so\ncleverly depicted as to excite unqualified admiration. \"Mr. Pickwick\nSlides\" is another truly artistic production. The delicate execution of\nthe extreme distance where is seen a manor house of the olden time\nnestling amongst the trees, and a farmyard hard by, leaves nothing to be\ndesired. Mr. Sala somewhat harshly criticises the illustrations in this\nwork, which, he says, \"were exceedingly humorous, but vilely drawn. The\namazing success of his author seems, however, to have spurred the artist\nto sedulous study, and to have conduced in a remarkable degree towards\nthe development of his faculties. A surprising improvement was visible\nin the frontispieces to the completed volumes[L] of _Pickwick_.\"\nUndoubtedly faults exist, but to characterize the illustrations as\n\"vile,\" seems too severe a term, for after all, the exaggerated types of\nface, form, and feature, do but harmonize with the somewhat exaggerated\ndescriptions of them by the author. This defect, if such it can be\ncalled, was remedied considerably in his later productions.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nIn 1837, \"Phiz\" accompanied Dickens into Yorkshire, there to gather\nmaterial for _Nicholas Nickleby_, a work which exposes the tyranny\npractised by some schoolmasters on their helpless pupils. In this book,\npublished in 1839, is presented to us the despicable \"Squeers,\" which\ntype of brute in human form was so successfully realized by both Author\nand Artist, that the indignation of innumerable Yorkshire pedagogues was\nraised to threats of legal proceedings, for traducing their characters,\none of them actually stating that \"he remembered being waited on last\nJanuary twelvemonth by two gentlemen, one of whom held him in\nconversation while the other took his likeness.\" The most familiar\nrepresentation of \"Squeers\" is seen in the second plate, where he stands\nsharpening his pen, and is timorously approached by the stout father of\ntwo wizen-faced boys who are about to become his pupils. The face of the\nschoolmaster, in which are combined hypocrisy and cruelty, and the\nexpression of sympathy for the new comers exhibited by the boy on the\ntrunk, are worthy of the closest inspection. The effect of the school\ntreatment at Dotheboy's Hall is visible in the illustration where \"The\nInternal Economy\" is depicted. Here we see the starveling lads during\nand after the \"internal\" application of superabundant doses of brimstone\nand treacle, administered by Squeers' worthy partner. The eighth plate\nhappily depicts the wild excitement of the pupils when \"Nicholas\nastonishes Mr. Squeers and family\" by making a furious attack on the\nformer with the cane; as well as \"The breaking-up at Dotheboy's Hall,\"\nwhere the boys revenge themselves on their former tormentors. There are\ntwo more etchings in this volume especially remarkable as artistic\nproductions, viz., \"Mr. and Mrs. Mantalini in Ralph Nickleby's Office,\"\nwhere the expression of an intent listener on the face of Ralph, and of\nhorror on that of Mantalini, is capitally rendered; and the plate\nentitled \"The Recognition,\" which shows poor Smike in the act of rising\nfrom a couch of sickness as he recognizes \"Broker,\" who had conveyed him\nas a child to school.\n\n_Master Humphrey's Clock_, written in 1840-1, includes the stories of\nthe _Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ which have been happily\ntermed \"two unequalled twin fictions upon one stem.\" The illustrations\nwere drawn on wood by H. K. Browne and George Cattermole, and the former\ncreated, pictorially, Little Nell, Mrs. Jarley, Quilp, Dick Swiveller,\nthe Marchioness, Sally Brass, and her brother Sampson. \"Phiz\" revelled\nin wild fun in the vignettes relating to the devilries of Mr. Daniel\nQuilp and the humours of Codlin and Short, and of Mrs. Jarley's waxwork\nshow. His \"Marchioness\" was a distinct comic creation; but in the weird\nwaterscape, showing the corpse of Quilp washed ashore, he sketched a\nvista of riparian scenery which, in its desolate breadth and loneliness,\nhas not since, perhaps, been equalled, save in the amazing suggestive\nThames etchings of Mr. James Whistler. To be sure, Hablot Browne was\nstimulated to excellence during the continuance of the _Old Curiosity\nShop_ by the friendly rivalry of the famous water-colour painter, George\nCattermole, who drew the charming vignettes of the quaint old cottages\nand school-house and church of the village where \"Little Nell\" died. In\n_Barnaby Rudge_, however, Hablot Browne had things graphic his own way,\nand again towards the close he manifested genuine tragic power. His\n\"Barnaby with the Raven\" is lovely in its picturesque grace.[M] When the\nfirst cheap series of this work was published, plates by H. K. Browne\nwere issued, which are now so scarce, that they are often catalogued at\neight or ten times their original price.\n\nTwo years after the visit of Dickens to America in 1842, _Martin\nChuzzlewit_ was published, the illustrations to which excel in vigour\nall the previous efforts of \"Phiz.\" Here we are brought face to face, in\na pictorial sense, with the hypocrite, Mr. Pecksniff, the _abstemious_\nMrs. Gamp and her bosom friend, Betsy Prig, simple Tom Pinch and his\ncharming sister, Ruth. The frontispiece is a most ambitious work, but\nnone the less successful, for \"Phiz\" has represented, in the space of a\nfew square inches, all the leading events, humorous and pathetic,\ndescribed in the novel. In the illustration where Mark Tapley is seen\nstarting from his native village for London, \"Phiz\" exhibits his sense\nof the picturesque in the old gables and dormers of the cottages which\nform the background. The plate, \"Mr. Pecksniff on his Mission,\" is full\nof interest, and gives us an insight into the character of Kingsgate\nStreet, Holborn, at that time. The female neighbours of Mrs. Gamp, the\nmidwife, flock round Pecksniff, commiserating with him on his supposed\ndomestic cares, and advising him to \"knock at the winder, Sir; knock at\nthe winder. Lord bless you, don't lose no more time than you can\nhelp--knock at the winder!\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBut the etching in _Chuzzlewit_ which most strikes the reader as a\nludicrous conception, is that where \"Mrs. Gamp propoges a toast.\" Here\nhe has admirably illustrated the text, wherein is described, with other\ndetails of a droll character, how some rusty gowns and other articles of\nthat lady's wardrobe depended from the bed-posts; and \"these had so\nadapted themselves by long usage to her figure, that more than one\nimpatient husband, coming in precipitately, at about the time of\ntwilight, had been for an instant stricken dumb by the supposed\ndiscovery that Mrs. Gamp had hanged herself.\" In the background of the\npicture are represented these indispensable articles of dress, while at\nthe table sit, in friendly chat, Mrs. Gamp and Betsy.\n\n\"Betsy,\" said Mrs. Gamp, filling her own glass and passing the tea-pot,\n\"I will now propoge a toast. My frequent pardner, Betsy Prig!\"\n\n\"Which, altering the name to Sairah Gamp; I drink,\" said Mrs. Prig,\n\"with love and tenderness.\"\n\nIn 1846, _Dombey and Son_ commenced, with forty illustrations by \"Phiz.\"\nThe frontispiece is similar in design to that of _Chuzzlewit_,\nintroducing the principal characters and events in the novel. The\naustere and pompous (not to say selfish) Mr. Dombey, whom \"Phiz\" had\ngreat difficulty in realizing to the author's satisfaction,[N] is\nintroduced in many of the plates, although the artist has somewhat\nfailed in preserving the same type of face throughout. He has succeeded\nbetter with the genial Captain Cuttle. Little Paul, as he sits in his\ndiminutive arm-chair, contrasts most favourably in his childish\ninnocence, with the grim Mrs. Pipchin, whose Ogress-like character is\nstrongly marked. The scene in which Mr. Dombey introduces his daughter\nFlorence to Mrs. Skewton, is one of the most successful in the book, and\ncontains the _best_ type of Dombey. Here also, the face of Florence is\ntruly pretty, and the artist has well portrayed the handsome but\nvindictive Edith denouncing Carker for his treachery. A very effective\netching entitled, \"On the Dark Road,\" represents the flight of the\nenraged and disappointed libertine. The horses are being urged on their\nmad career by the whip and spurs of a postilion, under the dark sky with\na glimmer of light in the horizon caused by the rising sun. The artist\nat this time essayed a process of working on plates over which a\nhalf-tint had been previously laid by means of a ruling-machine, and in\nwhich the \"high-lights\" were afterwards \"stopped out,\" and the \"whites\"\n\"burnished out.\" He frequently availed himself of these ready means of\nproducing effect. Full-length portraits of the principal characters in\n_Dombey_, which were issued as additional plates by \"Phiz,\" are now very\nscarce.\n\n_David Copperfield_ (1850), with forty illustrations, was the next\nventure, but was not so much an artistic as a literary success. A\nfavourite character in it of course, is Micawber, a kindly caricature of\nthe Author's father, the realization of whom, by Browne, obtained the\nhearty approval of Dickens.\n\nThe most characteristic and, perhaps, most successful work of \"Phiz\" is\nto be seen in the illustrations to _Bleak House_. A view of the \"House\"\nitself forms the subject of the frontispiece. \"The Ghost's Walk,\" the\n\"Drawing-room at Chesney Wold,\" \"Tom All-alone's,\" and the gateway\nleading to the burial ground where Lady Dedlock has fallen lifeless, are\ninstances where the artist has obtained some fine effects by the\n\"ruled-plate\" process. A writer in _The Daily Telegraph_, of July 11th,\n1882, speaks somewhat disparagingly of these illustrations, but _The\nAcademy_ of a few days later, in the following remarks, thus demurs to\nhis criticism:--\n\n\"In the _Bleak House_ illustrations hardly anything is wrong; there is\nno shortcoming. Not only is the comic side, the even fussily comic, such\nas 'the young man of the name of Guppy,' understood and rendered well,\nbut the dignified beauty of old country-house architecture, or the\narchitecture of the chambers of our inns-of-court is conveyed in brief\ntouches; and there is apparent everywhere that element of terrible\nsuggestiveness which made not only the art of Hablot Browne, but the art\nof Charles Dickens himself, in this story of _Bleak House_, recall the\nimaginative purpose of the art of Meryon. What can be more impressive in\nconnection with the story--nay, even independently of the story--than\nthe illustration of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers in gloom; than the\nillustration of the staircase at Dedlock's own house, with the placard\nof the reward for the discovery of the murderer; than that of Tom All\nAlone's; the dark, foul darkness of the burial ground shown under scanty\nlamplight, and the special spot where lay the man who 'wos very good to\nme--he wos!'? And then again, 'the Ghost's Walk,' and once more the\nburial ground, with the woman's body--Lady Dedlock's--now close against\nits gate. Of course it would be possible to find fault with these\nthings, but they have nothing of the vice of tameness--they deliver\ntheir message effectually. It is not their business to be faultless; it\nis their business to impress.\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\nA very successful rendering of character in _Bleak House_ is that of\nHarold Skimpole, whose prototype was Leigh Hunt, an intimate friend of\nthe Novelist, who, by his unintentional disregard for the feelings of\nHunt in caricaturing his peculiarities, nearly severed that friendship.\nAgain, there is intense humour in the illustration facetiously styled,\n\"In re Guppy, extraordinary proceeding.\" The love-sick Guppy is seen in\na kneeling posture, while declaring to Miss Summerson the burning\npassion that consumes him. The expression on the face of the young lady\nshows that she is more amused than flattered by his preference.\n\nIn _Little Dorrit_ (1855-7) the experience gained by both Author and\nArtist during their tour of the London prisons, stood them in good\nstead, for here the Marshalsea is fully described, the type of a\ndebtor's jail. The first illustration represents the interior of a\nFrench prison, in which are incarcerated Monsieur Rigaud and Signor John\nBaptist. The effect of deep gloom in the cell is produced by the\n\"ruled-plate\" method, and is quite Rembrandt-like. In contrast with\nthis, the illustration of \"The Ferry,\" is a delightful country aspect,\nwith trees and winding river; and another plate entitled \"Floating\naway,\" an evening scene, the moon rising behind the trees, is quite\nromantic. The old house in the last picture but one--\"Damocles,\"--again\nshows Browne's appreciation of the picturesque architecture of bygone\ntimes, in the effect of light from the setting sun as it falls upon the\nhouse front, throwing into relief the quaint old carvings of door and\nwindow.\n\nThe last work illustrated by \"Phiz\" for Dickens was _The Tale of Two\nCities_ (1859), containing sixteen etchings full of vigour, as the\ncharacter of the story justifies.\n\nFor some reason, at this time, a rupture was caused between author and\nartist,[O] which resulted in the engagement of Mr. Marcus Stone and Mr.\nLuke Fildes as illustrators of _Our Mutual Friend_ and _Edwin Drood_.\nThese accomplished painters avoided the old system of caricature, the\nold, forced humour; but it is certain that their designs are less\nintimately associated with the persons in the stories they illustrated\nthan those of \"Phiz\" with the earlier and more popular works of Dickens.\n\nHaving devoted the larger portion of the space at our disposal to a\ndescription of the most famous productions of Browne's pencil, which are\nprominent in the original editions of the Novels of Charles Dickens, we\ncan but briefly enumerate the plates he etched for Lever, Ainsworth, and\nothers.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nIn Charles Lever's _Harry Lorrequer_ (1839) and _Charles O'Malley_\n(1841), the uproarious mirth and jollity of Irish military life is well\nportrayed by the needle of the artist. \"The last night in Trinity\" in\nthe latter work, is an example of this, wherein is seen the worthy\nDoctor perched on a table, surrounded by a batch of Irish dragoons, and\nbeing elevated by an explosion of combustibles. The horses in the\nillustrations are admirably drawn.\n\nIn _Jack Hinton_ (1842) the artist shows remarkable force in depicting\nthe death of Shaun, and has well realized the humour of \"Corney's Combat\nwith the Cossack.\"\n\n_Tom Burke of Ours_ (1844) contains forty-four illustrations by \"Phiz,\"\nmany of which represent the scenes connected with the battles of\nAusterlitz, &c., during the reign of the great Napoleon. Most especially\nnoticeable is the scene in a court of justice, with \"Darby in the\nChair;\" the face of that hero with an expression apparently abashed, but\nreally full of roguishness, as he gazes at the counsel, is one of the\nmost successful of Browne's efforts.\n\n_The O'Donoghue_ (1845), has twenty-six illustrations, most of which are\nwell conceived. The falling body of a man in the frontispiece is a\nremarkable drawing. The girlish figure of Kate O'Donoghue, as she bends\nover the form of her heart-broken brother Herbert, is well depicted.\n\n_St. Patrick's Eve_ (1845), with four etchings and several woodcuts. The\nmost remarkable of the former is \"The Cholera Hut.\"\n\n_The Knight of Gwynne_ (1847), with forty illustrations.\n\n_Roland Cashel_ (1850), with forty illustrations.\n\n_The Daltons_ (1852), with forty-eight illustrations.\n\n_The Dodd Family Abroad_ (1854), with forty illustrations. The shrewd\nsimplicity of Kenny Dodd is well delineated.\n\n_The Martins of Cro' Martin_ (1856), with forty illustrations.\n\n_Davenport Dunn_ (1859), with forty-four illustrations.\n\n_One of Them_ (1861), with thirty illustrations.\n\n_Barrington_ (1863), with twenty-six illustrations.\n\n_Luttrell of Arran_ (1865), with thirty-two illustrations.\n\nThe following works of W. Harrison Ainsworth contain etchings and\nwoodcuts by \"Phiz:\"--\n\n_Revelations of London_, published about 1845, but never completed, has\nan illustration which represents a tumble-down house in Vauxhall Road,\nwhich is almost Rembrandt-like in its power. The artist was about thirty\nyears of age when he executed this.\n\n_Old St. Paul's_ (1847), contains only two plates by \"Phiz,\" but _The\nSpendthrift_ (1857), _Mervyn Clitheroe_, and _Crichton_ were wholly\nillustrated by him.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[L] The _Pickwick Papers_ were issued in one volume, and with _one_\nfrontispiece.\n\n[M] _The Daily Telegraph_, July 11th, 1882.\n\n[N] See illustration facing page 11.\n\n[O] If the following statement, made in the _Frankfurt Zeitung_, can be\ncredited, any feeling of enmity that existed between them had long since\ndied out:--\"Just after the death of Charles Dickens, 'Phiz' was\nconsiderably affected by the mere mention of the name of that\nillustrious novelist, which seemed to stir up in his breast feelings of\nregret at losing such a friend.\"\n\n\nSOME MISCELLANEOUS WORKS ILLUSTRATED BY \"PHIZ.\"\n\n_A Paper: of Tobacco, &c., by Joseph Fume_ (1839). With six plates by\n\"Phiz.\" _Fiddle Faddle's Sentimental Tour, in search of the Amusing,\nPicturesque, and Agreeable_ (1845). _The Union Magazine._ Vol. I (1846).\nContaining three plates by \"Phiz.\" _The Illuminated Magazine._ Conducted\nby Douglas Jerrold (1843-5), with woodcut illustrations by Leech, \"Phiz\"\n(H. K. Browne), and others. _Fanny, the little Milliner, or the Rich and\nthe Poor_ (1846), illustrated by \"Phiz\" and Onwhyn. _Wits and Beaux of\nSociety. Sketches of Cantabs, by John Smith (of Smith Hall), Gent._\n(1850). _The Cambridge Freshman._ With woodcut illustrations. _Paved\nwith Gold, or Romance and Reality of the London Streets_, by Augustus\nMayhew (1858). _A Medical, Moral, and Christian Dissection of\nTeetotalism by Democritus_ (1846). _New Sporting Magazine_ (1839). _The\nPottleton Legacy_, by Albert Smith. _Christmas Day, and how it was spent\nby four persons in the house of Fograss, Fograss, Mowton, and Snorton,\nbankers_, by C. Le Ros (1854). _Home Pictures_ (Durtin & Co., 1856). A\nseries of seven charming and characteristic plates. _Dame Perkins and\nher Grey Mare, or the Mount for Market_, by L. Meadows (1866). With\ncoloured illustrations. _H. B.'s Schoolboy Days._ _Illustrations of the\nFive Senses._ _Adventures of Sir Guy de Guy_, by George Halse. _The\nBaddington Peerage_, by G. A. Sala (published in _The Illustrated\nTimes_). In addition to these may be added an illustrated edition of\nByron's works, the \"Abbotsford\" edition of Sir Walter Scott's Novels,\nbesides numerous cuts in _The Sporting Gazette_, _The Illustrated\nTimes_, the early volumes of _Once a Week_, and the Comic Papers.\n\n[Illustration: (SOME SIGNATURES ADOPTED BY H. K. BROWNE.)]\n\n\nBELCARO: being Essays on Sundry AEsthetical Questions.\n\nBy VERNON LEE, author of the \"Studies of the Eighteenth Century in\nItaly.\" 8vo. price 8_s._\n\n\"There is much in this thoroughly original and delightful book which\nreminds us of the essays of the eighteenth century.... It is rare indeed\nto find so much thought conveyed in so easy a style--to find a writer\nwho not only has so much that is fresh to say, but has so fresh a way of\nsaying it.... This way of conveying ideas is very fascinating.... From\nfirst to last there is a continuous and delightful stimulation of\nthought. The book will lead to conversation, dreaming, speculation, and\nall kinds of pleasant and healthy mental exercise; and it is\ninterspersed with such perfect little sketches of scenery, and passages\nof so much eloquence, that it is a literary treat to read\nit.\"--_Academy._\n\n\"Clever and expressive, subtle and brilliant.... We could say a good\ndeal more about this book as the product of a remarkably acute critical\nmind; it would bear to be read a second time, and would be found to\nrepay the trouble.\"--_Athenaeum._\n\n\"Splendid essays on art.... We do not know why the writing reminds us of\nGeorge Sand, but it does.... Vernon Lee writes prose harmonies which are\nfinely composed.\"--_Vanity Fair._\n\n\nTHE SEALS AND ARMORIAL INSIGNIA OF THE UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGES OF\nCAMBRIDGE.\n\nPart I. Post 4to., 3_s._ Relating to the University. Contains\nChromo-lithograph and _eight engravings_ of Seals.\n\n_Imp. 16mo., elegant cover, gilt. Price 3s (Postage 4d)._\n\n\nTUSCAN FAIRY TALES. Taken down from the Mouths of the People. With\nsixteen illustrations, engraved by EDMUND EVANS.\n\nCONTENTS:--The Little Convent of Cats; The Fairies' Sieve; The Three\nGolden Apples; The Woman of Paste; The Beautiful Glutton; The King of\nPortugal's Cowherd; The Three Cauliflowers; The Siren; The Glass Coffin;\nLeonbruno.\n\n\"Sumptuously printed and prettily bound.\"--_Athenaeum._\n\n\"A thoroughly delightful book. The comparative mythologist and the child\nwill alike find something to gratify their very different\ntastes.\"--_Westminster Review._\n\n\"The work will delight the little ones as well as interest the student.\nThe book is charmingly got up and illustrated.\"--_London Review._\n\n_New Poems. Crown 8vo. Ten fine Plates, cloth, price 6s._\n\n\nGODS, SAINTS, AND MEN. By EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.\n\n\"Readers will find him, as before, a Browning without his\nobscurity.\"--_Graphic._\n\n\"Quaint, mediaeval legends and traditions, most of which have a strong\nsavour of the supernatural, in strong, tuneful and artistic\nverse.\"--_Scotsman._\n\n_Crown 8vo., price 1s, cloth 2s._\n\n\nON THE ART OF GARDENING: A plea for English Gardens of the future, with\npractical hints for planting them By MRS. J. FRANCIS FOSTER.\n\n\"In this pleasant and original little book the authoress not only enters\na vigorous protest against the bedding-out system and the so-called\n'natural' style of gardening, but gives very good practical advice for\ngardens of a different sort.\"--_Gardener's Chronicle._\n\n\"This little book proceeds from a true lover of flowers and\nwill be welcome to all who take an interest in their care and\nculture.\"--_Civilian._\n\n\"A pleasant and unpretending little volume.\"--_Saturday Review._\n\n\nLONDON: W. SATCHELL & Co., 19, TAVISTOCK ST., COVENT GARDEN\n\n\n_Price 2s. 6d._,\n\nTHE BOOK OF ODDITIES, AND PUNISHMENTS IN THE OLDEN TIME.\n\nBY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.\n\nWith numerous Illustrations BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, CROWQUILL, CUTHBERT\nBEDE, AND OTHERS.\n\n     CONTENTS:--Revivals after Execution--A Human\n     Pincushion--Female Jockeys--A Blind Road-maker--Odd\n     Showers--Singular Funerals--Whimsical Wills--Curious\n     Epitaphs--People and Steeple\n     Rhymes--Dog-Whippers--Sluggard-Wakers--Playing at Cards for\n     a Town, &c. &c.\n\n\"A capitally-written book, containing a vast amount of curious and\nout-of-the-way information. Mr. Andrews is never for a moment dull, but\ngives forth his antiquarian gossip with all the enthusiasm and point of\na practised _raconteur_. _He tells us all about the ducking-stool, the\nbrank, the pillory, the stocks, the drunkard's cloak, the whipping-post,\nriding the stang, and other forms of punishment._ The book is copiously\nillustrated and well indexed, and cannot fail to be popular.\"--_Sunday\nTimes._\n\nLONDON: W. SATCHELL AND CO., 19, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne), a\nMemoir., by Fred. G. Kitton\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n**NINE LIES ABOUT WORK**\n\n# NINE LIES ABOUT WORK\n\n## MARCUS BUCKINGHAM  \nASHLEY GOODALL\n\n**Harvard Business Review Press**\n\n**Boston, Massachusetts**\n**HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts**\n\nHarvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts when purchased in bulk for client gifts, sales promotions, and premiums. Special editions, including books with corporate logos, customized covers, and letters from the company or CEO printed in the front matter, as well as excerpts of existing books, can also be created in large quantities for special needs.\n\nFor details and discount information for both print and  \nebook formats, contact booksales@harvardbusiness.org,  \ntel. 800-988-0886, or www.hbr.org\/bulksales.\n\nCopyright 2019 One Thing Productions, Inc. and Ashley Goodall\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.\n\nThe web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book's publication but may be subject to change.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Buckingham, Marcus, author. | Goodall, Ashley (Author of Nine lies About work), author.\n\nTitle: Nine lies about work : a freethinking leader's guide to the real world \/ Marcus Buckingham, Ashley Goodall.\n\nDescription: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, 2019.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2018046989 | ISBN 9781633696303 (hardcover)\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Organizational effectiveness. | Industrial management. | Organizational change.\n\nClassification: LCC HD58.9 .B84 2019 | DDC 650--dc23 LC record available at   \n<https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2018046989>\n\nHardcover ISBN: 978-1-63369-630-3\n\nPaperback ISBN: 978-1-63369-803-1\n\neISBN: 978-1-63369-631-0\n\nThe paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.\n_To Chris and Graeme, who taught us to  \nstart with what's knowable_.\n\n# Contents\n\nIntroduction\n\nLIE #1 People care which company they work for\n\nLIE #2 The best plan wins\n\nLIE #3 The best companies cascade goals\n\nLIE #4 The best people are well-rounded\n\nLIE #5 People need feedback\n\nLIE #6 People can reliably rate other people\n\nLIE #7 People have potential\n\nLIE #8 Work-life balance matters most\n\nLIE #9 Leadership is a thing\n\nTruths\n\nAppendix A: The ADPRI's Global Study of Engagement\n\nAppendix B: Seven Things We Know for Sure at Cisco\n\nNotes\n\nIndex\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nAbout the Authors\n**NINE LIES ABOUT WORK**\n\n# Introduction\n\n> _It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble_.\n> \n> _It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so_.*\n> \n> **\u2014MARK TWAIN**\n\nHere's who we are.\n\nMarcus is a data geek. He loves figuring out how to measure things you can't count, such as personality, performance, and engagement. He spent much of his career doing this at the Gallup Organization. He then built his own coaching and software company devoted to helping people do their best work, and he now leads the ADP Research Institute's investigations into all things people and performance. He's a transplanted Brit.\n\nAshley lives in the world of big companies. After an early stint designing the acoustics for concert halls, he dedicated his career to helping the likes of Deloitte and Cisco get the most from all their people. He's the kind of practitioner who loves to pressure test every innovative idea against the messy realities of the world of work. Currently he's doing this for Cisco's hundred and forty thousand employees and contractors around the world. He's also a transplanted Brit.\n\nA couple of years ago, the _Harvard Business Review_ asked us to combine Marcus's reliable data angle with Ashley's real-world-leader angle and write an article about the most effective, reliable, and valid way to do that uniformly unpopular ritual, the performance appraisal. The article was bluntly damning of existing practices, and stirred up the field to such an extent that HBR came back to us and asked whether we could take this same rigorous and realistic approach and apply it to the entire world of work. We said yes, and the book you're holding is the result.\n\nWe began the book with a paradox: Why do so many of the ideas and practices that are held as settled truths at work wind up being so deeply frustrating to, and unpopular with, the very people they are supposed to serve? Why, for example, is it a settled truth that having your goals cascaded down upon you from above is the best way to align and evaluate your work, when those of us in the trenches feel the yearly goal-setting process to be meaningless rigmarole with little connection to our actual work? Why is it a settled truth that you need critical feedback, when, in the real world, most of us lean away from such feedback, and feel more inclined to give it to the other guy than to get it ourselves? Why is it a settled truth that your manager can reliably rate you on your performance, when, on actual teams, none of us has ever met a team leader blessed with perfect objectivity? Why is it a settled truth that all the best leaders possess a defined list of attributes that you should aspire to acquire, when, in our everyday lives, none of us has ever met a leader with all of these attributes?\n\nThis paradox led to the core idea and audience of the book. The idea is this: the world of work today is overflowing with systems, processes, tools, and assumptions that are deeply flawed and that push directly against our ability to express what is unique about each of us in the work we do every day. Workplace data buttresses this idea. Global worker engagement is weak, with less than 20 percent of workers reporting that they are fully engaged at work.* And economists, in seeking to explain the global decline in productivity growth since the mid-seventies, have suggested that \"the technological advances and management strategies that worked to propel productivity in the past have been fully implemented and are no longer contributing to productivity.\" In other words, whatever our current practices may be, they are no longer giving us much lift.\n\nThese practices are by now so commonplace and ingrained that they are hard to see for what they really are. Some of them we encounter as the necessary but frustrating things that large organizations just do and have always done. Some of them, though, are born of convictions held firmly by those who run our companies and who then impose these convictions on the rest of us. Together they form the backdrop and justification for almost everything that happens to us at work\u2014how we are selected for jobs and how we are then evaluated, trained, paid, promoted, and fired.\n\nAnd yet, look more closely and you'll discover that they \"just ain't so.\"\n\nWe could call these things \"misconceptions,\" or \"myths,\" or even \"misunderstandings,\" but because they are pushed at us so hard, almost as if they're being used to steer us away from the world as it truly is, we'll call them \"lies.\"\n\nThere are nine of them in this book. And since, in Picasso's framing, \"every act of creation is first an act of destruction,\" before we can build something strong and fine with our teams we need to deconstruct each lie\u2014to discern how it begins life as a truth in one small set of cases and then spreads into a lie applied to all cases\u2014and then push on to uncover the broader truths hidden behind.\n\nThe first three chapters, after asking why culture, plans, and goals are imposed on us so resolutely, reveal better ways for getting us all to pull together. Chapters 4, , , and  each address a particular aspect of our human nature, and then reveal how we can best grow ourselves and our people when each of us is so glaringly and enduringly different. Chapter 8 questions why \"balance\" is held up to each of us as the ideal, and then presents a very different aspiration. And finally, the last chapter takes on our reverence for all things \"leadership,\" and offers up a new window into what really happens when we, as followers, give our breath and our passion to the vision of another.\n\nAs you read, you'll realize that these Nine Lies have taken hold because each satisfies the organization's need for control. Large organizations are complex places, and a strong and understandable instinct of their leaders is to seek simplicity and order\u2014not least because this makes it easier to persuade themselves and their stakeholders that they are moving toward their objectives. But the desire for simplicity easily shades into a desire for conformity, and before long this conformity threatens to extinguish individuality. Before we know it, the particular talents and interests of each person are seen as inconveniences, and the organization comes to treat its people as essentially interchangeable.\n\nThis is why you are told that your organization's culture is monolithic, that the plan must be adhered to, that work must be aligned through cascaded goals, that humans must be molded into well-roundedness and given constant feedback until they become so, and that each one of us must rate the others so as to conform most closely to the prescribed models of leadership, performance, and potential.\n\nYou'll see, as well, that the strongest force pushing back against the lies, and the force that we all seek to harness in our lives, is the power of our own individuality\u2014that the true power of human nature is that each human's nature is unique, and that expressing this through our work is an act, ultimately, of love.\n\nThe audience we imagined at the outset was someone leading a team for the first time\u2014someone who is facing a glorious but challenging world, and someone who wants to do something extraordinary with his or her team, to achieve greatness with them, to enable greatness for them, to become the kind of leader they talk about for years to come. We imagined leaders who are asking themselves how they will get the most from each team member; how they will keep them all focused when each seems to have their own personal goals; how they will prevent them from making mistakes that will hurt the team, yet allow them room to experiment and learn; how they will be fair judges of their performance, yet still build relationships with them that are real and caring; and how they will do all this while remaining true to who they are as people. We imagined someone who, in attempting to do all this, would be confounded and stymied by the Nine Lies\u2014by all the things we know for sure but just ain't so.\n\nBut as we wrote, our sense of who we were writing for grew. We realized that we weren't writing just for a first-time team leader but for any leader frustrated by the (sometimes benign) attempts of his or her organization to exert control and impose uniformity. We came to think of our audience not as the new leader but as the _freethinking leader_. A leader who embraces a world in which the weird uniqueness of each individual is seen not as a flaw to be ground down but as a mess worth engaging with, the raw material for all healthy, ethical, thriving organizations; a leader who rejects dogma and instead seeks out evidence; who values emergent patterns above received wisdom; who thrills to the power of teams; who puts faith in findings, not philosophy; and above all, a leader who knows that the only way to make the world better tomorrow is to have the courage and the wit to face up to how it really is today.\n\nIf this sounds like you, then you are a freethinking leader. We don't know you personally, of course, but over the last six months we've thought a lot about you\u2014who you might be, how you might be feeling, and what you might need to thrive. This book is for you.\n\n*Ironically, one thing we know for sure that just ain't so is that this quotation is from Mark Twain: though it is most often attributed to him, the truth is that no one is sure who coined it. In this way it serves as a sort of double reminder of the dangers of misplaced certainty.\n\n*See appendix A.\n\n#\n\n# People care which company they work for\n\nMeet Lisa. She works in the field of corporate communications and marketing, and has done so for more than twenty years. We spoke to her the other day about her recent experiences at work, in the same way that we speak to hundreds of people every year about their experiences at work. Lisa told us that she'd recently moved from one company to another and then back again, and we wanted to understand more. Here's what she said.\n\n_Marcus and Ashley:_ Why did you leave Company A* after eighteen years?\n\n_Lisa:_ I'd moved from a role focused on events\u2014the big events we put on for our customers and partners\u2014to a role focused more on marketing. I found I couldn't be creative in the marketing role, and then my prior events role had been filled and I had nowhere to go. So the only way I could get back into events was to go elsewhere.\n\n_Us:_ That's what led you to look at Company B?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes. And anyway, after all this time at Company A, I felt like exploring something new, and a new environment.\n\n_Us:_ As you considered working for Company B, what was most important to you about the company?\n\n_Lisa:_ The brand\u2014whether it was seen to be a name-brand company in a market-leading position; innovation and the pace of innovation; whether I could build something new; where the job was located and whether I could work remotely; how cool the place was; whether I would learn there; and whether I could try new things easily. Those were some of the things I remember thinking about.\n\n_Us:_ And how did you try to evaluate each of those?\n\n_Lisa:_ Obviously, through the interviews I did for the job. But I'd also done my research beforehand\u2014I spent six months researching the company and the job, on Google, on Glassdoor. I spent two months prepping for my interviews, and at the same time I talked to as many people there as I could find.\n\n_Us:_ What did you conclude at the end of this?\n\n_Lisa:_ I thought Company B probably wasn't a perfect place, but it had checked enough of my boxes for me to feel comfortable going there.\n\n_Us:_ So you went to Company B. How long did you stay there for?\n\n_Lisa:_ Two years.\n\n_Us:_ Given you'd spent eighteen years at Company A, were you expecting to be at Company B longer than two years?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes, for sure.\n\n_Us:_ So can you explain why you were only there for two years, given how thorough you'd been in your research about the job? What happened?\n\n_Lisa:_ What happened is that I met my manager. I mean, I'd met her during the interview process, obviously, and there were a few things that bothered me\u2014but when I started I saw her true colors, and that's when things started to go wrong.\n\n_Us:_ What bothered you during the interview process?\n\n_Lisa:_ Her style struck me as severe, and formal, and a bit hierarchical. But I figured that was just her game face\u2014how she was to the outside world\u2014and that if I joined her team it would be different. But it wasn't.\n\n_Us:_ And when did you realize that?\n\n_Lisa:_ It was on Day Thirteen.\n\n_Us:_ Day Thirteen? How can you be so precise?\n\n_Lisa:_ I wrote it down in my calendar. I wrote down all the key dates during my time at Company B\u2014it was my way of documenting what was a really tough experience for me. On Day Thirteen I was in a meeting with my manager and a more senior executive, and the senior person asked what I thought was a simple question about booking hotel rooms, and I answered, and my manager looked shocked. As soon as the meeting finished, she took me to one side and said, \"We don't share that sort of thing with senior people here. Next time run it by me.\" And from that point on she micromanaged me, and I realized that she was fear-based, both in how she thought of her bosses and in terms of how she ran her team.\n\n_Us:_ Were there any other days you noted in your calendar?\n\n_Lisa:_ On Day Fifteen I wrote down, \"Possible last day at Company B\" for my two-year anniversary, and \"Last day at Company B\" for my four-year anniversary.\n\n_Us:_ Crikey. Just to confirm\u2014you spent months researching a company; you did seven interviews, in each of which you had carefully prepared questions to help you understand whether this would work for you; and two weeks in you'd not only decided to leave but given yourself a timeline. Is that right?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes, that's it. I knew fifteen days in that I wasn't there long term.\n\n_Us:_ And the main reason for that was your manager, and her style?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes. And it wasn't just my manager\u2014other leaders seemed to operate based on fear, too.\n\n_Us:_ When you were at Company B, were you introduced to their Core Values or Leadership Principles or anything like that?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes! I was handed a laminated page of them at my orientation. I was thrilled!\n\n_Us:_ Why was that?\n\n_Lisa:_ I read them and thought, \"These are great!\" There was one I remember in particular\u2014it was about disagreeing and then committing, about having the courage to speak up if you disagreed with what was being said, but then committing wholeheartedly to the ultimate decision when it was made. I thought that was really exciting, and would make for a great environment. But then I started work, and I realized\u2014darn, these just aren't true. Worse than that, some people here use them for evil.\n\n_Us:_ For evil?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes, they justify bad behavior by pointing to the Leadership Principles. So if they want to silence dissent, they tell people it's time to commit to the direction they want to go. Which is the opposite of what that idea is meant to be about.\n\n_Us:_ Ah, OK. So pretty quickly you decided to find a path back to Company A, right?\n\n_Lisa:_ Yes.\n\n_Us:_ And in the light of this experience with Company B, what was important to you as you looked for this next role?\n\n_Lisa:_ Three things\u2014culture, leadership, and the work I'd be doing.\n\n_Us:_ What do you mean by culture?\n\n_Lisa:_ It's the tenets of how we behave. I think of it like a family creed\u2014this is how we operate and treat one another in this family.\n\n_Us:_ What are some words you'd use to describe Company A's culture?\n\n_Lisa:_ Let me see. _Inclusive_ , _collaborative_ , _kind_ , _generous_ , _trusting_ , _fair_ , _supportive_. And I think the senior leaders are good people who lead ethically.\n\n_Us:_ Were those things uniform across Company A, in your experience?\n\n_Lisa:_ I think I was fortunate\u2014they showed up in the teams I worked on for sure. But I know people who were less fortunate, who didn't see these things.\n\n_Us:_ How do you explain that?\n\n_Lisa:_ For me, it's a question of whether each team leader believes in the culture of the company\u2014whether they get the culture or not. If they do, you're fortunate. If not, you're not.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nFrom the outside looking in, it's pretty hard to figure out what it might be like to work for a particular company. If you're job hunting, you might start by searching online as Lisa did\u2014perhaps on Glassdoor or one of the other job boards where employees can rate their current company\u2014or by talking to friends about where they've worked and what their experiences were. You might try to talk to a recruiter, although it's tricky to do that if you're not yet sure you're going to apply. You might try to figure it out by reading the coverage of a company in the press, but this can be frustrating, since articles tend to focus more on a company's products or its strategy, rather than on its culture per se. Wherever you look, you'll find yourself wondering if what you're discovering is really representative of the company, and is giving you a good sense of the inside story. In search of more objectivity and breadth, then, you might turn to _Fortune_ magazine's annual ranking of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.\n\n_Fortune_ publishes its ranking every January, and this issue of the magazine is one of the most widely read of the year. The ranking is based on an anonymous survey of the employees at each company (known as the \"Trust Index\"), together with a submission that each company puts together describing how it invests in its people and what it has to offer them (called the \"Culture Audit\"). From all this, the editors at the magazine and the analysts at the Great Place to Work Institute (which conducts the research) put together a list that tells you which companies are the best to work for that year, together with descriptions of the various perks they offer and brief testimony from current employees. In 2018 the top six, in order, were Salesforce, Wegmans, Ultimate Software, Boston Consulting Group, Edward Jones, and Kimpton Hotels, selected for reasons ranging from the pragmatic (paying bonuses for employee referrals, offering Starbucks gift cards during busy times, on-site child day care) to the noble (giving millions of dollars' worth of reclaimed food to the hungry, building environmentally friendly offices, always trying to promote from within) to the quirky (Salesforce has an entire floor dedicated to _ohana_ , the Hawaiian for _family_ , while Kimpton offers all new hires a welcome care package complete with each person's favorite snacks).\n\nIf you are indeed looking for a job, you read _Fortune_ 's list in search of insights about a given company. What will your colleagues be like? How will they treat you? What will a typical day be like? Will your work be interesting, challenging, and valued? Is this a company that really cares for its people? If you go through the long process of applying, and interviewing, and negotiating an offer, and ultimately landing a job there, will this be a company that puts as much into you and your career as you're going to put into it?\n\nWhat, precisely, is this list measuring about these companies? Read the submissions, the press releases, and _Fortune_ 's own descriptions of the winners, and the word you land on is _culture_. Salesforce has a \"family culture,\" hence the Ohana floor. Wegmans has a culture based on its mission to \"help people live healthier, better lives through food.\" Kimpton Hotels has an \"inclusiveness culture.\" Each of these companies, it appears, has figured out what kind of culture it wants to build, and then has made it onto the list because it has been resolute and effective in its pursuit. Judging by these and other examples, this thing called culture really matters. It is potentially more important than what the company does\u2014\"Culture eats strategy for breakfast!\"\u2014how the company does it, how much the employees get paid, or even the company's current stock price.\n\nCulture matters, according to the voluminous literature on the topic, because it has three powerful contributions to make. First, it tells you who you are at work. If you're at Patagonia, you'd rather be surfing. You work in beautiful Oxnard, California, and your onboarding consists of a day-long beach party where you are gifted the CEO's autobiography\u2014 _Let My People Go Surfing_ \u2014and where your first meeting takes place around a campfire. If you're at Goldman Sachs, then never mind the surfing\u2014you'd rather be winning. You wear your bespoke suit every day because you're a winner. It means something to say that you work for Deloitte, or for Apple, or for Chick-fil-A\u2014and this meaning says something about you, something that locates you and differentiates you, that defines your tribe.\n\nSecond, culture has come to be how we choose to explain success. When Tesla's stock was on the rise in the early part of 2017, it wasn't because people were finally getting the electric cars they'd paid deposits for a year earlier\u2014they weren't. Rather, it was because Elon Musk had created a culture of cool, a place where you couldn't even see the cutting edge because it was so far behind you. When Toyota had to recall over six million vehicles, the direct cause was a problem with the shift-lever assembly, but the deeper explanation we arrived at was that it was a problem with their polite yet win-at-all-costs culture.\n\nAnd third, culture is now a watchword for where we want our company to go: almost overnight, a big part of the job description of senior corporate leaders has become to create a specific sort of culture, a culture of \"performance,\" perhaps, or a culture of \"feedback,\" or a culture of \"inclusion,\" or a culture of \"innovation\"; to shape the direction of the company they lead by infusing it with particular traits that govern how people behave. Beyond explaining the now, culture has become our handle on the next.\n\nAs a team leader you are going to be told, repeatedly, that you must take stock of all this because you are responsible for embodying your company's culture, and for building a team that adheres to these cultural norms. You will be asked to select only applicants who fit the culture, to identify high-potentials by whether or not they embody the company culture, to run your meetings in a way that fits the culture, and, at company off-sites, to don the T-shirts and sing the songs.\n\nAll of which is fine, right up to the point where you start to wonder what, precisely, you are being held accountable for. Read the _Fortune_ list again and you'll be struck by the fact that a very small percentage of what's written about your company is in your job description. Having an on-site day-care facility, giving all employees 20 percent of their time to pursue their own interests, offering large rewards for referring a new hire, and building solar panels on the roof are all admirable initiatives, yet none of them is within your control. They are commitments made by others\u2014the executive committee or the board\u2014and while you may think them worthy, and may indeed be proud that they are something your tribe contributes to the world, you can't do anything about them. They are off in some other place, far from the day-to-day projects and deadlines, the ongoing actions and interactions, that actually comprise your world of work.\n\nWhen people ask you what it's \"really like\" to work at your company, you immediately know you're going to tell them not about the solar panels and the cafeteria, but about what it's really like. So you'll get real, and talk about how work is parceled out, whether many managers play favorites, how disputes get resolved, whether the real meeting happens only after the formal meeting is over, how people get promoted, how territorial the teams are, how large the power distance is between senior leaders and everyone else, whether good news or bad news travels fastest, how much recognition there is, and whether performance or politics is most prized. You'll get down to the two-foot level of how work actually gets done, and try to tease out what your company truly feels like to the people on the ground.\n\nYou won't know whether to call this \"culture\" or not, just as you won't necessarily know how to label each of these two-foot-level details, but in every fiber of your being you'll know that this ground-level stuff is what'll decide how hard people will work once they've joined, and how long they'll stay. This ground-level stuff is what they truly care about. Indeed, this ground-level stuff is what _you_ truly care about.\n\nIn which case, your most pressing question, as a team leader, will be something like this: If I am to help my team give their best, for as long as possible, which of these details are most critical? Tell me the most important ones, and I'll do my level best to pay attention to those.\n\nWe've spent the last two decades attempting to answer this question for you. In the next few pages we'll outline what we've found, and then we'll focus the rest of this book on going deeper, and on giving you insights and prescriptions for how you can address the things that matter most.\n\nAnd in so doing, the first lie we'll need to expose is precisely that _people care which company they work for_. It sounds so odd to label this a lie, since each of us does indeed feel some sort of connection to our company, but read on, and we think you'll see that while what each of us truly cares about may begin as \"company,\" it quickly morphs into something else rather different.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAll quantitative research requires qualitative digging, which is why, a little while ago, we spent a few hours with a team of people in Cisco's office in Krakow, Poland.* We were curious about their experience of work, and what their team was like. The team had about fifteen members overall, engaged in various jobs supporting Cisco's customers. We asked the group about the things they did frequently\u2014daily or weekly or monthly or quarterly\u2014that were important to them. Three of the team members answered by talking about lunch. We always bring our lunches to work, they said, instead of going to the cafeteria. And there's a spot on the patio outside where we eat together. We always eat at the same time as one another, no matter what is happening that day, and sometimes we talk about work, and other times about stuff outside work\u2014this is what we do every day.\n\nLater on, we saw where the fifteen-person team worked (our initial discussion had taken place in a conference room). They worked at a long row of workstations, each separated from its neighbors by vertical dividers. The three people who ate their packed lunches together pulled us to one side. Look! they said, pointing to an unremarkable spot on the floor, a few feet from the workstations. This is where we huddle! We asked what they meant. They said that when something happened during the day that they needed to talk about, they would leave their workstations and form an impromptu huddle where they could figure out what to do.\n\nHere we have a team of fifteen people, doing real work in the real world, and within it a sub-team of three people, also doing real work in the real world. And the three take time every day to eat together, and also\u2014maybe because of the lunches, or maybe not because of them, or maybe just because\u2014have a way of quickly breaking the routine configuration of their workspace to solve problems together.\n\nWhat is the \"culture\" of this three-person team-within-a-team? Is it different from the \"culture\" of the bigger, fifteen-person team, and if so, how? Who knows? All we do know is that both the three-person miniteam and the fifteen-person team are extremely productive and highly engaged. Back at Cisco's headquarters in San Jose, California, the CEO, Chuck Robbins, is doing his best to build an enthusiastic, committed workforce, but he is thousands of miles and several organizational levels away from the day-to-day realities that these team members face, and he knows that there's a limit to what he can control from the center. All he can hope to do is to encourage these local teams\u2014and every other of his thousands upon thousands of teams\u2014to build the sort of work experience that gets the best from each and every team member.\n\nWhat, then, should he be asking them to focus on? What are, in fact, the most important aspects of our experience of work?\n\nThe only way to rigorously answer this question is as follows: First, create two groups of people, one group from teams with high performance (high productivity, high innovation, high customer satisfaction, low voluntary turnover, low lost work days, whatever _performance_ means in a given company or business unit), the second group from teams with low or average performance.\n\nNext, start asking questions about what these teams are like on the inside. Ask many, _many_ questions of the high performers, and then ask the same questions of the low performers. Search for those few questions where the people on the high-performing teams say that they strongly agree and the people on the mid- to lower-performing teams do not. The goal here is to try to find what is distinctive about the high-performing teams through the eyes of the people on those teams.\n\nOver the last several years we've repeated this research hundreds of times in many different companies, always zeroing in on the questions that most clearly sort the best from the rest. We are not the first to undertake this kind of research, of course. Back in the late 1990s the Gallup Organization did pioneering work on engagement, eventually identifying twelve conditions as the drivers of it, and since then organizations such as the Corporate Executive Board, Korn Ferry, and Kenexa have added to our growing body of knowledge and our understanding of engagement at work, and of how we can measure it most reliably and with the most validity. Our work built on this existing research, as all sound research should\u2014research findings are provisional, after all\u2014and, in the end, we wound up identifying just a few aspects of the employee experience that exist disproportionately on the highest-performing teams. These eight aspects, and these eight precisely worded items,* validly predict sustained team performance:\n\n1. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.\n\n2. At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.\n\n3. In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values.\n\n4. I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.\n\n5. My teammates have my back.\n\n6. I know I will be recognized for excellent work.\n\n7. I have great confidence in my company's future.\n\n8. In my work, I am always challenged to grow.\n\nYou might notice a few things about these items right away. First, the team members are not directly rating their team leader or their company on anything\u2014they are rating only their own feelings and experiences. This is because, as we'll see in chapter 6, people are horribly unreliable raters of other people. When we ask someone to rate someone else on an abstract quality such as empathy or vision or strategic thinking, their responses tell us more about the person doing the rating than the person being rated. To get good data we have to ask people about their own experiences.\n\nSecond, you may also notice that the eight items fall into two broad groupings. The first is the odd-numbered items:\n\n1. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.\n\n3. In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values.\n\n5. My teammates have my back.\n\n7. I have great confidence in my company's future.\n\nThese deal with the elements of a person's experience created in their back-and-forth interactions with others on the team\u2014the communal experience of work, if you will. What do we all _share_ , as a team or as a company? We can think of these as the \"Best of We\" questions.\n\nThe second group comprises the even-numbered items:\n\n2. At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.\n\n4. I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.\n\n6. I know I will be recognized for excellent work.\n\n8. In my work, I am always challenged to grow.\n\nThese deal instead with the individual experience of work. What is unique about _me_? What is valuable about _me_? Do _I_ feel challenged to grow? We can think of these as the \"Best of Me\" questions.\n\nThese two categories of experience\u2014We experiences and Me experiences\u2014are the things we need at work in order to thrive. They are specific; they are reliably measured; they are personal; they reveal a local individual experience intertwined with a local collective experience. They are everyday. And if we think about the team in Poland, while we might not know what its \"culture\" is, we do know that lunching together and huddling together will have some bearing on the team members' feeling that their teammates have their backs, that they share a sense of what excellence is, that they are called on to do their best work frequently, that they catch each other doing things right, and so on. What we see in the eight questions is a simple way of measuring experience-at-work, and one that you, the team leader, can do something about.\n\nAnd what more than two decades of research into teams and their leaders has to tell us is this: what distinguishes the best team leaders from the rest is their ability to meet these two categories of needs for the people on their teams. What we, as team members, want from you, our team leader, is firstly that you make us feel part of something bigger, that you show us how what we are doing together is important and meaningful; and secondly, that you make us feel that you can see us, and connect to us, and care about us, and challenge us, in a way that recognizes who we are as individuals. We ask you to give us this sense of universality\u2014all of us together\u2014and at the same time to recognize our own uniqueness; to magnify what we all share, and to lift up what is special about each of us. When you come to excel as a leader of a team it will be because you've successfully integrated these two quite distinct human needs.\n\nOver the course of this book, we'll explore precisely _how_ the best leaders do this\u2014what they pay attention to and how they interact with the people around them. At the same time, we'll explore the eight items in more detail, and we'll see how the lies we're told at work push back, hard, against each of these eight critical aspects.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBut what of our first lie, that _people care which company they work for_?\n\nWell, we now know that these eight questions measure very precisely those aspects of our experience of work that matter the most\u2014in other words, the aspects that drive performance, voluntary turnover, lost work days, accidents on the job, and customer satisfaction. So, if it is true that in large part people's experience at work is driven by the company they work for, then when we ask these eight questions to every person in every team at a particular company, we should get, generally, the same responses. There shouldn't be variation from team to team, because the day-to-day experience of working at this particular company should remain mostly consistent.*\n\nBut that's not the case\u2014in fact, it's _never_ the case. The statistical measure of variation is called range, and we've found that these scores always have a greater range _within a company_ than _between companies_. Experience varies more _within a company_ than _between companies_.\n\nHere's what this looks like. This is how 5,983 teams at Cisco answered the second question, \"At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.\" (See figure 1-1.)\n\nNow, this is a very basic question. If you've spent much time in business organizations, you'll know that they devote a lot of energy to talking about strategies and plans and priorities and themes and critical initiatives and business imperatives, and Cisco is no different. Yet for all this effort, these nearly six thousand teams had a widely varying sense of what was expected of them. And we saw this variance across _all_ teams at _every_ company that we surveyed.\n\nFIGURE 1-1\n\n**Clarity of expectations on teams**\n\nHere's how 1,002 teams at Mission Health answered the seventh question, \"I have great confidence in my company's future.\" (See figure 1-2.)\n\nIf there's any item that should vary between companies rather than within them, it would surely be this one. After all, one company will presumably have only one future, and this future should seem the same regardless of which team you're on. Yet it doesn't feel like that. People's responses to this question vary significantly depending on which team they're on, within the same company: different team, different level of confidence in the future.\n\nWe see similar patterns on all eight of the questions\u2014we see, in other words, that when we zero in on the critical aspects of our experience at work, they vary more team-to-team than they do company-to-company. Any ideas\u2014like the idea of culture\u2014that rest on the assumption that our experience of a company is uniform, no matter where we sit, don't hold up. Any ideas\u2014again, like the idea of culture\u2014that rest on the assumption that our experience will vary company to company are incomplete, because our experience will vary more within a company than between companies. And any ideas\u2014again, like the idea of culture\u2014that rest on the assumption that this broad, unchanging company-ness is what defines our experience of work are simply wrong.\n\nFIGURE 1-2\n\n**Confidence in the future on teams**\n\nInstead _local_ experiences\u2014how we interact with our immediate colleagues, our lunching-on-the-patio companions, and our huddling-in-the-corner partners\u2014are significantly more important than company ones. At least, that's what all this research is telling us.\n\nMoreover, if we care most which _company_ we work for, it follows that there should be no connection between our experience on a given team and our choice to stay with a given company\u2014because company trumps team. But whenever we run an analysis, we find that when a team's score is low on these items, members of that team are significantly more likely to leave the company. At Cisco, for example, we've seen that when someone's experience of their team moves from the top half, companywide, to the bottom half, their likelihood of leaving the company increases by 45 percent. When people choose not to work somewhere, the somewhere isn't a company, it's a team. If we put you in a good team at a bad company, you'll tend to hang around, but if we put you in a bad team at a good company, you won't be there for long. The team is the sun, the moon, and the stars of your experience at work. As Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish writer and philosopher put it as far back as 1790, \"To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections.\"\n\nWhen we push on the data, and examine closely its patterns and variations, we arrive at this conclusion: while people might care which company they join, they don't care which company they work for. The truth is that, once there, _people care which team they're on_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nRecently the ADP Research Institute conducted a nineteen-country study on the nature of engagement at work\u2014what drives it, and what it drives. We've included a summary of the findings in the appendix, but here are three highlights that you'll want to know. First, virtually all work is in fact teamwork. In companies with over 150 employees, 82 percent of people work on teams, and 72 percent work on more than one team. Even in small companies, of fewer than twenty people, this finding holds: 68 percent of those in small companies report working on a team, and 49 percent say they work on more than one team. This proved to be so in every single country in the study.\n\nSecond, we know that if you do happen to work on a team you are twice as likely to score high on the eight engagement items, and that this trend linking engagement to teams extends to multiple teams\u2014in fact, the most engaged group of workers across the working world are those who work on _five_ distinct teams.\n\nThird, just like Lisa, those team members who said they trusted their team leader were _twelve_ times more likely to be fully engaged at work.\n\nThe good news in all this for you, the team leader, is that what people care most about at work is within your control. You might not be able to weigh in on your company's parental-leave policy, or the quality of its cafeteria, but you can build a healthy team\u2014you can set clear expectations for your people, or not; you can position each person to play to his or her strengths every day, or not; you can praise the team for excellent work, or not; you can help people grow their careers, or not. And you can, over time, build trust with your people, or not. Of course, given the \"always-on\" nature of your daily work, attending to each of these is challenging, but at least they are indeed part of your daily work.\n\nThe bad news for you is that your company, most likely, looks past this, so while you're doing your best to create these experiences for your people, your company may not be holding your fellow team leaders accountable for doing the same on their teams. Companies almost universally miss the importance of teams, as evidenced by the fact that most companies don't even know how many teams they have at any moment in time, and who is on them, let alone which are the best ones\u2014we are functionally blind to teams. And our overemphasis on culture leads companies to remove responsibility from where it resides\u2014with the team leaders\u2014and instead to focus on generalities. You now know that your company does not have a uniform culture, that if there is something distinct about your company's culture then it is unmeasurable, that the total score of your company's employee survey is simply the clumping together of lots of highly varied team-level surveys, and that these clumps mask what really matters. You now know that when a CEO sets out to build a great company, all she can do\u2014and it's a lot\u2014is strive to build more and more teams like her company's best teams.\n\nAnd you now know that often what's written about company cultures are stories masquerading as data\u2014stories of one world, and then another, and then another, vivid, intriguing, charming, and occasionally a bit scary, but not real. Like Narnia, or like Middle-earth, if hobbits had jobs.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIf the most important experience of work is the experience of team, what should we make of all the \"culture of . . .\" things with which we began? Are they all entirely irrelevant?\n\nIn his fascinating book _Sapiens_ , and again and in more depth in its sequel, _Homo Deus_ , the historian Yuval Noah Harari asks what it is that explains the success of humankind over all other species. Having examined and rejected the usual explanations\u2014we're not alone, as a species, in using tools, or in having language, or in making plans, or in experiencing consciousness\u2014he moves on to explore our notions of reality. Objective reality, as we know, is a reality that exists independently of our attitudes or feelings about it: if you stop believing in gravity, you'll still fall to the ground if you jump out of the window. Subjective reality, on the other hand, is defined precisely by your attitudes and feelings: if you have a toothache yet your dentist tells you she can't find anything the matter (there is no objective problem), your tooth still hurts.\n\nBut Harari goes on to argue that there is a third kind of reality, that this kind of reality is unique to humans, and that this kind of reality explains the dominance (for good or ill) of our species. There are some things that are real simply because we _all_ agree they're real\u2014things whose existence depends not on any objective reality, nor on any individual's subjective reality, but rather on our collective belief in them. By this logic, money, for example, exists _only_ because all of us agree it does. Initially this might sound odd\u2014surely money is just money, not some sort of mass belief system\u2014but here's the rub: when we all cease to believe in these realities, they cease to be real. If you and everyone else stop believing, all of a sudden, that a particular piece of paper is worth $10, then it actually and rather immediately ceases to be worth $10. This is more or less what happened in India on the evening of November 8, 2016, when the government announced that the very next day certain bills would no longer be legal tender, and those bills turned instantly from _Things That Are Valuable Because We All Agree They Are_ to _Things That Are Valueless Because Some Of Us Don't_.\n\nHarari calls these extended, communal realities _intersubjective realities,_ and tells us that they're the reason our achievements as a species are so different from those of our planet-mates. They enable us to coordinate our actions with those of people we may never meet, across distance and across time. Our belief in the intersubjective reality of nation, for example, enables us to cooperate with our fellow citizens to finance and build monuments, or to wage war; our belief in the intersubjective reality of democracy allows us to elect governments and to follow their laws. Our intersubjective realities are the distinguishing feature\u2014the apex technology\u2014of _Homo sapiens_.\n\nWhat are our intersubjective realities in the world of work? One, obviously, is the idea of the company. We can't touch it; it exists only in the realm of laws (another intersubjective reality), and when we stop agreeing it exists, it ceases to exist. Obviously, the stock-market value of a public company is another example. As is that company's brand and brand value. And its bank balance. All of these are useful\u2014essential, even\u2014to our ability to organize lots of people to achieve complex and enduring goals. Without them, and the many other intersubjective realities in the world of work, we would have none of the things that \"companies\" have produced since we invented them. But that doesn't make them real, in the sense that gravity is real, or in the sense that a toothache is real. Or in the sense that the other people at work\u2014your team\u2014are real.\n\nAnd just as the idea of the company is, in this particular sense, unreal, so is the idea of company \"culture.\" It's a useful fiction. That doesn't mean we should dispense with it; it _does_ mean, however, that we should be careful not to mistake it for something it isn't. Culture locates us in the world. It consists of stories we share with one another to breathe life into the empty vessel of \"company.\" But\u2014and here's the kicker\u2014so powerful is our need for story, our need for communal sense making of the world, that we imagine that our company and its culture can explain our experience of work. And yet it can't. So strong is our identification with our tribe that it's hard for us to imagine that other people inside our company are having a completely different experience of \"tribe\" from ours. Yet they are\u2014and these local team experiences have far more bearing on whether we stay in the tribe or leave it than do our tribal stories.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nHow can you make sense, then, of the things that are clearly different from one company to the next, things to which you're accustomed to attaching such importance? Patagonia _does_ have a drastically different type of onboarding than Salesforce. Goldman Sachs _does_ have a very different dress code from Apple. What are these things, and how are they different from the real-world experience of work?\n\nThe difference is this: these things are signifiers, designed to lure you in. You may not care which company you work for, but since you do care about which company you _join_ , these signifiers are crafted to help a company attract a certain kind of person by highlighting what the company thinks this kind of person values. This is why these signifiers show up time and again in promotional materials, and why they are so prominent in various company rankings\u2014because companies want it that way. These kinds of perks are plumage\u2014peacock feathers for people. They sound cool because they're designed to get your attention, just like plumage is. So when you read about how a certain company gives each employee \"twenty-percent\" time to focus on personal projects or claims to always promote from within, just remember that these beautiful feathers are designed almost exclusively to attract you, and that this attraction, as most attractions tend to, will fade.\n\nThe biggest difference, of course, between cultural plumage and the real world is that the _impact_ of plumage on how you and your team do your work every day is slight. That's not what it's for. It is a shared fiction, and it exists to attract a certain kind of person to join the company. And as with all shared fictions, the moment you all stop collectively believing in the plumage, it vanishes. Team experience, on the other hand (how you talk to one another and work with one another), has large and lasting impact on how you do your work, and it doesn't require all of you to agree to believe in it. It is what it is. And whether or not you all believe in it or can all describe it in the same way, it will nonetheless influence both how effectively your team works and for how long, and how many of your teammates will choose to stay.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen you study excellence and what leads to it\u2014what creates it\u2014there is a dog that doesn't bark.* Actually, a couple of them. Company doesn't bark. And cultural plumage doesn't bark. Instead, sitting there in plain sight is what was in plain sight in Poland. What the three people there shared, as a key part of their experience of work, was not about a place to eat, but rather\u2014critically\u2014about the people to eat with. While they might think of Cisco as a place that affords them a table to sit at or a corner of the office to huddle in, if we give them those things yet take away their teammates, or change the sorts of interactions they have with those teammates, their experience vanishes. In a very real sense the spot they huddle on with a couple of teammates matters more to them than all the perks Cisco well-intendedly throws their way. What's in plain sight, when we study excellence at work, is the groups of people doing actual work together\u2014what's in plain sight is teams.\n\nThis is why teams matter, and it's why they matter much more than cultural plumage matters.\n\nTeams simplify: they help us see where to focus and what to do. Culture doesn't do this, funnily enough, because it's too abstract.\n\nTeams make work real: they ground us in the day-to-day, both in terms of the content of our work and the colleagues with whom we do it. Culture doesn't.\n\nAnd teams, paradoxically, make homes for individuals. Whereas culture's focus leans toward conformity to a common core of behaviors, teams focus on the opposite. Teams aren't about sameness\u2014they aren't, at their best, about marching in lockstep. Instead they're about unlocking what is unique about each of us, in the service of something shared. A team, at its finest, insists on the unique contribution of each of its members, and is the best way we humans have ever come up with of harnessing those distinctive contributions together in the service of something that none of us could do alone.\n\nIn the last few years, there has been a lot of talking and writing about teams in corporate circles. Sadly, much of it has yet to grasp the main point. The general direction of the discussion so far has been that we should pay attention to teams because there are a lot of them at work. This is, of course, true\u2014although one could make the case that this isn't news. Granted, given new communications and information technologies, teams can now be assembled spanning more geographies and time zones and organizational units than ever before, but the fact that there are now more teams and more different sorts of teams than ever before isn't the big thing. The big thing is that only on a team can we express our individuality at work and put it to highest use.\n\nIn a sense, that's what the rest of this book is about. To see it clearly, we have to let go of our ideas about cultural plumage, because only when we do so does the fact of team emerge\u2014quietly, simply, powerfully\u2014from its shadow. And as we do this we come to realize what is perhaps the biggest problem of all with the idea of culture: it doesn't actually help us understand what to do more of, less of, or differently. Whether culture is a real thing or not, whether it defines our tribe at work or not, whether it's a marker of what sort of company we're joining or not, it won't tell you, the team leader, what to do to make things better. For that, we must take you to where the experience lives: to your team, and networks of teams, and their leaders. That's what matters most.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThere are three things for you to do as a leader of a team. First, you should know the answers to the eight questions for your team, all the time. There are technologies available to help you do this, but the easiest place to start is to ask your team members, one person at a time. Whatever their answers are, you'll _always_ be smarter because of them, and you'll _always_ know you're paying attention to something that matters.\n\nSecond, read on to understand more clearly how to build a great team, and how the lies you'll encounter get in the way of that. Your role as team leader is the most important role in any company. And who your company chooses to make team leader is the most important decision it ever makes. You have by far the greatest influence on the distinctive local experience of your team. This is a weighty responsibility, but at least it's yours. We want to help you step into it.\n\nAnd third, when you're next looking to join a company, don't bother asking if it has a great culture\u2014no one can tell you that in any real way.\n\nInstead, ask what it does to build great teams.\n\n*Obviously, we've disguised the names of the companies.\n\n*One of the great joys of writing as a team of two is that it allows us to bring both of our perspectives and, critically, experiences and stories to the task, resulting in what we hope is a richer book. This presents, however, one small challenge when writing about an experience that one but not both of us had, and it's the challenge of which pronouns to use. Joint authors before us have taken various approaches to this, either by referring to themselves in the third person (\"When Marcus interviewed such-and-such . . .\") or by beginning every story with some sort of parenthetical clarification (\"When one of us [Ashley] was in Poland . . .\"), neither of which we feel makes up in clarity what it takes away in readability. So we've decided that whether an event described here was experienced by one of us alone or by both of us, we'll just say \"we.\" We hope you will forgive us a little pronoun flexibility in the service of easier reading.\n\n*Strictly speaking, an item is a statement that a survey-taker responds to. As items are statements, not questions, they don't come with question marks. However, they are often referred to as questions, to ensure maximum confusion for those of us trying to figure out what's going on.\n\nThe eight engagement items discussed in this book are copyright ADP.\n\n*More precisely, we would see only as much variation within teams as we would within the company as a whole.\n\n*GREGORY: \"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?\"\n\nHOLMES: \"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.\"\n\nGREGORY: \"The dog did nothing in the night-time.\"\n\nHOLMES: \"That was the curious incident.\"\n\n\u2014Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, \"The Adventure of Silver Blaze,\" in _The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_ (London: George Newnes, 1894).\n\n#\n\n# The best plan wins\n\nGeorge Clooney had a plan.\n\n\"I have a question,\" says Carl Reiner early on in the movie _Ocean's Eleven_ , after Clooney has laid out his scheme for breaking into the impressively secured vault of a Las Vegas casino.\n\n\"Say we get into the cage, and through the security doors there, and down the elevator we can't move, and past the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open . . . say we do all that. We're just supposed to walk out of there with $150 million in cash on us, without getting stopped?\"\n\nThere's a silence. The members of Ocean's handpicked team eye one another nervously, unsure what's coming next.\n\nClooney pauses, and then nods, and then: \"Yeah.\"\n\nAnd Carl says, \"Oh.\" And then, \"OK.\" And in an instant, we know that Clooney has a plan for that, too, and that Carl realizes there's a plan, and doesn't need to know what it is, just that there is one, and that it'd better be a good one, because, as everyone knows, _the best plan wins_.\n\nThe thrill for us, the viewer, is seeing whether the plan will work\u2014will Matt Damon's pickpocket skills succeed in lifting the badge from the security guard? Will Casey Affleck and Scott Caan's goofy antics and handy-dandy birthday balloons block the casino cameras? Will Clooney charm Julia Roberts? (Yes to all. Duh.)\n\nBut ponder for a minute the thrill each team member would have felt. Even though they were coming together under challenging circumstances, they had the plan, whose raw material was a specific role that each of them should play. Each person's role was tightly circumscribed, time-bound, and sequential\u2014Brad Pitt would place the call to Julia Roberts, but not until Clooney had slid the phone into her jacket pocket\u2014so all could feel secure in the knowledge that if they learned how to perform their role well, and executed it well, then, like a mathematical algorithm, the sequence would play out perfectly, the plan would work, and the money would be theirs.\n\nIf you've recently been promoted to team leader, the first thing you'll be expected to do is create a plan. You'll be asked\u2014before you even start, most likely\u2014what your plan is for your team, or, more specifically, what your ninety-day plan is for your team. You'll have to sit down, think hard, survey your team members (many of whom you will have inherited), and then do your best George Clooney impression and make your plan.\n\nAnd when you do this, you'll quickly realize one of the many differences between your team and Clooney's: his team works alone, while yours appears to be connected to a whole host of other teams, each with their own version of the plan. In fact, poke your head above the parapet of your team for a second and look out across all the other teams in the company, and you'll discover something of a planning frenzy. Every team is about to go, or is away on, or is just back from, or is just debriefing from, their off-site, during which they formulated, or perhaps reformulated, their current version of the plan.\n\nIt won't be immediately obvious to you, but after a few years you'll discern that there is a pattern to this planning, a predictable rhythm that repeats itself year after year: in September, in advance of the November board meeting, the leaders of your company will go away on a senior leadership retreat. They may do a SWOT analysis (Strengths\/Weaknesses\/Opportunities\/Threats\u2014and it's just as fun as it sounds); they may bring in outside consultants to help them; and after much analysis and debate and proposal and counter-proposal, the white smoke will emerge from the chimney, and the leaders will emerge with The Strategic Plan. They will then present this plan to the board, and once it's approved, they will share it with their direct reports. This plan will then be sliced up into many other plans (departmental plans, divisional plans, geographic plans, and so on), each slice finer and more detailed than the preceding one, until you, too, are asked to take your team off-site and construct your version of the plan.\n\nWe do this because we believe that plans are important. If we could just get the plan right, we think, and weave every team's plan into the broader company plan, then we could be confident that our resources were allocated appropriately, that the correct sequence and timing were laid out, that each person's role was clearly defined, and that we had enough of the right people to fill each required role. Buoyed by this confidence, we'd know that we'd only have to galvanize our teams to give their all, and success would follow.\n\nAt the same time, there is a yearning quality to all this planning. We are attempting to shape our future, and our plans can feel like scaffolding stretching out into the months ahead, upon which we'll build our better world\u2014their function is perhaps as much to reassure us as it is to make that world real. Plans give us certainty, or at least a bulwark against uncertainty. They help us believe that we will, indeed, walk out of the casino with the cash.\n\nAnd yet, just as this cycle of big plans leading to medium plans leading to small plans is familiar to you, so\u2014surely\u2014is the nagging realization that things rarely, if ever, turn out the way you hope they will.\n\nSure, planning is exciting in the beginning, but the more you sit in all these planning meetings, the more a feeling of futility creeps in. While it all looks great on paper, tidy and perfect, you sense it's never really going to play out like this, and that as a result you'll soon be back in yet another planning meeting. You'll leave this one with the broad contours of your plan sketched out, and you'll agree on the next steps necessary to refine those contours into something specific and actionable, and then the meeting to make things actionable will get postponed a bit, and then, when it finally happens, it will drift off in another direction. And then, when your team finally gets around to nailing the details, some new idea or thought or realization will emerge that leads you to rethink what you started off with. George Clooney never had to deal with this.\n\nBut in the real world you'll have to. The defining characteristic of our reality today is its ephemerality\u2014the speed of change. If _Ocean's Eleven_ took place in the real world, then after Clooney had put his plan together, and picked his perfect team, and defined each person's role, and pressed play, they'd arrive in the vault, open the safe . . . and it would be empty, because Nevada would have changed its gambling regulations, and Andy Garcia's casino owner would have ditched the cash, replaced it with Bitcoin, and, in hopes of jumping a few spots on the _Fortune_ list, turned the vault into a subterranean romper-room-cum-fitness-center to aid his employees' well-being. In the real world, the _Ocean's Eleven_ team would burst into the vault to discover the 11:30 a.m. hot-yoga class.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nGeneral Stanley McChrystal had to grapple with this alarmingly changing world, and the stakes he faced were far higher than yours will be (we hope). In his book _Team of Teams_ he reveals what it was like to try to come up with \"the plan\" as he assumed command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force. This group had brought together the special-operations units of each branch of the US military\u2014the Army's Delta Force and 75th Ranger Regiment, Marine Force Recon, Navy SEALs, and Air Force Pararescue and Combat Control Teams\u2014and its mission was to deploy these units in the ongoing struggle with al-Qaeda in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. Within a few months of assuming command, McChrystal and his staff had created an \"awesome machine\"\u2014the planning, execution, and debriefing of targeted raids was now conducted at greatly increased speed. But still they were losing the war. They faced an enemy who was spontaneous, decentralized, and agile, made up of terrorist cells that could plan and execute attacks without recourse to a chain of command, and as much as McChrystal's planners tried to optimize their process, they were never quite fast enough to be ahead of events. Even if their traditional system\u2014intelligence gathering, leading to analysis, leading to target identification, leading to raid planning, leading to action, leading to after-action review\u2014could be made to run at the speed of light, it was never quite fast enough. McChrystal's forces were still too often caught unawares by the latest attack, were still too often turning up at a house in search of a target that had been there when the plan was created, only to find no one there.\n\nEverywhere we look we see this speed of change. When you put your plan together in September, it's obsolete by November. And if you look at it in January, you might not even recognize the roles and action items you wrote out in the fall. Events and changes are happening faster than they ever have before, so dissecting a situation and turning it into a meticulously constructed plan is an exercise in engaging in a present that will soon be gone. The amounts of time and energy it takes to make a plan this thorough and detailed are the very things that doom it to obsolescence. The thing we call _planning_ doesn't tell you where to go; it just helps you understand where you are. Or rather, were. Recently. We aren't planning for the future, we're planning for the near-term past.\n\nAnd where are the people who are making the plan? So far behind the front lines of the company that they don't have enough real-world information upon which to make the plan in the first place. How can you make a plan to sell a particular sort of product to a particular sort of customer when you're not out selling every day? You can't, not really. You can make a theoretical sales \"model\" based on your conceptual understanding of an abstract situation, or on an averaged data set that summarizes trends. But if it's not grounded in the real-world details of each actual sales conversation\u2014when do the prospects' eyes glaze over, when do the prospects lean forward, when do they start to finish your sentences\u2014your plan will always be more assumptive than prescriptive.\n\nIn terms of General McChrystal's challenge, this is the difference between building a plan around generalizations (say, that \"25 percent of the time we show up at the wrong house\") and building one that grapples with very specific realities (such as, \"How do we hit _this particular_ target, when he might leave _this particular_ house, at _this particular_ time, tonight?\"). Unfortunately, most plans\u2014particularly those devised high up in the company\u2014are built like the former, not the latter.\n\nAnd even if you do weave together the most carefully filigreed plan, your people inevitably chafe at being told what to do in the context of something so static, so conceptual, and potentially so out of touch with the real world they face. Although Ocean's Eleven were initially happy to be given prescribed roles with crystal-clear expectations, imagine how they'd feel if they played their roles to perfection as defined in the plan, and yet still found no money in the vault. And then imagine if they had to keep doing this month after month, because that was the plan, and because that was what the senior leader had decided would work, even though they kept telling their team leader that the money was gone, that the yoga instructor was getting annoyed, and that they felt just plain daft in their masks and overalls in the hundred-degree heat.\n\nYour people want and need to engage with the world that they're really in, and to interact with the world as it really is. By harnessing them to a prefabricated plan, you're not only constraining your people but, quite possibly, also revealing how out of touch with reality you are.\n\nThis is not to say that planning is utterly useless. Creating space to think through all of the information you have in your world, and trying to pull that into some sort of order or understanding, has some value. But when you do that, know that all you've done is understand the scale and nature of the challenges your team is facing. You'll have learned little about what to do to make things better. The solutions can be found in the tangible and changing realities of the world as it really is, whereas your plans are necessarily abstract understandings of the recent past. Plans scope the problem, not the solution.\n\nSo, though you are told that _the best plan wins_ , the reality is quite different. Many plans, particularly those created in large organizations, are overly generalized, quickly obsolete, and frustrating to those asked to execute them. It's far better to coordinate your team's efforts in real time, relying heavily on the informed, detailed intelligence of each unique team member.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIn late 1940, Hitler's armies had swept across Europe to the shores of France, and Britain's Royal Air Force was all that stood between them and the conquest of the British Isles. Although the RAF had been able to increase the number of fighter aircraft available over the course of the summer months, what it had was still not enough. The accepted model of the time for aerial defense was that, because it was impossible to know where the next attack would come, defenders\u2014in this case the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the RAF\u2014should fly continuous patrols in shifts, in the hope of encountering attackers. But the length of the English coastline, and the number of planes and pilots required to patrol its entirety without pause, made this approach prohibitive. So the only possible alternative was to guess where the attack might come, and too much of the time the guess was wrong\u2014a \"good\" interception rate was considered one where the enemy was sighted on half the sorties flown. In the history of air warfare to this point, this had always been true\u2014hence the dictum of the day: \"The bomber always gets through.\"\n\nWhat the RAF needed, if the country were to be saved, was a force multiplier\u2014something that made their limited roster of planes and pilots vastly more effective. The force multiplier they came up with was a room.\n\nIf you were to stand in this room today, here's what you'd see. Spanning one entire wall would be a series of twenty-six white vertical boards, each with the number of a squadron at the top, and each with rows of four colored lights underneath. The lights represent each flight in each squadron. There are twelve planes in a squadron, divided into four flights of three planes each, and the lights show at a glance the status of that flight\u2014whether it's ready for action, ordered into the air, engaged with the enemy, returning to base to refuel, and so forth\u2014together with how long each flight has been airborne. These boards (the so-called tote boards) show which orders have been given to which planes, capturing the status of each of four flights for each of twenty-six squadrons\u2014so, 104 pieces of information.\n\nBelow the tote boards, you'd see two rows of numbers, showing the number of planes and the number of pilots available for each squadron at the beginning of that day\u2014so, two numbers for each squadron, another 52 pieces of information.\n\nFarther below on the same wall, you'd see four displays showing the heights at which barrage balloons are deployed, together with the day's weather forecast\u20145 more pieces of information.\n\nIn the center of this wall, you'd see an unusual-looking clock, the face of which is divided into five-minute increments colored alternately red, yellow, and blue, and whose purpose relates to the large map table that covers most of the floor area of the room. This table shows a large-scale view of a portion of the coastline, the English Channel, and the coast of France. Around it, you'd see a number of women, each wearing headphones and each wielding a croupier's stick. And in the middle of the table, you'd see a number of wooden blocks with numbers affixed to them and other numbers added to the tops of them on sticks, roughly the size of toothpicks.\n\nEach wooden block represents a group of aircraft\u2014either attackers, defenders, or unidentified planes. If the aircraft are over France or the sea, their location is given by two radar systems, collectively called Chain Home, whose information is relayed from forty stations along the coast. If they are over land, their location is given by telephone reports from the 30,000 members of the Royal Observer Corps, deployed at 1,000 observation posts (because the radar system faces only out to sea). The planes' location, together with information from a third system identifying whether they are friend or foe, is passed to the women around the table\u2014the plotters. The plotters then move the wooden block to the right location and affix to it a numerical identifier, together with indicators of the number of planes, their altitude, whether they're friend or foe, and, for enemy planes, which squadrons have been dispatched to intercept them\u2014this last information being the numbers on the toothpicks. And all of these various numbers are color-coded, and the colors match the colors on the unusual-looking clock, so that everyone can see at a glance how up-to-date each piece of information is.\n\nThe map table, then, captures thousands of returns from the Chain Home radar system each minute, plus thousands more from the friend-or-foe system, plus, for every twenty-four hours, a million individual reports from the Royal Observer Corps, each relayed to the room within forty seconds.\n\nAnd what the room does is bring together all of these data points in real time and then present them so that front-line team members\u2014called controllers\u2014can exercise their judgment and can send their forces to where they know the enemy is. The room (now called the Battle of Britain Bunker) and its design, together with the network of identical rooms across the country and the many information systems flowing into each of them, formed what came to be called the Dowding system, after Hugh Dowding, the RAF commander who created it.\n\nIt made all the difference. It was a force multiplier that increased average interception rates from the prewar level of between 30 percent and 50 percent to an average of 90 percent, and often 100 percent, which is to say it _doubled_ the effectiveness of the defending force. It wasn't, in any sense, a planning system, acting slowly on stale and summarized information. Instead, it acted fast on current, raw, and detailed information. The RAF's force multiplier was an _intelligence system_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen we understand the characteristics of an intelligence system, as distinct from a planning system\u2014accurate, real-time data, distributed broadly and quickly, and presented in detail so that team members can see and react to patterns in deciding for themselves what to do\u2014we begin to see them everywhere. The Battle of Britain Bunker was an early example of what, today, we'd call a war room, a name that has grown from its literal roots to encompass more metaphorical uses. Think of the famous war room at the heart of Bill Clinton's first campaign for the US Presidency, for example, or of the war rooms used in project or crisis management. Think of NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, or of a live-TV production room. Or think of something like Cisco's Security Operations Centers, where engineers can monitor performance across a group of customers' networks, and immediately respond to problems.\n\nWhat all of these things have in common is that they move information across an organization as fast as possible, and do so to empower immediate and responsive action. Their underlying assumption is that people are wise, and that if you can present them with accurate, real-time, reliable data about the real world in front of them, they'll invariably make smart decisions.\n\nIt's not true that the best plan wins. It is true that _the best intelligence wins_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhat can you do as a team leader to create such an intelligence system for your team?\n\nFirst, _liberate as much information as you possibly can_. Think about all the sources of information you have, and make as many of them as possible available to your team, on demand. Planning systems constrain information to those who \"need to know.\" Intelligence systems don't\u2014they liberate as much information as possible, as fast as possible. So don't worry too much at first about whether your team will understand the data or be able to make use of it. If you think the information will help your people gain a better understanding of their real world in real time, share it. And encourage your team to do the same. Help them understand that sharing what they know about the world, frequently, is vital. Make sure your team is swimming in real-time information, all the time.\n\nSecond, _watch carefully to see which data your people find useful_. Don't worry too much about making all this data simple or easy to consume, or about packaging it for people, or weaving it together to form a coherent story. The biggest challenge with data today isn't making sense of it\u2014most of us deal with complexity all the time, and are pretty good at figuring out what we need to know and where to find it. No, the biggest challenge with data today is making it accurate\u2014sorting the signal from the noise. This is much harder, and much more valuable for our teams. So be extremely vigilant about accuracy; watch which information your people naturally gravitate toward; and then, over time, increase the volume, depth, and speed of precisely that sort of data.\n\nThird, _trust your people to make sense of the data_. Planning systems take the interpretation of the data away from those on the front lines, and hand it off to a select few, who analyze it and decipher its patterns, and then construct and communicate the plan. Intelligence systems do precisely the opposite\u2014because the \"intelligence\" in an intelligence system lies not in the select few, but instead in the emergent interpretive powers of all front-line team members. You are not the best sense maker. They are.\n\nMcChrystal, describing the system he ultimately created in Iraq, makes this same point: \"In the old model, subordinates provided information and leaders disseminated commands. We reversed it: we had our leaders provide information so that subordinates, armed with context, understanding, and connectivity, could take the initiative and make decisions.\" And what he created was perhaps the most extreme example yet of an intelligence system in action.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nA pretty good way to ruin someone's day is to fill it with meetings. Meetings, for most of us, are a way of taking time that could be put to good use in doing real work, and instead using that time to hear presentations of varying relevance to our immediate challenges, or to discuss topics that might appear important in the grand scheme of things, but that hardly seem urgent on any given day. And while countless meeting \"best practices\" (have a written agenda, document follow-up items, and so on) at least ensure some degree of utility, the fact remains that most meetings contain one or more people thinking to themselves that they could be doing something useful, if only they weren't doing this.*\n\nWhich makes what General McChrystal came up with in Iraq all the more remarkable, and all the more counterintuitive. Because what he did was to create a meeting, and moreover a meeting that took place six days a week, for two hours a day. For two thousand people.\n\nThe meeting was called the O&I\u2014the Operations and Intelligence meeting. Every day, at 9:00 a.m. Washington time, 4:00 p.m. Iraq time, McChrystal's entire command\u2014and, ultimately, anyone from any other agency with an interest in understanding what was happening\u2014would join, via video from wherever they were in the world, what amounted to a two-hour information-sharing session. The time was filled with brief updates, each a minute long, from anyone who had something pertinent to share, followed by four minutes of Q&A from the leadership team, or from anyone else who wanted to know more. The O&I had existed before McChrystal, but in a very different form. It had been shorter, and more exclusive, limited to those who had a \"need to know\" any particular piece of information\u2014it was part of a quintessential planning system.\n\nMcChrystal's O&I was a very different beast. It was open to anyone who wanted to learn or share information. It was democratic, in the sense that giving updates and asking questions could be done by anyone, not just senior officers. It was spontaneous, in that updates were not required to be polished or vetted, only brief. And it was frequent. His system embodied these few truths: that information grows stale fast, and must therefore be shared fast; that the best way to enable coordinated action on the ground is to coordinate not actions themselves, but rather the information the ground needs right now; that the best judges of what information is and isn't valuable are the end users of that information; and, critically, that the best people to make sense of information are the users of that information. And finally, that the best way to make sense of it was _together_.\n\nWhen McChrystal arrived in Iraq, and did everything he could to accelerate the planning system he inherited, the number of raids his troops conducted each month increased from ten to eighteen. When he created his intelligence system, that number shot all the way up to _three hundred_.\n\nAnd while this is an example of an intelligence system at huge scale, if you study the best team leaders you'll discover that many of them share a similarly frequent sense-making ritual\u2014not with two thousand people, but with two. It's called a check-in, and in simple terms it's a frequent, one-on-one conversation about near-term future work between a team leader and a team member.\n\nHow frequent? Every week. These leaders understand that goals set at the beginning of the year have become irrelevant by the third week of the year, and that a year is not a marathon, planned out in detail long in advance, but is instead a series of fifty-two little sprints, each informed by the changing state of the world. They realize that the key role of a team leader is to ensure that Sprint Number Thirty-Six is as focused and as energizing as was Sprint Number One.\n\nSo, each and every week these leaders have a brief check-in with each team member, during which they ask two simple questions:\n\n> What are your priorities this week?\n> \n> How can I help?\n\nThey are not looking for a to-do list from the team member. They simply want to discuss the team member's priorities, obstacles, and solutions in real time, while the work itself is ongoing. Making sense of it together can happen only in the now. The generalizations that emerge once the passage of time has blurred the details are not the stuff of good sense making. So, doing a check-in once every six weeks or even once a month is useless, because you'll wind up talking in generalities.\n\nActually, the data reveals that checking in with your team members once a month is literally worse than useless. While team leaders who check in once a week see, on average, a 13 percent increase in team engagement, those who check in only once a month see a 5 percent _decrease_ in engagement. It's as if team members are saying to you, \"I'd rather you not waste my time if all we're going to do is talk generalities. Either get into the nitty-gritty of my work and how you can help right now, or leave me alone.\"\n\nEach check-in, then, is a chance to offer a tip, or an idea that can help the team member overcome a real-world obstacle, or a suggestion for how to refine a particular skill. Check-ins can be short\u2014ten to fifteen minutes\u2014but that's plenty of time to do a little real-time learning and coaching. And, like all good coaching, this has to be rooted in the specifics of the particular situation the team member is facing, the psychology she is bringing to it, the strengths she possesses, and the strategies she might already have tried. Again, the only way to surface these sorts of microdetails is to make sure that the conversations are frequent.\n\nThis leads us to one of the most important insights shared by the best team leaders: _frequency trumps quality_. They realize that it's less important that each check-in is perfectly executed than that it happens, every week. In the intelligence business, frequency is king. The more frequently and predictably you check in with your people or meet with your team\u2014the more you offer your real-time attention to the reality of their work\u2014the more performance and engagement you will get. In this sense, checking in is akin to teeth-brushing: you brush your teeth every day, and while you hope that each brushing is high quality, what's most important is that it happens, every day. Twice-a-year super-high-quality teeth-brushing is as absurd as it sounds. So is twice-a-year super-high-quality intelligence. A team with low check-in frequency is a team with low intelligence.\n\nAnd this realization in turn gives the lie to the complaint\u2014heard so often from senior leaders and HR executives\u2014that \"our team leaders aren't skilled enough to coach their people!\" The data reveals only that those team leaders who check in every week with each team member have higher levels of engagement and performance, and lower levels of voluntary turnover. It doesn't have anything to say about the quality of those check-ins. We know for sure that if a team leader checks in often with a team member, the team member gets something really positive out of it\u2014even if the team leader is no Pat Summit.* And besides, if the team leader struggles initially with her check-in quality, at least she's able to practice it fifty-one more times with each team member every year. No matter what her starting point, or her level of natural coaching talent, she's going to get a little better.\n\nNow, you, the team leader, might think, _Well, I would love to check in with my people every week, but I can't. I've simply got too many people!_ If that's you, then yes\u2014you have too many people. One of the longer-running debates in the world of people and organizations is the span-of-control debate, which grapples with exactly how many team members every team leader should manage. Some say between one and nine employees. Others say between one and twenty. Some nurses manage staffs of forty; some call-center managers lead seventy or more.\n\nBut by pinpointing the weekly check-in as the single most powerful ritual of the world's best team leaders, we can now know the exact span of control that's right for every single team leader: it's the number of people that _you_ , and only you, can check in with every week. If you can check in with eight people, but you can't fit nine into your schedule, your span of control is eight. If you can find a way to check in with twenty people, then your span of control is twenty. And if you're one of those people who can legitimately manage a weekly check-in with only two people, your span of control is two. Span of control, in other words, isn't a theoretical, one-size-fits-all thing. It's a practical, function-of-team-leader's-capacity-to-give-attention thing. Your span of control _is_ your span of attention.\n\nIn the service of intelligence, then\u2014in the service of making sense of real-time information together\u2014the weekly check-in is the anchor ritual. You need to design your teams, and their size, to enable it. And if ever you become a leader of leaders, you'll need to ensure that your leaders know that this check-in is the _most important part_ of leading. Checking in with each person on a team\u2014listening, course-correcting, adjusting, coaching, pinpointing, advising, paying attention to the intersection of the person and the real-world work\u2014is not what you do _in addition to_ the work of leading. This _is_ the work of leading. If you don't like this, if the idea of weekly check-ins bores or frustrates you or you think that once a week is just \"too much,\" that's fine\u2014but, for the love of Hugh Dowding, don't be a leader.\n\nIn the previous chapter we saw how critical it was for team members to come to trust their team leader. Frequent sense making together\u2014whether in McChrystal's O&I meeting, or your weekly check-ins\u2014can help with this since it leads not only to better decisions but also to the building of trust. Two of the eight engagement items directly address this issue of trust: \"In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values\" and \"My teammates have my back.\" When these items receive low scores on a team it's easy to assume that the problem is one of intent\u2014that team members don't really care for one another or want to support one another. More often than not, however, low scores are a function not of bad intent but of poor information: team members don't know _how_ to support one another, because they don't know what's going on in enough detail to offer assistance. If they don't know what one another is doing, how can each learn what the others truly value? Likewise, if they don't know what work each is engaged in, how can any one of them feel safe? You can't watch someone's back if you don't know where his or her back is.\n\nThe more frequent sense-making rituals you establish on your team, the more information you will liberate, the more intelligence you will generate, and the more trust you will engender. Trust can never emerge from secrecy. Frequency creates safety.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe lessons of Dowding and McChrystal are not just lessons about systems and information and processes; they are lessons about the role of a leader in a fast-moving world. And their shared insight, across the span of sixty years, is that it is far more powerful for a leader to free the most information and the most decision-making power than it is for that leader to craft the perfect plan.\n\nAnother of the eight aspects that distinguish the best teams, as we've seen, is the sense of every team member that, \"At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.\" Whether informed by Taylorism and Scientific Management in the early part of the twentieth century, by Management by Objectives in the latter part of it, by any number of management truisms in between, or simply by what seems intuitive, our assumption has most often been that the best way to create clarity of expectations is to tell people what to do. It turns out, however, that by the time you've managed to do this, your directions are wrong because the world has moved on. In this way, the systems we've built to tell people what to do at great scale\u2014planning systems\u2014fail.\n\nThe best, most effective way to create clarity of expectations is to figure out how to let your people figure it out for themselves. This isn't a question of removing complexity, but is rather one of locating it in the right place\u2014not hidden from view as the input for a grand plan, but rather shared for all to see. To do this, give your people as much accurate data as you can, as often as you can\u2014a real-time view of what's going on right now\u2014and then a way to make sense of it, together. Trust the intelligence of your team.\n\n*POINTY-HAIRED BOSS: We're having a meeting to discuss employee retention.\n\nDILBERT: Tell them that employees quit because there are too many useless meetings.\n\nPOINTY-HAIRED BOSS: We won't be getting into reasons at the first meeting.\n\n_\u00a9 2001 United Feature Syndicate, Inc_.\n\n*In case you don't know Pat Summit, she was the best coach of the last century. She was the coach of the University of Tennessee women's basketball team, and she had the most wins in college basketball history: 1,098. She won eight NCAA championships (a record at the time); was an Olympic medalist and coach, guiding the US women's basketball team to a gold medal in 1984; and in 2000 was named the Naismith Coach of the Century.\n\n#\n\n# The best companies cascade goals\n\nRecently a friend told us about a goal of hers: She said she was going to run a marathon. More precisely, she told us she was going to run the Prague marathon in seven months' time, in May. And when we asked her why, off the top of her head she shared a few of her reasons: that May was far enough away to give her time to go from \"the couch to the course\"; that the only marathon she could find around that time was in Prague; that she'd never been to Prague; that the course in Prague was known to be a mostly flat course and that a marathon was hard enough without throwing in those darn hills.\n\nBut of course none of these was the real reason she was running the marathon in Prague, in May. The real reason was that she wanted to significantly improve her physical stamina, and running a marathon seemed like the best way\u2014albeit a tad drastic\u2014to achieve that end. All the other details\u2014May, Prague, a flat course\u2014were simply her way of making that end more tangible, and therefore more hers.\n\nThis, at their best, is what goals do for us. They enable us to take what we value most and, by adding detail and timelines, to \"chunk\" these values into a describable outcome, something vivid and tangible. Visualized in our mind's eye, our goal pulls us forward, up and off the couch, and onto the road early one frigid Saturday morning in January, late one drizzly evening in March. Our goal becomes our companion, nestled in one corner of our psyche, pulsating, nudging us onward, guiding our thoughts and actions, and giving us the energy to push through the tiredness, the injuries, and the self-doubt, until one day we round the corner in Wenceslas Square and, alongside other people with other goals, complete our marathon.\n\nAnd if goals did this in the corporate world\u2014if they helped us step toward what's most important to us\u2014they would be supremely useful.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nGoals are everywhere at work\u2014it's hard to find many companies that do not engage in some sort of annual or semi-annual goal-setting regimen. At some point in the year, usually at the start of a fiscal year or after bonuses and raises have been paid, the organization's senior leaders set their goals for the upcoming six or twelve months, and then share them with their teams. Each team member looks at each of the leader's goals, and figures out what to do to advance that goal, and thus sets a sort of minigoal that reflects some part of the leader's goal. This continues down the chain, until you, and every other employee, has a set of goals that are miniversions of some larger goal further up in the organization.\n\nIn some organizations, goals are also grouped into categories, so that each person is asked to set, say, strategic goals, operational goals, people goals, and innovation goals. Once the goals have been created, each is then approved by the person's immediate leader, and then by the leader above that person, and so on, with each layer assessing whether each goal is sufficiently challenging, and whether it's properly aligned with the goals above, up and up and up the chain.\n\nAs the year unfolds, you may well be asked to record what percentage of your goals you've completed. This \"percent complete\" data is then aggregated into bigger and bigger groups so that the company can, at any point during the year, say things like, \"65 percent of our teams have completed 46 percent of their goals. We need to speed up!\"\n\nAnd, at the end of the year, you're asked to write a brief self-assessment reflecting how you feel you've done on each goal, after which your team leader will review this assessment and add her own, in some cases also saying whether she thinks each goal was actually met, or not. After HR has nudged her a couple of times, she'll input all this information into the company performance management system, whereupon it'll serve as a permanent record of your performance for the year, and will guide your pay, promotion opportunities, and even continued employment.\n\nIf you're in sales, your sales quota will work in a similar way\u2014an overall corporate sales goal is sliced into parts and distributed across the organization. The only difference being that your quota, or your team's quota, is usually just a single number handed down to you from above, defining you and your work throughout the year\u2014which is why salespeople, in most companies, are referred to not as people but simply as \"quota carriers.\"\n\nAnd, in the era of the smartphone, once-a-year goal-setting has been deemed Not Enough, and so your phone will soon be dramatically upping the frequency of all this goal-setting, assessing, and tracking, if it hasn't done so already\u2014all because we have come to believe that _the best companies cascade goals_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe names we give these goals have changed over the years. We started with MBOs, or Management by Objectives, first popularized by Peter Drucker in his 1954 book _The Practice of Management_. Then came SMART goals, goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound, followed shortly by KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals, in Jim Collins's memorable framing). The latest incarnation, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), originated at Intel and is now used by much of Silicon Valley for defining and tracking goals and measuring them against your \"key results.\"\n\nAcross all the different technologies and methodologies, massive amounts of time and money are invested in this goal-setting. To give you a sense of the scale of the investment, the consulting firm Deloitte estimated that it spent $450 million on goal-setting, tracking, and evaluating every year, while Accenture, its consulting cousin, with more than 500,000 employees, spent more than twice that. When companies like these shell out close to $1 billion on something every year, there must be some truly extraordinary benefits.\n\nWhat are they?\n\nWell, every company is different, of course, and each makes its own calculus, but the three most common reasons put forth for all this goal-setting are, first, that goals stimulate and coordinate performance by aligning everyone's work; second, that tracking goals' \"percent complete\" yields valuable data on the team's or company's progress throughout the year; and third, that goal attainment allows companies to evaluate team members' performance at the end of the year. So, companies invest in goals because goals are seen as a _stimulator_ , a _tracker_ , and an _evaluator_ \u2014and these three core functions of goals are why we spend so much time, energy, and money on them.\n\nAnd this is precisely where the trouble begins.\n\nIn terms of goals as a stimulator of performance, one great fear of senior leaders is that the work of their people is misaligned, and that effort is being wasted in activities that drag the company hither and yon, like a rudderless boat in a choppy sea. The creation of a cascade of goals calms this fear, and gives leaders the confidence that everyone on the boat is pulling on the oars in the same direction.\n\nOf course, none of this alignment is worth very much if the goals themselves don't result in greater activity\u2014if the boat doesn't actually go anywhere. As it happens, no research exists showing that goals set for you from above stimulate you to greater productivity. In fact, the weight of evidence suggests that cascaded goals do the opposite: they limit performance. They slow your boat down.\n\nHave you ever tried to hail a cab in New York City on a rainy day? It's not easy. You stand there on the corner of 52nd and 3rd waving frantically at any vehicle that's even vaguely yellow, and bemoaning the fact that every one of the (suddenly scarce) cabs is taken. If you're up on your economics, you might even surmise, as the water drips off your nose, that the rain has increased the number of taxi hailers (demand) while not changing the number of taxi drivers (supply), hence the problem. But actually that's not quite what's going on. Cab drivers have an informal daily goal, or quota, for the fares they want to earn before they allow themselves to stop working\u2014for most cabbies that number is twice the cost of renting the cab for the day. The moment the day's receipts add up to twice their rental fee, they head home and rest up for the next day of battle. Now, they have this goal every day, but on rainy days\u2014because more people choose to take a cab\u2014they hit that goal earlier in their shift, and the moment they do they vanish off home.\n\nThe same thing happens with sales quotas. Leaders set quotas because they want to stimulate the performance of their salespeople. But quotas don't actually work like that. The very best salespeople hit their quota months before the end of the year, whereupon they do the sales equivalent of vanishing off home\u2014that is, they start to delay the closing of their deals so that they can \"bank\" them and ensure that they begin the next year with a head start. Sales goals actually degrade the performance of top salespeople\u2014they function, as they do for New York City cab drivers, as a ceiling on performance, not a catalyst for more of it.\n\nBut what about salespeople who are struggling, or middle-of-the-road? Won't goals serve to stretch them upward toward their quota, in much the same way as our friend's marathon goal will help to stretch her upward toward greater endurance? Well, again, not exactly. In reality, what happens to middling or struggling salespeople is that their imposed quota increases the pressure on them. And this is not the self-imposed pressure that comes from attempting to achieve something we feel is important\u2014the sort our marathon-training friend will feel on a Sunday morning when she forces herself to get up and go running. No, this pressure to achieve company-imposed goals is coercion, and coercion is a cousin to fear. In the worst cases, fear-fueled employees push and push and, falling short, resort to inappropriate and sometimes illegal tactics in order to meet their goals.\n\nThis is what happened at Wells Fargo with its cross-selling goals for each branch: if someone came in to open up a checking account, the Wells Fargo personal banker was also supposed to sell them a savings account, a credit card, a demand deposit account, and a loan. But having these goals didn't lead to more cross-selling, or at least, not just that. Instead, it led to the creation of more than 3.5 million fake accounts.\n\nNone of which is to say that sales quotas are useless. In fact, they can be an excellent forecasting device. Senior leaders can use them to estimate what the company's top line is going to be for any given period, and then announce this to the board and the investment community so that all interested parties can get a sense of the expected revenues, against which costs, investments, and ultimately cash flow can be assessed. The best executives are good guesstimators\u2014they have a sense, born of long experience, of what the median quota should be, the \"line of best fit\" around which the variation of salespeople's performance will cluster. Some will outperform their quota by 10 percent, others will fall short by 10 percent, and thus at year's end the sales goals, when guessed well, will be hit.\n\nBut these sales goals don't beget more sales; they just anticipate what the sales will be. Sales goals are for performance _prediction_ , not performance creation.\n\nHow about tracking performance\u2014do goals allow companies to do that? Hardly. Even though so many companies ask employees to write down their yearly goals and track their progress using some sort of software; even though books like _The Progress Principle_ by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer say that humans love to track their progress and that they derive joy from each achievement; and even though, in the last few years, we have seen more goal tracking and not less; none of this tracking does what it is intended to, for the simple reason that your progress toward a goal is not linear.\n\nTake our marathon-running friend. If, at the end of February, she calculates that her training regimen is 62 percent complete, does that mean that she has only 38 percent of her marathon goal left to go? Obviously not: she has 100 percent left because she hasn't yet started her actual marathon. And what happens when she does indeed run her race? When she has finished her first thirteen miles does that mean she is now thirteen out of twenty-six miles, or 50 percent of the way toward completing the race? Again, no. As every marathon runner discovers, the first half of the marathon is the comparatively easy part. It's the last half\u2014in particular, the last six miles\u2014that's brutal. Only when you pass the twenty-mile mark do you begin to feel the legs harden and the mind weaken; only then do you know whether you have the physical and mental strength to complete your goal. And what percentage of the whole does the refining fire of the last six miles represent\u201440 percent? 60 percent? 90 percent? It's impossible to put an accurate number on it because, in truth, the first twenty miles of a marathon are one thing, and the last six miles a very different thing.\n\nSo our friend can't be 62 percent done with her marathon preparation, nor she can be 50 percent done with her actual marathon. She can only either complete the goal or not complete it. All goals, at least in the real world, function in this same way. You are either done, or you are not done: goal attainment is binary. You might want to set some intermediate goals along the way, and tick these goals off as they are done (or not done). But you won't ever be able to assign a \"percent complete\" to your bigger goal as you tick off these mini-goals. And if you attempt to, or if your company asks you to, you will only be generating falsely precise data about the state of your progress.\n\nFinally, what about evaluating employees? Can we evaluate a person based on how many goals he or she has achieved? Many companies do, for sure. But here's the snag: unless we can standardize the difficulty of each person's goals it's impossible to objectively judge the relative performance of each employee.\n\nLet's say we have two employees we're evaluating, Victoria and Albert. Each is aiming to complete five goals, and at year's end Victoria has achieved three goals and Albert has achieved five. Does that mean Albert is a higher performer? Not necessarily. Maybe one of Victoria's five goals was \"Govern an empire\" and one of Albert's five goals was \"Make a cup of tea.\" For us to use goal attainment to evaluate Victoria and Albert, we need to be able to perfectly calibrate each and every goal for difficulty\u2014we need each manager, with perfect consistency, to be able to weigh the stretchiness or slackness of a given goal in exactly the same way as every other manager.* And as it happens this sort of calibration is a practical impossibility, so we can't. Sorry, Albert.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nDespite this evidence, however, it remains true that goals, and cascaded goals in particular, have an intuitive appeal to many leaders who find themselves in search of ways to ensure efficient and aligned execution in their organizations. And, at the same time, it also remains true that for those of us in the trenches, our experience of goals feels nonintuitive, mechanical, fake, even demeaning. Why is that?\n\nWell, in the real world, this is what's going on. Firstly, and oddly, when you sit down to write your goals, you already have a pretty good idea of the work that you're about to do. After all, it's not as though you roll up to the office on a Monday morning desperately trying to figure out how you're going to fill the time. So what the goal-setting process is asking you to do is to write down work that you already know you're going to do. Your work goals aren't out ahead of you, pulling you along like our marathoner's goal; instead they're just behind you, being tugged along by your own preexisting understanding of the work you're going to do anyway.\n\nThe goal categories\u2014strategic, operational, innovation, people, and so on\u2014are odd simply because work doesn't come in categories. You don't plan your time by thinking, \"Well, on Tuesday I'll do some operational, and hopefully make time for a bit of innovation on Thursday afternoon.\" Work usually comes in projects, with deadlines and deliverables, and so when you're asked to translate it back into category goals, you (and most every other employee) fudge it and force-fit your work to the categories, while hoping no one will mind too much.\n\nAnd while it's not unreasonable to hope that the work you do matches up to what your team leader wants you to do, setting goals that are a subset of his goals, or reviewing your goals against his, is actually a pretty strange way of going about this. Your team leader already knows what you're doing, because in the real world you talk to him about it, all the time. If you're off working on origami and he'd rather you were working on quilting, he'll tell you. And when something changes, a few days later, and he needs you to shift your focus over to glass-blowing, again, he'll just tell you. Even if he doesn't tell you, and you continue to potter away at something that's all of a sudden out of whack, the very last thing he'd think of doing to communicate this to you is to go back into your goal form, change your goals, and hope you'll notice. Again, cascaded goals are tagging along behind the work, not out ahead of it: as used in the real world, goal setting is more a system of record keeping than a system of work making.\n\nThen there's the fact that you don't go and look at your goals once you've set them. If they were supposed to be guiding your work, you'd think you might.\n\nAnd what about the gritty point of it all, at year's end, when you're supposed to self-evaluate against your goals? While your boss may imagine that you're engaging in honest and earnest reflection on the year gone by, you're probably trying to find the elusive sweet spot between, on the one hand, saying that you hit all your goals out of the park, by which you'd risk seeming arrogant or deluded, and, on the other, acknowledging that some things didn't go as planned, by which you'd risk giving your boss\u2014or some unseen higher-up\u2014an excuse to decrease your bonus. Self-evaluation of goals isn't really about evaluating your work, in other words: it's a careful exercise in self-promotion and political positioning, in figuring out how much to reveal honestly and how much to couch carefully.\n\nThis is no comment on you, by the way. Carefully calibrating your self-evaluation to find this sweet spot is a practical response to a bizarre situation. The company has asked you to evaluate yourself against a list of abstract goals that were irrelevant a couple of weeks after you wrote them down. You're being asked to do something meaningless and pretend it's meaningful. It's enough to make you a little crazy.\n\nAnd your team leader's in on the crazy. When the end of the year comes around and she has to sit down with a stack of goal forms and write\u2014under each goal you typed in months and months ago\u2014one or two little sentences describing how you've done against each one, what must be going through her mind? More than likely it isn't related to you or how she thinks you've done, but is more about how quickly she can get through the stack and cross \"goal review\" off her to-do list. Like you, she's got a nagging feeling that she's wasting her time\u2014because what's in front of her now is a random subset of things you thought you might be doing a while ago, shoe-horned into whatever categories you thought you could get away with at the time, written so as to look maximally impressive for anyone reading the form, and now garnished with your delicately positioned self-evaluation. She knows that the work changed an equally long time ago and has very little to do with what's on the form, and that she's already told you how well you did on the work that actually happened, by talking to you about it as the year went along. To her this form filling is the worst kind of administrivia-masquerading-as-management, so she writes the little sentences and hopes that no one will complain if they're shorter than last year's.\n\nIn the real world, there is work\u2014stuff that you have to get done. In theory world, there are goals.\n\nWork is ahead of you; goals are behind you\u2014they're your rear-view mirror.\n\nWork is specific and detailed; goals are abstract.\n\nWork changes fast; goals change slowly, or not at all.\n\nWork makes you feel like you have agency; goals make you feel like a cog in a machine.\n\nWork makes you feel trusted; goals make you feel _dis_ trusted.\n\nWork is work; goals aren't.\n\nBut it doesn't have to be this way. Goals can be a force for good.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nLook again at our soon-to-be-marathoner friend: she has taken something she deems valuable (fitness) and turned it into a tangible achievement (the marathon). She has made it real. This, ultimately, is what goals are for: to help you manifest your values. They are your best mechanism for taking what's inside of you and bringing it out where you and others can see it, and where you and they can benefit from it. Your goals define the dent you want to make in the world.\n\nAnd this in turn means that the only criterion for what makes a good goal is that the person working toward it must set it for him- or herself, _voluntarily_. The only way a goal has any use at all is if it comes out of you as an expression of what you deem valuable. It doesn't have to be SMART, or big, hairy, and audacious. It doesn't need to contain key performance indicators or be built from objectives and key results. If a goal is going to be useful, if it is going to help you contribute more, then the _only_ criterion is that you must set it for yourself, voluntarily. Any goal imposed upon you from above is an un-goal.\n\nThis doesn't mean, though, that there is nothing we should cascade in our organizations. Since goals, done properly, are only and always an expression of what a person finds most meaningful, then to create alignment in our company we should do everything we can to ensure that everyone in the company understands what matters most. And so the truth:\n\nThe best companies don't cascade goals; _the best companies cascade meaning_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe research into the best teams gives us the first clue to this. When you have a measurement instrument like the eight questions we shared in chapter 1, one of the things you can do is something called factor analysis. This, in essence, tells you how many different sorts of things your questions are measuring\u2014how clumpy they are. In all the years of researching teams, company by company by company, we had only ever found one factor in our eight questions\u2014one clump of experience that all eight questions were illuminating for us\u2014and we called this clump \"engagement.\"\n\nBut when we ran the numbers at Cisco, something unexpected happened. First, two of the eight questions behaved differently from the other six in one slice of the analysis. We weren't sure what this meant, as it didn't show up anywhere else. But later on, we ran our factor analysis, and then, all at once, there it was: a second factor appeared.\n\nIt was made up of these two questions:\n\n1. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.\n\n7. I have great confidence in my company's future.\n\nSo we began thinking of these as the \"company\" factor, and the remaining six questions as the \"team\" factor\u2014and these two factors _together_ as \"engagement.\"\n\nTo be clear, the \"company\" things\u2014excitement about the mission and confidence in the future\u2014still vary from a good team to a bad team, and still explain team performance. But at the same time, it appears that they may not originate from within the team, as the other six things\u2014safety and trust, a sense of excellence, challenging work, and so on\u2014clearly do, but instead originate from outside the team and then become amplified, or not, within the team. Put another way, while a team left to its own devices can take care of many of its own needs, it apparently can't create a sense of the broader mission and confidence in the future from out of thin air. So, in addition to giving our teams and their members a real-time understanding of what is happening in the world, we need to give them a sense of which hill we're trying to take. Instead of cascading goals, instead of cascading instructions for actions, we should cascade meaning and purpose.\n\nThe best leaders realize that their people are wise, that they do not need to be coerced into alignment through yearly goal setting. These leaders strive instead to bring to life for their people the meaning and purpose of their work, the missions and contributions and methods that truly matter. These leaders know that in a team infused with such meaning, each person will be smart enough and driven enough to set goals voluntarily that manifest that meaning. It is shared meaning that creates alignment, and this alignment is _emergent_ , not coerced. Whereas cascaded goals are a control mechanism, cascaded meaning is a release mechanism. It brings to life the context within which everyone works, but it leaves the locus of control\u2014for choosing, deciding, prioritizing, goal setting\u2014where it truly resides, and where understanding of the world and the ability to do something about it intersect: with the team member.\n\nOur prevailing assumption is that we need goals because our deficit at work is a deficit of aligned action. We're mistaken. What we face instead is a deficit of meaning, of a clear and detailed understanding of the purpose of our work, and of the values we should honor in deciding how to get it done. Our people don't need to be told what to do; they want to be told why.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nTo see what this looks like in practice, take a closer look at Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, and Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A. Though separated in age, religious affiliation, geography, and company product, they all demonstrate a similar fixation with cascading meaning. Now, given the challenges that both Facebook and Chick-fil-A have faced lately, whether because of their use of their customers' data, in Facebook's case, or because of their position on gay rights, in Chick-fil-A's, you might ask why we chose these people as examples. Our reasoning is this: people are imperfect, and so if we are going to learn from real people, then, by definition, we are going to have to learn from imperfect people. It is up to us all to sort what is useful and valuable about these people and their companies, from what is not.\n\nTen years ago, in a post intended to clarify his company's mission, Zuckerberg wrote that Facebook's purpose was to make the world more connected. As we were writing this chapter, he added what he sees as meaningful nuance to this mission, saying:\n\n> . . . we're making a major change to how we build Facebook. I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.\n\nYou may not see the distinction, but he does, and so today\u2014just as he's done every six months for the last ten years\u2014he's intent on announcing another distinction to the world and, more importantly, to all of the people who work for him. This is what Zuckerberg does. He takes his values so seriously that with each new insight of his, he tweaks and course corrects and tweaks and learns and tweaks again, and then with great weight and import he announces the tweak to the world.\n\nTo some people, these small shifts of focus and their accompanying announcements might seem portentous, exhibiting no more than the narcissism of minor differences, but to he and Sandberg they are part of a relentless effort to cascade to their teams what they truly value, with the implicit message that if you don't value what they value then you may well be on the wrong team. And indeed the constant iteration and \"improvement\" of this message is, in and of itself, part of that message, because Zuckerberg's and Sandberg's meaning in the world is not just to help people get more connected but also to do so in a way that confesses to being a work in progress. They've both made it very clear\u2014Sandberg in her book _Lean In_ , and Zuckerberg in his numerous blogs and congressional testimony\u2014that they don't necessarily know all the answers. They know what they want to build at Facebook, _and_ they know they don't always know how to get it, and neither do you, and neither does any of us. What they've told us is that each of them, and everyone else at Facebook, are constantly making it up as they go along, constantly experimenting.\n\nIf you join Facebook on Thursday, you're at onboarding boot camp on Friday, writing and honing code over the weekend, and potentially having that code shipped on Monday. Things move fast. Facebook's address, 1 Hacker Way, reinforces this ethos, and if the symbolism of that didn't register with you, there's always the massive \"The Hacker Company\" sign, bought from a strip mall in Florida, that now hangs proudly over the company's town square.\n\nThese types of things\u2014the signage, the street address\u2014are different from the cultural plumage we encountered in our first chapter, designed to lure you in. Rather, they exist to help us understand what we are working toward\u2014what our work is for, and what it means. Indeed, Facebook's entire campus seems to have been constructed to bring Zuckerberg and Sandberg's meaning to life. Though the exteriors of many of the buildings are Frank Gehry masterworks of fluid beauty and sustainable energy, the interiors scream \"temporary.\" It feels like the entire company just moved in yesterday, and might move out tomorrow: concrete floors, exposed AC ducts, a pile of keyboards sitting in one corner, handmade posters tacked up on the walls.\n\nWhen we were there a couple of years ago, we noticed that each conference-room door was made of glass and had a logo etched onto it\u2014and that this same logo stretched off into the distance, repeating on door after door, for the length of a football field. Which might not be particularly unusual if the logo\u2014there in Facebook's offices where Facebook's code gets written by Facebook's employees to go into Facebook's applications\u2014was actually Facebook's logo. But it wasn't: it was Sun Microsystems' logo.\n\n\"What's with the logos?\" we asked Facebook's head of facilities.\n\n\"Oh that,\" he said. \"Well that's because this used to be the Sun Microsystems building.\"\n\n\"Could you perhaps afford to buy new doors,\" we offered, \"with the Facebook logo on them?\"\n\n\"We could,\" he replied. \"But Mark and Sheryl made the decision to keep the logo on the doors because it reminds everyone that unless you make quick decisions, move fast, and figure out better solutions, you might go the way of Sun Microsystems.\"\n\nLook on the walls, and you'll see another Facebook oddity: posters. Physical, printed posters. Outside, on the conference-room walls, behind the reception desk; posters next to posters next to yet more posters. Each one is an announcement of something someone is passionate about, some hobby, event, or activity\u2014underwater skateboarding, Time's Up, Black Lives Matter, or the local tiddlywinks group. Why would something as old-economy as a poster proliferate at a high-tech digital-media company? It's all part of Facebook's stated mission to facilitate and reinforce real human connection. If you want people to connect with other people then you have to be curious about what each person is interested in and passionate about, and then find ways to surface and celebrate these passions. Just as we draw on our cave's wall, so we put up our posters. And in this way we learn about one another.\n\nWith all of these deliberate actions Zuckerberg and Sandberg have cascaded their meaning to their team of teams, and again, while we can quibble with the results, or worry that speed and connection at Facebook have been emphasized to the detriment of security and accuracy, we can still learn from the way in which speed and connection have, indeed, been emphasized.\n\nIf you love genuine human connection, Zuckerberg and Sandberg tell their people, you'll find meaning at Facebook.\n\nIf you love the idea that the future is a work in progress, you'll find meaning at Facebook.\n\nIf you love speed over beauty, you'll find meaning at Facebook.\n\nBut, if you want beauty\u2014carefully considered, precise, perfect beauty\u2014then Facebook is not for you. If you want to live in a world where things are either not yet begun or already perfected, but never in between, don't work here. Instead, go just a couple miles down the road and work for Apple. There, it does not look like they moved in yesterday and are about to move out tomorrow. There, it looks like an alien spaceship\u2014perfectly circular, complete, whole, and utterly finished\u2014has landed in downtown Cupertino, and welcomes in only those who are attracted to its beautiful closed system. If that's what gets you going, if that's where you find meaning, work there. Because Facebook will leave you cold.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nChick-fil-A is the most profitable and fastest-growing quick-service restaurant company in the world, which is perhaps surprising. Facebook's growth is surely tied to the power of network effects. Google's success can be traced to the monopolistic powers of its search algorithm. Amazon relied on its first-mover status and disdain of margins to secure its leadership position. But what's Chick-fil-A got? It's got a chicken sandwich, some waffle fries, and a shake, which, though all distinctly yummy, wouldn't on their face seem differentiated enough to explain the company's outlandish and continued success.\n\nWhat Chick-fil-A had was Truett Cathy, its founder, a man who was just as relentless, as precise, and as deliberate at bringing his meaning to life as Facebook's leaders have been.\n\nUnlike Facebook, where the work never seems to stop, Chick-fil-A isn't open on Sundays, despite the boost in sales and profit that the extra day would bring. Why? Because Cathy was a devout Christian who followed the Bible's injunction to reserve Sunday as a day of rest.\n\nThe closed-on-Sunday policy is perhaps the most obvious example of the way that Cathy cascaded meaning to his teams. A less well-known one is Chick-fil-A's franchise agreement. Your typical franchisee-franchisor agreement is a mechanism designed to leverage capital through the multiplier of brand\u2014the franchisor brings the brand, the franchisee the capital. The franchisor selects the franchisee based on how large and how stable a hunk of capital the franchisee can bring to the agreement, and the franchisee assesses the franchisor based on how powerful and attractive the brand is. The goal of the franchisor is to secure lots of capital; the goal of the franchisee to secure as many locations as possible. So, for example, Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc., McDonald's largest franchisee, has over $4.5 billion in sales from over two thousand locations.\n\nThe Chick-fil-A franchise agreement does not work this way. As a Chick-fil-A franchisee you cannot own two thousand locations, no matter how much capital you have. Instead, you are allowed to own one.* You can throw as much money at Chick-fil-A as you like, and it won't be swayed into giving you any more locations: the franchise agreement, unchanged since Cathy devised it in the mid-1950s, forbids it. At its founding, Cathy decided that the mission of his company was less to sell chicken than it was to build leaders in local communities. Some of us might scoff at this, but Cathy stayed true to it, and devised his franchise agreement accordingly. He reasoned that if he was to grow local leaders, he would have to ensure that each person he brought on as a franchisee had a good reason to stay close to their local community. The best way to do that, he thought, was to keep these leaders in their stores, and the best way to ensure that, in turn, was to allow them only one. If you have only one, he figured, then you will be in this store all the time, staying close to your guests and close to your team members, knowing intimately the concerns of each\u2014what the community is interested in and what it's worried about. And over time you will respond to these needs and take action, and therefore, over time you will grow as a community leader.\n\nGuided by the purity of his vision, he crafted this extraordinary franchise agreement and then selected his franchisees (or operators, as they are known in the company), not on the size of their capital but on their commitment to their community. And in case you're thinking to yourself that while this makes for a nice story (the sort of founding myth we're all used to hearing), it can't possibly be true in the second decade of the twenty-first century, then you should know that to this day, you need zero capital to become an operator, and yet such is the care with which Chick-fil-A selects these future community leaders that it is harder to become one than it is to get into Harvard.\n\nOver the years, Chick-fil-A has doubtless scared away countless billions of dollars of capital that could have been pressed into service to grow its brand, but what it has gained instead are tens of thousands of people who have embraced Cathy's meaning. These local leaders are the heroes of the organization. Every year, the company gathers them all together at an event called Seminar, where one of the highlights is a magazine-worthy spread of photos and stories and testimonials, all in celebration of the unique contribution that each operator has made in his or her community. At each Seminar the very best operators are brought up on stage, one-by-one, to have their story told.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nNone of this is to say that Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, or Truett Cathy are exemplars of perfection\u2014they aren't, and we don't imagine any of them would have claimed to be. But if you want to create alignment in your team, or your company, then you can learn from the way in which each of them deliberately, relentlessly, precisely, and pervasively cascaded meaning.\n\nTo be specific, here are the three levers they used to such great effect.\n\nThe first is _expressed values_ : what you write on the walls. We don't mean that you should literally write out your \"values.\" Many leaders and many companies set about doing this and wind up with a list of generic values such as _integrity_ , _innovation_ , or, God forbid, _teamwork_ \u2014which are about as meaningful as Muzak\u2014and then wonder why the whole exercise doesn't seem to have made much difference. Instead, apply some creativity to how you want to bring your meaning to life for your people. Don't _tell_ them what you value, _show_ them. What do you actually want them to see and to bump into at work? Facebook's Sun Microsystems logos, its love of posters, and the \"Hacker Company\" signage are all vivid examples of this.\n\nWhat are your expressed values? What have you written on your walls? What do your people encounter when they walk in through the door. What do they see when they turn to the left? And what do those things tell them about who you are?\n\nA second way to cascade meaning is through _rituals_. Facebook has their famous bimonthly hack-a-thon; Chick-fil-A stops work on Sundays. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club, had a ritual he practiced every single Friday until he was physically unable to do it anymore: he would pick a store, move the merchandise around on a particular end-cap display, and come back on Saturday to see what had sold. It was his own version of QMI, or quick market intelligence, and what it signaled, to his employees, was his deep belief that no one, not even the boss, knows the brain of the customer better than the customer.\n\nYou already have rituals, whether they are conscious or unconscious, and these rituals\u2014the things you do repeatedly\u2014communicate to your people what is meaningful to you. If we followed you around for a week, we'd see them. Let's say you have a meeting: What time do you show up? Are you five minutes early, or five minutes late? What are you wearing? Do you catch up with your team members about their personal lives or do you launch right into business? Who talks first? Do you allow your team members to speak, or do you cut them off? Does the meeting go long? Do you hold people back to finish things up?\n\nThese are all aspects of your rituals, and we, your team, see them, make sense of them, and draw our conclusions\u2014whether you want us to or not. The question, then, isn't whether you have rituals or not. The question is whether or not you are deliberate about what your rituals communicate.\n\nTo see the power of a ritual to vividly communicate a leader's meaning, juxtapose Facebook's rituals with Steve Jobs's. At the end of every week, either Zuckerberg or Sandberg goes to Facebook's largest cafeteria and holds an all-hands meeting during which any employee can ask any question that he or she wants to, and the two top leaders commit to answering each question as best they can. The purpose of these meetings is contained not so much in the actual substance of the answers as it is in the reinforcement that Facebook values transparency and openness so much that they will dedicate a significant chunk of top leaders' time to it each week.\n\nJobs, by contrast, valued aesthetic beauty far higher than openness, and so his all-hands meetings, which he held every three months or so, and which the rest of the world mistook for product launches, looked very different. At each \"launch\" he would describe in precise detail the beautiful design of each product, or the intricate ecosystem of hardware and software, or the exquisite integration of content and code, and while we, the consumers, were oohing and ahing at the new products, the real audience\u2014Apple employees\u2014were watching and taking note. They could see their leader extolling the virtues of aesthetics, of beauty for its own sake, of the joy in refined creation, and they would lean into that shared meaning.\n\nOr they would lean out and go work for Facebook. Either way, the product launch had served its true purpose: to cascade Jobs's meaning across his teams.\n\nThe third lever is _stories_. Chick-fil-A makes an art of its storytelling through the operator profiles during Seminar. The company dedicates time to going out to each operator's store, taking photos, and learning about his or her family and community, precisely so it can share these stories with the rest of the company.\n\nMany of the best leaders are storytellers, not in the sense of writing a novel or a screenplay, but because they cascade meaning through vignettes, anecdotes, or stories told at meetings, on email chains, or on phone calls. They are always telling these little stories, because the stories that they choose to tell convey what they value. Stories make sense of the world: they are meaning, made human. That's why religions tell stories about their messiah and the creation of the earth, and include parables within those stories that help us learn what is meaningful. And that's why you can tell a lot about what matters to a team by the stories that the team members tell themselves.\n\nFor example, on a much larger scale, if you've spent any sort of time in Great Britain you'll know that there are three battles that the Brits can't stop talking about: the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War, and the Battle of Britain and the evacuation from Dunkirk in the Second World War. There's nothing odd, of course, about a country repeating the tales of its battles long after they've been fought. What is odd, however, is that Britain didn't win any of these battles. The Charge of the Light Brigade was a disaster, and the Battle of Britain and the Dunkirk evacuation were more about avoiding defeat than securing victory. Why, then, do we keep talking about them?\n\nBecause they define what we Brits think is most meaningful about us: that we never give up, and we never give in. We value determination and grit _more_ than we value winning, so we tell story upon story of keep-going-ness that usually ends up on just the wrong side of victory.* In so doing we create shared meaning.\n\nYou tell stories, whether you know it or not, and you're telling them all the time, in every conversation and at every meeting. What stories are you telling, and what do they say about what you find meaningful?\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAs a leader, you are trying to unlock the judgment, the choices, the insight, and the creativity of your people. But, as we've seen in the last two chapters, the way we go about this doesn't make much sense. We cloister information in our planning systems, and we cascade directives in our goal-setting systems. Instead, we should unlock information through intelligence systems, and cascade meaning through our expressed values, rituals, and stories. We should let our people know what's going on in the world, and which hill we're trying to take, and then we should trust them to figure out how to make a contribution. They will invariably make better and more authentic decisions than those derived from any planning system that cascades goals from on high.\n\nFor Ethan Floquet\u2014or, more accurately, for his mother\u2014his cascaded goals became an ever increasing burden with each passing year. Ethan has autism, and every year since his early childhood his mother has been asked to write an individualized education plan, or IEP, setting out her and her husband's goals for Ethan for the upcoming year\u2014their aspirations for their son\u2014to aid and guide his educators and therapists. But as time went by, their goals diminished. It became clear that Ethan would never live independently, or hold down a job without help, or marry. His goals became smaller and smaller; the annual meeting to discuss his development became more and more somber; and each year's IEP became shorter than the preceding year's. It ultimately shrank to a single sentence, at a time when Ethan had found a farm program that seemed to offer some promise (\"We hope that Ethan can remain with this program for the year\"), before vanishing altogether the following year. Ethan's mother had been too busy, and the task of once again revisiting all his shortcomings\u2014for the eighteenth year in a row\u2014too painful.\n\nBut that year, unbeknownst to his mother, Ethan had written his own goals. He had written them, of course, in ignorance of his cascaded goals, and had instead focused on something else. Here they are, in full:\n\n> After I graduate from high school I plan to work at Prospect Meadow Farm until I retire and live at home with my family as long as I can. I'd like to keep taking classes at Berkshire Hills Music Academy. For fun, I want to play Special Olympics basketball, go to our cabin in Vermont and the shore in New Jersey, mow lawns, and collect business cards. My goals for the future are to take the PVTA bus into town to make purchases, and someday learn how to drive a zero-turn lawn mower.\n\nGoals set by others imprison us. In creating his own, Ethan had found freedom.\n\n*A condition known more properly as inter-rater reliability, and another finicky-but-importantly-true thing that, as we'll see later, explains in part why 360-degree assessments don't work and why performance ratings are such a problem.\n\n*In exceptional circumstances, Chick-fil-A will allow you a second freestanding location, if your first is in a mall. But 95% of their operators have only one.\n\n*Here's another one: Our most famous explorer is not Ernest Shackleton, who successfully rescued his team after they became stranded in the ice on an expedition to Antarctica. Neither is it James Cook, who was the first European to discover Australia. No, it's Robert Falcon Scott, who lost the race to the South Pole to Roald Amundsen and was therefore the _second_ person to reach it, and who died of hypothermia and starvation on the way back, persisting to the very end. He's the one we talk about most.\n\n#\n\n# The best people are well-rounded\n\nWatch Lionel Messi dribble. Go on YouTube, type in \"Best Messi Dribbles,\" click on any of the clips that come up\u2014there will be hundreds to choose from; any one will do\u2014and you will see a small man with magical feet, running at what seems like double time past one defender after another until he gets into the penalty area and shoots. If you are a soccer fan, you will have seen him do this countless times already, but if you aren't, it's worth taking a moment to watch this man. All of us who are interested in excellence can benefit from studying preternatural ability in action: we can wonder at what caused it, analyze the technique of it, and dissect the steps involved, or we can simply revel in the fluid mastery of it and try to imagine where in our lives we, too, can experience flow such as this.\n\nLionel Messi is from the port city of Rosario in Argentina. He was always a speedy kid. In videos his mom took of his first soccer games, you see him sprint past one opponent after another, as though the outsize ball is pulling him along on a string. Such a prodigy was he that, from across the Atlantic, scouts from F.C. Barcelona came calling, and at the tender age of thirteen Messi was spirited away from home to La Masia, \"The Farmhouse,\" Barcelona's legendary youth academy. There, his little body refused to grow, so they gave him growth hormones and waited for the size of his frame to catch up with the size of his talent. It never did: he topped out at five feet seven, and stayed as skinny as a kid playing on the streets of Buenos Aires' _villa miseria_. But somehow this didn't seem to matter. His gift was so extraordinary\u2014the ball looking as if it were magnetically attached to his boots, no matter his speed or his jackrabbit changes in direction\u2014that it rendered irrelevant his lack of size and stature. He joined Barcelona's first team at the age of seventeen and since then has proven himself the best soccer player in the world, and in many people's eyes, the greatest of all time. Watch him now, and watch carefully, because we may never see his like again.\n\nAlthough any of the YouTube videos could serve as a highlight reel, the one that best illuminates his gifts shows a goal that Messi scored against Athletic Bilbao in the final of the 2015 Copa del Rey. It's worth playing it out in detail because, while so much of what he does in just a few seconds is astonishing (not least the cannon of a shot he unleashes at the end of the run), this clip reveals something about him that is at once truly bizarre and the very foundation of his genius.\n\nHe receives a pass on the halfway line, and for a moment stands perfectly still with the ball at his feet, one defender in front of him and the rest of the opposing players staking out their positions between him and the goal. Then, as though seized by a sudden thought, he darts to his left, jukes back to his right, leaves the nearest defender flat-footed, and takes off down the sideline. Three other opponents converge on him, trying to squeeze him into the corner and away from the goal. He slows for a second, dips his shoulder right, accelerates left, touches the ball past the legs of one defender, and then at once is free of all three of them and bursting toward the penalty area. Two more Bilbao players sprint over to cover him, but somehow he ghosts past this new threat, his legs on fast-forward, the ball now rolling out to his left, perfectly positioned for a strike on goal. He shoots. He scores. The Barcelona players celebrate with him as only soccer players can, and as he walks back toward the halfway line for the restart, even the Bilbao supporters clap in admiration. The greatest ever.\n\nWatch this clip over and over and you find many things to marvel at: his zero-to-top-speed quickness, his innate sense of the pitch and of the most dangerous angle to take toward goal, his counterintuitive decision to shoot for the near post. But by far the most remarkable discovery awaiting you is that, as he races from the halfway line through seven defenders and into the penalty area, he uses only one foot. Count the touches from the start of his run to his actual shot on goal and you realize that of the nineteen times he kicks the ball, only two of them are with his right foot. Everything else he does during the dribble, including the shot at the end of it, is done with his left.\n\nClick on other clips, watch other dribbles in the magnificent Messi oeuvre, and you discover that this is always the case. His ratio of strong-foot to weak-foot usage stays constant at around 10 to 1. For the sake of comparison, the right-footed Cristiano Ronaldo's ratio is around 4.5 to 1. Messi is not just a left-footed player, in other words. He is a player who does virtually everything that needs to be done with a ball with only his left foot. Passing, dribbling, shooting, tackling\u2014all of it.\n\nMessi's left-footedness, then, is truly extreme. And, of course, everyone on the opposing team is acutely aware of this, yet even with the foreknowledge that he is going to play with his left foot time after time after time, they are still bamboozled as he swerves around them. Messi has taken his natural left-footedness and cultivated it to such an extent\u2014developed it to work with such speed and precision\u2014that instead of being a limitation, it bestows on him a consistent, dramatic, and unfair advantage.\n\nWe get the sense, watching him, that acquiring this advantage was no rational calculation on his part. For sure, he must have practiced ten thousand hours and more, but what he conveys as he swerves and skips toward goal is not diligence and discipline, but joy: pure, unconscious, unstoppable joy in his craft. To see him run with the ball at his feet is to see the fullest and best and most authentic expression of this man. It delights us, and lifts us up, as it always does when we see someone shine as only he or she can shine. And just like the opposing supporters, we look in wonder at this little man, clap our hands, and smile.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nMessi plies his trade on the world's largest sporting stages, but you may have experienced similar admiration for colleagues at work. One of them puts together a presentation and delivers it with wit and clarity, and you smile. Another handles a grumpy customer with just the right mix of empathy and practicality, and you marvel at how easy she made it look. Another defuses a complex political situation, and you look at him in awe and wonder how on earth he did it. As humans we are wired to find joy in seeing someone else's talents in action. We resonate with the naturalness, the fluidity, and the honesty of a thing done brilliantly well, and it attracts us and draws us in.\n\nYou will have recognized the Messi joy when it is your _own_ performance that you're experiencing, too\u2014that is, when you are expressing your own strengths. This sensation is not, at root, created by how good you are at something. Rather, it's created by how that activity makes you feel. A _strength_ , properly defined, is not \"something you are good at.\" You will have many activities or skills that, by dint of your intelligence, your sense of responsibility, or your disciplined practice, you are quite good at, and that nonetheless bore you, or leave you cold, or even drain you. \"Something you are good at\" is not a strength; it is an ability. And, yes, you will be able to demonstrate high ability\u2014albeit briefly\u2014at quite a few things that bring you no joy whatsoever.\n\nA _strength_ , on the other hand, is an \"activity that makes you feel strong.\" This sort of activity possesses for you certain definable qualities. Before you do it, you find yourself actively looking forward to doing it. While you are doing it, time seems to speed up, one moment blurring into the next. And after you've done it, while you may be tired and not quite ready to suit up and tackle it again, you nonetheless feel filled up, proud. It is this combination of three distinct feelings\u2014positive anticipation beforehand, flow during, and fulfillment afterward\u2014that makes a certain activity a strength. And it is this combination of feelings that produces in you the yearning to do the activity again and again, to practice it over and over, to thrill to the chance to do it just one more time. A strength is far more _appetite_ than ability, and indeed it is the appetite ingredient that feeds the desire to keep working on it and that, in the end, produces the skill improvement necessary for excellent performance.\n\nOf course, it's possible there are a few activities in which you seem to have boatloads of appetite and very little natural ability. Florence Foster Jenkins was, according to one historian, \"the world's worst opera singer. No one before or since has liberated herself quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation.\" The songwriter Cole Porter used to have to bang his cane repeatedly against his leg in order to stop himself from laughing out loud at the unremitting awfulness of her voice. And yet she loved to sing, and even managed to buy her way onto the stage at Carnegie Hall.\n\nLook closer at Lady Florence, however, or at anyone who appears to love an activity in which his or her performance is woeful, and you discover that often what such a person loves isn't the activity itself but instead the trappings of the activity. In Lady Florence's case it was most probably the attention given to a public performer: she had been a successful pianist in childhood, even performing at the White House, until an injury curtailed her piano playing and she had to find another way to get onstage. Other times, you see someone become addicted to brief moments of greatness in a sea of otherwise mediocre performances, and what keeps pulling that person back to the activity is the endless quest to re-create those flashes of brilliance. Anyone who has ever hit a perfect seven iron on the golf course, and then spent years toiling to recapture that one moment, will know what we mean. In any case, it appears that as a rule we humans are congenitally incapable of deeply loving an activity in which we are awful.\n\nInstead, we are drawn to activities in which we find joy. We can't always explain why, but some activities seem to contain ingredients that breathe life into us, that lift us up out of ourselves to reveal something finer, more resilient, and more creative. Each of us is different, of course, so each of us finds this joy in different activities, yet each of us knows this feeling. And when our work does indeed bring us this joyful ingredient, when we do indeed feel love, even, for what we do, then we are truly magnificent. Stevie Wonder, who clearly knows a thing or two about cultivating and contributing one's strengths to the world, said it best: \"You will never feel proud of your work if you find no joy within it. Your best work is always joyful work.\"\n\nThis is what work does to Stevie Wonder when he composes and sings\u2014he finds joy. This is what work does to Lionel Messi when he dances round defenders and finds the net from impossible angles\u2014he finds delight. This is what we see when we see anyone who is really good at their work\u2014we see someone who has found love in what they do. And this is what your company hopes your work will do for you. When your leaders say they want you to be creative and innovative and collaborative and resilient and intuitive and productive, what they are really saying is, \"We want you to fill your working hours with activities that bring you joy, with tasks that delight you.\"\n\nOddly\u2014and sadly\u2014this set of observations is often dismissed in business circles, perhaps because business is meant to be about rigor and objectivity and competitive advantage, next to which the idea of looking for joy in work, as a precursor to excellence in work, seems rather soft. Fixing shortcomings, no matter how hard that might be, seems like the hard-boiled business of business; finding delight is the province of poets.\n\nYet the data does not lie. Of the eight conditions that are the signature of the highest-performing teams, there is one in particular that stands out\u2014in study after study, irrespective of industry and irrespective of nationality\u2014as the single most powerful predictor of a team's productivity. It is each team member's sense that \"I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.\" No matter what kind of work your team is doing and no matter which part of the world you're working in, your team will always be most productive when more team members feel delight and joy in what they do every day. Now, when we remove the words \"every day\" from the question, reasoning that perhaps the quotidian frequency is too high and that perhaps we should ask only whether people get a chance to feel a \"good fit\" between their strengths and their job, the item ceases to work\u2014that is, the link between those who strongly agree to it and the performance of the team vanishes. The \"every-day-ness\" of the feeling that your work plays to your strengths is a vital condition of high performance. Somehow, on the best teams, the team leader is able not only to identify the strengths of each person but also to tweak roles and responsibilities so that team members, individually, feel that their work calls upon them to exercise their strengths on a daily basis. When a team leader does this, everything else\u2014recognition, sense of mission, clarity of expectations\u2014works better. But when a team leader doesn't, nothing else that he or she tries, whether in the form of money or title or cheerleading or cajoling, can make up for it.\n\nOngoing work-strengths fit is the _master lever_ for high-performance teams: pull it, and everything else is elevated; fail to pull it, and everything else is diminished.\n\nNothing thus far should be particularly surprising. We've all seen people like Lionel Messi demonstrate their brilliance, and been uplifted by the sight. We've watched colleagues excel, and we've felt happy wonder in their success. We've experienced the joy of being at one with an activity, and the pride of knowing everything we've been able to contribute through our unique combination of strengths. Even the data shouldn't be particularly shocking\u2014of course the best teams are built around the optimal fit between strengths and roles. For any of us with much experience of the world, there is (or at least there should be) no earth-shattering revelation here.\n\nWhich makes it all the more surprising (or frustrating, or depressing) that companies are not, in fact, built to help us pinpoint and then contribute our unique strengths. In their systems and processes and technologies, in their rituals and language and philosophies, they evidence exactly the opposite design: to measure us against a standardized model, and then badger us to become as similar to this model as possible. They are built, that is, around the lie that _the best people are well-rounded_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAt some point in your career, if you haven't already done so, you will bump into a thing called a competency model. A competency is a quality you are supposed to possess in order to excel in your job. They look like this: strategic thinking, goal orientation, political savvy, business acumen, customer focus, and so on. The idea behind them is that excellent performance in a job can be defined in terms of the right grouping of competencies. Thus the company's top leaders will be asked to examine a long list of these competencies\u2014there are literally thousands to choose from\u2014and then pick the ones that everyone agrees each incumbent in each job should possess. One widely used model, for example, identifies five categories of competencies (core, leadership\/management\/business\/interpersonal, job functional, job technical, and technical-task specific) and then a further list of competencies within each of these, so that \"core,\" in this case, includes 22 leadership competencies, 18 management competencies, 45 business competencies, and 33 individual competencies, for a total of 118. Entry-level jobs are assigned fewer or simpler competencies, and the further up the hierarchy a job is, the more numerous and the more complex the competencies assigned to it tend to become. Having defined competencies for each role, the leaders will also usually define a desired proficiency level for each competency on a scale of 1 to 5, so that they can say, for instance, that such-and-such a job requires strategic thinking at a proficiency level of 3, whereas it needs customer focus at a proficiency level of 5.\n\nThis entire construct\u2014the chosen competencies and their required proficiency levels, for each seniority level, for each job, across some or all of an organization\u2014is called a competency model. In a typical model, a given job might be defined to require a few dozen competencies at varying proficiency levels.\n\nSo far, this might seem unobjectionable, if a little unwieldy: a group of leaders getting together to define what they feel the ideal employee should look like. It might not be our first choice for how they should spend their time, but at least no one has been harmed in the making of this model. It's what happens next, however, that leads us into choppier waters, because once created, the competencies show up everywhere. Your manager and your peers will rate you on them, and your overall performance rating will be derived in large part from how much of each of them you possess. During annual talent reviews, the competencies will be the language used to describe your performance and potential: if the consensus is that you possess them all, you will be considered for promotion, or paid more, or selected for plum assignments; whereas if you do not possess them, or display gaps in a few of them, you will be told to take the relevant training programs, and work on proving to your company that you have plugged your gaps. These competencies will become the lens through which your company sees you, understands you, and values you.\n\nAll of the major Human Capital Management tools\u2014the enterprise software systems that companies use to keep information about you, pay you, allocate benefits to you, promote you, develop you, and deploy you\u2014are built around competency models, and how closely you and your colleagues match up to the models. There is even, in one of these platforms, a robot that takes over the mundane chore of providing written feedback for team members: The team leader first selects which competency to evaluate, from the required list for the team member; then picks from a list of behaviors that someone is supposed to exhibit if they are either failing at, meeting, or exceeding this competency; then watches as the system generates a sample sentence to convey this feedback; then is given the opportunity to adjust this sentence to sound more or less positive, using buttons that adjust the feedback in one direction or the other; and then clicks a final button to add the finished sentence to someone's feedback form\u2014all without typing a single word. The robot produces such eye-glazing prose as, \"Barbara . . . puts thought into her budget requests and reviews her costs throughout the year to identify appropriate adjustments,\" these insights being produced with a few speedy clicks, and in complete ignorance of (and apparent indifference to) whether Barbara actually does any of those things.\n\nWhat concerns us here, however, is not so much the soul-crushingly automated implementation of competency models, but rather the theory of work that they embody and that underlies so much of what we do in organizations today. The theory goes something like this: we live in a world of machines, code, and processes, and when these break, we have to identify the faulty component or line of code or process step and fix it\u2014to take dysfunction and repair it. The first part of this competency theory of work, then, extends this thinking to performance. Once we've located you on our proficiency scales, we tell you that your lowest scores\u2014those where you are most \"broken\"\u2014are your \"development areas,\" and that the best path to greater performance will come from unrelenting focus on these areas.\n\nThe second part of our theory takes this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: we reason that if improvement in performance comes from remedying shortcomings, then high performance\u2014excellence\u2014must be the result of having removed shortcomings across the board, from having a high score on every scale. Excellence, in other words, is a synonym for all-round high ability: well-rounded people are better.\n\nThis is the lie that underpins the tyranny of competencies, and it is persistent and pervasive. But to see the truth, we need only to understand two particular facts.\n\nFirst, _competencies are impossible to measure_. Take \"strategic thinking\" as an example. Is this a state, something that is variable and subject to flux? Or is it a trait, something that is inherent and relatively stable over time? In the field of psychometrics we measure these two phenomena quite differently.\n\nWhen we are measuring states, we either devise surveys that ask a person about his or her state of mind, or we create tests with right and wrong answers to determine whether a person has acquired the necessary knowledge. A person's voting preference is a _state_ , as expressed in a survey. We presume it can change, such that when we ask a person about it at Time 1, and then give her new information, we expect her preference might well be different at Time 2. Mood is a _state_. Although it does appear that each of us has a unique happiness set point, we assume that a person's mood can change around that point, such that when we ask about it at Time 1, and then a change in situation or circumstance occurs, we may well observe a difference in the person's mood by Time 2. Similarly, skills and knowledge are _states_. If we test you on a certain skill or knowledge base at Time 1, and then give you more training in these areas, it's likely that you will get more of the answers right at Time 2.\n\nThese are all _states_ , and we expect them as such to change over time.\n\n_Traits,_ on the other hand, are inherent in a person. Extroversion is a trait, for example, as is empathy, and competitiveness, and need for structure. Each of us possesses certain unique predispositions and recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior, and the overwhelming evidence is that, while each of us can learn over time to be more intelligent and effective at contributing through these patterns, the patterns themselves persist throughout our lives.\n\nTraits cannot be measured with a survey or a skills test. Instead, they have to be measured using a reliable and validated personality assessment. The two most prevalent kinds of personality assessments are _self-assessments_ (involving a number of carefully worded statements measured on a strongly agree\u2013to\u2013strongly disagree scale) and _situational judgment tests_ (involving a number of situations with a list of possible response options from which the test taker selects the one that fits her best).*\n\nBefore you set about measuring something you have to decide which of these\u2014states or traits\u2014you are trying to measure, so that you can properly select your measurement method.\n\nHere's the point. Seen in this light, what is a competency such as \"strategic thinking\"? Is it a state or a trait? We need to know, if we want to measure it\u2014and the entire purported purpose of competencies is to measure something. If we think a competency is the former, a state, then we should measure it either with a survey asking about the person's state of mind or with an actual test that has correct and incorrect answers. We should never ask your manager or your peers to rate you on it, because they can't possibly know how much of this abstract quality you possess, any more than they can accurately divine your voting preferences or the score you would get on a test. And if we think a competency is the latter, an inherent trait, then we should use a personality assessment to measure it, and we should never tell you to take a \"strategic thinking\" class so that you can improve in it, because if it's a trait, then, by definition, it probably won't change much.\n\nBut the truth about competencies such as strategic thinking, political savvy, or any of the others is that they are a haphazard mix-up of states and traits. We don't know whether goal orientation, say, derives from the way you are wired, or from what you have learned to do, or from what you have been told to do. We don't know whether customer focus is a different piece of your wiring, or a different skill you have learned, or the same skill used differently, or something else entirely. A scientific approach to performance would start with what is measurable, and only then study how those things contributed to performance. But competencies are built in the other direction. They start with a listing of every quality we can think of that we feel is important to performance, and only then ask how each one might be measured. By this point it is too late to disentangle the states from the traits, so we fall back on rating one another on the resultant abstractions (which measures, sadly, neither state _nor_ trait) and hoping that are all improvable in some way.*\n\nAnd because competencies are unmeasurable, it is impossible to prove or disprove the assertion that _everyone who excels in a particular job possesses a particular set of competencies_. It is equally impossible to show that _people who acquired the competencies they lacked outperformed those who did not_ \u2014that, in other words, well-rounded people are better. These two statements together are the foundation for most of what companies do to develop the talents of their people, yet each of them is unfalsifiable\u2014you will find no academic papers in any peer-reviewed journal proving the necessity of possessing certain competencies, and no proof that acquiring the ones you lack nets you any increase in performance. Both of these assertions, despite the good intentions that created them, are conjured from thin air\u2014and we can never know if they are correct.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBut hang on, you may say: Isn't the art of business the art of making decisions with incomplete data? Isn't that what businesspeople get paid for\u2014taking risks in the face of uncertainty? Isn't all this psychometric stuff a bit precious? Even if we can't prove, measurably, that acquiring a list of competencies helps a person to excel, what's wrong with trying nonetheless? Surely a good team leader should encourage each of her people to pinpoint capability gaps, to strive to plug these gaps and thereby become more well-rounded. Surely both the team and the individual would benefit from getting each person to conform ever more closely to the well-rounded ideal. Indeed, surely that's what growth _is_ \u2014the process of gaining ability where we have little.\n\nAgain, no. Which brings us to the second fact: the research into high performance in any profession or endeavor reveals that _excellence is idiosyncratic_. The well-rounded high performer is a creature of theory world. In the real world each high performer is unique and distinct, and excels precisely because that person has understood his or her uniqueness and cultivated it intelligently.\n\nWe see this most easily in the world of professional sports. If we were to design the theoretical model of a high-performing attacker on a soccer team, we would not create a Lionel Messi, with his diminutive stature and ineffectual right foot. Instead we might devise a player who looks more like Cristiano Ronaldo\u2014a taller, more physically imposing player who is equally at ease with his left foot, his right foot, and his head (though even here we would likely erase from our theoretical design Ronaldo's ego, individualism, and occasional petulance). In the world of tennis we would obviously include in our design the fluidity and grace of Roger Federer, but we'd also probably want to add a hunk of Rafael Nadal's muscle, dollops of Novak Djokovic's cocksureness, and just a hint of Andy Murray's soft hands at the net. In our theoretical world, in other words, we would pick and mix the qualities we thought preferable. But obviously, in the real world no one gets to do this, whether they're a soccer player, a tennis player, or a team leader. In the real world each of us learns to make the most of what we have. Growth, it turns out, is actually a question not of figuring out how to gain ability where we lack it but of figuring out how to increase impact where we already have ability. And because our abilities are diverse, when you look at a great performance you see not diversity minimized but rather diversity magnified; not sameness but uniqueness.\n\nWe find the same idiosyncrasy among the best musical performers. We expect Adele to belt out soaring, maudlin ballads, but were we to ask Lorde or Halsey or Britney Spears or, God forbid, Miley Cyrus to sing or sound the same as Adele, we'd all be as alarmed as the Carnegie audience at a Florence Foster Jenkins concert. Now, we might assert that every role has some minimum requirements without which a person cannot succeed, no matter how extraordinary his or her other gifts (the customary name for these things, or rather for the lack of them, is career derailers). Even here, though, we would need to be careful in specifying our minimum requirements. After all, if we include \"fluency in musical notation\" in our list of musical skills, we'd knock out some big names. Frank Sinatra, for instance, couldn't read a note. Neither can Elton John. And if we include \"having two hands\" in our list of required traits for a pianist, we'd be forced to exclude Paul Wittgenstein, a classical pianist who lost his right arm in the First World War, who subsequently commissioned piano concertos for the left hand from the leading composers of his day, and without whom we would not have masterpieces by Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, and Maurice Ravel.\n\nBut these are all extreme examples, and might seem remote from the real world of work. What happens when we measure the strengths and skills of a regular job? Do we find idiosyncrasy or well-roundedness?\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIn the early 1980s, a man set out to predict performance. His name was Don Clifton. He was trained as a mathematician and a psychologist, and he set out to identify, quantitatively, the factors that could be identified in a job candidate\u2014specifically, the factors that would predict success in the role the candidate sought.\n\nClifton was leading a team of researchers at a company called Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI), which in the 1990s acquired and took on the name of the Gallup Organization. One of the early studies SRI did sought to predict the success of pub managers for a large brewery chain, as it had long been recognized that a big part of the difference between a so-so pub and a great pub depended, in some hard-to-pin-down way, on the characteristics of the manager. Clifton and his team began, as they always did, by asking questions\u2014lots of questions\u2014of the brewery chain's best and average pub managers, as measured by their business results. \"What is the best way to manage someone?\" \"How closely should an employee be supervised?\" And so on. They asked these questions of the average managers and of the great managers, and looked for differences in their answers. Questions that didn't yield a difference were thrown out, and when all was said and done they had a set of 108 questions that seemed to identify the secrets of pub-manager performance. Now they did a blind test, using their questions on a different selection of managers, without knowing how well these managers were doing, and they demonstrated that their list of questions could reliably and consistently sort the best from the rest.\n\nThe questions measured various qualities\u2014from a pub manager's sense of mission, to his or her instinctive contingency planning, to his or her ability to develop others\u2014and the researchers were curious to see if one of these, or a small group of these, was the master key, the one thing or combination of things that, time and time again, unlocked great performance. But as they looked at the scores of the best managers, they found something subtly and wonderfully different. The high scores of the best managers moved around\u2014one manager would do well on questions about creating a particular ambience in the pub, say, while another would excel on questions about inventory and budgeting. There was no pattern at all. Or, rather, there was just one big pattern\u2014the only way to predict a manager's performance was to look at his or her _total_ score. They had found a list of ways in which managers could excel, and they could define excellence on each of these dimensions. Yet it seemed to make no difference which of these a candidate excelled at, _as long as he or she excelled somewhere_.\n\nThis was not an anomaly for the role of pub manager. Every single occupation the Gallup Organization studied\u2014salesperson, teacher, doctor, housekeeper\u2014displayed this same pattern: those who excelled did _not_ share all the same abilities, but instead displayed unique combinations of different abilities, strongly. Excellence in the real world, in every profession, is idiosyncratic.\n\nIn the theoretical world that exists inside most of our large organizations\u2014a world preoccupied with the need for order and tidiness\u2014the perfect incumbent of every role possesses all the competencies that can be dreamed up and defined. In the real world, however, these long lists of intricately defined competencies don't exist, and if they did, they wouldn't matter. If, as someone once said,* the British fox hunt is the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible, then the competency model is the unmeasurable in pursuit of the irrelevant. In the real world, each of us, imperfect as we are, strives to make the most of the unique mix of traits and skills with which we've been blessed. Those of us who do this best\u2014who find what we love about what we do, and cultivate this love with intelligence and discipline\u2014are the ones who contribute most. The best people are not well-rounded, finding fulfillment in their uniform ability. Quite the opposite, in fact\u2014 _the best people are spiky_ , and in their lovingly honed spikiness they find their biggest contribution, their fastest growth, and, ultimately, their greatest joy.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOn some level, we have all long known this. From our earliest memories of school to our most recent experiences of work, the thought that _if only I could set this annoying thing aside and focus on what I really want to, then I could make a much bigger difference_ is all too familiar. But then why do these competency models and their associated 360-degree assessments, feedback tools, and development plans exist? What could have prompted otherwise sensible people to have spent so much time and energy and money building models whose efficacy is intrinsically unprovable, that require enormous amounts of time and energy to create, and that fly in the face of our own experiences in the world?\n\nThe simplest answer is that, though we are deeply aware that each of us is unique, and that no amount of training or badgering will remove that uniqueness, it is still quite overwhelming for a busy team leader to allow himself to come face-to-face with the fact that each of his team members thinks differently, is motivated by different things, responds to relationship cues differently, and gets a kick out of different sorts of praise. Who has the time for all these subtle shadings of diversity? Better to just define a model, and then manage to the model (hence the automated feedback writer we encountered earlier).\n\nFor a company, it's all about control. The strong instinct of most corporate leaders, faced with the teeming diversity not just of gender, race, and age but of thought, drive, and relationship inside their organizations, is to look for some way to exert control\u2014to rein it all in, to impose conformity on the chaos, and thence to be able to understand what's going on, and to shape what will happen next. And so companies have spent, and continue to spend, large quantities of time and money trying to work around each person's uniqueness\u2014and this is where these models bubble up from. The models promise rigor\u2014a clear set of characteristics against which _everyone_ can be measured, a sort of \"apples-to-apples\" comparison (even though in the real world it is always \"apples-to-oranges\"). The models promise analytical insights\u2014a way to understand the _entire_ workforce. (It's no accident the systems are known as performance management systems, as oxymoronic as that sounds.) The models promise fact, evidence, truth. What is the job of an executive if not to know what's going on, in great specificity, and to be able to tweak the dials of the vast enterprise before him so that progress may be made? The creeping suspicion, on the part of more and more leaders, that the models offer none of the things they promise, is an inconvenience to be minimized.\n\nAnd to be clear, it isn't just the competency models that are dubious but the ideas behind them. There is the idea that improvement comes from repairing our deficits. There is the idea that failure is essential to growth. And there is the idea that our strengths are something to be afraid of.\n\nAs we've seen, what's most striking when we look at excellent performance is not the absence of deficit but, rather, the presence of a few signature strengths, honed over time and put to ever greater use. But still the idea of fixing deficits appeals to us\u2014it gives us the hope that we might corral, and thus tame, our imperfections, and it allows us to make amends for our shortcomings by toiling to fix them. And the fact that this toil is usually far from joyful is part of the allure. \"Pain + Reflection = Progress\" is the mantra at Bridgewater, the hedge fund run by Ray Dalio, and in some way we thrill to the hard clarity of this prescription. The pain of working on our deficits seems like a worthy pain, a way to pay our penance and make our restitution with the world, and we are drawn to its salutary austerity.\n\nAnd the idea that failure is important is attractive, in turn, because failure helps us understand our deficits\u2014it helps us find more of them. If a technology company today is _not_ talking about failing fast, there is presumed to be something wrong with it. \"There is no way to 'get better' other than to first do it, however poorly you do,\" says Charlie Kim, CEO of Next Jump, and this makes perfect sense. But then the false syllogism: \"So get started; go out and fail! We have become good at getting better because we are so good at failing.\" Beyond the obvious point\u2014that if all a company did was to become brilliant at failing in more and more ways, faster and faster, it would be, well, a failure\u2014the truth is that large success is the aggregation of small successes, and that therefore improvement consists of finding out, in each trial, what works, seizing hold of it, and figuring out how to make more of it. Failure by itself doesn't teach us anything about success, just as our deficits by themselves don't teach us anything about our strengths. And the moment we begin to get better is the moment when something actually works, not when it doesn't.*\n\nAnd then there is the idea that our strengths are to be feared\u2014that we should avoid overusing them because that will somehow pull us away from our proper focus on failure and shortcomings, and instead pull us toward laziness and complacency. Of course, if we were able to watch a great athlete training, or a great writer writing, or a great coder coding, we would see that honing a strength is hard work\u2014it is by no means easy to find that incremental margin of performance when you are already operating at a high level\u2014and that a strength is not where we are most \"finished\" but in fact where we are most productively challenged. Yet we are told to resist the temptation to \"just\" play to our strengths, and instead to work constantly on our weaknesses. In common parlance, we are told to avoid \"running around our backhand.\" This betrays, perhaps, a misunderstanding of what a strength actually is. It is not, for each of us, where performance is _easiest_ \u2014it is where performance is most _impactful_ and _increasing_. We would never tell Lionel Messi to try to play with his right foot. We would instead watch as he works, tirelessly, to make his left ever more powerful. And the only reason that \"running around your backhand\" has become an idiom for avoiding a weakness is that this is _exactly_ what we see great tennis players do, time and time again, whether it's Juan Mart\u00edn del Potro, Rafael Nadal, or countless others. The phrase describes the act of avoiding a weakness in order to play to a strength, and the lesson from the best is that this leads _toward_ high performance, not _away_ from it.\n\nYet these are the ideas that competency models, 360-degree assessments, talent reviews, feedback tools, and much more are built on\u2014that what is most important for us is to understand our deficits, embrace failure, and be wary of our strengths. To be clear, we are not, here, making an absolutist argument: we are not saying that there is nothing to be gained from trying to improve our shortcomings, or that we shouldn't try new things for fear of failure. We are, however, arguing for priority, for focusing first, and predominantly, on our strengths and our successes, because that is where the greatest advantage is to be had. And the great shame in all of this is that the very systems that we might hope would be aimed at discovering and unleashing each person's unique talents have, in fact, the effect of inhibiting those talents, and denying what makes each one of us unique. They don't, in the end, help performance. They hinder it.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhat, then, should we do in the face of all of this? How do the best team leaders in the real world go about building great teams? Here are three strategies we've seen used by the best team leaders.\n\nThe first strategy is this: _Get into the outcomes business_. A team leader at one of the early Silicon Valley startups faced an unusual situation. He had assigned a new hire to work with one of his experienced engineers, and now the experienced engineer was complaining. The new hire was arrogant and prickly, he said, but worse than this, he had awful body odor\u2014the team leader should fire him. But the team leader saw something in his unusual employee, and worked out a different solution. He figured that the two could work together as long as they weren't in the office at the same time, and instead passed work back and forth. And so, in the early days of Atari, Steve Jobs worked nights.\n\nOthers may have confused you into thinking you are in the control business, and competency models will have left you languishing in the method business. But you're in neither of these. As a team leader, you are in the outcomes business. You are being paid to create certain outcomes for your company, as efficiently, as predictably, and as sustainably as possible, and to do this with enough creativity and intuition and excitement to engage the sort of talent that you and your company will need tomorrow. The lesson we learn from Hugh Dowding's bunker, Stanley McChrystal's daily O&I call, Facebook's conference-room logos, and Chick-fil-A's franchising agreement is that leaders _can't_ be in the control business and _must_ be in the intelligence, meaning, and empowerment business\u2014the outcomes business.\n\nLionel Messi's manager needs the team to score goals. And Messi's bizarrely magical left-footedness is only intriguing because it results in Messi, or one of his teammates, putting the ball in the back of the net. Everything his manager does to coach him makes sense only if they both keep focused on the outcome of scoring goals, and thereby helping the team win. It's not the idiosyncrasy that ultimately matters. It's the goals that matter, and the idiosyncrasy is only useful because it is _always_ the best way to get more goals.\n\nTennis is the same. If we were coaching Andy Murray, we would never try to define for him some model of universal tennis excellence and tell him to try to play like that. Instead we'd say something like, \"Hey, Andy, we know what winning looks like, and feels like, so what strengths do you have that can give you an unfair advantage over everyone else, and thereby help you win? You will never have Roger's backhand, or Rafa's spin, but you do have speed, and touch, and a weird, relentless, hangdog determination. How can we make those dominate for you?\" Billie Jean King once said that the best tennis players have to practice their winning combinations, the one-two-three sequences that end the point in their favor. So we might continue by asking Andy how his strengths can be combined, and then encourage him to spend time honing those combinations, so that in pressure situations he can call upon them with unthinking confidence. We would, in other words, try to help him figure out how his particular strengths, alone or in combination, could move him toward the outcomes he's after.\n\nThe outcome of teaching is helping a student learn. There is no universal recipe for that, any more than there is a universal recipe for writing a beautiful song. The outcome of managing a pub is not creating a great atmosphere, or designing a fun quiz night, or having the best-priced, best-tasting beer. These are methods, and none of them matter in and of themselves. Instead the outcome is having a pub full of happy punters. The very best district managers spend their pub visits paying attention to what each pub manager looks forward to, when he is in \"flow,\" and which activities in the pub he naturally gravitates to. They then build their coaching strategies around these signs of his strengths, helping each manager combine them in the service of the desired outcome.\n\nYou can do the same. Define the outcomes you want from your team and its members, and then look for each person's strength signs to figure out how each person can reach those outcomes most efficiently, most amazingly, most creatively, and most joyfully. The moment you realize you're in the outcomes business is the moment you turn each person's uniqueness from a bug into a feature.\n\nAnd what you will be doing, when you step back and look, is fitting the role to the person\u2014which leads us to the second strategy: _Define the adjustable seat_.\n\nIn the years following the end of the Second World War, the United States Air Force was creating more and more innovative and expensive planes\u2014jet-powered, fast, and fiendishly hard to control\u2014which pilots were then proceeding to crash at an alarming rate. After various inconclusive inquiries, Air Force engineers began to wonder if the cockpit design was the problem\u2014if, for some pilots, the controls were too hard to reach and operate\u2014and if the standardized cockpit dimensions, created in 1926 from studying hundreds of pilots and calculating their average size, were in need of revision. The engineers decided to recalculate the average, and to this end set out in 1950 to measure the various physical attributes of 4,063 pilots. One of the team charged with doing the measuring was a young lieutenant named Gilbert S. Daniels.\n\nNow, as Daniels thought about the problem the USAF faced, he realized that this wasn't only a problem of knowing the average per se, but also one of fit, between any individual pilot and a cockpit designed for the average pilot. So as the study proceeded, he began to think about another question. In addition to his assigned task of calculating the average, he asked himself how many of the pilots in the sample were actually average-sized\u2014or close to average-sized, at any rate. (Daniels defined _average_ as within the middle 30 percent of the range of measures on any given dimension.) If a good number of pilots were near average-sized, he reasoned, then the new cockpit dimensions stood a chance of solving the problem.\n\nThe researchers had measured ten dimensions for each pilot, so now Daniels set himself the task of going through the data, pilot by pilot by pilot, and counting how many of the 4,063 pilots were in the middle 30 percent on all of the ten dimensions.\n\nThe answer, when it came, was this: _none_. There were no average-sized pilots\u2014none whatsoever. Even if you looked at just three of the ten dimensions, fewer than 5 percent of the pilots were average-sized on all three. Even in a population of humans deliberately _selected_ against a set of criteria (if you were too tall or too short, for instance, you weren't qualified to become a USAF pilot in the first place), there was no one-size-fits-all, not even close.\n\nJust as Don Clifton discovered that the only predictor of performance was total score across a number of relevant variables\u2014that there was no right _pattern_ of abilities, only a right _sum_ of abilities\u2014Gilbert Daniels discovered that there were no average humans in a population of 4,063, and that the average is a mathematical concept, not something that exists in the physical world. While the outcomes of high performance are visible and clear, the ingredients of high performance vary from person to person. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to human beings; and there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to great performance.\n\nWhat can you do, then, with all this unfettered diversity? You do what Daniels advised the US Air Force to do: design an adjustable seat. Fit the machine to the pilot, not the other way around. You can do the same with your team\u2014it entails adjusting the outcomes you're asking individual team members to deliver to better match their idiosyncratic talents.\n\nThe first strategy suggests that we clarify the outcomes we're after, and then help each team member find his or her path to these outcomes. This raises the question of what to do if the outcomes aren't right for a particular person. In response, the second strategy suggests that we fit the work to the person, and not the other way around, so as to maximize person-outcome fit. But this in turn raises a further question: if we are always fitting work to people, how do we address the full spectrum of work we have to get done? If we were to design an \"adjustable seat\" for each person, we may still end up with many necessary tasks left undone.\n\nHence the third strategy: _Use team technology_. To help you address everything that needs to be addressed, the real world has devised a supremely effective technology for integrating people's wonderfully imperfect capabilities in the service of a given objective. It's called a team, and the essential magic of a team is that it makes weirdness useful.\n\nYou are weird. You don't seem weird to you because you are with you all the time. But you are weird, to everyone else, and they are weird to you: gloriously, beautifully weird. It's weird that others don't get a kick out of the same things that we do. It's weird that some people love doing things we find excruciating. And when we see someone do something better than we ever imagined possible, it can be confounding, perplexing, astonishing\u2014and also, of course, a source of relief. Thank goodness that woman there loves to confront people. Thank goodness that man there loves thorny political situations. Thank goodness that woman there is so impatient for action. If the people around us were not wired to be weird, then we'd have to spend all of our time scrambling to find someone who actually stood out. Instead, we can partner them up, and wire their weirdness together into a team.\n\nDiversity isn't an impediment to building a great team\u2014rather, it's the fundamental ingredient without which a great team cannot exist. If we were all the same, there would doubtless be things that all of us could not do, and that therefore the team could not do. We need to partner with people whose strengths\u2014whose weirdness, whose spikiness\u2014is different from ours if we are to achieve results that demand more abilities than any of us has alone. And this means, in turn, that the more different we are from one another, the more we need one another. The more different we are, the more we rely on understanding and appreciating the strengths of others, and on building a shared understanding of purpose, and an atmosphere of safety and trust, so that those strengths can be most usefully put to work. Well-roundedness is a misguided and futile objective when it comes to individual people; but when it comes to teams, it's an absolute necessity. The more diverse the team members, the more weird, spiky, and idiosyncratic they are, the more well-rounded the team.\n\nCompetencies, and all the other normative and deficit-focused tools we have, don't push in this direction\u2014of expressing and harnessing diversity. They do just the opposite, as we've seen. But we don't need to throw them out completely. The process of creating them\u2014involving a group of leaders, usually, debating what they value most\u2014is not one that should result in any sort of measurement tool or one-size-fits-all standard. It is, however, exactly the sort of process that should create a statement of collective values, priorities, purpose, and ambition. Customer focus, innovation, growth orientation, agility\u2014these are not abilities to be measured, they are values to be shared. So we should remove from our competency models the levels of ability, the individual evaluations, the feedback, and all the other things that they have become encumbered with, and we should instead simplify them, clarify them, recognize them (and name them) for what they are, and stick them on a wall for all to see. When we carry our competencies across the measurement bridge, we enter a fake and dangerous world\u2014as a tool of assessment, order and control, they are worse than useless. But as public signifiers for what we deem most important, they are another way we can cascade meaning in our organizations, and thereby help our leaders and teams understand what's most important.\n\n*If you are familiar with Marcus's work, StrengthsFinder is an example of a self-assessment and StandOut is an example of a situational judgment test.\n\n*We'll talk more about the perils of rating other people in chapter 6.\n\n*Yes, it was Oscar Wilde.\n\n*As we're writing this, Facebook is facing numerous government inquiries into the use of its data to influence elections, Uber has curtailed its self-driving-car testing because one of its cars hit and killed a cyclist, and Yahoo has long since ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. It is unlikely that anyone is celebrating these and other failures, and the \"fail fast\" speed with which they've been achieved.\n\n#\n\n# People need feedback\n\nIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a millennial in possession of a job must be in want of feedback.\n\nActually, not just millennials. It goes without question that feedback for each and every one of us at work is a good thing, and that more feedback is an even better thing. As a result, today we are blessed with upward feedback, downward feedback, peer feedback, 360-degree feedback, performance feedback, developmental feedback, constructive feedback, solicited, unsolicited, and anonymous feedback, and with all of these flavors and variants has emerged a cottage industry of classes to teach us both how to give this feedback and how to receive it with grace and equanimity. We seem certain that modern employees need, and indeed cannot but benefit from, a real-time, straight-up assessment of their performance, and an appraisal of where they stand in relation to their peers. Indeed, of all the things we \"know for sure,\" in Twain's words, this is the one we know for surest.\n\nIf there is any complaint in all this, at least on the evidence of recent innovations in HR technology, it's that this feedback doesn't happen nearly _enough_ , so coming soon to a phone near you is an array of tools designed to enable you and your company to generate feedback at any time, on any person, about any and all aspects of his or her performance.\n\nYou, as the team leader, will be told that one of the most important and tricky parts of your job is to convey this feedback to your people, no matter how negative the reviews might be. Your job is to accelerate team performance, and it'll be your responsibility to hold a mirror up to the performance of your people so they can see themselves as they really are, and see their performance as it truly is. This, you'll be told, is the secret to both success and respect as a team leader\u2014so much so, in fact, that this sort of direct, clear, unvarnished feedback has its own special name at work: it's called _candid_ feedback.\n\nAnd this in turn means that you need to maintain a certain distance, lest you lose your objectivity and compromise your candor. Although you may sometimes wonder if people would give more and grow more if you showed that you genuinely cared about them, the refrain you'll hear is that if you get too close to your team members you'll never be able to give them the candid feedback they need.\n\nTo aid your development as a leader, others will recommend to you the many books on how to have tough conversations, and will suggest you read from the growing pile of articles describing just how much Gen Y and millennials crave constant corrective feedback. With titles such as \"Why Millennials Actually Want More Feedback at Work\" ( _Fortune_ ), \"Managers: Millennials Want Feedback, but Won't Ask for It\" (Gallup), \"Feedback Is the Unlikely Key to Millennial Career Happiness\" ( _Forbes_ ), and \"Why Millennials Need Constant Feedback at Work\" ( _Business Insider_ ), these articles will make plain to you that millennials thrive on the stuff.\n\nYou'll be taught phrases such as, \"Is now a good time for me to give you some feedback?\" And, \"Would you care for some feedback?\" And the slightly more assertive, \"I have some feedback for you. Are you sitting down?\" Having learned how to give feedback, you'll also learn how to receive it through techniques such as _mirroring_ (\"Did I hear you say that I need to work on my 'organizational savvy and politics'?\") and _active listening_ (\"Can you clarify what you mean by 'hopelessly naive' and give me a couple of recent examples?\").\n\nAnd of course, should you reject the feedback you receive from someone else because it feels odd, or confusing, or just plain wrong, you'll be helped to understand that this feeling is just a natural reaction to threat, and that to grow as a person and as a leader you will need to \"let go of your ego,\" to \"embrace your failures,\" and to always maintain a \"growth mindset.\" If you can reframe all this feedback as valuable input to help you grow, then\u2014you'll be told\u2014you'll soon find yourself addicted to it. As the author and speaker Simon Sinek said recently in his spot as guest editor for Virgin's workplace blog, \"So here's a way you can fulfill your potential in the workplace: negative feedback . . . Negative feedback is where it's at . . . After every project or anything that I do, I always ask somebody, 'What sucks? What can I do better? Where is there room for improvement?' I'm now to the point where I crave it. That's what you want. You want to get to the point where you crave negative feedback.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nSeeing such enthusiasm for feedback, we might start to wonder what an entire company would look and feel like if everyone was giving everyone else reviews at every turn\u2014if feedback were pervasive and continuous. If so we need look no further than Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. In addition to being extraordinarily gifted at securing returns for his investors\u2014Bridgewater has made $45 billion in net gains since its founding in 1975, more than any other hedge fund\u2014Ray Dalio, Bridgewater's chairman, co-CEO, and co-CIO, has decided to build his company around a commitment to \"radical transparency.\" His belief\u2014explained in his book _Principles_ , in which he lays out 210 prescriptions for work and life\u2014is that the way to be successful is to see and engage with the world as it truly is, no matter how positive or negative these realities are. No hierarchy or office politics should prevent anyone, no matter their level in the company, from challenging an assumption or interrogating a course of action. The real world is right there, Dalio says: it is what it is. We must face it with all of our intelligence unfettered, and we can't allow our politeness or our fear of repercussion to prevent us from seeing what is there to be seen, and thereby changing it for the better.\n\nOf course, people are part of this real world, and they too must be seen for who they really are, without filter, without delay. So at Bridgewater, not only is every meeting videotaped, archived, and made available for every person in the company to view in the company's \"Transparency Library\" (Dalio's commitment to radical transparency is total and without irony) but also each employee is issued an iPad loaded with a variety of apps for rating his or her fellow employees on sixty attributes, such as \"willingness to touch the nerve,\" \"conceptual thinking,\" and \"reliability.\" Employees are expected to rate their peers after calls, meetings, and daily interactions, and all the resultant ratings are analyzed (by the team that created IBM's Watson, no less), permanently stored, and then displayed on a card that each employee carries with him or her at all times. Bridgewater calls this your \"baseball card,\" and its intent is to hold you accountable for knowing \"who you really are,\" and to give everyone else a radically transparent view of what you truly bring to Bridgewater\u2014one of the metrics it displays is your \"believability score.\"\n\nThis is obviously an extreme example\u2014back in 2016, Dalio and his COO got into such a heated spat that each demanded the other be rated on \"integrity\" by the entire firm\u2014and it is difficult to prove what effect, positive or negative, this transparency has had on performance. (Despite the millions of data points collected, Bridgewater still has no reliable measure of each person's performance, as we'll see in chapter 6.) The company as a whole has produced outstanding results across decades and has grown from Mr. Dalio's two-bedroom apartment to occupying a gleaming office building in Greenwich, Connecticut, with 1,500 full-time employees. At the same time, however, the Glassdoor reviews of Bridgewater are mixed, and its first-eighteen-month turnover levels stand at 30 percent, three times higher than the industry average. People leave teams, not companies, as we've seen. That said, it does seem that Bridgewater has more than its fair share of teams that people want to leave.\n\nBut while Ray Dalio and Bridgewater may be outliers, they are at the same time clearly part of the established consensus that _people need feedback_ , and that the best companies and the most effective team leaders must figure out how to give it to them.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIn part, this consensus is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the absurd infrequency of traditional performance reviews. Because companies report their financial results annually, we have all become used to altering people's compensation annually, and since many companies came to espouse \"pay for performance,\" it was inevitable that goals would be set annually, and performance reviews conducted annually, and therefore feedback given annually. This cadence, though it worked for the financial folks, made little sense for either team leaders or members. Leaders felt burdened by the need to put everything into one set of goals at the beginning of the year and one set of laborious reviews at the end, while team members simply felt ignored. No one was served by this annual infrequency, yet there wasn't much to be done about it\u2014if we hated filling out one long set of forms at the beginning and the end of the year, nothing would be gained by upping the frequency of the form filling.\n\nAnd then technology came to the rescue, as it were. With the creation of app-enabled smartphones, the subsequent near ubiquity of these phones, and then their integration with corporate IT infrastructure, companies gained the ability to give every employee the power to launch a survey to anyone in the employee census file, and collect, aggregate, and report the results. Today we can get feedback from anyone, on anyone, at any time, quickly and easily.\n\nBut while this might explain why we are now _able_ to give constant feedback, it doesn't help us understand why we would so desperately _want_ to. To understand that we need to turn to two well-documented oddities of human nature.\n\nLet's say that one of your colleagues is late for an important meeting. As you sit in mild annoyance waiting for him to arrive, you create a little story in your mind that explains his tardiness as a result of his disorganization and lack of prioritization, and his lack of concern for all the people he's keeping waiting. This sort of interpretation of others' actions is so commonplace that it would be unremarkable, except for the fact that it contains a kernel of reasoning that's demonstrably flawed, and that nevertheless has a huge impact on how we design our organizations. What we're doing, in creating our little story, is coming up with an explanation\u2014an attribution, if you like\u2014for our colleagues' actions, and those explanations, when they concern the people around us, overwhelmingly ascribe others' behavior to their innate abilities and personality, not to the external circumstances they find themselves in. In this case, your colleague is late because of his innate disorganization, for example, not because a senior leader grabbed him in the hallway to ask a pressing question. This tendency of ours to skew our explanations of others' behavior (particularly negative behavior) toward stories about _who they are_ is called the Fundamental Attribution Error. Show us someone doing something that annoys us, or inconveniences us, and we're instantly certain that it's because there's something wrong with that person.\n\nAnd the Fundamental Attribution Error has a cousin. While our stories of others center on _who they are_ , we are much more generous to ourselves in our interpretation of our own actions. When it comes to our self-attributions, we skew the other way, and overascribe our behavior to the external situation around us, to _what's happening to us_. If we're doing something that annoys someone else, then that person is annoyed only because he or she doesn't understand the situation that's forcing us to act that way. This tendency is called the Actor-Observer Bias, and it's one of a number of human-reasoning biases that fall into a category called self-serving biases, because they serve to explain away our own actions in a way that props up our self-esteem.\n\nThese biases lead us to believe that your performance (whether good or bad) is due to _who you are_ \u2014your drive, or style, or effort, say\u2014which in turn leads us to the conclusion that if we want to get you to improve your performance we must give you feedback on who you are, so that you can increase your drive, refine your style, or redouble your efforts. To fix a performance problem we instinctively turn to giving you personal feedback, rather than looking at the external situation you were facing and addressing that.\n\nAnd by the way, if you think about it, much of the world of work is designed this way\u2014it's designed for Those Other People, who need to be told what to do (hence planning instead of intelligence), whose work needs aligning (hence goals over meaning and purpose), and whose weaknesses put us all at risk (hence the deficit thinking we saw in the last chapter, instead of the focus on distinctive abilities). One of the inconvenient truths about humans is that we have poor theories of others, and these theories lead us, among other things, to design our working world to remedy or to insulate against failings that we see in others but don't see in ourselves.*\n\nAdd to this the wonky logic that since success is achieved only through _hard work_ , and since giving negative feedback, receiving negative feedback, and fixing mistakes are all _hard work_ , therefore negative feedback causes success,\u2020 and you can begin to see why our faith in feedback, and specifically negative feedback, is so firmly rooted\u2014why we \"know for sure\" that feedback is helpful and that our colleagues need it.\n\nBut this just ain't so.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nLet's go back to where we began, with millennials. The various books and articles argue that millennials crave feedback in part because they are addicted to social media, and to the dopamine hit of one more Facebook \"like,\" or one more Instagram \"love.\" We are asked to interpret this behavior as the result of millennials' need to always know how they are perceived by others and where they stand. And, according to this reading, you're in big trouble as a manager if you aren't constantly attending to how they're doing and telling them how to do it better.\n\nBut if we look more closely\u2014if we look at which features have become more popular on the various social-media platforms, and at the details of how users choose to interact with these platforms\u2014a different picture begins to emerge.\n\nConsider, for example, the very different approaches taken by Facebook and Snapchat to providing for user feedback. A couple of years ago Facebook had been researching additional response emojis beyond the classic \"like.\" After much experimentation (and constant reassurances to its users that the company wasn't going to launch a \"dislike\" button), Facebook announced the addition of six new emojis so that users could offer more-nuanced feedback to other users' posts: the six finalists were \"love,\" \"haha,\" \"yay,\" \"wow,\" \"sad,\" and \"angry.\" Yet soon after the launch, Facebook discovered that, despite the company's careful research and testing, hardly anyone bothered with the new options.\n\nSnapchat, meanwhile, was growing, and then growing some more. Snapchat didn't have six possible responses to a post\u2014it didn't even have one, in fact, because there was no Snapchat \"like\" button, and there isn't to this day. Its appeal was precisely that on this new platform no one would rate you. The user just posts a story, or sends a friend a snap message; the friend responds or doesn't; and then\u2014poof!\u2014in twenty-four hours the story or snap is gone, permanently. If you talk to heavy users of Snapchat\u2014and there are now over 200 million of them\u2014you'll discover that what's attractive about Snapchat to millennials is precisely that they can go there, post there, and share there, all without feeling the pressure of feedback. They see the size of their audience. They keep their snap streaks alive with their friends. But they never have to worry about feedback at all: there is no judgment, let alone any permanent record of judgment. Instead there is just the connection to a friend or an audience.\n\nFor all of Snapchat's early users this was a relief. Snapchat became one of the precious few places in their lives where they were free to be themselves and connect with each other without filters. The very absence of permanent feedback allowed them to be more casual, more at ease, and more real, and this safe, attentive place attracted them in the millions. It is extraordinarily difficult to start a social-media platform and have it grow organically\u2014users are busy and have established behavior patterns, and the power of the network effect to prevent those behaviors from changing is strong. Ning, Path, and latterly Myspace were all launched (in the case of Myspace, relaunched) with great fanfare, and all faltered because they didn't tap into the essence of human nature purely and powerfully enough. Snapchat's chances of success were arguably slim, and yet, because it found an important missing ingredient in young people's lives (a safe place filled with an admiring audience), it was able to find a path to exponential user growth. And then Facebook and Instagram, to their credit, got curious, listened and learned, and did whatever they could to make themselves more like Snapchat.\n\nIf the Snapchat example is any guide, it would seem that at root, social media is more about publishing\u2014about positive self-presentation. It matters less to us whether this \"self\" is truly us, or whether, as many have observed, our online selves are aspirational projections, than it matters to us that others see us, and like us. We aren't looking for feedback. We're looking for an audience, and all of us\u2014not just millennials\u2014seem drawn to places that provide us with a way to meet our audience and gain its approval. What we want from social media is not really feedback. It's attention, and the lesson from the last decade is that social media is an attention economy\u2014some users seeking it, some supplying it\u2014not a feedback economy.\n\nAnd ironically, while the design of today's social-media platforms reflects the fact that millennials are attracted most to environments without feedback, today's companies point to these very same social-media platforms as their primary evidence for why millennials crave feedback.\n\nThe Snapchat growth story is only the most recent addition to a large body of evidence about the human need for uncritical attention. In the late nineteenth century the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called us \"the beast with red cheeks\"\u2014the lover of attention\u2014and in the following decades the nascent field of social science proceeded to offer up one case study after another of just how right he was. The psychologist Harry Harlow, in a famous series of experiments in the 1950s, deprived baby monkeys of their mothers, gave them the choice of a wire \"mother\" holding a milk bottle or a soft towel \"mother\" with no milk bottle, and showed that primates, given this choice, will always crave warmth and attention and safety over food\u2014the baby monkeys consistently and heart-wrenchingly picked the towel over the milk. More recently, epidemiologists, psychometricians, and statisticians have shown that by far the best predictor of heart disease, depression, and suicide is loneliness\u2014if you deprive us of the attention of others, we wither.\n\nIn the workplace, the most well-known example of this phenomenon is the research undertaken in the 1920s and 1930s at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric facility just outside Chicago. The management, unsurprisingly, wanted to increase the productivity of the workers, and began a series of experiments to explore the relationship between working conditions and worker output. The researchers first made the factory brighter by turning the lights up, and sure enough, in the following days worker output jumped significantly. But then, in the interests of experimental rigor, they decided to turn the lights back down to see what would happen. Strangely, output increased once again. There followed more experiments\u2014making the work stations cleaner, keeping the factory tidier, providing more food during breaks, varying the length of the breaks, keeping the total break time the same but dividing it into smaller or larger chunks\u2014and in each case, when a condition was changed, output went up, yet when it was changed back to where it had been in the first place, output went up _again_. And then, more confounding still, when each experiment was concluded, output sank all the way back to its original level.\n\nIt took a while to figure out what was going on, but the consensus that ultimately emerged from the Hawthorne experiments has had a profound effect on the science of work. The conclusion was not that workers craved a brighter workplace or a tidier one, or, for that matter, a darker one or a messier one. Instead, what the workers were responding to was attention. Each of these interventions demonstrated to the workers that management was interested in them and their experience, and they liked that. And thus liking their work a little more, they worked a little better, and a little faster, and by the end of the day produced a lot more.\n\nThe truth, then, is that _people need attention_ \u2014and when you give it to us in a safe and nonjudgmental environment, we will come and stay and play and work.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBut it's a bit more complicated than that, as it turns out, because feedback\u2014even negative feedback\u2014is still attention. And it's possible to quantify the impact of negative attention, if you will, versus positive attention, versus no attention at all, and thereby better understand what sort of attention we most want at work. In their ongoing study of engagement in the workplace, researchers at the Gallup Organization asked a representative sample of American workers whether their managers paid most attention to their strengths, to their weaknesses, or to neither, and they then asked a series of follow-up questions to measure how engaged each of these employees was. They then calculated the ratio of highly engaged employees to highly _dis_ engaged employees for each type of attention.\n\nTheir first finding told them, in effect, how to design the World's Worst Manager. To create pervasive disengagement, ignore your people. If you pay them no attention whatsoever\u2014no positive feedback; no negative feedback; nothing\u2014your team's engagement will plummet, so much so that for every one engaged team member you will have twenty disengaged team members.\n\nThe researchers' second finding might, on its face, look like a pretty encouraging outcome. They found that negative feedback is forty times more effective, as a team leadership approach, than ignoring people. For those employees whose leaders' attention was focused on fixing their shortcomings, the ratio of engaged to disengaged was two to one. But if we remember that \"engagement\" in this case is a precisely defined set of experiences that have been shown to _lead to_ team performance; and if we recall that most of us have been taught that negative feedback is the best, and that most of us experience mainly negative feedback in our professional lives; and if we consider what the researchers found when they looked at positive attention, then this ratio of two to one becomes much more worrying. Because the third finding was this: for those employees given mainly positive attention\u2014that is, attention to what they did best, and what was working most powerfully for them\u2014the ratio of engaged to disengaged rose to sixty to one.\n\nPositive attention, in other words, is _thirty times_ more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team. (It's also, if you're keeping score, _twelve hundred times_ more powerful than ignoring people, but we haven't yet come across a management theory that advocates ignoring people.) So while we may occasionally have to help people get better at something that's holding them back, if paying attention to what people _can't_ do is our default setting as team leaders, and if all our efforts are directed at giving and receiving negative feedback more often and more efficiently, then we're leaving enormous potential on the table. People don't need feedback. They need attention, and moreover, attention to what they do the best. And they become more engaged and therefore more productive when we give it to them.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nSo far, so good. We like positive attention, and it helps us do better work. But what about learning? If all we get is attention to our strengths, how will we ever develop? As Simon Sinek asked, what about those areas where he needs improvement? A team leader must surely want her team members to grow and get better, and won't this necessitate that she spend most of her time pinpointing flaws and fixing them?\n\nAgain, our informal theories of work\u2014our \"know for sure\" theories\u2014let us down. We seem to accept, on its face, the idea that \"strengths\" go at one end of the scale and \"areas for improvement\" or \"areas of opportunity\" go at the other, that areas of high performance are where we are most complete and areas of low performance are where we should, and can, grow.\n\nBut as we saw in the last chapter, the single most powerful predictor of both team performance and team engagement is the sense that \"I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.\" Now, we tend to think of \"performance\" and \"development\" as two separate things, as though development or growth is something that exists outside of the present-day work. But development means nothing more than doing our work a little better each day, so increasing performance and creating growth are the same thing. A focus on strengths increases performance. Therefore, a focus on strengths is what creates growth.\n\nThe best team leaders seem to know this. They reject the idea that the most important focus of their time is people's shortcomings, realizing instead that, in the real world, each person's strengths are in fact her areas of greatest opportunity for learning and growth; and that consequently, time and attention devoted to contributing to these strengths intelligently will yield exponential return now and in the future. Some of these leaders know this instinctively\u2014or perhaps they've figured it out from their experience with real humans on their teams\u2014but for the rest of us there is a wealth of biological data to reinforce the truth that positive attention accelerates development. At the microscopic level learning appears to be a function of neurogenesis: the growth of new neurons. And, as many recent studies have shown, the brain\u2014though it goes through its most frenzied periods of synapse growth and synapse pruning during childhood and adolescence\u2014never loses its ability to create more neurons and more synaptic connections between those neurons. This is referred to as \"neural plasticity,\" and it's often pointed to as a sign that, since the brain can keep mutating through life, we should keep telling people what's wrong with them so that they can fix themselves, so that they can learn to do it right.\n\nAnd of course, we _can_ all learn to do it right, or at least, right-er. We _can_ all learn to be slightly better at skills that we apply ourselves to with disciplined practice. However, what the brain science also reveals is that while the brain does continue to grow throughout life, each brain grows differently. Because of your genetic inheritance and the oddities of your early childhood environment, your brain's wiring is utterly unique\u2014no one has ever had a brain wired just like yours, and given the brain's complexity, no one ever will. Some parts of your brain have tight thickets of synaptic connections, while other parts are far less dense. And when we examine your brain's growth\u2014when we count the new neurons and their connections\u2014it turns out that you grow far more neurons and synaptic connections where you already have the most preexisting neurons and synaptic connections. Perhaps this is caused by nature's harshly efficient use-it-or-lose-it design, or perhaps, with so much preexisting biological infrastructure supporting your densest synaptic regions, it is simply easier to forge new connections where you already have lots. Either way, we now know that, though every brain grows, each grows most where it's already strongest. The arrow of brain development points toward specialization. As the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux memorably described it, \"Brain growth is like new buds on an existing branch, rather than new branches.\"\n\nSo the weight of the neurological evidence supports the notion that your strengths _are_ your development areas\u2014that these are, biologically speaking, one and the same. Neurological science can also tell us what happens in response to a deliberate focus on strengths instead of weaknesses. Consider, for example, an experiment during which scientists split students into two groups. To one group they gave positive coaching, asking about the students' dreams and how the students would go about achieving them, while with the other they probed about homework, and what the students thought they needed to do differently to be better. While these conversations were happening the scientists hooked each student up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, so as to see which parts of the brain were most activated in response to these different sorts of attention.\n\nHere's what they found. In the brains of the students who received negative feedback the sympathetic nervous system lit up. This is the \"fight or flight\" system, the system that mutes the other parts of the brain and thus allows us to focus only on the information most necessary to survive. When this part of the nervous system is triggered, your heart rate goes up, endorphins flood your body, your cortisol levels rise, and you tense for action. This is your brain on negative feedback: it responds as if to a threat, and it narrows its activity. The strong negative emotions produced by criticism \"inhibits access to existing neural circuits and invokes cognitive, emotional, and perceptual impairment,\" psychology and business professor Richard Boyatzis said in summarizing the researchers findings.\n\nNegative feedback doesn't enable learning. It systematically inhibits it and is, neurologically speaking, how to create _impairment_.\n\nIn the students who received attention focused on their dreams and how they might go about achieving them, however, the sympathetic nervous system was not activated. Instead it was the parasympathetic nervous system that lit up. This is sometimes referred to as the \"rest and digest\" system. To quote the researchers again: \"[T]he Parasympathetic Nervous System . . . stimulates adult neurogenesis (i.e., growth of new neurons) . . . , a sense of well being, better immune system functioning, and cognitive, emotional, and perceptual openness.\"\n\nIn other words, positive, future-focused attention gives your brain access to more regions of itself and thus sets you up for greater learning. We're often told that the key to learning is to get out of our comfort zones, but this finding gives the lie to that particular chestnut\u2014take us out of our comfort zones and our brains stop paying attention to anything other than surviving the experience. It's clear that we learn most _in_ our comfort zone, because that's our strengths zone, where our neural pathways are most concentrated. It's where we're most open to possibility, and it's where we are most creative and insightful.\n\nIf you want your people to learn more, pay attention to what's working for them right now, and then build on that.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe question is, how? How can you stimulate learning and growth within your team, steer clear of the negative feedback that sets your people back, and still ensure that your team is running smoothly and efficiently?\n\nThere's one thing you can start to do immediately: get into the conscious habit of looking for what's going well for each of your team members. The pull to look at the negative is a very strong one\u2014the Berkeley psychologist Rick Hanson sums up the research memorably when he says, \"the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones\"\u2014which is why making this a _conscious_ habit is so important. It might not come naturally or easily for you, but with such a payoff in terms of performance, engagement, and growth, it'll be worth practicing it.\n\nIn the world of computing, there's an event called a high-priority interrupt. It tells the computer's processor that something requires its immediate attention, and so it needs to \"interrupt\" normal processing and jump the particular something to the head of the processing queue. In the real world of team leaders you'll have quite a few things that function in the same way\u2014that grab your attention and force you to act. The majority of these high-priority interrupts are going to be problems, and that's normal. You don't want to administer medicine to a patient if it's the wrong medicine. You don't want to present something to your executive if you've just received information that half of what you're presenting is now obsolete. Any system or process that breaks down will demand that you, the team leader, address it. This is a high-priority interrupt doing what it should do: stopping everything to seize your attention.\n\nAnd the same high-priority interrupts will occur when one of your people messes up. You'll see something someone does wrong\u2014a poorly handled call, a missed meeting, a project gone awry\u2014and the same instinct will kick in: stop everything to tell that person what he did wrong, and what he needs to do to fix it.\n\nThe difficulty for you here is that people aren't processes, nor are they machines\u2014what works for processes and machines doesn't work for men and women. Processes and machines are finite and static, and unless we change something about them, they either stay the same or gradually wear out. People, by contrast, are in a constant state of learning and growing, and, as we just saw, they grow the most under positive attention and the least under negative feedback. Paradoxically, then, the more your high-priority interrupts involve catching your people doing things wrong (so you can fix them), the less productive each person will become in the short term, and the less growth you'll see from your team members in the long run. Finding itself in negative-criticism territory, the human brain stiffens, tenses, and\u2014in meaningful ways\u2014resists improvement. Machines and processes don't do that. You can fix a machine, you can fix a process, but you can't fix a person in the same way\u2014people aren't toasters.\n\nSo, when it comes to your people, what should be your high-priority interrupt? If what you want is improvement, then it should be whenever someone on your team does something that really works. The goal is to consciously spend your days alert for those times when someone on your team does something so easily and effectively that it rocks you, just a little, and then to find a way of telling that person what you just saw.\n\nThis sounds as easy as \"catch people doing things right,\" but as we'll see, there's a little more to it than that. Tom Landry, who coached the Dallas Cowboys for twenty-nine consecutive years, was one leader who figured this out. Early in his coaching career, with the Cowboys struggling at the bottom of the league and a bunch of misfits on his roster, he introduced a radical new method of coaching. While the other teams were reviewing missed tackles and dropped balls, Landry instead focused his players' attention on their wins, however minor. He combed through footage of previous games and created, for each player, a highlight reel of where that player had done something easily, naturally, and effectively. He reasoned that while the number of wrong ways to do something was infinite, the number of right ways, for any particular player, was not. It was finite, and knowable, and the best way to define and know the right way was to look at those plays where the player had done it right. So he set about capturing these distinctive moments of excellence and offering them up to each player. From now on, he said, \"we only replay your winning plays.\"\n\nNow, on one level, he was doing this to make his players feel better about themselves, because like all good team leaders, he knew the power of praise. The relevant survey item here is \"I know I will be recognized for excellent work.\" And as we've seen, the data shows that people on the highest-performing teams strongly agree with this item far more than people on lower-performing teams.*\n\nBut Landry wasn't nearly as interested in praise as he was in learning. His instincts told him that each person would learn best how to improve his performance if he could see, in slow motion, what his own personal versions of excellence looked like. Really great performance often happens in a state of flow, such that we're barely conscious of what we're doing\u2014Michael Jordan used to watch himself in post-game highlights and shake his head, saying, \"Wow, I did that?\" By replaying his players' winning plays Landry was taking them outside themselves and allowing them to see the contours and the rhythm of what \"working\" truly looked like for each one. In so doing, he hoped not only that they would feel more confident but also that they'd be in a better position to repeat and build on their unique strengths in action. David Cooperrider, professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University and creator of the theory of Appreciative Inquiry, has pointed out that organizational growth will always follow the focus of your attention. Tom Landry, twenty years earlier, was applying the same principle to his Cowboys.\n\nYou can do this, too. Nowadays, _recognition_ has become a synonym for _praise_ , but in doing so has moved some way from its origins. It comes to us from the Latin word _cognoscere_ , meaning _to know_ , which in turn stems from the Greek word _gnosis_ , meaning _knowledge_ or _learning_. Thus, to _re_ -cognize a person, in essence, means to come to know him anew. Recognition, in its deepest sense, is to spot something valuable in a person and then to ask her about it, in an ongoing effort to learn who she is when she is at her best.\n\nThe trick to doing this is not just to tell the person how well she's performed, or how good she is. While simple praise is by no means a bad thing, it captures a moment in the past rather than creating the possibility of more such moments in the future. Instead, what you'll want to do is tell the person what _you_ experienced when that moment of excellence caught your attention\u2014your instantaneous reaction to what worked. For a team member, nothing is more believable, and thus more powerful, than your sharing what you saw from her and how it made you feel. Or what it made you think. Or what it caused you to realize. Or how and where you will now rely on her. These are _your_ reactions, and when you share them with specificity and with detail, you aren't judging her or rating her or fixing her. You are simply reflecting to her the unique \"dent\" she just made in the world, as seen through one person's eyes\u2014yours. And precisely because it isn't a judgment or a rating, but is instead a simple reaction, it is authoritative and beyond question. It's also humble: when someone says to you \"I want to know where I stand\" she doesn't actually mean this, and you, frankly, are in no position to tell her\u2014you are not the ultimate and definitive source of truth for where she stands. Instead, what she means is \"I want to know where I stand _with you_.\" And happily, here your truth is unimpeachable.\n\nWith each replaying of these small moments of excellence, relayed through the lens of your own experience, you'll ease her into the rest-and-digest state of mind, her brain will become more receptive to new information and will make connections to other inputs found in other regions of her brain, and she will learn and grow and get better. It is, in short, the best recognition she could ever receive. You are learning about her, and relaying that learning to her, and, as on the best teams, she knows that tomorrow you will be doing so again. On such rituals is great performance built.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe nature of your attention is key. If a team member screws something up, of course you have to deal with it. But remember that when you do, you're merely remediating\u2014and that remediating what's wrong, so a mistake won't happen again, moves you no closer to creating excellent performance. If a nurse gives someone the wrong medication, ignoring that mistake could be lethal. So you can, of course, say to him, \"Don't ever do that again!\" And you can, of course, design a process to ensure that the medicine is always triple-checked before being administered to a patient. But as you do this, know that if the nurse now consistently gives the correct medication to his patients, this does not mean he's now giving excellent care leading to a faster and more complete recovery. Correcting the nurse's mistake won't lead to this, any more than correcting someone's grammar will lead to her writing a beautiful poem, or telling someone the correct punchline to a joke will make this person funny. Excellence is not the opposite of failure: we can never create excellent performances by only fixing poor ones. Mistake fixing is just a tool to prevent failure.\n\nTo conjure excellence from your team requires a different focus for your attention. If you see somebody doing something that really works, stopping them and replaying it to them isn't only a high-priority interrupt, it is arguably your highest-priority interrupt. Get into this habit and you'll be far more likely to lead a high-performing team.\n\nAnd what of balance? Landry said he would replay _only_ each player's winning plays. Should we go to that extreme, or should we highlight the occasional winning play but focus mainly on mistake fixing? How many positive replays, in other words, should we have for every mistake-fix? What is the best ratio of 'Yes, that!' to 'Stop that!'? Research in other areas of social science sheds some light on this. Look at professor John Gottman's work on happy marriages, or professor Barbara Fredrickson's work on happiness and creativity, and the positive-to-negative ratio you'll arrive at is somewhere between three to one and five to one\u2014three to five moments of appreciative attention for every one piece of negative feedback. While there is no need to obsess over the mathematical precision of the ratios, the science suggests that if you aim for this level of deliberate imbalance you and your team will be well served.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAll that being said, however, there will inevitably come a day when, despite your best intentions and careful highlight flagging, one of your people will implore you to give him negative feedback or corrective action. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, he'll say. Or he'll say that he finds himself stuck in the middle of a difficult situation, or is struggling with his job and is turning to you for advice on how to move forward. What do you do?\n\nTo begin with, try to resist the powerful temptation to jump in with your very best advice.*\n\nFirst, as we saw earlier in the chapter, your brain is wired uniquely, such that the world you see and the sense you make of it, the things in it that draw you in, or repel you, or drain you, or light you up, and the insights these things spark in your mind\u2014all these are utterly different from everyone else's, and become even more different as you grow. As a result, the advice given to you by a leader who is not you will not necessarily work for you. The best team leaders know this: They realize that, for example, if you are struggling with public speaking, they cannot just advise you to organize your flow, practice your stories, and nail your ending, because what you mean by _flow_ and _story_ and _nail the ending_ are going to be utterly different from what they mean by those very same words. They understand that the path you will take to your best performance will be unpredictably different from theirs.\n\nYou'll need to remember this the next time you give someone a piece of perfectly crafted advice and then see him do something quite different from what you'd prescribed. Don't get mad at him: it wasn't that he wasn't listening, or had nodded his assent and then passive-aggressively gone and done the exact opposite. He'd heard you, and more than likely, he wanted to do what you wanted him to do. It's just that he couldn't make sense of your sense. All he had was his own sense, so he acted out of that, as best he could.\n\nSeen in this light, much of what we call \"advice\" is perhaps better understood as _The Recitation Of A Set Of Tactics That Work For Me And Only Me_. Ray Dalio's principles are not universal, as interesting as we might find them to be. They are simply and only 210 tactics that work for Ray, or at most for people who share very many characteristics with Ray. In this sense, advice is akin to blood. Prior to the twentieth century doctors attempting blood transfusions found to their deep frustration that while in some cases they worked beautifully, in others the patient's body seemed to be allergic to the donor's blood and rejected it completely. It was only when the Austrian scientist Karl Landsteiner identified the existence of different blood types, and discovered that some blood types were physiologically incompatible with others, that doctors realized the importance of knowing the type of the donor and the patient before attempting a transfusion.\n\nThe same applies to \"performance transfusions.\" To succeed, they depend on how individuals make sense of what they're hearing\u2014how they metabolize it, and hook it into their own patterns of thought and behavior. Performance-transfusing advice, in other words, starts with the performer, not with the advice.\n\nThe second thing that great team leaders know, and that brain scientists have shown, is that an \"insight\" is brain food. These scientists aren't yet sure whether this is because insights come with a nice shot of dopamine or some other neurochemical transmitter, but what they do know is that the brain is built such that a new insight\u2014\"a feeling of knowing generated from within,\" to use their phrasing\u2014feels good. Perhaps you have felt this. Perhaps you have noticed it in others when you've tried repeatedly to teach and advise but seen performance leap only when your team member has combined this advice with her own raw material to create a flash of new understanding. This insight then becomes her sense maker, her lens through which to view the challenge in front of her, her guide as she navigates her way forward. This insight is learning, and while it can be nudged from without, it is only ever generated from within.\n\nWe take such pains with our advice. We are so proud of its kindly intent, its perspective, its generosity, and its sequence: the way we begin with a simple setup and then walk our confused advice seeker step-by-step through our carefully constructed logic, until we bring her gaze all the way to the solution standing before her, clear as day. We offer this painting up to her, beautiful and complete.\n\nBut the most helpful advice is not a painting. It is instead a box of paints and a set of brushes. Here, the best team leaders seem to say, take these paints, these brushes, and see what you can do with them. What do you see, from your vantage point? What picture can you paint?\n\nThis, in the end, is why they are so intent on replaying for you what's working for you. By helping you to see what \"working\" looks like for you, they're offering you an image that you can use as raw material for your painting, and since it was your behavior that created the image in the first place, you've already felt it from within. Now it's their job to show it to you from without, so that you can recognize it, and re-create it, and refine it.\n\nWhen a team member comes to you asking for advice, then, don't rush to your easel and start furiously painting away. Instead try this approach\u2014the box-of-paints approach, if you will, containing some hues of _present_ , some shades of _past_ , and a few bright dabs of _future_.\n\nStart with the _present_. If your team member approaches you with a problem, he is in it _now_. He is feeling weak, broken, or challenged, and you have to address that. But rather than dealing with it head-on, ask your colleague to tell you three things that are working for him _right now_. These \"things that are working\" might be related to the situation, or they might be completely separate from it. They might be significant or trivial. It doesn't matter. Just ask for three \"things that are working.\" In doing that, you're priming his mind with oxytocin\u2014what we sometimes call the \"love drug,\" but which here is better thought of as the \"creativity\" drug. By getting him to think about some specific things that are going right, you are deliberately altering his brain chemistry so that he can be open to new solutions, and new ways of thinking or acting.\n\n(By the way, you can be totally up-front with him about what you are doing\u2014the evidence suggests that the more active a participant he is in this, the more effective the technique.)\n\nNext, go to the _past_. Ask him, \"When you had a problem like this in the past, what did you do that worked?\" Much of our lives are lived through patterns, so it's highly likely that he has encountered this problem before and found himself similarly stuck. But on one of these occasions he will almost certainly have found some way forward, some action or insight or connection that worked for him and enabled him to move out of the mess. Get him thinking about that, and seeing it in his mind's eye: what he actually felt and did, and what happened next.\n\nFinally, turn to the _future_. Ask your team member, \"What do you already know you need to do? What do you already know works in this situation?\" In a sense you're operating under the assumption that he's already made his decision\u2014you're just helping him find it. At this point, by all means offer up one or two of your own paintings, to see if they might clarify his own. But above all keep asking him to describe what he already sees, and what he already knows works for him.\n\nThe emphasis here should not be on why questions (\"Why didn't that work?\" or \"Why do you think you should do that?\"), because these take both of you backward and upward into a fuzzy retrospective world of conjecture and concepts. Instead, rely on your what questions (\"What do you actually want to have happen?\" or \"What are a couple of actions you could take right now?\"). These sorts of questions yield concrete answers, in which your colleague finds his actual self doing actual things in the near future. Each answer he comes up with is a brushstroke to his painting, making his images ever more vivid, more compelling, and more real.\n\nAnd if he starts big, as some do, with huge swaths of color that overwhelm the entire canvas\u2014\"What I need to do is quit my job, buy a dinghy, and sail round the Cape of Good Hope\"\u2014then put a couple of smaller brushes in his hand and direct his gaze to one corner of the canvas: Here's a figure, you might suggest. Can you repaint it, in a different color perhaps, or with one small shift in the perspective? Perhaps he will be able to come up with a few things he knows he can tackle right now, rather than up and quitting his job. And then, guided by the small but increasingly vivid image in his own mind, he will, little by little, create a new painting.\n\n*The American philosopher John Rawls proposed, in 1971, a thought experiment to counter these theories of ours, an experiment he called The Veil of Ignorance. Essentially, he suggested that the best way to design the world was to imagine that when we were done designing it, we'd be randomly assigned some role in this new world, and that we should design in ignorance of what that role would be\u2014whether we would be rich or poor, male or female, academic or athletic, and so on. He proposed, in other words, that we should design a world for ourselves, for any imaginable permutation of ourselves, rather than for others. And this is likely a very good way to design a workplace, too\u2014not for those idiots, but for this one.\n\n\u2020This false syllogism is wonderfully memorialized in the British TV comedy _Yes, Prime Minister_ , in the form of \"We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.\" Its equivalent: \"All cats have four legs. My dog has four legs. Therefore, my dog is a cat.\" Logicians refer to this as the fallacy of the undistributed middle. For the rest of us, it's known as politicians' logic.\n\n*And in case you're wondering which drives which\u2014whether the performance leads to praise or vice versa\u2014the data reveals that though high performance at Time 1 does indeed relate to a higher score on the recognition item at Time 2, the correlation coefficients are four times bigger when pointed the other way: praise leads to performance more than praise reflects performance.\n\n*And the irony that we are here advising you not to give advice has not escaped us.\n\n#\n\n# People can reliably rate other people\n\nHow much do you think you can know about a person simply by watching him? If you work with him every single day, do you think you can figure out what drives him? Could you spot enough clues to reveal to you whether he's competitive, or altruistic, or has a burning need to cross things off his list every day? How about his style of thinking? Are you perceptive enough to see his patterns and pinpoint that he is a big-picture, what-if thinker, or a logical, deductive reasoner, or that he values facts over concepts? And could you parse how he relates to others, and discern, for instance, that he's far more empathetic than he appears, and that deep down he really cares about his teammates?\n\nPerhaps you can. Perhaps you are one of those people who instinctively picks up on the threads of others' behaviors and then weaves these into a detailed picture of who a person is and how he moves through the world. Certainly, the best team leaders seem able to do this. They pay close attention to the spontaneous actions and reactions of their team members, and figure out that one person likes receiving praise in private, while another values it only when it's given in front of the entire team; that one responds to clear directives, while another shuts down if you even appear to be telling her what to do. They know that each member of their team is unique, and they spend a huge amount of time trying to attend to and channel this uniqueness into something productive.\n\nHow about rating your team, though? Do you think you could accurately give your team members scores on each of their characteristics? If you surmise that one of your team is a strategic thinker, could you with confidence choose a number to signify how good at it she actually is? Could you do the same for her influencing skills, or her business knowledge, or even her overall performance? And if you were asked how much of these things she had in relation to everyone else on the team, do you think you could weigh each person precisely enough to put a number to each person's _relative_ abilities? This might sound a bit trickier\u2014you'd have to keep your definition of influencing skills stable, even while judging each unique person against that definition. But if we gave you a scale of one to five, with detailed descriptions of the behaviors associated with each number on the scale, do you think you could use that scale fairly, and arrive at a true rating?\n\nAnd even if you are confident in your own ability to do this, what do you think about all the other team leaders around you? Do you think they would use the scale in the same way, with the same level of objectivity and discernment as you? Or would you worry that they might be more lenient graders, and so wind up with higher marks for everyone, or that they might define \"influencing skills\" differently from you? Do you think it's possible to teach all of these team leaders how to do this in exactly the same way?\n\nIt's a lot to keep straight\u2014so many different people rating so many other different people on so many different characteristics, producing torrents of data. But keep it all straight we must, because this data represents people, and once collected, it comes to define how people are seen at work.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAt least once a year, a number of your more senior colleagues will gather together in a room to discuss you. They will talk about your performance, your potential, and your career aspirations, and decide on such consequential issues as how much bonus you should get, whether you should be selected for a special training program, and when or if you should be promoted. This meeting, as you might know, is called a talent review, and virtually every organization conducts some version of it. The organization's interest is in looking one by one at its people\u2014its talent\u2014and then deciding how to invest differentially in those individuals. The people who display the highest performance and potential\u2014the stars, if you like\u2014will normally get the most money and opportunity, while those further down the scale will get less, and those struggling at the lower end of the scale will more than likely be moved into a euphemistically described Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) and thereby eased out.\n\nThese talent reviews are the mechanism that organizations use to manage their people. They want to keep the best people happy and challenged, and simultaneously weed out those who aren't contributing. Since, in most organizations, the largest costs are people's wages and benefits, these meetings are taken very seriously, and the most pressing question\u2014a central preoccupation of all senior leaders in all large organizations\u2014is, \"How can we make sure that we are seeing our people for who they really are?\" This is a wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night sort of question for senior leaders, because they worry that their team leaders might not, in fact, understand the sort of person the organization needs nearly as clearly as the senior leaders do, and further that the team leaders might not be objective raters of their own people.\n\nTo combat this worry, companies have set up all sorts of systems designed to add rigor to this review process. The one you may be most familiar with is the nine box. This is a graph showing _performance_ along the x-axis and _potential_ up the y-axis, with each axis divided into thirds\u2014low, medium, and high\u2014to create nine possible regions. Each team leader is asked to think about each person on his or her team and then place them, in advance of the talent review, into one of the nine boxes\u2014to rate them, that is, on both their performance and their potential. This system is designed to allow a team leader to highlight that a particular person might have bags of potential, and yet not have translated that potential into actual performance, whereas another team member might contribute top-notch performance, and yet have very little potential upside\u2014he's maxed out in his current position. With this data displayed in the talent review, the leadership team can define different courses of action for each person: the former will be given more training and more time, for example, while the latter might just be offered a healthy bonus.\n\nMany companies also give people performance ratings on a scale of 1\u20135, either in parallel with or as an alternative to the nine-box process. Again, each team leader is asked to propose a rating for each person on his or her team. Then, before or as part of the talent review, there is a meeting called a \"consensus\" or \"calibration\" meeting, which goes something like this: your team leader talks about you and defends why she ended up giving you a 4 rating, and then her colleagues weigh in on why they gave their people 5s, or 4s, or 3s, whereupon debates ensue about what really constitutes a 4, whether a 4 on one team is the same as a 4 on another team, whether you truly deserve a 4 this year, and if you do, whether the organization has enough 4s left over to allow you to have one.\n\nIf the organization has run out of 4s\u2014which happens often since many team leaders are reluctant to give a person a 3 or, perish the thought, a 2\u2014then your team leader may have to give you a 3 and tell you that, though you truly deserved a 4, it wasn't your turn this year, and that she will look out for you next year. This is called \"forcing the curve,\" which is the name given to the rather painful process of reconciling the organization's need to have only a certain percentage of employees show up as super-high performers with the team leaders' tendency to give high ratings to everyone so as to avoid having unpleasant performance conversations. Forced curves are no one's idea of fun, but they are felt to be a necessary constraint on team leaders, and a way of ensuring that rewards are appropriately \"differentiated,\" so that high performers get much more than low performers.\n\nPerhaps wanting to add more precision to the words _performance_ and _potential_ , many organizations have created lists of competencies that team members are supposed to possess, and against which they are rated at the end of the year. In chapter 4 we questioned whether these models were true reflections of what performance looks like in the real world. (Does anyone really have all of the competencies? Can we really prove that those who acquire the ones they lack outperform those who don't?) Nevertheless, many organizations still rate each person against such standard checklists. To aid in this, each competency is defined in terms of behaviors, and then the behaviors are tied to a particular point on the rating scale. So, for example, on a competency called organizational savvy and politics, if you see that the person \"Provides examples of savvy approaches to successfully solving organizational problems,\" then you'd rate her a three. If you see that she \"Recognizes and effectively addresses politically challenging situations,\" you would rate her a four. Using your behaviorally anchored competency ratings as your building blocks, you would then be asked to construct an overall rating of her performance and potential, and this is how she'd be represented during the talent review.\n\nHistorically, the talent review has happened only once or twice a year, but as we saw with Bridgewater Associates, with the arrival of smartphones it's now technologically possible for an organization to launch short performance-ratings surveys throughout the year. Each person can be rated by their peers, direct reports, and bosses, and then the scores can be aggregated either at mid-year or at year's end to produce a final performance rating. A number of startup, venture-capital\u2013backed companies are leading the charge in bringing constant ratings into the workplace, and have gained such traction that the more established Human-Capital-Management software providers are scrambling to create their own always-on rating tools, and large institutions such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and General Electric are building their own versions.\n\nThis race to real-time ratings appears as inevitable as it is frenzied, and all of it is in service of the organization's interest, which is to answer the question, \"When it comes to our people, what do we _really_ have here?\"\n\n_Your_ interest in all this is related, but different. You won't be too worried about competencies, and calibration sessions, and behavioral anchors, all of which probably sound a bit esoteric. Instead, you'll be acutely aware of a few real-world practicalities that boil down to the fact that your pay, your promotion possibilities, and possibly even your continued employment are being decided in a meeting to which you are conspicuously not invited. The people who _are_ in the room\u2014some of whom you know, and some of whom know you, and others of whom you've never met\u2014are talking about you, and people like you, and they are rating you, deciding which box you go in, and thereby deciding what you will get after a year of hard work, and also where your career will go next. You may not realize this during your first couple of years in the workforce, but once you do, it will preoccupy you. You'll think to yourself: I really want these people to think well of me. I really, really want these people not to think ill of me. But most of all, I want the truth of me in the room where the decisions are made. This is your interest.\n\nYou will come to wonder about these rating scales, these peer surveys, and these always-on 360-degree apps, and you will hope that there is enough science in them, enough rigor and process, that you\u2014ideally, the best of you\u2014will be portrayed accurately. After that, let the chips fall where they may. At least, then, you will have been given a fair hearing on your true merits as a person, and as a team member.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIt is going to bother you greatly to learn, then, that in the real world, none of this works. None of the mechanisms and meetings\u2014not the models, not the consensus sessions, not the exhaustive competencies, not the carefully calibrated rating scales\u2014 _none_ of them will ensure that the truth of you emerges in the room, because _all_ of them are based on the belief that _people can reliably rate other people_. And they can't.\n\nThis, in all its frustrating simplicity, is our sixth lie.\n\nIt's frustrating because it would be so much more convenient if, with enough training and a well-designed tool, a person could become a reliable rater of another person's skills and performance. Think of all the data on you we could gather, aggregate, and then act on! We could precisely peg your performance and your potential. We could accurately assess your competencies. We could look at all of these and more through the eyes of your bosses, peers, and subordinates. And then we could feed all this into an algorithm, and out would come promotion lists, succession plans, development plans, nominations for the high-potential program, and more.\n\nBut none of this is possible, despite the fact that many human-capital software systems claim to do exactly what's described above. Over the last forty years, we have tested and retested people's ability to rate others, and the inescapable conclusion\u2014reported in research papers such as \"The Control of Bias in Ratings: A Theory of Rating\" and \"Trait, Rater and Level Effects in 360-Degree Performance Ratings\" and \"Rater Source Effects Are Alive and Well After All\"\u2014is that human beings cannot reliably rate other human beings, on anything at all.\n\nWe could confirm this by watching the ice-skating scoring at any recent Winter Olympics\u2014how can the Chinese and the Canadian judges disagree so dramatically on the scoring of that triple toe loop?\u2014but instead, let's take a look at the most revealing real-world study of our rating prowess, or lack thereof. It was conducted by two professors, Steven Scullen and Michael Mount, and one industrial\/organizational psychologist, Maynard Goff. They collected ratings on 4,392 team leaders, from two direct reports, two peers, and two bosses. These team leaders were rated on a combination of leadership competencies, such as \"manages execution\" or \"fosters teamwork\" or \"analyzes issues,\" with a short list of questions measuring each competency, for a total of just under half a million ratings from over twenty-five thousand raters.\n\nThe researchers then asked a straightforward question: What best explained why the raters rated the way they did? Could ratings best be explained by relative positioning in the organizational hierarchy, in which case all your direct reports would give you similar ratings, which were measurably different from those given by your peers, which in turn were different from those given by your bosses? Or was the strongest effect a rater's sense of your overall performance\u2014if someone thought highly of you overall, did this affect every single question he or she rated you on? Or was the most powerful factor driving your score on each of the six questions per competency how the person rated you on the other five questions for that competency? If he or she felt you had lots of political savvy, in other words, did this increase scores not only on one of the questions related to political savvy but on all of them? These three possible explanations\u2014rater perspective, overall performance, and competency performance, as the researchers termed them\u2014represented three increasingly close measures of the thing the ratings were trying to measure (your performance on a given skill), with the last of the three being closest to the mark.\n\nObviously, each rater had her own reasoning for each rating, but by slicing and dicing the data the researchers hoped to see what best explained the overall patterns, and what they found was that most of the variation in people's scores\u201454 percent of it\u2014could be explained by a single factor: the unique personality of the rater. From the data it was apparent that each rater\u2014regardless of whether he or she was a boss, a peer, or a direct report\u2014displayed his or her own particular rating pattern. Some were very lenient raters, skewing far to the right of the rating scale, while others were tough graders, skewing left. Some had natural range, using the entire scale from one to five, while others seemed to be more comfortable arranging their ratings in a tight cluster. Each person, whether he or she realized it or not, had an idiosyncratic pattern of ratings, so this powerful effect came to be called the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect.\n\nHere's what's going on. When Lucy rates Charlie on the various subquestions in the competency called strategic thinking, there is a distinct pattern to her ratings, which her organization believes reflects her judgment about how much strategic thinking Charlie has. For this to be true, however, when Lucy then turns her attention to a different team member, Snoopy, and rates him on the same competency, the pattern of her ratings should change, because she is now looking at a different person with, presumably, different levels of strategic thinking. What the Scullen, Mount, and Goff research reveals is that Lucy's pattern of ratings does _not_ change when she rates two different people. Instead her ratings stay just about the same\u2014her ratings pattern travels with her, regardless of who she's rating, so her ratings reveal more about _her_ than they do about her team members. We think that rating tools are windows that allow us to see out to other people, but they're really just mirrors, with each of us endlessly bouncing us back at ourselves.\n\nAnd this effect is not, by the way, associated with unconscious bias on the part of the rater for or against people of a particular gender, race, or age. These biases do exist, of course, and we should do everything we can to teach people how to see past them or remove them\u2014but the discovery from this research is that the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect applies _regardless_ of the gender, race, or age of both the rater and the person being rated. The idiosyncrasy of the rating pattern stems from the uniqueness of the rater, and doesn't appear to have much of anything to do with the person being rated. In fact, it's pretty much as though that person isn't there at all.\n\nThe measurement community was understandably frustrated by the size of the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect, so it expended considerable effort trying to minimize it or remove it. The increasingly detailed descriptions of what constitutes a five versus a four, and the behavioral anchors attached to each point on the competency scales, are all part of that effort. Unfortunately, we now know that these increasingly detailed scales and anchors actually _magnify_ the effect: the more complex the rating scale, the more powerful the influence of our idiosyncratic rating patterns. It's almost as if we get overwhelmed by the complexity of the rating scale and revert to the \"safety\" of our natural rating pattern.\n\nWhen we rate other people on a list of questions about their abilities, the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect explains _more than half_ of why we choose the ratings we do. The three largest studies of people rating other people in the way that we do at work have reached strikingly similar conclusions: about 60 percent of the variability in ratings can be chalked up to the raters' differing responses to a rating scale.\n\nSince you're most concerned that the truth of you be in the room, this should worry you enormously. The rating given to you tells us, in the main, about the _rating patterns of your team leader_ , and yet, in the room, we act as though it tells us about the _performance patterns in you_.\n\nAnd even if we could in fact correct for our rating idiosyncrasies, we'd still have another hurdle in front of us. The people you work with simply don't interact with you enough to be able to pinpoint the extent to which you possess, say, influencing skills, or political savvy, or strategic thinking, or frankly any abstract attribute. People at work are preoccupied (with work, mainly), and paying attention to you closely and continuously enough to be able to rate you on any of these abstractions is a practical impossibility. They simply don't see you enough. Their data on you is insufficient\u2014hence the name for this second hurdle: _data insufficiency_. If Olympic ice-skating judges can't agree on the quality of each triple toe loop, when the only thing they are doing is sitting watching triple toe loops one after the other, then what hope does a busy peer, direct report, or boss have of accurately rating your \"business acumen\"?\n\nEven if we changed the world of work, and created a job category of roving raters whose sole responsibility was to wander the hallways and meeting rooms, to watch each person act and react in real time, and then to rate each person on a list of qualities, we still wouldn't get good data, in part because our definitions are poor. A triple toe loop is defined as a take-off from a backward outside (skate) edge assisted by the toe of the other foot, followed by three rotations, followed by a landing on the same backward outside edge\u2014and this is the only definition of it. Look up _business acumen_ , on the other hand, and you'll find something like this:\n\n> Business acumen is keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation . . . people with business acumen . . . are able to obtain essential information about a situation, focus on the key objectives, recognise the relevant options available for a solution, [and] select an appropriate course of action.\n\nAnd this is just one of many definitions you'll encounter. Furthermore, there is a world of difference between the specificity of \"take-off from a backward outer edge\" and the vagueness of \"essential information,\" \"key objectives,\" and \"appropriate course of action.\" Essential to whom? Key objectives as determined by whom? Appropriate course of action as determined how? Of course, each of us reading the definitions thinks, \"Well, I could easily define those for myself\"\u2014but that's the point. When we rate people on abstractions, there is even more scope for our ratings to reflect our own idiosyncrasies. And because one person's understanding of _business acumen_ is meaningfully different from another's, even when two highly trained and focused raters rate the same person on the same quality, they find it extraordinarily difficult to arrive at the same rating for the same quality.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nTo all this talk of the _Idiosyncratic Rater Effect_ and _data insufficiency_ , however, some will tell you to calm your fears. The truth of you will indeed emerge in the room, they'll say, because even though one person might be an unreliable and idiosyncratic rater, many people won't be. If each person can just manage to get you \"roughly right,\" and if we aggregate the \"roughlys,\" then we'll wind up seeing you pretty clearly. This is the logic upon which 360-degree surveys are based: one person may be off base, but if ten people are telling you that you lack business acumen, then it's a safe bet that you do indeed lack business acumen.\n\nUnfortunately, despite its ubiquity, this line of thinking is wrong. It contains two fallacies. The first of these concerns the wisdom of crowds. This was an idea popularized by James Surowiecki in his book of the same name, in which he described example after example of a well-informed majority being wiser than a sole genius. He began the book with the story of Charles Darwin's half-cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who, while attending the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition in 1906, came upon a competition to guess the weight of an ox. For sixpence, anyone who was interested could buy a ticket and write his guess on it, and the person whose guess was closest to the ox's actual weight would win a prize. Galton was fascinated by data, so he stuck around after the winner had been announced and asked if he could borrow the eight hundred tickets on which the guesses had been written. He divided the sum of the guesses by the number of them to find the average. The ox's actual weight was 1,198 pounds, and lo and behold, the average of all the guesses was 1,197 pounds. The crowd was wise.\n\nAnd this is entirely true\u2014well-informed crowds are wise, and very often wiser than a small, privileged, expert elite. But the critical qualifier in that sentence is _well-informed_. The mechanism that creates wisdom in crowds is that lots of members of the crowd have real-world experience of the question being asked\u2014in this case, most of them were from the surrounding farmlands and knew, roughly, the weight of oxen (and even if they didn't, they had a shared understanding of what \"weight\" was). Take all those \"roughlys\" and average them, and you do indeed get pretty close to the ox's actual weight.\n\nBut what happens if the crowd is ill-informed? What happens if instead of the ox's weight the crowd had been asked to guess the number of atoms in the ox's body? Or how \"friendly\" the ox was? The crowd, lacking any real-world frame of reference for the thing being guessed at, wouldn't be wise at all. This is what happens when lots of people who encounter you infrequently, and who each have different definitions of _business acumen_ , are asked to rate you on it. We get the 360-degree-survey equivalent of West Country folk guessing the number of atoms in an ox.*\n\nThe counterargument to this would be that in this analogy, business acumen is more like the weight of the ox than the number of atoms in the ox\u2014we know what business acumen is, so we can indeed roughly rate one another on it. What we discover in the data, however, is that each person seems to have his own idiosyncratic definition of _business acumen_ , and that the more we try to standardize the definition with behavioral descriptions such as those we saw earlier, the greater the idiosyncratic rater effect becomes.* The same applies to other characteristics such as influencing, decision making, or even performance. Each of these is an abstract vessel into which we pour our own unique meaning: we are not well-informed, and we are, as raters, about as effective as farmers would be estimating numbers of atoms. This is the first crowd-based fallacy\u2014that all of us are (always) smarter than one of us.\n\nThe second fallacy is this: that although one person's rating of you might be bad data, if we combine it with six other people's equally bad ratings data, we will magically turn it into good data\u2014that somehow the errors will be averaged out. But this is not how data works. Errors average out only if they are random. If they are systematic\u2014if they stem, for example, from a faulty measurement instrument, as they do when we rate one another\u2014then adding them up produces more error, not less. Noise plus noise plus noise never equals signal; it only ever equals lots of noise. In fact, the truth about data is that noise plus signal plus signal plus signal still equals noise, because the tiniest amount of bad data contaminates all the good data.\n\nWe found an intriguing example of this in the story of Ariel 6, the last in a series of scientific research satellites designed and built by the United Kingdom and launched by the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. It carried three instruments, a cosmic ray detector and two X-ray detectors. The X-ray detectors were aligned with the spin axis of the satellite, so to point them at a specific star, the entire satellite had to be pointed at a particular region of the sky. To achieve this attitude control, the designers came up with an ingenious way of using the Earth's magnetic field both to measure where the detectors were pointed and to change the actual orientation of the satellite. And in order to measure the magnetic field, the satellite was equipped with instruments called magnetometers. There were two of them, not only to provide redundancy but also to enable the two independent measurements to be combined and averaged so as to reduce any random errors.\n\nIn the summer of 1979, the satellite was carefully packed up, shipped from the United Kingdom to Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, mounted atop a Scout rocket, and launched into space. It immediately encountered problems: The satellite was not spinning about its designated axis and was slightly off-kilter. There were problems recharging the batteries. And for some reason the X-ray detectors were detecting fewer X-rays than scientists had expected they would. The scientists needed to run a test to figure out what had gone wrong, so they pointed the satellite at the strongest X-ray source in the sky, the Crab Nebula.\n\nBy comparing what they expected to see with what they were actually seeing, they made two discoveries. First, the surfaces of the mirrors of one of the X-ray detectors had become contaminated\u2014as a result, in future missions X-ray mirrors were protected until it was safe to expose them to space. And second, it became obvious that the satellite wasn't pointing exactly where it should be\u2014it was off by a few degrees. There was a fault, it turned out, with one of the magnetometers, so there was a systematic error in the averaged measurements. And with that bad data mixed with the good data from the other magnetometer, the satellite didn't know where it was\u2014it couldn't be pointed accurately at the right star.\n\nIn the world of ratings, the idea that we can always cover for the possibility that any individual data source is bad by getting lots of data from lots of sources and averaging it is wrong and harmful. Adding bad data to good, or the other way around, doesn't improve the quality of the data or make up for its inherent shortcomings.\n\nFor Ariel 6, the solution was to ignore the readings from the faulty magnetometer and rely on those from the good one. But when it comes to the talent-review meetings aiming to identify our best people, we don't have this option. _All_ our readings are faulty\u2014we have no good data to rely on. We are, literally, using flawed data to point us at the wrong (human) stars.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nSo far, we've seen that 1) human beings can never be trained to reliably rate other human beings, that 2) ratings data derived in this way is contaminated because it reveals far more of the rater than it does of the person being rated, and that 3) the contamination cannot be removed by adding more contaminated data. And this means, in turn, that ratings-based tools, be they annual engagement surveys, performance-rating tools, 360-degree surveys, or any of the many other varieties at large, do _not_ measure what they purport to measure. And _this_ means, in turn, that discussions based on the data generated by these tools do _not_ accurately reflect the truth of you. Faced with this sorry state of affairs, what on earth should we do?\n\nA sensible place for us to start is by learning to tell good data from bad. As most everyone at work will tell you, we are running headlong into a big-data world in which every single process, outcome, item, personal preference, and interaction will be captured, quantified, and run through machine-learning-enabled algorithms. The promise of this world is that, with all of these data points collected in real time, we'll be able to apply artificial intelligence to examine and learn from the relationships between the points, and thereby understand which thing predicts which other thing how frequently and under what conditions.\n\nBut none of these algorithms will yield anything useful unless they're grinding on good data. If we were to discover that having your cellphone in your pocket makes thermometers go haywire (don't worry, we haven't), then we wouldn't be able to learn anything useful from studying your temperature data over time, or the relationship of your temperature to some other data point, because all of your temperature data would have been contaminated by the cellphone in your pocket\u2014garbage data in, garbage discoveries out.\n\nSo what, precisely, is \"good data\"?\n\nWe can say that good data has three distinct characteristics: it is reliable, it is variable, and it is valid.\n\n_Reliable_ data is simply data that we are confident is measuring what it says it's measuring, in a stable and predictable way. The most obviously reliable data comes from anything that can be counted, because if a thing can be counted\u2014whether with your fingers or with some sort of measuring tool\u2014then no matter whose fingers or tool we are using, we'll still get the same data. Your height is reliable data, as is the amount of money in your paycheck, the number of days you missed from work last year, and the temperature outside your office on a particular spring afternoon.\n\nIf, however, we walk outside with our thermometer on that spring day and it displays a reading of 69 degrees Fahrenheit, but then ten minutes later reads 21 degrees, although it's theoretically possible that the world just got dramatically colder, it's much more likely that our thermometer is broken. If after another ten minutes it now reads 75 degrees, we can be pretty sure that it's the instrument that's gone crazy, not the world. There are various statistical tests we can do to assess the reliability of a data set, but in essence, we come to trust our data-gathering tools when the data they generate doesn't change if the thing they're measuring doesn't change. Unreliable data, on the other hand, is wobbly data\u2014it seems to move all by itself. And any measurement tool that spits out changes in data when nothing in the real world is actually changing is, like a broken thermometer, not to be trusted.\n\nThis is why 360-degree-feedback tools are unreliable. The data they produce is supposed to measure the presence of certain competencies in the person rated, yet when we examine the data, it's clear that it wobbles about by itself, because what the tool is actually responding to is the idiosyncrasy of the rater.\n\n_Variable_ data is data that displays natural (unforced) range\u2014that is, range that reflects actual range in the real world. We can judge the quality of a measurement tool by its ability to measure and display this real-world range. Sticking with our temperature example, if we had a regular, store-bought thermometer whose lowest possible reading was 10 degrees below freezing and we took it to the South Pole, then each day our thermometer would tell us that it was 10 degrees below freezing, even though, in actual fact, it was much colder than that. Our thermometer, lacking the ability to measure the full range of what we wanted it to, would fail us as a measurement tool. It wouldn't be broken; it would merely be ill-suited for the task at hand.\n\nIf you've ever taken a training course at work and then been asked to rate it, you'll be familiar with a measurement tool that produces invariable data. Ask class participants to respond to the question, \"Overall, this was a good learning experience,\" on a five-point scale, with five being \"strongly agree\" and one \"strongly disagree,\" and you'll discover that virtually all the responses are either a four or a five. Whereas our thermometer is poorly suited for its Arctic purpose, this training measurement tool is poorly designed. Nevertheless the effect is the same: the data it produces has no range, no natural variation.\n\nPerformance-rating tools are similarly poorly designed. When we ask team leaders to rate their team members on a five-point scale, the data winds up looking like it came from a tool with a three-point scale, because team leaders seldom, if ever, use the bottom two scores. (This is why so many companies feel the need to force the curve\u2014if they didn't, the performance-rating tool simply wouldn't produce data with range.)\n\nTo produce range in our rating tools, we have to create questions that contain extreme wording. A question such as, \"I feel that my job fits my abilities,\" produces very little range at all\u2014pretty much everyone agrees or strongly agrees. This is why when we sought to measure the issue of strengths-role fit we chose to word the question, \"I have the chance to use my strengths _every day_ at work.\" The words _every day_ are extreme, and their effect is to push respondents toward either end of the rating scale\u2014to produce range.* Look back to each of the eight team-experience questions we described in chapter 1 and you'll see that each of them contains an extreme wording. So, for example, the question measuring mission and purpose isn't, \"I believe that my company has a worthy vision,\" but is instead, \"I am _really enthusiastic_ about the mission of my company.\"\n\nThese may appear to be small differences, but on them rests the tool's ability to generate data that captures real-world range.\n\nFinally, we have to ask ourselves whether this range in reliable data matters. Does a high score on the measurement tool predict a high score on something else in the real world? Does variation in the tool relate to variation in something else in the real world? This, for data geeks, is the Holy Grail, and its proper (if less than compelling) name is \"criterion-related validity.\" We can say that a tool's data is _valid_ if the range of data produced by the tool predicts range in something else\u2014if we can prove, time and again, that it is measuring something that correlates with or predicts a different outcome measured using a different tool. For example, Amazon can say that its customer-recommendation data is _valid_ (or, has \"criterion-related validity\") if it can prove that people who bought one item really did also buy a different item. When Amazon knows for sure that the number of clicks on one web page relates to the number of clicks on an entirely different page, then it can have confidence that it's looking at _valid_ data.\n\nOr, we can say an engagement tool's data is valid if the people who rate their engagement more positively on the tool actually wind up staying with the company longer\u2014in this case, range in engagement scores predicts subsequent range in voluntary turnover. One piece of reliable data predicts another piece of reliable data, and so, careful step by careful step, do we add to our store of valid knowledge about the world.\n\n_Reliable_ , _variable_ , and _valid_ \u2014these are the signs of good data, and these three concepts will help you intelligently examine the quality of any data put in front of you.\n\nFor example, if someone claims his data is _valid_ you might ask him, politely, whether he can prove that this data has been shown to predict something else, measured by something else, in the real world. If he can show this\u2014 _\u00e0 la_ Amazon and the clicks from one page driving the clicks on another\u2014then you're probably looking at valid data.\n\nIf someone comes to you and asks you to pay attention to a data set, ask yourself if the data displays natural variation or range. Ask to see a scatter plot. If the data points on the scatter plot all cluster to one end of the scale or the other, it's probably not good data. And of course, any data in which someone has had to fake range by forcing the curve, through a calibration or consensus session, is always bad data. The consensus has contaminated the data, the range is forced, and so the data is bad.\n\nThe place to start, however, is _always_ reliability. Your statistician friends will tell you that all data-based discoveries are built on reliability. When we measure things, we have to make sure that the measurement tool doesn't generate data that wobbles by itself\u2014because if it's wobbling by itself, then we'll never be able to trust its range, and thus never be able to prove that its range can predict range in something else we're interested in in the real world. No reliability means no validity\u2014no knowledge. On anything, ever.\n\nAnd, as we've seen in this chapter, the problem with almost all data relating to people\u2014including you\u2014is that it isn't reliable. Goals data that reports your \"percent complete\"; competency data comparing you to abstractions; ratings data measuring your performance and your potential through the eyes of unreliable witnesses: it wobbles by itself, and fails to measure what it says it's measuring.\n\nOne of the most bizarre implications of this systematic unreliability is that, in what is supposedly the age of big data, no organization can say what drives performance\u2014at least, not knowledge-worker performance. We may be able to say something intelligent about what drives sales, say, or piece-work output, because both of these are inherently and reliably measurable\u2014they can be counted. But for any other work\u2014which means most work\u2014we have no way of knowing what drives performance, because we have no reliable way of measuring performance. We don't know whether bigger teams drive performance more than smaller teams. We don't know whether remote workers perform better than colocated workers. We don't know whether culturally more diverse teams are higher performing than less diverse ones. We don't know whether contractors are higher performers than full-time employees, or if it's the other way around. We can't even show that our investments in the training and development of our employees lead to greater performance. We can't say anything about any of these things, precisely because we have no reliable way to measure performance.\n\nSo when you read definitive statements about these things or, for that matter, about any other aspects of performance, your data-quality alarm bells should ring in your ears. While each of these things might be true, the exact opposite might also be true. Until we come up with a reliable way to measure individual knowledge-worker performance\u2014whether this means the performance of a nurse, or a software developer, or a teacher, or a construction worker\u2014any claim about what drives performance is not valid. No one knows, and anyone who claims to know simply doesn't know good data from bad.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhat can you do about this? Well, you can start by asking about it. Ask where your performance or potential ratings come from. Ask what competencies you might have been rated on. Ask to see the survey questions themselves. And if you see a survey filled with questions in which the rater is being asked to rate you on your specific behaviors or competencies, ask whether this survey has taken into account the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect. You will probably get a blank stare in response, so perhaps have this chapter handy, or download one of the articles mentioned earlier. More than likely you will see no immediate change in either the tool or the process, but at least you will be aware, and you will start to gain a reputation as someone who intelligently and rigorously interrogates the data you see. That's always a good reputation to have.\n\nThe other thing you can do, if you have the influence and the intention, is to change the way that the \"people stuff\" in your organization is measured. Because there is a better way\u2014a more reliable way\u2014to capture data about people. And it is based on this truth: although we are not reliable raters of others, _people can reliably rate their own experience_.\n\nIf we ask you to rate your local representative on his political savvy, your rating is not a reliable measure of something called \"political savvy\"\u2014you are not able to reach into his psyche and reliably weigh the presence or absence of this abstract quality. However, if we ask you today who you plan to vote for, your answer _is_ a reliable measure of who you plan to vote for today. It is a much humbler measure since it is asking only that you tell us about how you are feeling today about your voting preference, but it is a _reliable_ measure of what it says it's measuring.\n\nLikewise, if we ask you to rate one of your team on \"growth potential,\" then your rating is unreliable\u2014because what is growth potential, and how can you be the judge of it? But if we ask if you plan to promote her today, your answer _is_ reliable. While you may not be able to project into _her_ psyche and accurately perceive her growth potential, you are able to ask _yourself_ if you plan to promote her today, and the answer you get back will be a reliable one. (When we report on our own experiences, we have all the data we need\u2014we have perfect data sufficiency\u2014because we're with ourselves a lot!) Your answer is exactly and only what it purports to be: your subjective reaction to her, carefully measured. It is both a humbler piece of data and, at the same time, a more reliable one.\n\nIn the same vein, your rating of a team member on something called \"performance\" is unreliable, because your definition of _performance_ is unique to you. But in contrast, your response to the question, \"Do you turn to this team member when you want extraordinary results?\" is entirely reliable. With this question we are not asking you to stand above her, and outside of yourself, and opine dispassionately on her performance. Instead we are asking you to look inside yourself and tell us simply whether you feel confident to go to her when you want something done excellently. You cannot be wrong about this, because there is no right or wrong, only your feeling about what you would or wouldn't do with this team member. Someone else might disagree with you, but this doesn't make that person right\u2014it just makes his or her reaction to the team member different from yours.\n\nOnce again, the data here is humbler (it's just you rating your own experience) and at the same time more reliable (you _know_ your own experience).\n\nSo as a general rule, if you're after good data, be on the lookout for questions that ask only that you rate your own experience, or intended actions. You may not know if questions such as these are valid\u2014that is, you may not know if the responses to them predict something in the real world\u2014but at least you'll know that these responses will be reliable. And just to be clear, _reliable_ doesn't mean _accurate_. _Reliable_ means something doesn't fluctuate randomly. Thus, when we say you are a reliable rater of your own experiences or intentions, we do _not_ mean that you are an accurate rater of your own personality or performance. If we ask you to rate yourself on performance or on growth orientation or on learning agility, you are most definitely _not_ an accurate rater of these things\u2014if these things even exist. Instead, all we mean is that you are a reliable rater of your own internal experiences and intentions. That's it.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nLooking through this lens, we can now begin to answer the thorny question of how to measure knowledge-worker performance: we can use our reliability in reporting our experience and intended actions to design a different type of question. And the trick is to invert our line of inquiry. Rather than asking whether another person has a given quality, we need to ask how we would _react_ to that other person if he or she did\u2014we need to stop asking about others, and instead ask about ourselves. Once we've designed questions like this, we could then simply ask team leaders, every quarter or at the end of every project, what their experience was like of each team member. Here's what that would look like in practice.\n\nWe could ask a question about the quality of the team member's work, such as the one from earlier: \"Do you always go to this team member when you need extraordinary results?\"\n\nWe could ask another about how \"team-y\" a person was, not by asking the team leader to rate the person on collaboration or cooperation, but instead by asking the leader about what he would do, or how he would feel, were he in the presence of someone who was highly collaborative: \"Do you choose to work with this team member as much as you possibly can?\"\n\nWe could ask about the team member's future prospects. And here we would again steer clear of having the team leader rate the person on potential or some other abstract characteristic. Instead we'd ask about intent, like this: \"Would you promote this person today if you could?\"\n\nAnd finally, we'd probably want to ask the team leader if there was anything in the person's work to be concerned about, with a question such as this: \"Do you think this person has a performance problem that you need to address immediately?\"\n\nHere we have four questions, each asking the team leader to tell us about the team leader's own feelings and intended actions. Now, the responses to these questions are not a perfect measure of each team member's complete performance\u2014there is no way to get at that, or even define it\u2014but they do give us a reliable view of what every single team leader feels about every single team member, and what each intends to do with each.\n\nWe tend to think that subjectivity in data is a bug, and that the feature we're after is objectivity. Actually, however, when it comes to measurement, the pursuit of objectivity is the bug, and reliable subjectivity the feature. These questions generate reliable (and subjective) data, and while this isn't everything, it's a lot. In the same way that measuring a person's weight doesn't give a complete measure of his health but does at least give a reliable measure of something that is clearly part of health, these four items allow us to see, reliably, something that is clearly part of performance.\n\nWe might observe here, by the way, that the question \"what is performance?\" is exactly as abstract, and about as helpful, as the question \"what is health?\" We don't actually try to measure health today\u2014we use a series of discrete measures instead. We can ask if your Body Mass Index (BMI) is too high. We can ask about your glucose levels. We can measure your recovery rate after exercise. And we can do something with the information that we gather, because its specificity leads to further helpful inquiry and action\u2014whereas deciding that you rated a 4 on health wouldn't be much use at all. The key to understanding performance is to stop thinking of it as a broad abstraction, and instead start finding elements of it that we can measure reliably and act on usefully.\n\nOf course, we might worry that some team leaders lack sound judgment. But we will never be able to find a valid, data-based way to identify which leaders should be trusted and which shouldn't, so the best course of action is simply to ask every team leader to answer these questions, or some like them, about every team member, every quarter. Then, at every talent review we would know that we were looking at precisely what every team leader feels about and would do with every team member. This is a humbler claim for the data to make, but because we have set our sights on what is measurable, not on what is True, we can be certain of what we have. This is what reliable performance data should look like.\n\nWell, actually, this is what reliable performance data _does_ look like. Here are the answers to the first two of our questions\u2014the question about extraordinary results and the question about working with a team member as much as possible\u2014from a group of team leaders at Cisco (see figure 6-1). For both of these questions, Cisco has applied an algorithm that controls for each team leader's unique rating \"fingerprint\"\u2014whether he or she rates more leniently or more strictly, and whether his or her use of the scale is broad or narrow\u2014so that this data is capturing as precisely as possible what each team leader thinks.\n\nAs you can see, beyond their reliability, these questions also create natural variation. Cisco doesn't need to force the curve, because the team leaders' answers to these carefully worded questions create unforced range.\n\nArmed with this humble, reliable, real-world data, Cisco is now able to start answering some fun questions, and then acting on the answers. The company now has reliable, variable, and valid data at the individual level on both performance and engagement, and so can start looking for connections between the two. And Cisco has discovered, for example, that when team members feel strongly that they understand what's expected of them, that they get to use their strengths frequently, that they will be recognized for great work, and that they're constantly challenged to grow (that is, when they have high scores on the \"Me\" engagement questions we saw in chapter 1), then their team leader, independently and without knowing their engagement scores, will tend to give them a higher score on the first performance question\u2014will tend, in other words, to go to them more often for excellent work.\n\n**FIGURE 6-1**\n\nDistribution of standardized scores\n\nFurther, when team members feel strongly that they are surrounded by people who share their values and that their teammates have their back (two of the \"We\" engagement questions), then their team leader, again independently and without knowing their scores, will tend to give them a higher score on the second performance question\u2014will tend to look to work with them as often as possible. All of which might seem like research esoterica, until you're a team leader wanting to raise someone's individual contribution\u2014in which case you should talk to him or her about expectations, strengths, recognition, and growth)\u2014or until you're a team leader wanting to raise someone's team contribution\u2014in which case you should talk to him or her, and the entire team, about what excellence means to all of you, and how everyone can support one another in all the things you're doing.*\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWe began this chapter by asking you how you can be confident that the truth of you is in the room during the talent review\u2014how you can be confident that decisions about your pay, your next role, your promotion, and your career are being made based on a true understanding of who you are.\n\nBut actually, you don't want the truth of you in the room.\n\nYou don't want someone to be in any room pretending that they have a reliable measure of _who you are_. In the same way that you hated your singular performance rating\u2014you were never just a 3, because you were never just a number\u2014so you will come to despise the newer tools that now claim, ever more loudly, to capture all your essential competencies. They don't, and they never will: they simply add gasoline to the conflagration of bad data purporting to represent you. Any tool that pretends to reveal _who you are_ is false.\n\nWhat you want in the room is different: not the truth of you, but just the truth. You don't want to be represented by data that attempts, arrogantly, to divine who you are. Instead, you want to be represented by data that simply, reliably, and humbly captures the reaction of your team leader to you. That's not you, and it shouldn't pretend to be you. It's your leader, and what she feels, and what she would do in the future. And that's enough. Truly.\n\n*In case you're curious, we did the math, and the answer appears to be something like 54,340,365,926,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take. You might want to assemble your own crowd of West Country punters to check this.\n\n*One reason for this is that, to return to our earlier example, a toe loop jump existed before it was called a toe loop, so the precision of its definition is inherent in its name. Business acumen didn't exist as a thing until we named it, and as a result it's just an abstraction defined by other abstractions, and will always stubbornly resist any more precise definition.\n\n*Strictly, to capture more of the existing range in the real world by identifying more precisely a particular experience that varies from person to person.\n\n*We've included more of Cisco's and ADP's research findings in the appendixes, for those of you who want to learn more.\n\n#\n\n# People have potential\n\nJoe's an entrepreneurial sort. In the early days of the internet, he founded a pioneering yellow-pages company that integrated directory listings with mapping technology, and managed to secure backing from a venture-capital firm. The investors came in and, as is the practice of such firms, evaluated all the existing executives on their potential for guiding the future of the company. Sadly for Joe, they decided that he didn't have much of it. He had never displayed leadership in his high school or college life, he wasn't class president or captain of the lacrosse team, and now, looking at his current work and style, they determined that he lacked the potential to set the future vision and to build the right team around him. They demoted him to head programmer, and brought in a professional executive to run the company.\n\nJoe didn't shine in this new role either. He had some software skills, but they were unpredictable, resulting in a mess of spaghetti code that other, more experienced developers had to pull apart and detangle. In fact, so messy were his creations that the entire code base of the company's product had to be rewritten. Everyone agreed that although Joe clearly had drive, he would never become one of the company's leading software engineers. He just didn't have enough potential.\n\nBecoming increasingly frustrated with his diminished position, and sensing that the investors didn't see much of a future for him, Joe waited for the company to be acquired and then left to start his own financial-services company. Here, he did what he'd always done\u2014worked hard, pushed hard, challenged everything\u2014and his new company grew large enough that an even bigger player swooped in and bought it from him.\n\nThe leaders of this new company, too, were unimpressed with his potential\u2014or confused by it, or something\u2014so he left once more, this time to see whether he could do interesting work in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering. The jury is still out on his new ventures, and real profits have yet to show up on the books, but with him at the helm, his companies currently employ hundreds of people and are making truly innovative products. If he hadn't done what he did, these jobs wouldn't exist, and neither would the products. And in this sense, Joe is exactly what we want a team leader to be: a person who makes the most of his unique strengths and thereby creates a better future for all of us.\n\nJoe's experience is relevant here because this chapter is all about the future. Specifically, it's about your future, and the future of everyone on your team\u2014and about all the Joes out there in teams large and small, who are misunderstood by their companies, mislabeled, mismanaged, and, in the end, missed altogether.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nJust for a moment, think of all the people on your team. Bring to mind each of their faces and names. Imagine what they're working on now, how they like to work, what they thrive at doing, what they struggle with, and what they aspire to. And now, if you can, answer this: Which one of them has the greatest potential?\n\nSooner or later in your time as a team leader, you'll be asked this exact question and told to plot your response on the _potential_ axis of your nine-box grid. And as you ponder your answer, you'll pretty quickly run into some challenges. You might be quite clear that Jack is doing really well in his job today, but find yourself unsure of whether that means he has potential. And you might be equally certain that Jill is also doing well, but at the same time realize that her job is very different from Jack's job. If one of them has potential, does the other? If, as seems to be implied, potential is some sort of universal quality, then how should you gauge it in two different people doing two different jobs?\n\nAnd what if Jill is in fact struggling in her current role? You might start to ask yourself whether current performance is the same as future potential or merely a clue to it, or whether, alarmingly, the two are not related at all. Perhaps you'll think to yourself that Jill might have, hidden somewhere within her, the potential to do really well at something else. You might not ponder this for long, though, because if (like Joe) she seems to lack potential in one role, and then subsequently another, it will be quite hard to convince yourself that she does indeed have potential for an entirely different role. If she's struggling now, then won't she struggle wherever she goes?\n\nEven if she isn't struggling, if she is in fact one of your current high performers, she nonetheless wants to be challenged to grow, so you'll be forced to start thinking about other jobs on other teams, jobs she might do equally well\u2014or even better. And when she starts asking you about her future\u2014as she surely will\u2014you'll quickly find yourself peering out into the fog. Since you're not nearly as familiar with those other jobs on those other teams as you are with those on your own team, how can you truly know if she has the potential to excel elsewhere? As a good team leader, you have a pretty clear sense of her present performance\u2014what's in front of you right now\u2014but being asked to weigh her potential requires you to project out into a world you know much less about.\n\nThis can be quite intimidating, not least because you're aware that how you weigh Jill's potential\u2014specifically, how you rate it\u2014will more than likely stick to her for a long time. If you rate her highly, then the received wisdom, passed on to your fellow team leaders, will be that she is now a \"high potential,\" or \"hi-po,\" and she will carry this quality around with her wherever she goes. She will get more attention from these other team leaders, be given more opportunities, more training, more investment, and if ever her performance falters, more benefit of the doubt. On the flip side, you realize that if you rate her poorly on potential, she'll become a proverbial \"lo-po,\" which will be a tough label to shake off, no matter how hard she tries.\n\nYour rating of her on potential, or more accurately, your guess about how much value she will bring to the company in the future, will, in all sorts of real ways, _create_ her future. That's a lot of responsibility for you to bear.\n\nJill, meanwhile, perhaps aware that there's another talent review in the offing, is wondering whether she'll make the hi-po list. Like you, she isn't sure what potential is, or what a high potential is. She's just trying to do good work every day. She knows that potential is clearly a good thing to possess\u2014it comes with all sorts of goodies and perks\u2014but, at heart, what she really wants to know is whether she's doing well enough in her job right now, and where her career is going next. If your rating of her on potential helps her career, then wonderful\u2014but if it doesn't, or if being branded a lo-po makes getting help with her future less likely, then she's going to be frustrated. There's a great deal at stake for her here. At some point, she will ask you what you rated her, and then you'll somehow have to justify your decision. And this will be super tricky, since, in the back of your mind, you'll know that you weren't so very clear what potential was in the first place, nor what clues might point you to it, nor what scale you should have used to rate her on it.\n\nBut that's a worry for later. Right now you'll look around and see that other team leaders on other teams seem able to announce confidently who has potential on each of their teams, so you'll put Jill's inevitable questions out of mind, pull out your nine-box grid, and do your best to do right by her. And her future.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOf course, you can't really blame your company for putting you into this sort of high-pressure situation. As with all the practices we've covered thus far in the book, assigning a \"potential\" rating to each employee is a product of some very good and necessary intentions. Your company is a maximization machine\u2014it wants to make the best use of its finite resources\u2014so it is greatly interested in identifying precisely who to invest in, and how.\n\nThe problem with this stems from the way your company executes on these good intentions. Why, for example, does it assume that it will net a good return only from certain people? Surely, the clich\u00e9 that \"Our people are our greatest asset\" applies to _all_ of the people in the company. As we've seen, every human brain retains its ability to learn and grow throughout adulthood. For sure, each brain grows at a different speed and in a different way, but this implies only that each person learns differently, not that\u2014categorically\u2014some people do and some don't. Therefore, the best course of action for any maximization machine worth its salt would be to figure out where and how each brain can grow the most, rather than zeroing in on only a select few brains and casting aside the others.\n\nBut sadly, somewhere along the line, companies by and large recoiled from this natural diversity, seeing it as simply too varied and too individualized to make sense of, and decided instead that the most pragmatic approach would be to invent a generic quality called \"potential,\" rate every person on it, and then invest most in those who have lots of it, and much less in those who don't. As with all the lies we've addressed in the book so far, the lie that _people have potential_ is a product of organizations' desire for control, and their impatience with individual differences.\n\nWhen you think about it for a moment, the notion of a generic quality called \"potential\" is actually pretty odd. Look around you and you'll find hundreds of different definitions, but there's no need to look any further than _Harvard Business Review_ 's very own:\n\n> High potentials consistently and significantly outperform their peer groups in a variety of settings and circumstances. While achieving these superior levels of performance, they exhibit behaviors that reflect their companies' culture and values in an exemplary manner. Moreover, they show a strong capacity to grow and succeed throughout their careers within an organization\u2014more quickly and effectively than their peer groups do.\n\nThis seems like an eminently desirable quality. Who wouldn't want people who \"outperform their peer groups,\" not just in their current role but \"in a variety of settings\"; who, in addition to performing with excellence, also \"reflect their companies' culture and values\"; and who, all the while, show \"a strong capacity to grow\"? We all would, of course\u2014high-performing, culture-embodying people blessed with oodles of learning agility and lashings of successitude are the stuff of every team leader's dreams.\n\nAnd yet, this definition almost immediately rings hollow for you. First, there's the feeling that, although you might want such a person on your team, you don't recognize yourself in the definition. When you think about yourself at your best, you land on specific activities you love, or skills at which you shine\u2014whereas in contrast, this definition appears strangely vague, untethered from any actual work. And then there's the part of the description that seems to imply that you can excel anywhere, at virtually anything, \"in a variety of settings and circumstances.\" Not only is this unlikely, but more to the point, who among us actually aspires to this sort of Jack-of-all-trades-ness? If we were to have this quality it would imply, surely, that we were not unique and distinct, but instead were empty learning vessels, blank slates waiting for our settings and circumstances to define us, adept at learning, but featureless. How depressing.\n\nBeyond the disquieting emptiness of this definition, the most damaging inference is that this quality called \"potential\" is inherent in a person, and that people bring it with them from situation to situation: that no matter what \"setting or circumstance\" they encounter, those people with lots of it are blessed with a special power enabling them to learn faster, grow more, and achieve more. High potential is the corporate equivalent of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket: you take it with you wherever you go, and it grants you powers and access denied to the rest of us.\n\nIn chapter 4 we drew the distinction between traits, which are inherent in a person, and states, which are changeable in the person. Using this framing, potential is clearly something we think of as a trait\u2014it is inherent in the person, some people have more of it than others, and those who do take it everywhere with them.*\n\nAssuming just for the moment that potential actually is a trait, the first problem we encounter is how to measure it. As we saw earlier, if we want to measure a trait, we can't ask someone to rate you on it, because it's impossible for any rater to be either perceptive enough or objective enough to reach into your psyche and assign a number to what they see inside you. And in the case of potential, the measurement challenge is orders of magnitude more difficult, since we are asking the rater to rate you not on a trait displayed in your current behavior but on a projection, a probability that you possess something that might just possibly be displayed in some future situation. It's flat-out impossible for the rater to do this reliably, so whatever data he produces about you will be the very worst kind of bad data. Yet this data will, as we saw with Jill, create the future.\n\nBut is there even anything here to measure\u2014is potential a thing at all? Do we really think that there exists in people a trait that confers on some lucky few the ability to grow more and learn more regardless of setting or circumstance? That we could throw this hi-po into any situation and his potential would enable him to adapt, and then thrive? That this general potential will act like a turbocharger, and take any inputs from the world of work and boost them into outstanding performance?\n\nIf we do think this, then we do so in the complete absence of any evidence. Over the last hundred years we've wondered whether there was such a thing as general intelligence\u2014the elusive _g_ factor\u2014and discovered that if it exists, we can't find it. Sure, we can build a test that reliably measures a thing called IQ, but we don't actually know much about what IQ is\u2014it doesn't seem to independently predict educational success, career achievement, health, or happiness. It's just a score on a test. The best this test can do, it appears, is tell us that, if your test score is very low, you probably have cognitive impairment and will therefore have difficulty learning. So it works as a predictor of problems but not as a predictor or descriptor of flourishing.\n\nLikewise, evidence for the existence of general potential is nonexistent. Instead the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction. We know that each person's brain grows by adding more synaptic connections, that each person's synaptic pattern is unique, and that therefore each person's brain grows uniquely. Therefore we know a) that the ability to learn exists in us all, b) that it shows up differently in each of us, and c) that while we can all get better at anything, none of us will ever be able to rewire our brains to excel at everything. More simply, we can all get better, and we will all get better at different things, in different ways, and at different speeds.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nSo there is no such thing as having potential. Or rather, there is, but it doesn't mean anything. Or rather, it doesn't mean anything beyond being a human. To say that you have potential means simply that you have the capacity to learn, and grow, and get better, like every other human. Unfortunately, this won't reveal anything about precisely where you can learn, and grow, and get better, or how, or how fast, or under what conditions. Potential, like being human, doesn't tell us anything about what particular human you are, or what direction would be best for your sort of human in the future. And, of course, if having potential is just being a human, then we can't rate you on it. We can't split our company up into hi-po's and lo-po's, any more than we can rate you on your human-ness and give the most stuff to those who are most human and the least to those are who least human.\n\nThis sort of apartheid does terrible things to a company. The careless and unreliable labeling of some folks as hi-po's and others as lo-po's is deeply immoral. It explicitly stamps large numbers of people with a \"less than\" branding, derived not from a measure of current performance but from a rater's hopelessly unreliable rating of a thing that isn't a thing. And then this rating of a thing-that-isn't-a-thing opens doors for some, confers prestige on some, elevates some, blesses some, and sets them up for a brighter future, all while relegating others to a status less than human. How explicitly awful.\n\nIt is also unproductive. The maximization machine should make the most of every single human within it, not just a rarefied subset. This notion that some people have lots of potential, while others don't, leads us to miss the gloriously weird possibilities lying hidden in each and every team member, even the ones who, at first blush, seem to have little to offer the team's future. If we have in our head a preconceived notion\u2014even, as in the case of the _Harvard Business Review_ definition, a detailed description\u2014of what a hi-po should do, feel like, and act like, then we will cease to be curious about the many possible futures of each idiosyncratic person on our team.\n\nThis, certainly, is what happened to Joe's employers. They had a set idea of what a high-potential CEO should look like, and what a high-potential software engineer should look like, and neither of them looked like Joe. They stopped looking at Joe, became impatient with him, diminished his role, eased him off to the sidelines, and were more than happy when he decided that his most interesting and challenging work lay elsewhere.\n\nAnd that's a shame for them, because \"Joe\" is a pseudonym. His real name is Elon. That yellow-pages company was acquired by Compaq for $307 million. The financial-services company, X.com, became better known as PayPal and sold to eBay for $15 billion. At which point you may say, \"Yes, but have you seen what he's done lately?\" and reference his fining by the SEC, his joint-puffing on a podcast, and any number of other transgressions that may have occurred from the time of our writing to the time of your reading. And our reply would be, \"Yes, but have you seen what he's done lately?\" and we'd reference his reinvention of the automobile industry, his reinvigoration of the space industry, and his counterintuitive alarm-sounding of the dangers of AI. As the _New York Times_ put it immediately after the 2018 SEC action against Musk was concluded, \"The Future of Electric Cars Is Brighter with Elon Musk in It.\" Yes, he is the spikiest sort of leader, given to impulsive and imperfect actions, but to dismiss his potential is to miss pretty much everything meaningful about him. He may be a handful, and intemperate in his tweeting, but if Elon Musk wasn't a high potential, then it's time to admit that the concept serves no purpose.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nYet still you are going to be asked by your company to rate people on their potential, and by your team members to guide them toward ever-more-challenging work. So what on earth do you do? How can you honor your company's need to get the most from each person, and yet not segregate your team into artificial and demeaning categories, such as hi-po's and lo-po's?\n\nYou can start by taking a trip to the north coast of Scotland. Imagine, for a moment, that you've settled down in a small village just outside Inverness, and have opened up a hot-air-balloon sightseeing business. Your business has done well\u2014all those lovely Scottish moors to gaze down upon\u2014and your team has grown to five excellent hot-air-balloon pilots. One of them is named Maureen. She comes up to you one drizzly afternoon and says, \"I love my current job, but I want to continue to grow. I want to stay challenged, round out my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, have more to offer. I think I want to become a glider pilot. Can you help me?\"\n\nWhat do you say?\n\nWell, here's what you don't say. You don't say, \"Maureen, do you have enough potential?\" Nor do you say, \"Maureen, do you have enough potential as a glider pilot?\" You do not say these things because these are not things human beings say to other human beings in the real world.\n\nInstead, whether consciously or unconsciously, you'll find yourself asking her two discrete sets of questions. And what's interesting about these two sets of questions is that they lead us away from generic potential and toward a far more useful concept for helping us understand Maureen, and for guiding her career.\n\nThe first set of questions will focus on who Maureen is as a person. You'll find yourself asking her, \"What do you love most about your job right now, Maureen? What do you love most about ballooning? Do you love the piloting part, the thrill of the lift, the sensation of getting airborne; or do you love the navigating part, the movement of the light-as-air balloon through the cold northern winds, the calibration of the flame to achieve just the right altitude; or do you love the part where you show the guests the sights and get to tell them interesting facts they may not have known about this part of the world?\" You'll ask her about what job she thinks she might want next, and what it is about being a glider pilot that she thinks she might enjoy. You might even ask her what her \"perfect job\" would look like. Each of these questions addresses who Maureen is as a person, what she loves, what she's really into, and what she yearns for in terms of her career. You're basically being curious about the specifics of what it's like to be Maureen-at-work.\n\nThe second set of things you'll ask her about will focus on how she's moved through the world thus far, and what she's picked up along the way. You'll ask her about her current performance: how many balloon trips she completes and how many guests she takes up in a month. You'll ask her about her past performance: you'll want to find out how long she's been a balloon pilot, how many hours she's logged, what her safety record has been, how often she is able to put her balloon down within the designated landing range. And then you'll get into her skills, not by asking about ratings and 360-degree scores\u2014no one in the real world asks about such things\u2014but instead by asking if she has her level-one, -two, and -three certifications for hot-air-balloon piloting, whether she has extended this to completing her giant-hydrogen-filled-airship certification (in your mind you might call this the Hindenburg test), and, of course, whether she has her glider-pilot's license. And with each of these questions, you'll learn more about how Maureen has moved through the world\u2014what she has measurably achieved, and measurably learned.\n\nFrom the answers to these two sets of questions, you'll have discovered, first, who Maureen is at work. These are her traits. These are things that are inherent and enduring in her\u2014not entirely unchanging, but nonetheless resistant to change. These are the loves and aspirations that are uniquely hers, and that she carries around with her everywhere she goes, just as surely as she carries her own body. Wherever she goes, they are there. You can call these her _mass_.\n\nAnd second, you'll have unearthed some things she's acquired as she's applied herself in the world to move in a particular direction: her current and past record of performance, and her tested certifications. Obviously, since she can change any and all of these things, these are states. But since they describe how she has moved through the world\u2014how she's done it, how well she's done it, how quickly, and in what direction\u2014you can usefully label these her _velocity_.\n\nIn the world of physics, there's a name for the discrete, measurable, definable, and directional thing that is produced when mass and velocity combine. It's called momentum. In the world of teams and team members, the same applies. Maureen has _momentum_.\n\nBy keeping these two ideas about Maureen\u2014mass and velocity\u2014separate, and by using _momentum_ to describe their combination, we suddenly enable you, the team leader, to do all manner of useful things to help her.\n\nFirst, you reject the apartheid of potential, where everyone is separated into hi-po and lo-po. \"Do you or don't you have potential?\" is a question that exists to serve the (well-meaning but misguided) company. But it's not helpful to you as a team leader, and it's completely uninteresting and unhelpful to Maureen. Because she knows it's not a matter of _whether_ she can learn and grow, but _how_ , and how efficiently, and in what direction. Only certain people have \"potential\"; _everyone_ has momentum. One team member's might be more powerful than another's, or speedier than another's, or pointed in a different direction, but everyone has some. The question isn't whether you inherently possess a lot of it or not. Instead, when it comes to momentum, the question is how much of it you have at this very moment, right now.\n\nSecond, you convey to her something real: namely, that the speed and trajectory of her momentum at this very moment are a) knowable, b) changeable, and c) within her control. When you talk to her about her momentum, you help her to understand where she is at this moment in time, not so that she can be catalogued and categorized and put into one box instead of another, but so that she can understand what paths are possible next. Her career is moving on a particular trajectory at a particular speed, and she\u2014with your help\u2014can take the measure of her accomplishments, her loves and loathes, her skills and knowledge, and see where she can accelerate, or shift the path slightly, or even attempt a great leap. Where potential is assumed to be a fixed, inherent quality\u2014she's a hi-po or a lo-po\u2014momentum is, by definition, always in a state of change. And if Maureen wants to speed it up, or alter its direction, she can.\n\nThird, you help her identify which parts of her current career are a function of who she is as a person\u2014parts she will therefore likely bring with her, situation to situation\u2014and which parts are entirely situation-dependent, and which she could change if she so chose. Given how close we all are to our own performance, and given that we are sometimes misguided in our career desires, this kind of subtle and specific insight could very well prevent her from making an ill-advised career move.\n\nFinally, understanding Maureen's career in terms of momentum doesn't just benefit her. It frees you, as her team leader, from the awful burden of having to determine her entire future based on a fiction.\n\nIt's not true\u2014or, indeed, useful\u2014to think that _people have potential_. Instead, the truth is that _people have momentum_.\n\nPotential is a one-sided evaluation. Momentum is an ongoing conversation. In a world of \"potential,\" it's hard to imagine what, exactly, a career conversation looks like once Maureen has been shunted off into the lo-po dungeon. Momentum, on the other hand, represents the opposite of \"up-or-out\" thinking. And it's the best concept to address one of the key survey items that measure engagement and performance: \"In my work, I am always challenged to grow.\" Potential doesn't do that\u2014it doesn't challenge you to grow. It tells you that you either will, or you won't.\n\nAddressing their potential makes people feel like they've been dealt with. Addressing their momentum makes them feel _understood_. More important, it helps them understand themselves, by encouraging them to consider where they are, right now\u2014not as a point of stasis, but as a unique human being moving purposefully through the world.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBut if this sort of straightforward conversation about the future is what is happening in the real world, we might well ask how we came to be ensnared in the bizarre apartheid-creating theory world of potential. And again, the lie that _people have potential_ is another example of a specific and useful thing made generalized and useless. In this case, it's perfectly fair to ask if Maureen has the \"small-p\" potential to do a certain job well. But as soon as we divorce the idea of Maureen's potential from the very specific demands and rewards of a particular job\u2014as soon, that is, as we stop asking about who Maureen is, and where she's going, and how those things mesh with what she might do next\u2014and instead treat her potential as some abstract, mystical, and essential quality of hers that we can isolate and rate her on, then we slide down the slippery slope into untruth. And if we then institutionalize this thinking through our people-management processes and systems in the name of bringing predictability and control to our organization, we find that we have sacrificed common sense and humanity at the altar of corporate uniformity, and we shouldn't be very surprised if our people chafe at the result. We may well also find that we've created a system that codifies and amplifies our biases and projections\u2014that the people with the most \"potential\" inevitably wind up looking and acting a lot like us.\n\nOur people tools and processes can never compensate for bad team leaders. We like to think so\u2014we figure that, even if your team leader is ignoring you, at least your crowd-sourced feedback will tell you how you're doing; or that, even if your team leader never asks about your career, at least the talent review will give you something to go on. But aside from the flaws that we've already seen with these and other common approaches, any large-scale system can never hope to replicate the very particular and specific attention that a team leader can offer. Again, teams are where we live, and team leaders can make or break that experience for us. And rather than investing in systems and processes to provide a fallback in case our managers are found wanting, it's far better to invest in helping our team leaders do what we need them to, by 1) getting rid of ratings of \"potential,\" 2) teaching team leaders what we know about human growth, and 3) prompting them to discuss careers with their people in terms of momentum\u2014in terms of who each team member is, and in terms of how fast each is moving through the world. This is harder, of course, than buying the latest piece of enterprise software and then imploring our people to use it, but it's the right hard thing to do.\n\nBecause when team leaders understand how careers are built in the real world, they begin to think like Andy.\n\nAndy is a team leader at Cisco, and a little while ago he set out to help each of his team members see what their futures could look like. He started by asking them to imagine their dream jobs\u2014in other words, to reflect on their aspirations\u2014and then to make this practical by searching on LinkedIn. The task he set them was to split into pairs, and then to spend two hours searching on LinkedIn for jobs that came close to their ideal\u2014with no limit on which company, or industry, or line of work these jobs were in. He asked them to work with their partner to narrow down the list to the one or two roles that excited them the most.\n\nAnd then he asked them to analyze these jobs in terms of the skills and experiences and qualifications they drew on, and then to compare those lists with the skills and experiences and qualifications that each of them already had, and to figure out which new ones they wanted to go after.\n\nHe wasn't, in other words, evaluating them on their potential, and sorting them into those who could grow in some way and those who couldn't. Instead, he was helping each of them to get clear on who they were and where they wanted to go (again, _mass_ ), and on the measurable skills and experiences they had and wanted to acquire (again, _velocity_ ). His presumption was that everyone had momentum, and that it was his job to help them figure out how to direct it. \"I think there's a lot of energy within our teams that isn't being used,\" he told us, \"and I have a lot of people who, given the right circumstances, the right engagements, the right customer\u2014whatever it is, we can find what enables them to share that energy, to bring it out.\"\n\nThe results were fascinating. As Andy explained to us, \"We looked around the room at each other and realized that our careers were bigger than Cisco, and that we could go further down those steps to define ourselves within the market as professionals.\" And more than this, his team members were able, with his encouragement, to make many of the skills they wanted to learn part of their current jobs\u2014so that their work, every day, was helping them build the skills they wanted for the future. \"It changed the conversation,\" Andy said, \"from how we could get another job outside, to how we could build our practice to be the best professionals we could be\u2014to deliver better service internally, but also to build up our transferrable skills.\"\n\nAnd this, surely, is what any truly people-maximizing company would want.\n\n*Although we might question why, if it's a trait and doesn't therefore change much, we re-rate people on it every year.\n\n#\n\n# Work-life balance matters most\n\nWork is hard. Every day, you feel the stress of performing, of delivering against your goals and objectives, of earning enough to support your family, of learning how to advocate in just the right way to advance your career and thereby earn more. And always, hanging over your head, is the threat of change as your company shifts its focus, outsources your role, or finds a particularly smart machine that can do your job better, faster, and cheaper. And then there are the other people you have to work with\u2014an ever changing cast of characters, some of whom work across the hall, others of whom work across the world, whose collaboration you seek, but whose motives and methods remain mysterious. The commute doesn't help: the daily battle with your fellow strivers on trains, planes, and freeways, everyone rushing in and rushing out, clogging the arteries of your city, raising your stress level. Forty-five minutes, an hour, ninety minutes each way\u2014or a two-hour flight if you work for one of the big consultancies and have to show up at the client site\u2014all just so you can begin your daily race of life-at-work. On the way home you steal a brief moment or two to decompress, and then, once home, you have a quick dinner with the family before dragging out the phone again for the evening volley of emails and texts, hoping to catch one last request so that it won't need immediate action before your shower in the morning.\n\nWork is hard. Particularly, it seems, if you're a physician. We might think that doctors have it better than the rest of us because at least all that frenetic dashing about is in service of something truly meaningful\u2014if we've learned anything about what we want from our world of work, it's that we crave work with meaning and purpose. And we imagine that, while doctors have to complete forms and wade through other assorted administrivia, they nevertheless see their patients, one after another, being cured and getting back on their feet again, all by dint of the doctor's efforts and expertise. Would that we all saw so clearly and so often the point of our work. Would that we could all do what we love.\n\nWhen we look at the data, however, that's not what we see: despite the purity of their purpose, physicians seem to have it harder than the rest of us; or at least, they feel it harder. According to a recent report from the Mayo Clinic, 52 percent of physicians report being burned out, and their incidence of PTSD is 15 percent, four times the levels in the regular workforce and three percentage points higher than the levels found in veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These sky-high stress levels inevitably have quantifiable and negative effects on both patient care and physician well-being. The Mayo Clinic found not only that a 1 percent increase in measured burnout led to a 20 to 30 percent decrease in patient satisfaction but, more worryingly still, that 15 percent of all doctors have issues with substance abuse during their careers, and that their rates of depression and suicide are twice the national levels.\n\nAccording to doctors, things are only getting worse. The Mayo study further revealed that 80 percent of physicians believe the medical profession is on the decline, that 60 percent of all physicians will endure a professional lawsuit during their career, and most tellingly of all, that 73 percent of doctors would _not_ recommend the medical profession to their children. As a result, if current trends continue, by the year 2025 the United States will experience a shortfall of more than twenty thousand physicians.\n\nThe only job harder than being a doctor\u2014so the data tells us\u2014is being an emergency-room nurse, which comes with higher levels of burnout and depression and (at 19 percent) almost twice the level of PTSD seen in combat veterans.\n\nThe health-care profession is taking this data seriously, and is devoting significant time and money to conferences, research, and practical experiments, all to figure out what's making work so demoralizing, and what can be done.\n\nThe prevailing approach will not surprise you. Though each health system differs in its methods and priorities, the basic assumption in most of these efforts is that these days being a doctor or a nurse is unavoidably hard, and that therefore the enlightened hospital should do whatever it can to help health-care professionals recover from the stress of work, and should also find ways to limit the work week to fewer than sixty hours\u2014to provide some barrier against the ever rising tide of stress. Some health systems offer meditation rooms just off the ER, others provide support with all that electronic record keeping, still others pay for monthly meals out with colleagues and family.\n\nWith its stress levels and stress-related problems, the world of doctors and nurses serves as an extreme example of the rest of the working world. Work, our experience teaches us, is toil\u2014a stressor, a drainer of our energy\u2014and if we are not careful, it can lead to physical exhaustion, emotional emptiness, depression, and burnout. It's a transaction\u2014we sell our time and our talent so that we can earn enough money to buy the things we love, and to provide for those we love. Indeed, the term we use for the money we earn in this transaction is _compensation_ , the same word we use for what we get when we're injured or wronged in the eyes of the law. Our wages are not just money, then: they are money to make up for the inherent badness of work\u2014a bribe, if you will, to tough it out.\n\nWork is even a distraction from work. When we need to get something important done, we recognize that it will be hard to do unless we can somehow make our escape from the daily grind, and so we go on a leadership _retreat_ to get away from the noise and stress of work, to better focus on other work.\n\nAnd because the effects of work are so potentially toxic, the obvious and sensible precaution to take, so that we don't all expire at our desks, is to balance it out with something else, with something better. With _life_.\n\nWe lose ourselves in work, and rediscover ourselves in life. We _survive_ work, but _live_ life. When work empties us out, life fills us back up. When work depletes us, life restores us.\n\nThe answer to the problem of work, the world seems to say, is to balance it with life.\n\nOf course, we are simplifying things here. Some people succeed in finding great satisfaction in their work, while others have hugely stressful lives outside of work. We know, too, that some jobs seem to be inherently difficult, or even inherently boring. No one's work, or life, is ever completely joyous, or completely controllable.\n\nYet still, the assumption that pervades our working world is that \"work is bad\" and \"life is good,\" and therefore _work-life balance matters most_. \"Does the company support work-life balance?\" is right up there with \"What's the company culture like?\" in the list of questions candidates inevitably ask during the interviewing process\u2014which explains why, in these tight labor markets, companies highlight their on-site dry-cleaning, banking, and child-care services, their quiet rooms, in-chair massages, sleep pods, and luxury shuttle buses. These perks are tremendously well intended and are often highly valued by employees\u2014and at the same time are rooted in the idea that work is a heavy weight on the scales, and that the enlightened organization is one that does everything it can to lessen that weight, and thereby tip the scales back toward life.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nGood intentions aside, the problems with all this begin with the concept of _balance_ \u2014and it's a concept with a long history.\n\nIf you visit the Presidio of Santa Barbara\u2014the fort the Spanish explorers built to support the Mission of Santa Barbara\u2014you will see on the wall a list of the provisions the captain of the fort requested of his superiors in Mexico City. The date of the requisition list is 1793, and along with \"Two pounds of gold musketeer braid, fine for epaulets,\" and \"Two beaver hats; one black and one white,\" you'll find \"Four pounds of rose oil, three ounces of Galapa powder, two ounces of sweet mercury, and one little box with twelve cupping glasses, filled with seedless cotton wool.\"\n\nWhile some of these might have been used for making dessert, or drinking tea, their primary purpose was something else. From the time of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates until the advent of modern medicine in the mid-nineteenth century, our concept of physical health was founded on the idea of balance. Hippocrates posited that each of us contained four humors\u2014black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Even though each of our bodies held slightly different amounts of each, which in turn created our different personalities (the phlegmatic person had an abundance of phlegm, the calm or \"sanguine\" person contained more blood), the healthy person was he or she who maintained the perfect balance between all four.\n\nIf your humors were out of whack, you fell ill, and so you were told to take sweet mercury to purge you of phlegm, or to use cupping glasses to draw out your blood. With your humors back in balance, your sickness would be cured and you would be well again. The requisition list on the wall of the fort was, then, a list of supplies for the pharmacy.\n\nOver time, this emphasis on finding physical balance took on psychological overtones\u2014if you were too short-tempered, it was because your yellow bile was out of balance; if you were lazy, you had a body overloaded with phlegm\u2014and from there grew to become an explanation for the entire physical universe. The metaphysical extrapolation of the four humors was the four elements\u2014earth, fire, water, air\u2014each of which was believed to balance out the others in the harmony of creation.\n\nAll of which is to say that we humans appear to have had a thing for balance for a long, long while. To us it has always seemed like the right, the noble, the wise, and the healthy state for which we should all strive. And we can speculate that the difficultly of achieving it has added in some way to its allure\u2014it's another of those things, like working to remedy our faults, that's always a work in progress, that's fantastically hard to achieve in practice. You've striven for it, haven't you? You've tried to find that delicate balance between the needs of yourself, your family, your friends, your work colleagues, your boss, and your community. You're aware that each of these constituencies places different and often conflicting demands on you, and you've struggled to give due attention to each one, satisfying their differing needs while still attending to your own. You've sat on a conference call in the car-pool line and mouthed \"Sorry!\" to the kids in the back. You've rationalized a missed Presidents' Day outing with the family because, well, it's a Monday, your other team members appear to be online, and besides, Presidents' Day isn't a proper holiday anyway, not really.\n\nYou've taken on a \"stretch\" assignment because it might\u2014just might!\u2014come with a raise, or at least a bonus, and so enable you to afford a better house for your family. But because you now have more work to do, and more resting on it, you've found that you can't attend that school-board meeting, or your cousin's wedding, or that online management course, because life is about trade-offs and this one is yours.\n\nYou've found yourself spinning plates, or juggling balls, or plugging gaps\u2014whatever the metaphor, you've known too often the feeling of too many requests from too many quarters and not enough hours in the day. You've told yourself that if you can just keep the plates spinning, the balls in the air, the gaps plugged, then perhaps you can parcel out your attention and energy so that no one, in your work or your life, will feel too neglected\u2014so that, although you can't be all things to all people, your unflagging efforts will at least achieve some sort of equitable distribution.\n\nBut in the real world does anyone, anywhere, man or woman, young or old, affluent or barely solvent, ever actually find balance?\n\nIf any have, we haven't met them yet. And this is why balance is more bane than benefit. In practice, striving for it feels like triage, like trying to erect some sort of barricade against the endless encroachments on our time and the relentless ratcheting of expectations to work more, all while worrying that someone else has figured out how to do this better than we have. Obviously, triage can be necessary in life, but it surely is not enough\u2014it keeps things at bay, but it takes us away from ourselves. And in the end, balance is an unachievable goal anyway, because it asks us to aim for momentary stasis in a world that is ever changing. Supposing we ever get things just exactly in balance, we know for sure that something will come along and unbalance them and that we'll be back to pushing our balance rock up the hill again. Balance as an ideal erases our humanity\u2014the essence of who each of us is and aspires to be\u2014and replaces it with a Sisyphean coping strategy.\n\nSo what then should we do? Work can be hard. So can life. And there's too much of both, too much of the time. If balancing everything out isn't the answer, then what is?\n\nWe need a new way of thinking. About work. About life.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThroughout this book we've found our answers by trying to examine the world as it really is, rather than as we wish it were. While initially it might seem that certain elements need to be in balance (acidity or insulin levels in the body, for example), when we look more closely what we find is flow. Today we know that all matter is made up of infinitely more particles than four, and that the balance between these millions of particles is far less important than the ongoing relationship between them all and the biological, chemical, and physical processes that these relationships create. Something can be said to be \"healthy\" only when its process allows it to take inputs from the world, and first, metabolize them to produce something useful, and second, do so in such a way that it can keep doing it. Health is less balance than it is motion.\n\nYou are one such process. Neither you nor your life are in balance, nor will you ever be. Instead you are a unique creature who takes inputs from the world, metabolizes them in some way, produces something useful, and does so in such a way that you can keep doing it. At least, you are when you're healthy, when you're at your best, when you are contributing all that your talents allow you to. When you're flourishing you are acting on the world and it on you. Your world offers up to you raw material\u2014activities, situations, outcomes\u2014in all parts of your life, and some of this raw material invigorates you and gives you energy. You are at your healthiest when you find this particular kind of raw material, draw it in, allow it to feed you, and use it to contribute something\u2014and when that contribution actually seems to leave you with more energy, not less.\n\nThis state, not balance, is what we should strive for. What should we call it?\n\nThe Greeks called it _eudaimonia_ , which sounds like a cleaning product but which actually means \"the fullest and purest expression of you in your most elevated state.\" Their idea was that each of us had a spirit, or _daimon_ , that embodied our greatest and most unique possibilities\u2014our natural strengths or talents\u2014and that the state we should all seek was one where, because of the happy intersection of our role, our skills, our team, and our context, we turned these possibilities into contribution, and thus liberated our good spirit.\n\nWe could stick with the Greeks and _eudaimonia_ , but while the word captures the meaning quite well, it's a bit of a mouthful. So let's play out what this state actually looks like in the real world, a world so busy and distracted that it doesn't seem much concerned with your particular _daimon_ , and see if that helps us find something a little more down-to-earth.\n\nMiles is a physician. More specifically he's an anesthesiologist, the chap who puts you to sleep and wakes you up again. He lives in the United Kingdom, where anesthesiologists are called anesthetists. He loves what he does and has been at it for twenty years. Tens of thousands of his colleagues may be struggling with burnout, but he seems to revel in his work.\n\nWe were interviewing him the other day, trying to figure out how a regular doctor working in a regular ward of a regular National Health Service teaching hospital could find a state of mind and heart that has eluded so many other physicians, when we made a rude discovery: Miles doesn't like sick people. To be more specific, he doesn't seem to get much of a kick out of helping sick people get better.\n\nHere's what this discovery sounded like in our interview:\n\n_Marcus and Ashley:_ So, Miles, is there anything about your role that brings you down, or frustrates you?\n\n_Miles:_ Other than the hours?\n\n_Us:_ Yes. Anything in the work itself?\n\n_Miles:_ Well, I really don't like the follow-up.\n\n_Us:_ Pardon?\n\n_Miles:_ Yeah, I really don't like meeting up with the patients after the operation, seeing how they're doing, checking up on their recovery, giving them a few things they can do at home to alleviate their symptoms, and then meeting up again after a bit to track their progress. Don't like any of that at all.\n\n_Us:_ [ _pause_ ] But isn't that what being a doctor is?\n\n_Miles:_ Not for me it's not.\n\n_Us:_ What don't you like about that?\n\n_Miles:_ The pressure.\n\n_Us:_ Pressure?\n\n_Miles:_ Yes, the pressure to make them get well. I mean, what if they don't? The body is a complex and individualized organism, so many variables, and then you combine that with a patient's lifestyle, environment, psychology, luck, and who knows if they are really going to get better. It's just too much pressure for me.\n\n_Us:_ Oh.\n\nSo that's what it sounded like: a very successful, truly happy doctor revealing to us that the thing he is most stressed about at work is seeing whether his patients actually recover. Since this flew in the face of pretty much everything we'd read on physician satisfaction\u2014namely that doctors, like people in all professions, should \"start with why\" and should derive most of their joy at work from seeing their true purpose come to life\u2014we pressed on.\n\n_Us:_ Then can you tell us what you do truly enjoy about what you do?\n\n_Miles:_ Sure. Well, first off, I love the stress.\n\n_Us:_ What? Didn't you just say you didn't like stress?\n\n_Miles:_ No, I said I didn't like the pressure of making a patient get better over time. I absolutely love the stress of keeping a patient hovering between life and death. We still know so little about how anesthesia actually works. When I first started, we used mostly thiopental. Nowadays everyone goes with that new drug propofol\u2014the one that Michael Jackson took, which is actually a far better drug. And yet no one really knows how it all works. Both drugs seem to slow down the flow of minerals through the blood system, and so put you to sleep without stopping your heart, but we still don't know much about how either one actually does that. The whole challenge of putting someone to sleep, and keeping them hovering there, caught between life and death, for sometimes sixteen hours at a time, all the while not quite knowing how or why it's working\u2014man, I love that!\n\n_Us:_ Have you always loved that part of it?\n\n_Miles:_ Yep, right from the start. Some people freak out when you have to put someone under and then gradually ease them back to life, but I always leaned into that. I'm something of an adrenaline junkie\u2014swim with sharks, jump out of planes, that kind of thing\u2014so this part of it really wakes me up, makes me feel alive.\n\n_Us:_ Anything else you love?\n\n_Miles:_ Well, yeah. Frankly, it's the responsibility of the role. In the UK\u2014less in the US and Canada\u2014but in the UK the person who is supposed to understand the entire body of each patient is the anesthetist. The surgeon can fix the heart valves. The neurologist can tease apart the brain. The general surgeon can maneuver the bowels\u2014all critical stuff, but all very focused and specialized. The doc who needs to understand the entire body\u2014the entire respiratory, cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal, everything\u2014is the anesthetist. All of those systems feed into how a patient will respond to the drugs and how he or she will hover asleep. Because when you're under, you're never just under. You're always moving up or moving down, and my job is to be finely attuned to the entire person, and to understand their entire body so well I can hold them just so. Being an anesthetist is rather like flying a plane\u2014one wrong move and you can start to spiral down, and then another slight mistake, and then the spirals speed up, and in an instant you can find your patient spiraling down, down and away from you. I love that kind of responsibility\u2014twelve people in the OR and all of them relying on you to know the whole person, and hold the whole person.\n\n_Us:_ It sounds terrifying.\n\n_Miles:_ No, really, it's amazing. Every day. Just love it.\n\nWe don't know what you make of all this, but we did what we always do in interviews with people who thrive at work: we listened in the moment, wrote it all down, and then pondered it later.\n\nAnd where we landed was that, as ever, the theoretical models of what people are supposed to feel about their work rarely, if ever, match up to what a particular person truly does feel. Miles is a brilliant and successful doctor who hates the pressure of helping someone get well, and yet loves the life-and-death stress of holding a patient just outside death's door, all while not fully understanding precisely how he's doing it. Some might judge Miles and say, \"Well, all doctors should love seeing patients get healthy. That, after all, is the purpose of being a doctor.\" And yet what use is that judgment? Miles is Miles. He knows not only why he became a doctor, and why he became an anesthetist, but also what specific aspects of being an anesthetist he loves most. Others can judge all they want, but we know which doctor we would want putting us under. We'd want a doctor who derived great joy from what he did, who was fascinated by the subtle complexity of his responsibilities, and who got his kicks from keeping us just this side of the river Styx. We'd want Miles.\n\nAnd so, doubtless, would you.\n\nWe wish you could have been there to actually hear him talk, because when he does, his whole tone and demeanor shift and lift, and when he starts diving into what he loves about what he does, you sense you're in the presence of a special state of mind, a truly happy heart, a \"good spirit.\" Would that all doctors could feel this way.\n\nAnd would that _you_ felt this way about your work. You know you want to. You listen to folks such as Miles and you wish that one day you could feel what he feels about his work. Not that he skips to work every day\u2014some days are hard, some are exhausting, and some are probably deeply sad and difficult. But you feel his joy, and you want a part of it. You want this in your working life. You want to find love in what you do.\n\nHowever, the moment you start thinking this to yourself, you almost immediately dismiss it as sappy or unrealistic. Watch any famous commencement address on YouTube, or take a long lunch with a mentor, and it's almost guaranteed that at some point you'll hear the advice to \"Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life again.\" And when you hear that, your heart sinks. On the one hand, the thought seems to make perfect sense\u2014wouldn't it be great if we could all do what we love?\u2014but on the other, it seems, in this day and age, to be something of a luxury. It invites the response that it's all very well for you, lucky person, to have made your way doing what you love, but for the rest of us work is very much a requirement, and love an added\u2014and rare\u2014bonus.\n\nLinger on it for a moment, though. We're going to take a longer look at love; not to drag you away from the hard realities of the world of work, or to dismiss the demands and discoveries of reliable data, but instead to dive deeper into both. In doing so, we'd like to share the truth that\u2014more than striving for balance between work and life\u2014 _love-in-work matters most_.\n\n_Love-in-work_ is less of a mouthful than _eudaimonia_ , for sure, but it might also sound soft, idealistic, and far removed from the real-world pragmatism of the freethinking leader. If it does, then bear with us. Because love\u2014specifically, the skill of finding love in what you do, rather than simply \"doing what you love\"\u2014leads us directly to a place that is the epitome of pragmatism.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOn the face of it, though, organizations don't appear greatly concerned with love. Southwest Airlines can stick a heart on its planes, and Facebook can claim that its mission is to \"ship love,\" but in these two cases, as in most others, the love refers to the customers, not the employees. Most organizations are much more worried about the meaty stuff: performance, goals, achievement, discipline, execution, and rigor. Get all this done, meet all the deadlines with the necessary levels of quality, and maybe then you can sprinkle a little dusting of love on it at the end.\n\nIf this is your view of your organization, then you\u2014and it, if it shares this view\u2014are missing the mark. Because the truth is that even the most hard-nosed, performance-oriented organizations desperately want you to find great love in what you do. They just don't call it that.\n\nHave you ever been deeply in love? Cast your mind back to when that was\u2014when you were so in love with someone that you couldn't wait to see that person, when time flew by quickly when you were together, and when, after parting, you ached to see your love again.\n\nWhen you're in love, you're a different person. Looking at the world through the rosy lens of love, everyone seems wonderful, people are beautiful, the world is happy and kind, and spring is in the air. Love lifts you up. It elevates you to a new plane, where you're at your most productive, creative, generous, resilient, innovative, collaborative, open, and powerful. When you're in love, you are simply magnificent.\n\nLook at those adjectives again: _productive_ , _creative_ , _generous_ , _resilient_ , _innovative_ , _collaborative_ , _open_ , _powerful_. Not only are they a pretty good description of how you hope to be in your life, or how your spouse or family wants you to be, but they're also, surely, the exact qualities your organization's CEO is looking for in every team member. Put the list of you-in-love qualities next to your CEO's list of ideal-employee-at-work qualities and you'll see that the list is the same.\n\nBut you don't get to feel any of these things by writing them down, just as your organization won't create any of these in you merely by discussing them with you in a training class. You\u2014and your organization\u2014get them only if you create them, and you create them only through love. The poet Pablo Neruda, in love, wrote \"I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees.\" That's the power of love. With it, you blossom. You flourish. You look forward to what you're about to do. Time flies by while you're doing it. And when you're done with it, you feel an urge to start right back up again. You experience _eudaimonia_ , your spirit manifesting its fullest and most beautiful expression. That's what your organization wants, that's what you want for yourself, and that's what you want for your people. You want love.\n\nMost organizations shy away from the word _love_ , preferring more business-appropriate terms such as _committed_ or _motivated_ or _discretionary effort_. (Maybe, about now, you're privately wishing that we would shy away from it, too.) But in the real world we have to engage with what really is, not some watered-down version of how we'd like people to be or to feel. If we want our people to flourish, if we want them to be creative and intrigued and generous and resilient, then we've got to help them find what Miles found. There's love in work, and we should use the word. We should be curious about how each of us can find it. We should honor the truth that our organization can never find it for us, can never define it for us. For too long we've allowed our organizations to appropriate human words\u2014 _love_ , _passion_ , _excitement_ , _thrill_ \u2014and persuade themselves that, by invoking these words, they've created genuine human feelings. They haven't, and they never will. The organization is a fiction, an \"intersubjective reality,\" to use the term from chapter 1, and it's simply not real enough or human enough to know which activities at work you love. Only you can know that. Only you are close enough to yourself to know where you find love and where you don't, at the level of detail that Miles did. He said, in essence, \"I love this specific thing, not that specific thing.\" And no one, before or after he was hired, would have known this about him. This was a transcendent part of him that only he had access to.\n\nThe same is true for you. There's a little bit of you that your organization can never touch, never know, never see, and certainly never feel. And yet it's this part of you\u2014the loving, feeling part of you\u2014that makes you feel alive at work, able to do things that surprise and delight you, things that are ridiculously good, unexpectedly made, astonishing to your team, and that light you up from the inside.\n\nOrganizations are not powerless, but their power (and their name) comes from their ability to organize what is already there in plain view. Your organization, if it is careless, can crush your spirit, can diminish or ignore your _daimon_. But only you can animate it. Only you can bring love into your world at work.\n\nAnd when you do all sorts of good things happen. The Mayo Clinic actually managed to quantify the power of love-in-work. It asked physicians how much of their time at work they spent doing those activities they loved the most. Those who reported that they spent at least 20 percent of their time doing things they loved had dramatically lower risk of burnout. Each percentage point reduction below this 20 percent level resulted in a commensurate and almost linear increase in burnout risk. Remove the love from a physician's work, and the work grates, and grates some more, until it hurts.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe big question, then, is how to make this happen. Whether we call it love-in-work or _eudaimonia_ or anything else, the fact remains that work is called work for a reason, and your work is not only busy and sometimes repetitive but\u2014more to the point\u2014is not always of your own making. You have a particular job, in which certain outcomes are expected, and your responsibilities are what they are. What's love got to do with that?\n\nWell, the Mayo Clinic research reveals that love actually has a great deal to do with it. You can, and should, weave love into your work, no matter what role you're in. And in case you're wondering, the data reveals that, for most of us, the problem of loveless work lies less in the fact that our job is too constricted and more in the fact that we can't figure out how to weave. The ADP Research Institute's global engagement study revealed that only 16\u201317 percent of workers say they have a chance to play to their strengths every day, whereas their surveys of a representative sample of the US working population reveal that 72 percent of workers say, \"I have the freedom to modify my role to fit my strengths better.\" In psychology we refer to this as an attitude-behavior consistency problem\u2014we know we _can_ modify our roles to fit ourselves better, but most of us simply don't.\n\nSo, here's a way to remove the problem\u2014here's how to intentionally and responsibly weave love into your work.\n\nThink about the most successful person you know. Not in terms of money, necessarily, but in terms of her contributions to her team, and her organization\u2014someone enormously productive, creative, resilient, and seemingly at one with her work. More than likely, as you think of this person, you're thinking she got lucky. \"How,\" you're asking yourself, \"did she _find_ that role, how did she _find_ that work, how did she _find_ that life? I wish I could find something that fits me as well as her work fits her.\"\n\nIf you are indeed thinking this, then first, good for you for recognizing something special and precious, and second, you've landed on the wrong verb. This person didn't _find_ this work\u2014she didn't happen upon it, fully-formed and waiting for her. Instead, she _made_ it. She took a generic job, with a generic job description, and then, within that job, she took her loves seriously, and gradually, little by little and a lot over time, she turned the best of her job into most of her job. Not the entirety of it, maybe, but certainly an awful lot of it, until it became a manifestation of who she is. She tweaked and tweaked the role until, in all the most important ways, it came to resemble her\u2014it became an expression of her.\n\nYou can do the same.\n\nTwice a year, spend a week in love with your work. Select a regular week at work and take a pad around with you for the entire week. Down the middle of this pad draw a vertical line to make two columns, and write \"Loved It\" at the top of one column and \"Loathed It\" at the top of the other.* During the week, any time you find yourself feeling one of the signs of love\u2014before you do something, you actively look forward to it; while you're doing it, time speeds up and you find yourself in flow; after you've done it, there's part of you looking forward to when you can do it again\u2014scribble down exactly what that something was in the \"Loved It\" column.\n\nAnd any time you find yourself feeling the inverse\u2014before you do something, you procrastinate, perhaps handing it off to the new person because it will be \"developmental\"; while you do it, time drags on and ten minutes feels like a hard-fought hour; and when you're done with it, you hope you never have to do it again\u2014scribble down exactly what _that_ something was in the \"Loathed It\" column.\n\nObviously, there'll be plenty of activities in your week that don't make either list, but if you spend a week in love with your work, by the end of the week you will see a list of activities in your \"Loved It\" column that feel different to you than the rest of your work. They'll have a different emotional valence, creating in you a distinct and distinctly positive feeling, one that draws you in and lifts you up.\n\nThink of these activities as your \"red threads.\" Your work is made up of many activities, many threads, but some of them feel as though they're made of particularly powerful material. These red threads are the activities you love, and your challenge is to pinpoint them so you can ensure that, next week, you'll be able to recreate them, refine them, and add to them. You are weaving red threads into the fabric of your work, one thread at a time. Now, you do not have to end up with an entirely red quilt. The Mayo Clinic researchers found that when the physicians spent _more_ than 20 percent of their time on activities they loved, there was no corresponding reduction in burnout risk. The 20 percent number was a threshold, which is to say that a little love goes an awfully long way: when you can deliberately weave your red threads throughout the fabric of your work you'll feel stronger, perform better, and bounce back faster.\n\nThese red threads are your strengths. Typically we think of our strengths as what we're good at and our weaknesses as what we're bad at, and that our team leaders, or our colleagues, are therefore the best judges of both. But as we saw in chapter 4, this is not the best definition of either strengths or weaknesses. A strength is any activity that strengthens you (for Miles the anesthetist, keeping a patient hovering between life and death), and a weakness is any activity that weakens you, even if you're good at it (for Miles, helping patients recover). \"Performance\" is what you have done well or poorly, and your team leader can be the judge of that. Team leaders and colleagues, however, can't judge what strengthens or weakens you.\n\nIf you spend a week in love with your work and realize that you love finding patterns in data, then your team leader can legitimately tell you, in regard to your _performance_ , \"Well, you're not explaining the patterns well enough,\" or \"Well, you're not finding patterns that are useful,\" or, \"You're not putting them on a PowerPoint slide properly.\" Your team leader can say all these things. But what she cannot say is, \"No, you don't love finding patterns in data,\" just as we can't say to Miles, \"No, you don't love holding people between life and death.\" She can't say that your red thread isn't a red thread. You are the one and only judge of that.\n\nAnd don't imagine that your teammates in the same role as you share the same red threads as you. They don't. Think back again to Miles. We have interviewed other anesthetists\u2014indeed, other anesthetists who are the same age as Miles and who work in the same health-care system as he does\u2014who don't sound anything like Miles when they describe what they love. One loves the bedside conversations before the operation, and the calm sensitivity required to bring a sedated patient gently back to consciousness without the panic that afflicts many patients. Another is drawn mostly to the intricacies of the anesthetic mechanism, and has dedicated herself to defining precisely how each drug does what it does\u2014get her on the subject of what exactly \"consciousness\" is, and you'll hear the same passion as Miles displayed when he described the thrill of the stress.\n\nAnd yet, looking at Miles, you would never have known what his red threads were. He looks and acts no differently from any other middle-aged British doctor. His red threads have nothing to do with his race, his gender, his age, or his religion. They are simply and only an artifact of his uniqueness. For no good reason other than the clash of the chromosomes, Miles loves certain aspects of his work and loathes other aspects. It is therefore his responsibility to identify these red threads, see them for what they are, and then deliberately weave them into the rest of his work. No one can do this for him\u2014neither the identification, nor the weaving. Only he, with discipline and intelligence and intention, can bring love into his work.\n\nThe same is true for you, of course. You have a unique relationship with the world, a relationship that reveals to you things that only you can see. It offers thread-weaving opportunities all the time, but the only person who knows if those threads are red is _you_. The world won't do your weaving for you\u2014it doesn't care about your red threads. The only person who can stop and be attentive enough to identify these threads, and weave them intelligently into the fabric of your work, is you.*\n\nThis is true not only in your work life but in your life in general. Despite how it might feel a lot of the time, you do not have many different compartments of your life, each of which must be carefully balanced. Instead, you have one life, one whole cloth, one fabric for you to weave your red threads into. It's up to you to know what you love about work, what you love about hobbies, what you love about friends, and what you love about family, and those things will be different from everyone else's things. So when people say, \"Well, as a father\/friend\/colleague I think you should do this or that,\" remember that they do not know you like you know you, that they are well intended yet blind. Your world has an _n_ of 1, and that 1 is you.\n\nShould you work fifteen hours a day? Should you have three kids before the age of thirty? Should you devote all your time to your career until you can afford the day care you will need? Should you take six weeks of vacation a year, or none? Should you quit your job and go surfing or van-ing? These are all choices that only you can make, and the only way to make them wisely is to honor the truth that your life will give you strength if you can but pay attention to your emotional reactions to the events and activities and responsibilities you choose to fill it with.\n\nAnd what of the list of \"Loathed It\" things? Obviously these are your fraying, weak threads, and your aim is to incorporate as few of them as possible in your life's fabric\u2014either by stopping these activities altogether, by partnering with someone to get them done as painlessly as possible, or by seeing if, in being combined with an activity you love (by being braided with one of your red threads), they can become less draining for you. When you start to think about your life in this way, you'll quickly realize not only that \"balance\" is an unhelpful idea but that we have the categories wrong. What we all wrestle with every day in the real world is not so much _work_ and _life_ as it is _love_ and _loathe_.\n\nWatch for your red threads. Take them seriously. They are light, they are strong, they are true, and they are yours. And when you feel run down, or burned out, or at risk, or that everything is coming apart at the seams, cling to them tightly. They will hold fast until you have the strength to begin weaving something new. This new thing you make, this new idea, or project, or job, or relationship, or life, will not necessarily be balanced as others see it. It will not necessarily be a life that others would have made or would even approve of. Nor will it necessarily be easy. But it will be yours. It will be crafted from sources of strength felt only by you, and so it will be strong. It will flourish. It will not wither, and neither will you.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWouldn't it be wonderful if work were _for_ love\u2014if the point of work were to discover that which each of us loves? Obviously, today we don't think of it that way. We think of it as a transaction: you get things done, and then we pay you to buy things you love. But what if we flipped that all around? What if we made the purpose of work to help people discover that which they love; if we changed the American Management Association slogan from _Get work done through people_ to _Get people done through work_? We'd fail, of course, because people are complicated, and so is work, and so is life. And besides, no person is ever \"done.\" But what if we made the attempt the entire point of work: To teach our kids and our college graduates, our workers young and old, our people in the second decade of their first career and our people in the first year of their third career, how to use the raw material of work to find their very own red threads and then to take responsibility for weaving them into something fine and strong?\n\nWe wouldn't net any less productivity. We would net more, and as the Mayo data shows, this productivity would be healthy\u2014underpinned by resilience and fulfillment. In the end, shouldn't that be what work is for?\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAbout twenty years ago, a thirteen-year-old gymnast named Sergei Polunin was plucked from his depressed Ukrainian town and brought over to White Lodge, the junior Royal Ballet School in the middle of Richmond Park, London. For the rest of his childhood he was trained in the Royal Ballet techniques, and he displayed such extraordinary natural talent that, at nineteen, he became the youngest principal male soloist in the history of the Royal Ballet Company. Everyone in London agreed that he was better than Baryshnikov, better than Nureyev, better even than Nijinsky, the most technically perfect dancer in a century. London was proud to have found and nurtured him.\n\nBut no one truly knew him, and no one truly cared to. He was a passionate, lyrical dancer, strong but fluid, soulful but angry, his tattooed body merely the most obvious sign of his need to push the boundaries. The powers that be at the Royal Ballet Company ignored all this, and instead did what they always do with their prodigies: they made him follow the strictures of the Royal Ballet Way. He would dance the classical ballet repertoire, in the classical ballet form and mold, and they would make him do it again and again, to glorify the company and delight the London crowds. And so he danced, and he danced, and he delighted and amazed, until one day, at the age of twenty-one and only two years after he ascended to principal, he quit.\n\nThere was a pattern for the perfect Royal Ballet dancer, and this pattern didn't care what Sergei Polunin loved. It didn't care about whatever his red threads as a dancer might be, and sadly he wasn't strong enough to believe that holding fast to these threads was vital for him. He was forced to conform to this pattern and he let his threads slip away, and soon, quite soon, he fell apart. Ballet, as you know, is an unremittingly technical and demanding craft, but if you build technical craft on a loveless foundation, you net only burnout, because technical mastery absent love _always_ equals burnout. Burnout isn't the absence of balance but the absence of love.\n\nThe Royal Ballet Company had won the talent war. It had found the most technically and lyrically gifted dancer in a century, and then, blind to his loves, it had torn him up. And we, the world, suffered for it. He had nothing left to contribute. Sergei flailed around for a few years, no longer at home in either London or the Ukraine, lost without his passion, and, after his parents divorced, alone and unmoored.\n\nAnd then he did what you might have done if you've ever found yourself similarly untethered: he found one thing he knew he loved\u2014one frayed strand of a red thread\u2014and he followed where it led. He asked a choreographer friend of his to create one dance that he would truly love, a choreography as lyrical as it was technical, equally precise and passionate. He would practice the piece, dance and film it twice during one muggy afternoon in Hawaii, post the video on YouTube for his close friends and family to see, and then\u2014well, he had no idea what would happen next. He was simply taking hold of one strong thread, weaving it into something that was, at the very least, authentic, and then hoping it would have enough power to pull him back onto his life's path.\n\nOn the day after Valentine's Day in 2015 he published, to very little fanfare, his version of Hozier's \"Take Me to Church.\"\n\nIf you've never seen it, take a moment now to log onto YouTube and watch\u2014it's four minutes and eight seconds that you'll never forget. Whether you're a fan of ballet or not, you'll recognize it not only as the work of a man at the end of his tether, but also as a pure expression of technical craft and unabashed joy. You see here a man who is taking his loves seriously, interlacing them with craft and discipline, and contributing to us something passionate, rare, and pure. You will see, from the inside out, that this is the fullest, most authentic, and richest expression of this unique person. If the people coming to work on your team could feel more like this, if you could help them take their red threads this seriously\u2014not to make your people feel good about themselves, although that helps, but so they could share more with the world\u2014what a beautiful and lasting contribution you and your team would make.\n\nSince it was posted, Sergei's video has been viewed more than twenty-three million times. He's danced the piece on stages as diverse as Covent Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, and _The Ellen DeGeneres Show_ , and has rediscovered his love for his craft as a guest principal at Europe's most prestigious ballet companies. No longer tied down to the classical Royal repertoire, he's rediscovered his love-in-work, and all of us are the beneficiaries.\n\nWe ask the same of you. Spend a week in love with your work. Hold tightly to your red threads. Yes, so you can blossom. But mostly, so you can figure out ways to share what's unique about you with the rest of us.\n\nThe power of human nature is that each human's nature is unique. This is a feature, not a bug. So your responsibility is to take seriously the uniqueness of your uniqueness, and design the most intelligent, the most honest, and the most effective ways to volunteer it to the rest of us. We\u2014your teammates, your family, your community, your company\u2014are waiting for you to share with us your unique loves. We're here for but a few short years. Please don't make us wait too long.\n\n*As we've shared this exercise around the world, we've learned that not all languages and cultures use the words \"love\" and \"loathe\" in the same way\u2014in the Netherlands, for example, there is no single word for \"love.\" So to be clear: the key idea here is to capture your strong positive and negative reactions to your work, so pick whatever words mean that to you\u2014you're after the extremes of your experience, not the \"meh\" in the middle.\n\n*You're often told, by the way, to \"take ownership of your career.\" This is what it actually means\u2014it means taking ownership of the weaving of your red threads.\n\n#\n\n# Leadership is a thing\n\nMemphis, Tennessee, is the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. We visited the museum a couple of years ago, and spent two or three hours there learning about the civil-rights movement and the long struggle of African Americans to end institutionalized discrimination and achieve some measure of equality.\n\nThe layout of the museum\u2014really, the layout of the experience of a visitor\u2014is arresting. Rather than comprising a series of rooms that you might visit in turn, the main exhibit is laid out as a winding path across the floor of a large room\u2014making a sort of high-walled maze\u2014so as you walk you encounter the various displays and artifacts in chronological order. You begin with the conclusion of the Civil War, and see the hopes and possibilities of that brief moment in time quickly pushed aside by Jim Crow laws. You see the struggles over segregation leading up to the _Brown_ v. _Board of Education_ decision in 1954. And then, rounding a corner, you see a full-scale replica of a bus\u2014an entire city bus, not gleaming and new and modern, but old, banged-up, hard-working, and hard-worked, the sort of vehicle that shuttles anonymously to and fro in our lives, moving us from one place to another while we think of other things. This particular bus, however, serves to remind us of one of those moments in history that cleave time into before and after, because in 1955, on a bus like this one, Rosa Parks, after another long day at work, refused to give up her seat to a white person when instructed to do so by the driver. The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott, carried forward by a young minister from a local church, became one of the early flashpoints in the civil-rights struggle.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThis is not a chapter about leadership.\n\nIt's become something of a clich\u00e9, in the business literature, to bemoan the vast volume of writing on the topic; to list the number of books on leadership that come up if you search on Amazon; to point to the great library of articles and blog posts and videos and inspirational speeches as evidence that leadership is either a Really Important Subject or else a Really Over-Analyzed Subject. If it's possible to distill the essence of what all these written and spoken words have to tell us, it would be something like this: that leadership is enduringly fascinating to us and that we believe it to be critically important at work.\n\nAnd we can say a little more. We can say that there appears to be broad agreement that certain people exhibit a definable, consistent, and meaningful quality called leadership. That there are some characteristics of a person that are in some way above and different from that person's technical skills (whether he or she can write good code, for example, or good English) and that also transcend that person's interpersonal or \"soft\" skills (whether he or she can make the sale, or negotiate a deal) and that make the person a leader.\n\nWe can also say that we tend to agree that all the best leaders possess this quality, or set of qualities\u2014so, leadership is something that lives, specially, in those who lead and is in some way responsible for their ability to do so. And we can say that, as a consequence, most of us would agree that if you want to be a leader, you have to have this set of qualities.\n\nThere is a frustrating circularity to this argument\u2014that there's a thing called leadership, and we know it's a thing because leaders have it, otherwise they wouldn't be leaders. It's like saying your cat has catness because he's a cat: it might be true, but it's hardly helpful to your hamster if he dreams, someday, of being a cat. This know-it-when-we-see-it vagueness explains, in part, why we can talk about leadership so much without usefully advancing our understanding of it, or getting much better at it.\n\nPerhaps to combat this vagueness, some go further and begin to try to specify some of the qualities that make up leadership. Being inspirational seems to be important. Being able to create and articulate a vision matters a lot. The ability to formulate strategy is good, as is the ability to distinguish a good strategy from a bad one. Sometimes mastery of execution makes the list\u2014the art of getting stuff done. Setting a direction for an organization is important, and, in concert with this, bringing people into alignment with that direction and motivating them to move ahead. Decision making is high on the list, together with managing conflict. Innovation and disruption usually put in an appearance. Communications skills also rank highly, and having what's commonly referred to as \"executive presence\" is also felt to be critical.\n\nTo this collection of long-limbed characteristics are added some personal traits. Leadership requires authenticity (the ability to come across as a \"real\" person) and often, too, vulnerability (the courage to be imperfect in public, to relinquish the need to be right or to be the smartest person in the room). These things, and a few others, are said to be needed so that our leaders can build effective relationships with others.\n\nAnd yet these characteristics are curiously circumscribed: authenticity is important, right up until the point when the leader, authentically, says that he has no idea what to do, which then fractures his vision. Likewise, vulnerability is important until the moment when the leader's comfort with her own flaws causes us to doubt her, and to question whether she is sufficiently inspirational. Apparently, we require authentic sureness and reassuring vulnerability, however contradictory those things may be. The personal qualities that make the list are Goldilocks qualities\u2014they must be neither too hot, nor too cold, but just right.\n\nThese little inconsistencies, however, melt away in the face of our conviction that leadership is a great good at work\u2014it is _always_ better for a person to have more of it, and the more leaders an organization has, the better. This much, at least, appears settled\u2014and as a result you will be told that the most important thing you can do to advance your career is to \"grow your leadership.\"\n\nNow, some might choose other attributes for their lists, but those above are a reasonable summary of the theory-world view of leadership. And the reason that this isn't a chapter on leadership is not that the qualities listed aren't useful (they are) or that this topic has been done to death (it's close) but, rather, that when we look critically, we realize that we may well have misunderstood leadership altogether.\n\nIndeed, the final lie that we encounter at work is that _leadership is a thing_.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIn June 2004, while tidying a basement, a sheriff's deputy in Montgomery, Alabama, came upon several books of mug shots. The books were clearly old, and the photos inside them had been carefully sorted by gender and by race. In a volume titled \"Negro Male\" was a page showing photographs of some of the eighty-nine people arrested on February 22, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott.\n\nAs we look at that page today, twelve men look back. Some are dressed informally; some formally. Some are younger; some older. Some seem worried; some resigned; some defiant. Each has an arrest number in front of him: some are holding it; some have it hanging from their necks on a chain. As it turns out, we know the names of all twelve men on this page, although we know little else about them beyond that. And we know their names because of something they did together, and something that invites us to think about leadership differently.\n\nThe thing that the men in the mug-shot book have in common is explained by the identity of one of them in particular. On the top row of the page, the man bearing number 7089 stares back at the lens, his light-colored suit coat buttoned, his tie straight, his hands resting on his knees. At the time this photograph was taken, he was twenty-seven years old, and was the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. In the days following Rosa Parks's arrest, he had been asked to lead the boycott, which, beginning in December 1955, saw widespread participation and created significant economic problems for the city's transit system. In early 1956 a county grand jury returned indictments against several of the boycott participants for violations of the Alabama Anti-Boycott Act, and the pastor, together with eighty-eight others, was arrested.\n\nHis name, of course, was Martin Luther King Jr. But the story these pictures have to tell us is not, in the first instance, a story about him, about Number 7089. It's a story about the other eleven men on the page, and it's a story that\u2014in all the theorizing about leadership, in all the competing lists and competencies, in all the articles and surveys and assessments and books, in all the dissection and analysis and categorization\u2014is sadly lost. For leadership does not live in the abstract, does not live in the average. It lives, instead, in the real world.\n\nAnd if we look at that world, this is what we see.\n\nFirst, the ability to lead is rare. It was not inevitable that Martin Luther King Jr. would emerge from the Montgomery bus boycott as a national leader whom millions would follow\u2014there were other good people guiding the Montgomery Improvement Association, just as there were other, earlier bus boycotts, such as the one in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a couple of years before. But something about King in Montgomery was special. The fact that we lionize those who have this special ability; the fact that we spend so much time looking for it and trying to get more of it; and the fact that it plays such a prominent role in how we think about our organizations: these point not to its ubiquity but to its scarcity\u2014and this scarcity, in turn, belies the supposed ease with which we're all meant to be able to get better at it. If leading were easy, there would be more good leaders. If there were more good leaders, we might be just a little less focused on it.\n\nSecond, leaders have shortcomings. Their skill set is incomplete. We don't need J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance files to reveal that King was not in possession of every quality the perfect leader should possess. And this is confounding, because it challenges the notion that there is in fact a list of leadership qualities, each of which is essential. For every quality on the list, we can think of a respected leader in the real world who lacks it. If leadership is about being inspirational or visionary, then what should we make of Warren Buffett, whose principal activities as a leader seem to consist of sitting in an office in Omaha, Nebraska, drinking Cherry Coke, and finding companies to buy? If leadership is about creating a winning strategy, then what should we make of Winston Churchill, whose disastrous policies in the 1920s and 1930s led to his exile from government? If leadership is about execution and communication, then what should we make of King George VI of Great Britain, who was revered for his leadership of that nation during the Second World War, but who could barely speak in public, and who wasn't in a position to execute anything? If leadership is about building a winning coalition, then what should we make of Susan B. Anthony, whose falling-out with her fellow women's-suffrage leaders created a split in that movement that lasted twenty years?\n\nIf it's about ethics, what do we make of Steve Jobs's buying a new car every six months to avoid registering it, so as to be able to park in handicapped spots whenever he wanted to? If it's about caring for those in your charge, what do we make of General George Patton and his physically assaulting soldiers with PTSD? If it's about authenticity, where does that leave John F. Kennedy and his hidden illnesses and affairs?\n\nWhat does it mean for all the models and lists if the things on them are optional? The lesson from the real world is not that there is any particular collection of qualities that every leader has, but rather that every leader we can think of has obvious shortcomings\u2014that leaders aren't perfect people, not by a long way.\n\nAnd finally, it follows that leadership is not about being the most well-rounded of the well-rounded people. As we saw in chapter 4, the best people aren't well-rounded. The same is true for the leaders we see in the real world\u2014and even more so. As with some of the great performers we met earlier\u2014think Lionel Messi and his amazing left foot\u2014we don't see the most respected leaders spending much time trying to round themselves out, trying to develop abilities in areas where they have none. Instead, we see them trying to make the best use of what they already have, with the result that whenever we look closely, we see them going about the task of leading in very different ways. In this way, leading is the same as all other fields of human endeavor\u2014high performance is idiosyncratic, and the higher the level of performance the greater the level of idiosyncrasy.\n\nKing, too, had a very particular approach to leading, and his genius and his effectiveness lay not in trying to round himself out and acquire the skills of, say, a Rosa Parks, a Malcolm X, or a Ralph Abernathy, but instead in starting from, cultivating, and, in moments of crisis, falling back on his very particular gifts as a leader\u2014which we'll try to describe shortly.\n\nThis is why the idea that _leadership is a thing_ is a lie. When you take any of our definitions of that thing, and then try to locate it in the real world, you encounter exception upon exception upon exception. The very least we can conclude is that if there is some magical set of attributes, we haven't yet figured out what they are, and that plenty of leaders are doing plenty of leading without many of them. And if that's the case, then the things that supposedly make up leadership neither add to our understanding of it nor help us be better at it.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBut if the real world shows us what leadership _isn't_ , does it give us any clues at all that we can learn from? Can we say nothing more than that leading is a free-for-all, a grab bag of different skills and attributes and states and traits that will remain ever mysterious? Or is there a different way to understand what's going on?\n\nWhat's most remarkable about the events in Montgomery in 1956 is not that one individual took a stand and was imprisoned as a result\u2014it is not what this one man said or did. It is rather that others chose to follow him. What is truly before us on the page of mug shots is a picture of a leader _and his followers_ \u2014and it is because, on that day, the eleven chose to follow that sixty years later we know their names. In the midst of physical attacks and intimidation and firebombings, the eleven saw something special in King, something that they chose to follow, and because of what they did, and then because of what countless thousands and millions did in the ensuing years, we recognize him as a leader.\n\nThis is the true lesson in leading from the real world: a leader is someone who has followers, plain and simple. The only determinant of whether anyone is leading is whether anyone else is following.\n\nThis might seem like an obvious statement, until we recall how easily we overlook its implications. Followers\u2014their needs, their feelings, their fears and hopes\u2014are strangely absent when we speak of leaders as exemplars of strategy, execution, vision, oratory, relationships, charisma, and so on. The idea of leadership is missing the idea of followers. It's missing the idea that our subject here is, at heart, a question of a particularly human relationship\u2014namely, why anyone would choose to devote his or her energies to, and to take risks on behalf of, someone else. And, in that, it's missing the entire point.\n\nThis notion\u2014that a leader is a person with followers\u2014does not emerge from a list of skills, or tactics, or competencies; it doesn't coincide with a person's level within a hierarchy; and it doesn't actually tell us very much about the nature of the leader him- or herself. But it does capture a condition, a litmus test if you like, for leading. And that condition is precise\u2014it's about the presence, or absence, of followers.\n\nSo the question we should really be asking ourselves is this one: Why do we follow? What is it that makes us work hard late into the night\u2014to go beyond what's expected of us? What makes us move someone to the front of our queue? What makes us voluntarily place some part of our destiny in the hands of another human being? What makes us give our breath to another?\n\nWhat made those eleven men entrust their well-being and their hopes to Number 7089?\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWe can see some part of the answer in those eight items with which we began the book. We know that the feelings measured by those eight items exist disproportionately on high-performing teams, so we know something of what followers need from their team leader.\n\nBroadly speaking, we want to feel part of something bigger than ourselves\u2014the \"Best of We\"\u2014while, at the same time, feeling that our leader knows and values us for who we are as a unique individual\u2014the \"Best of Me.\"\n\nMore specifically, we follow leaders who connect us to a mission we believe in, who clarify what's expected of us, who surround us with people who define excellence the same way we do, who value us for our strengths, who show us that our teammates will always be there for us, who diligently replay our winning plays, who challenge us to keep getting better, and who give us confidence in the future.\n\nThis is not a list of qualities in a leader, but rather a set of feelings in a follower. When we say to ourselves that leadership is indeed a thing, because we know it when we see it, we're not really seeing any definable characteristic of another human. What we are \"seeing\" is in fact our own feelings as a follower. As such, while we should not expect every good leader to share the same qualities or competencies, we _can_ hold all good leaders accountable for creating these same feelings of followership in their teams. Indeed, we can use these feelings to help any particular leader know whether or not she is any good. Those eight items introduced in chapter 1 are a valid measure of a leader's effectiveness. We need not dictate how each leader should behave, but we can define what all good leaders must create in their followers. And since we measure this by asking the followers to rate their own experiences, rather than rating the leader on a long list of abstract leader qualities, this measure of leader effectiveness is reliable.\n\nLeadership isn't a thing, because it cannot be measured reliably. Followership is a thing, because it can.\n\nAnd it's a lie that _leadership is a thing_ because no two leaders create followers in quite the same way. What's true in the real world is that leading is many different things. Your challenge as a leader is not to try to acquire the complete set of abstract leader competencies\u2014you will fail, not least because the first hurdle you will fall at is authenticity. Instead, your challenge is to find and refine your own idiosyncratic way of creating in your team these eight emotional outcomes. Do this well and you will lead well.\n\nInterestingly\u2014and happily\u2014a close study of the real world reveals that these two are linked. Your ability to create the outcomes you want in your followers is tied directly to how seriously and intelligently you cultivate your own idiosyncrasy, and to what end. The deeper and more extreme your idiosyncrasy becomes, the more passionately your followers follow\u2014and while this is frustrating to us when we happen to disagree with the ends of a particular leader, it is so nonetheless.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWe leave the Montgomery bus behind us and continue our walk through the exhibition. We see the student sit-ins of 1960, and we follow the Freedom Riders of 1961. We learn about efforts to organize resistance and protests in Mississippi and in Albany, Georgia. And then we arrive at a replica of a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.\n\nIn the 1960s, Birmingham was known as the most segregated city in America. In early 1963 the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, together with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, began a nonviolent campaign against the segregation. A local justice issued an injunction against the protest. The civil-rights leaders duly announced they would disobey this order, and on April 12, 1963, King and other marchers were arrested and incarcerated. That same day, eight white Alabama clergymen published an open letter in which they criticized King and his methods, and a copy of the newspaper in which it was printed was smuggled in to King in his cell. King, on reading it, began writing. At first, he wrote in the margins of the newspaper. Then, when those were covered, he wrote on the toilet paper in his cell, and then on scraps of paper given him by a friendly fellow inmate, and then, finally, on a writing pad brought in by his lawyers. When King finally set down his pencil, he had written what is now known as the Letter from Birmingham Jail. We read a copy of it on the wall outside the jail cell.\n\nIt's a long letter\u2014an impassioned letter. It's a plea against settling, against compromise, against the path of least resistance. And in it, King talks about extremism. \"The question,\" he says \"is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be.\"\n\nWarren Buffett, the uninspiring Coke-drinker from Omaha, is an extremist. He's exceptional at finding and buying companies. Winston Churchill, while he might have been a poor policy maker, was exceptional at inspiring uncompromising resistance. Susan B. Anthony was really good at focusing her energies, and those of the people around her, on a specific goal. Steve Jobs was really good at creating hardware and software that was delightful to use. George Patton was really good at fighting, with his whole being, whatever was in front of him on any given day. And John F. Kennedy was really good at making the future feel universal and morally uplifting. What each of these leaders had in common was that they were really good at something\u2014each was, in their different way, an extremist.\n\nWe have seen, already, that the best people aren't well-rounded, but are instead _spiky_ \u2014they have honed one or two distinctive abilities that they use to make their mark on the world. What we see in the best leaders is a similar extremism\u2014a few signal abilities refined over time. But now, these abilities are so pronounced, and the leaders so adept at transmitting them to the world, that they stand out to all of us. And so this truth: _we follow spikes_.\n\nWe do this not merely because a leader who has deep mastery in something will be able to excel at it, but because these spikes change the way we feel about the future. There aren't many human universals\u2014the anthropologist Donald Brown's book _Human Universals_ lists sixty-seven of them\u2014but one of them is that every human society ever studied ritualizes death. Each society does this differently, but we all do it. Death is the great unknown, and these rituals serve to lessen our fear and give us some illusion of control. These death rituals are merely the most obvious sign of something common to us all: we humans fear the unknown. The past is what it is, the present is where we stand, yet the future is a scarily uncertain place. This uncertainty leads us to seek reassurance, and in particular, reassurance through the ritualization of that most uncertain certainty of all\u2014our ultimate demise.\n\nThis particularly human characteristic presents a challenge for you, the modern day leader. You are charged with rallying your team toward a better future, yet many on your team are fearful of this future. And this fear isn't unjustified. It's adaptive. Those of our forebears who lacked it, who paddled their little rafts toward the horizon, asking themselves \"Ooh, I wonder where the sun goes to sleep?\" often didn't return to pass on their genes. Being a bit cautious can be a sensible thing.\n\nAs a leader, you can't be dismissive of this fear. You can't tell your people to \"embrace change\" and to \"get comfortable with ambiguity.\" Well you can, but you will then get them thinking ever more deeply about change and ambiguity, which will, in turn, _increase_ their anxiety and lessen your effectiveness as a leader. It's an irony that while consultants wax lyrical about change, real-world leaders hardly use the word at all, realizing that their followers want instead an increasingly vivid picture of the future, not another reminder of its inherent uncertainty.\n\nYour greatest challenge as a leader, then, is to honor each person's legitimate fear of the unknown and, at the same time, to turn that fear into spiritedness. We, your followers, like the comfort of where we stand, yet know that the flow of events is pulling us inexorably into the unknown. So when we find something, anything, however slight, that lessens our uncertainty, we cling on for dear life.\n\nThe final characteristic of the best teams, as we saw in chapter 1, is the feeling that, for each team member, \"I have great confidence in my company's future.\" This confidence in the future, it seems, is the antidote to our universal uncertainty. And it explains why we follow. The act of following is a barter\u2014we entrust some part of our future to a leader _only_ when we get something in return.\n\nThat \"something in return\" is confidence.\n\nAnd what gives us confidence in the future is seeing, in a leader, some great and pronounced level of ability in something we care about.\n\nWe follow people who are really good at something that matters to us. _We follow the spikes_.\n\nIt's as if the spikes give us something to hook on to. We're well aware of our own shortcomings, and we know that what lies ahead of us in life is unknowable. We're aware, also, that our journey will be easier if we can do it in partnership with others. And when we see, in those others, some ability that offsets our own deficits, and that removes for us, even if only slightly, some of the mist of the future, then we hold on. We don't necessarily follow vision, or strategy, or execution, or relationship building, or any of the other leadership things. Instead we follow mastery. And it doesn't much matter how this mastery manifests itself, as long as we, the followers, find it relevant. John F. Kennedy was a master at getting us to see and engage with the near-term future in a way that made it morally enlarging\u2014even during the Cuban Missile Crisis he ended his address to the nation by reaching out to the Cubans themselves, saying, \"I have no doubt that most Cubans today look forward to the time when they will be truly free\u2014free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation.\" His brother Robert didn't share this spike. Robert F. Kennedy's spike was urgent, present-day righteousness. Whether he was rooting out Communists under Joe McCarthy, or attacking the Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, or aggressively pushing forward the Civil Rights Act in spite of his brother's caution, RFK's focus was on making things right, right now.\n\nEach truly effective leader cultivates his or her mastery in a way that communicates to us something certain and vivid. It's as if we trust leaders only when they've proven to us that they've opened more doors than we have, seen round more corners than we have, dived deeper than we have, taken themselves more seriously than we have. We trust the seriousness of this. We trust its predictability. We are drawn to its specialness. We sense its authenticity. We are attracted to the beautiful clarity of great ability, the brief moments of awe. We ignore everything else.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOne of the lessons of the Nine Lies is that when we blind ourselves to what's around us, and instead theorize about how the world ought to be (or how we'd like it to be if only it were tidier), our people vanish. We stop seeing them. We mute our curiosity, and we replace it with dogma and dictum. The same happens with the people we call leaders\u2014the moment we start theorizing, they vanish, too.\n\nAnd here are the truths that vanish along with them.\n\nThe truth that no two leaders do the same job in the same way.\n\nThe truth that as much as we follow the spikes, they can also antagonize us.\n\nThe truth that no leader is perfect\u2014and that the best of them have learned how to work around their imperfections.\n\nThe truth that leaders are frustrating\u2014they don't have all the abilities we'd like them to have.\n\nThe truth that following is in part an act of forgiveness\u2014it is to give our attention and efforts to someone despite what we can see of their flaws.\n\nThe truth that not everyone should be, or wants to be, a leader\u2014the world needs followers, and great followers at that.\n\nThe truth that a person who might be a great leader for me might not be a great leader for you.\n\nThe truth that a person who might be a great leader for one team, or team of teams, or company, might not be a great leader for another.\n\nThe truth that leaders are not necessarily a force for good in the world\u2014they are simply people with followers. They aren't saints, and sometimes their having followers leads to hubris and arrogance, or worse.\n\nThe truth that leaders are not good or bad\u2014they are just people who have figured out how to be their most defined selves in the world, and who do so in such a way that they inspire genuine confidence in their followers. This isn't necessarily good or bad. It just is.\n\nThe truth that leading isn't a set of characteristics but a series of experiences seen through the eyes of the followers.\n\nThe truth that, despite all this, we reserve a special place in our world for those who make our experience of it better and more hopeful.\n\nAnd the truth that, through it all, we follow your spikes.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWe spend vast sums of money, in the corporate world, on training and developing our leaders\u2014in the United States alone, a jaw-dropping $14 billion every year. The usual leadership course goes something like this: there's a video, either of people talking about leaders, or else of a real leader in the real world. It's intriguing, provocative, and moving. We learn about the impact leaders have had on the various interview subjects, or we feel it ourselves as we see the real leader on-screen. While watching, we feel inspired, curious, energized\u2014that we are going to learn about something important, and that we have just, in a small way, felt that important thing for ourselves.\n\nThen a facilitator steps to the front of the room and explains _the model_. The model takes whatever we've just seen and experienced and makes it boring. The model is usually a two-by-two grid of little boxes, and in each of the boxes is written some sort of abstract word: _empathy_ , _authenticity_ , _vision_ , and so forth. And then the facilitator explains that for the next several hours of our lives, we will take each little box in turn, and learn about the abstract thing written in it, and how each of us can have more of that thing. Sometimes the course has been preceded by an assessment that we've all taken, and partway through the course we get to see our results, and how we compare with the things in the boxes. Sometimes we get to give one another feedback in real time at our tables on how we're doing at the things in the boxes. Sometimes we build action plans and write down in our notebooks well-meaning commitments about how we'll do more of the things in the boxes, knowing as we do so that the moment the course finishes, these commitments will join \"floss more often\" in the _Big Lifetime Pile Of Things Not Done_.\n\nWe're told, as we do all these things, that at the end of this process, we will all be more like the leader we saw at the beginning. But our experience, as we go along, is one of increasing frustration. None of the things in the boxes helps us locate the feeling we had, in the opening video, about a particular leader. Indeed, the things in the boxes seem to have nothing on earth to do with the actual leader we've seen, or any actual leaders we've seen. We encounter leaders, in life, emotionally. In our leadership training, the first thing we do\u2014in our attempt to understand leadership\u2014is to wring the emotional life out of the thing.\n\nBecause what never, ever happens in any of these courses is our starting with the question: Who are you? Not, who are you in comparison with some model involving abstract words in little boxes, but who are you as a living, breathing, growing, worrying, joyous, uncertain, loving, striving, messy, and yes, spiky human being? We never ask why, given your particular jumble of characteristics, anyone would follow you. We never ask how\u2014given that one-of-a-kind mixture of states and traits that makes you who you are\u2014you would use those things to create an experience for the people around you, and use what you have to help them feel better about the world you're all walking through together, and, while we're at it, how we might give you some measure of that so you can adjust your course as you go.\n\nSo we need to stop with the models. Stop with the 360-degree assessments. Stop with the minute and meaningless parsing of how to move your \"effective communications\" score from a 3.8 to a 3.9, while also figuring out why your peers gave you a 4.1 on \"strategy\" yet your boss gave you a 3.0. Stop with the endless lists of abstractions. Stop debating whether it's authenticity or tribal leadership or situational leadership or level-five leadership or whatever the latest leadership-nirvana thing is. Stop with the one-size-fits-all.\n\nInstead, let's get humble\u2014the experience of the people on our teams and in our organizations is a true thing, and we don't simply get to choose what it is.\n\nLet's get curious about that experience and how our actions shape it.\n\nAnd let's follow our own reactions to real people in the real world. When we feel uplifted by what someone does or says, we need to stop and ask why. When we feel a fresh rush of energy after talking with someone, we need to stop and ask why. When we feel, in response to another human being, that mysterious attraction tugging on us\u2014like a fish on a line, or like a needle twitching in a compass, an attraction that says Here, something is happening, something true and visceral and substantial, something that will change, however slightly, the arc of our future\u2014we need to stop and ask why.\n\nWe need to get to know real leaders in the real world, and we need to come to know them as followers ourselves. Then we can start learning.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nOur walk continues. Now we come to a representation of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at Selma, across which King led marchers in 1965 after the horrors of Bloody Sunday. As we walk, imagining as best we can the hundreds upon thousands of determined footsteps that the bridge has come to represent, we notice that the ground is rising beneath us\u2014that we are ascending. Our pathway doubles back on itself. We see murals of the Selma marchers, and we hear the sound of marching feet. We hear King's words\u2014\"How Long, Not Long\"\u2014as they were delivered at the Alabama State Capitol steps in March of that year. And then, all at once, quiet. We have ascended a full floor, and turning once again, we can see down on the exhibition, and the path that we have traveled.\n\nNow, King's journey is clear to us. Now, looking down from above on each of the protests, and marches, and arrests, and setbacks, and turning points, and triumphs, we can see, neatly laid out on the exhibition floor, the voyage he took. How Montgomery led to Albany, and Birmingham led to Washington, and thence to Selma. How, \"This movement will not stop, because God is with the movement,\" was followed by, \"We . . . will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,\" and then, \"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.\" And through and across these places and words, we see King harness the nonviolent protest methods of Gandhi to his own particular brand of persistence. We see him fuse his personal bravery and sacrifice to his prose, borrowing as it did the rhythms and cadence of the pulpit and transforming them into a universal poetry of hope.\n\nBut let us go back, for a moment, to somewhere near the beginning of this journey, to the meeting of a few dozen local ministers at King's church in Montgomery at which he was asked to lead the boycott, and imagine what might happen if that meeting were instead to take place in a business organization today\u2014if we were, say, selecting a leader for a key corporate initiative. We would first ask the assembled group to identify what qualities were necessary in the leader. We'd present the ministers with a list\u2014results orientation, strategic orientation, collaboration and influence, team leadership, developing organizational capabilities, change leadership, and market understanding, say\u2014and ask them to gauge just how much of these would be needed for the leader to succeed. We'd then ask the group to rate Dr. King and any other candidates on each of these, both in terms of his current level of ability and his potential for growth in each, and we'd compare those with the required levels of ability. Then we'd use this to predict his chance of success, and weigh that in our decision of whether to ask him to lead. And then, if we went ahead and decided King was the man for the job, we'd suggest development opportunities for him to grow in the areas we'd decided mattered most. We'd do this because this is our theory of leadership in action. And the point is not that we wouldn't choose Dr. King but that we wouldn't in any meaningful sense see him at all.\n\nBut now look down with us again to the exhibition floor, and now think of the followers without which the journey would not have been. These theoretical things would have meant exactly nothing to them. What they saw was not a perfectly balanced set of abstract qualities. What they saw resembles in no way our tidy, hindsight-blinded models. What they saw was an imperfect man who understood very well what sort of an extremist he should be. For Dr. King, leading meant defining, vividly, the goal, and then taking advantage of any opportunity to press toward that goal. There was no detailed plan of execution\u2014first this, then this, then that. Rather, there was a clarion vision\u2014\"let freedom ring\"\u2014and then an unswerving commitment to intervene whenever and wherever progress toward that vision could be made, and to do so regardless of the personal or physical risks that any such action entailed. His approach was contingent, opportunistic, and incremental. It focused on imagined change, not on predictable execution. Its focus was at once broad, in terms of vision, and narrow, in terms of what must be done in the here and now\u2014but its focus was not in between those two, in any kind of roadmap to success. It relinquished certainty on how the goal might be met, and substituted trust that the right actions done now and repeated at every future opportunity would ultimately prevail.\n\nAs we stand and survey the exhibition, our perspective, looking down from above and at the same time looking back from the future, offers us a certain clarity. King's followers, however, were not afforded that luxury. What confronted African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s who sought to claim those rights that the Constitution had promised them was not a tidy journey with well-defined steps. It was, rather, massive and pervasive uncertainty. King, the spiky extremist, helped them see into that future; helped them perceive, however dimly, what its contours might be, and how they might be a part of it.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIn the spring of 1968, Memphis is a troubled city. In February the city's sanitation workers, frustrated by years of poor pay and poor working conditions, and angered by the deaths of two of their number in a garbage-crushing machine, go out on strike. A march to support the strike, with King in attendance, degenerates into violence, and one young protester is killed. A second march is organized for the following week, and again, King plans to attend.\n\nHis staff and close friends don't want him to go. He's tired, depressed, not sleeping, and drinking heavily. He's being criticized, constantly, by the press, by local leaders in Memphis, and even by some within his own movement. He's watched wherever he goes. He has even, a couple of weeks earlier, sent his wife synthetic red carnations instead of real ones, because he wants her to have something that will outlast him.\n\nHe knows, however, that unless he can lead a nonviolent protest in Memphis\u2014unless he can reclaim the moral high ground\u2014the future of all he has worked for will be at risk. So he goes. His flight to Memphis is delayed by a bomb threat. When the plane finally makes it to Tennessee, it's met, unexpectedly, by a police detail, which seems to be there less to protect him than to monitor him. During his first meeting of the day, word comes in that the city has issued an injunction against the march. His second meeting of the day is with a group of black activists who are believed to have been responsible for the violence in the first march, and whom King is trying to persuade to act peacefully if the second march goes ahead. He's pulled away from this meeting to confer with his lawyers about their strategy to remove the injunction. Then, it's back to the activists. Outside, the skies darken\u2014a storm is on the way.\n\nExhausted and battling laryngitis, he tells his colleagues that he won't be able to speak at a rally planned for that evening, and asks Ralph Abernathy to give an address in his place. He lies down on the bed in his room and tries to rest. Before very long, Abernathy calls. There's a huge crowd at the rally, and they want to see King. Can he come after all?\n\nKing often speaks without preparation, and the speech he gives this evening is no exception. He begins by imagining that he's been given the choice of which era of human history he would like to live in, and his answer becomes a sort of journey. From ancient Egypt, to ancient Greece, to Rome, and then to the Renaissance, King tells us what momentous events he would be able to witness in each place, before rejecting each in turn, declaring, \"But I wouldn't stop there.\" He keeps going, past Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and past Roosevelt's New Deal, until he arrives in the second half of the twentieth century. It's a familiar rhetorical device, of course\u2014not this . . . not this . . . but _this_ \u2014and here it serves to locate the present moment in the arc of history. This is the moment in all of history he would choose, because now matters most, at least to this man.\n\nNext he is practical and directive. Unity is critical\u2014division will lead to defeat\u2014and it is important to \"keep the issues where they are\":\n\n> The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that . . . we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be\u2014and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue.\n\nHe emphasizes the importance of economic protest, reminding his listeners of their collective economic power and encouraging them to use it to hold corporations to account. He goes so far as to list names of particular brands of bread to avoid (Wonder Bread and Hart's Bread), and tells his audience to encourage their neighbors, too, to boycott these brands. He advocates for black-owned banking and insurance companies. All this, he says, is in the name of intensifying the protest: \"Up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.\"\n\nHe tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and uses it to make a very specific point. He asks his audience to imagine why the Levite and the priest did not stop to help the injured man, and wonders if it was because they were afraid of what might happen to them. He describes the road between Jerusalem and Jericho where the events of the parable took place\u2014he has driven down it\u2014and tells his audience how remote and dangerous (\"really conducive for ambushing\") it is. And he makes the question that faced the Samaritan the question that faces his listeners, as they consider, perhaps fearfully, whether to join the upcoming march:\n\n> That's the question before you tonight. Not, \"If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job.\" Not, \"If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?\" The question is not, \"If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?\" The question is, \"If I do _not_ stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?\" That's the question.\n\nThen he begins his ending. In both an echo and a continuation of his opening tour of history, he tells the audience of being stabbed by a deranged woman years before, and learning that the knife had come so close to his aorta that had he sneezed, he would have died. And now this\u2014\"If I had sneezed\"\u2014becomes a refrain as he recounts what he has witnessed in a few years in the second half of the twentieth century. If he had sneezed, he wouldn't have seen the sit-ins of the 1960s. If he had sneezed, he wouldn't have seen the Freedom Riders. If he had sneezed, he wouldn't have seen the Montgomery bus boycott, or the protests in Birmingham, or the \"great movement\" in Selma. And finally:\n\n> If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.\n> \n> I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze.\n\nHe ends where he began: Now is the most important time. Here, Memphis, is the most important place.\n\nWhat connects all these things? What connects a tired man, coming to Memphis against the advice of his team, to this same man giving a speech when all he wants to do is to stay in his hotel; to the opening rejection, in that speech, of every period in history in favor of now; to the advice to stay together; to the injunction to keep the issues where they are; to the reminders and instructions on the power of economic action; to the tale of the Samaritan, used to encourage people to march in support of the sanitation workers; to his final words, locating Memphis in this moment at the apex of a journey without peer in history?\n\nWe follow a leader because he is deep in something, and he knows what that something is. His knowledge of it, and the evidence of his knowledge of it, gives us both certainty in the present and confidence in the future. And the something that we see when we look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not, ultimately, the oratory, magnificent though that is, or the self-sacrifice, inspiring though that is, or the ideology of nonviolence, uplifting though that is, or even the indefatigable persistence, humbling though that is\u2014but rather the end to which all these are deployed, time and time again. Martin Luther King Jr. was a crucible maker. He brought issues to a head, deliberately and relentlessly. His brilliance was the brilliance of not letting go, of creating intensity and focus and a concentration of time and place, and then adding more fuel and urgency and energy until, out of the white heat that he had made, something happened. That was his spike.\n\nWe see this in the structure of his speech that night in Memphis\u2014in the opening, using the repetition of \"but I wouldn't stop there\" to intensify our focus on _now_ , and in the closing, using the repetition of \"if I had sneezed\" to point us to _here_ \u2014and we can speculate whether the tension-building techniques of the orator, which he learned at a young age, were in fact the germ of this ability.\n\nWe see it when he says, directly:\n\n> . . . we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them . . . It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.\n\nIt's not violence or nonviolence, because that's not a crucible. It's nonviolence or nonexistence, because that is.\n\nWe see it in the contours of his life, laid out for us in his final speech and laid out before us on the exhibition floor in Memphis. He didn't always know what the next point of friction would be, but he could seize a moment and make it a crucible, time and time again. This was his way to get people to see his truth\u2014that the current day was not the Promised Land. And it was his way to recognize, honor, and alleviate the uncertainty his followers felt. This was not the totality of King, of course; it is, however, what we see as most distinctive about him, and it is what we hook on to and follow.\n\nAnd the uniqueness of this ability to force the issue becomes clearer still when we think about what his contemporary leaders were doing. When John F. Kennedy said, \"The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,\" it was inspiring and future-is-now-ing, because that was his spike\u2014but it wasn't crucible making. When Malcolm X said, \"There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution,\" it was raising the temperature, because that was his spike, but it wasn't raising the intensity\u2014it wasn't crucible making. And when Robert Kennedy said, \"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world,\" it was to focus his listeners on a noble and righteous cause in his own spiky way, but it wasn't crucible making.\n\nCrucible making was the pattern and the technique of King's life. And the compulsion to do this was what led him to ignore his advisers and return to Memphis, because going back was the only way to force the issue.\n\nAs he nears the end of his speech that night, he's well aware of the dangers facing him. He knows that he's such a good crucible maker that sooner or later something bad is bound to happen; that he is such a good crucible maker that sooner or later he will get caught up in the fire; that, moreover, his putting his own life repeatedly at risk is an essential element of his ability to continually force the issue. He knows, therefore, that as the noise surrounding him becomes louder\u2014as it has been doing for weeks\u2014he needs to anticipate what will happen if he is no longer there. And he knows that he wants his movement\u2014his series of crucibles, each leading to a breakthrough, and each creating the possibility of the next\u2014to continue after him, and that for this to happen, he must subordinate himself to it, and yet imbue it with such energy that it is unstoppable. He does this as only he can:\n\n> Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.\n> \n> And I don't mind.\n> \n> Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!\n> \n> And so I'm happy, tonight.\n> \n> I'm not worried about anything.\n> \n> I'm not fearing any man!\n> \n> Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nAnd now the reason for our ascent is clear, because now we are looking into a motel room, and it is the motel room, on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. spent his last day. After his sermon the evening before, King spent most of April 4, 1968, in this room, joking with his brother, who was also there, calling his parents, and even, at one point, starting a pillow fight with a fellow minister. It's a modest room\u2014meager, even. Two queen beds with thin coverings; a nightstand with a phone and a lamp; a small TV attached to the wall on a bracket; the bedclothes brown, the curtains holding back the bright light also orange-brown; the carpet brown, too. And a door leading to the balcony. A few moments after six o'clock that evening, King stepped through the door, onto the balcony, and it was there that the assassin's bullet found him.\n\nAs we write, we are days away from the fiftieth anniversary of King's death. Our journey to the Promised Land is further along now, and yet still incomplete and still contested. And across five decades the force of what this man stood for is still strong, even to those of us who were born after his death, and who know him only through the sermons, and speeches, and memorials. It is strong not because of the breadth of his abilities, but because of their narrowness and their focus, and consequently their distinctiveness and their power. This is what drew followers to him in their millions during his life, and this is what outlives him and draws us to his cause to this day.\n\nLeading and following are not abstractions. They are human interactions; human relationships. And their currency is the currency of all human relationships\u2014the currency of emotional bonds, of trust, and of love. If you, as a leader, forget these things, and yet master everything that theory world tells you matters, you will find yourself alone. But if you understand who you are, at your core, and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which refracts and magnifies your intent, your essence, and your humanity, then, in the real world, we will see you.\n\nAnd we will follow.\n\n# Truths\n\nTRUTH #1 People care which team they're on\n\n_(Because that's where work actually happens.)_\n\nTRUTH #2 The best intelligence wins\n\n_(Because the world moves too fast for plans.)_\n\nTRUTH #3 The best companies cascade meaning\n\n_(Because people want to know what they all share.)_\n\nTRUTH #4 The best people are spiky\n\n_(Because uniqueness is a feature, not a bug.)_\n\nTRUTH #5 People need attention\n\n_(Because we all want to be seen for who we are at our best.)_\n\nTRUTH #6 People can reliably rate their own experience\n\n_(Because that's all we have.)_\n\nTRUTH #7 People have momentum\n\n_(Because we all move through the world differently.)_\n\nTRUTH #8 Love-in-work matters most\n\n_(Because that's what work is really for.)_\n\nTRUTH #9 We follow spikes\n\n_(Because spikes bring us certainty.)_\n\n# Appendix A\n\n# The ADPRI's Global Study of Engagement\n\nDr. Mary Hayes, Dr. Frances Chumney   \nDr. Corinne Wright, Marcus Buckingham\n\nIn July 2018 the ADP Research Institute (ADPRI) conducted a nineteen-country study of the world's workforce. The aim of the study was to measure the relative levels of engagement of each country, and to identify the conditions at work that are most likely to attract and keep talented employees. This study repeated and amplified a similar global study conducted in 2015 that involved thirteen countries.\n\nIn each country we identified a random sample of 1,000 full-time and part-time employees, stratified by various demographics, such as age, gender, and education level, and broken out by various industries and work types. With oversampling, a total of 19,346 employees were selected and surveyed.\n\nThe survey asked about many aspects of respondents' attitudes to work, but at its core was a reliable and valid measure of engagement, developed over the last decade, and comprising eight questions. Extensive previous research has shown that those who answer these eight questions positively are more likely to be seen as highly productive, and less likely to leave, and these predictive relationships between high scores on the questions and higher performance and retention are statistically significant and stable across industries and roles.\n\nUsing this survey we are able to calculate the percentage of workers who are Fully Engaged in any team, company, or country; and to examine which conditions are most likely to lead to being Fully Engaged at work.\n\n  * The percentage of Fully Engaged workers is calculated using a formula that captures the extreme positives on each question, and then weights each question's responses according to its relative power, giving more weight to those questions with the greatest explanatory power.\n  * Those workers who are not Fully Engaged fall into a category we call, simply, \"Coming to Work.\" These workers are not necessarily actively disengaged\u2014the survey was built to measure positive functioning, not pathology. They are instead merely workers who are not contributing all that they possibly could.\n\nIn 2018 we used the same survey and same sampling methodology, and applied the same country-specific corrections (to take into account how different nationalities respond differently to survey scales), as we did in 2015. As far as we are aware, this 2018 study is the largest and most reliable study of global worker engagement yet undertaken. The ten principal questions that we explored, together with our findings, are as follows.\n\n1. Has global engagement increased or decreased in the last three years?\n\nGlobal engagement remains at almost exactly the same level as it was in the thirteen original countries.\n\n  * 16.2 percent Fully Engaged in 2015, as compared with 15.9 percent in 2018. This means that, globally, fully 84 percent of workers are merely Coming to Work, and are not contributing all they could to their organizations.\n\nClearly, organizations have not yet solved the challenge of getting most workers to see work as a place where they can give of themselves, and be recognized and valued for their best.\n\nThere are obviously many entrenched reasons for this\u2014macroeconomic forces; the difficult, dangerous, and monotonous nature of some kinds of work; and the labor policies of certain countries, for example. However, as we will see below, the data suggests that there are nonetheless some actions that organizations can take to be more intentional and systematic in the way they seek to engage their workers.\n\nThough the overall level of engagement remained stable from 2015 to 2018, we found significant variation in the percentage of Fully Engaged workers by country.\n\n  * In eight countries the percentage of those Fully Engaged increased (Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom).\n  * In four countries the percentage of those Fully Engaged decreased (Brazil, China, Mexico, and the United States).\n\nIndia showed the largest increase in the percentage of Fully Engaged workers, up 5 points to 22 percent, and China showed the largest decrease, with a 13-point drop to 6 percent.\n\n2. Which are the most and least engaged countries in the world?\n\nIn 2018 we surveyed an additional six countries to those surveyed in 2015: Egypt, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has the highest percentage of Fully Engaged workers, at 26 percent, while China has the lowest percentage of Fully Engaged workers, at 6 percent.\n\n3. What factors contribute most to a worker's feeling Fully Engaged?\n\nWe examined many variables that could possibly contribute to a feeling of engagement at work, such as industry, position title, education level, gender, part-time versus full-time, and gig versus nongig.\n\nAlthough each of these revealed interesting relationships (which we reference below), one factor trumped all others in its ability to explain a worker being Fully Engaged: whether or not the worker was on a team.\n\n  * Workers who say they are on a team are 2.3 times more likely to be Fully Engaged than those who say they are not.\n\nThis finding holds true within all countries in the study, and in many countries the disparity between nonteam and team workers is even greater.\n\n  * For example, in Brazil 5 percent of nonteam workers are Fully Engaged, whereas 15 percent of team workers are Fully Engaged. Likewise, in Singapore 4 percent of nonteam workers are Fully Engaged as compared with 22 percent of team workers.\n\nAcross the world, the data reveals that it is extremely difficult to engage workers who do not feel part of a team. The challenge for almost all organizations today, however, is that they are not set up to know very much about their teams. Current human resource systems are extensions of financial systems and so are able to show only who-reports-to-whom boxes on an organizational chart. The challenge with this, of course, is that most work does not happen in these structured boxes.\n\n  * Of those who say they work in teams, 64 percent of them report that they work on more than one team, and that this team is not represented in the org chart.\n\nClearly, there are many reasons why engagement levels remain relatively low across the world, some of those reasons relating to the nature of work itself, some to macroeconomic conditions in the region or country, and some to the specifics of the industry or company. However, it appears that one of the reasons that engagement remains relatively low across the world is that organizations do not understand, or act on, the vital power of teams.\n\n  * Organizations do not know how many teams they have, who is on them, or which are their best and most engaged teams.\n  * When organizations make great teams their primary focus\u2014what creates them, what can fracture them\u2014we may well see significant rises in global engagement.\n\n4. What factors create a highly engaged team?\n\nEighty-three percent of workers report that they are on a team. Some of these teams, though, are more engaging than others. When we examined the most engaged teams we found that by far the best explainer of engagement levels was whether or not the team members trusted their team leader.\n\n  * Of those who strongly agreed that they trusted their team leader 45 percent were Fully Engaged. Of those who didn't strongly agree only 6 percent were Fully Engaged. A worker is twelve times more likely to be Fully Engaged if she trusts her team leader.\n\nAcross countries, industries, and positions a trusted team leader is the foundation for building highly engaged teams.\n\n5. Which factors create trust in a team leader?\n\nTwo questions in the survey showed the strongest relationship to a worker's feeling of trust in his team leader:\n\n  * Do I know clearly what is expected of me at work?\n  * Do I have the chance to use my strengths every day?\n\nThis data suggests that these two conditions\u2014knowing what is expected, and being able to play to one's strengths\u2014are the foundations of trust. When a team leader, despite the ambiguities and the fluid and fast pace of the world of work, can help team members feel clarity about expectations and a sense that their best is recognized and utilized frequently, then trust is built, and a Fully Engaged team becomes more likely.\n\n6. Is it more engaging to be a full-time worker, a part-time worker, a virtual worker, or a gig worker?\n\nAccording to the study, the most engaging work status is to have one full-time job and one part-time job.\n\n  * Of those who have this status, 25 percent are Fully Engaged, compared to 16 percent for those whose status is captured in only one of the other categories.\n  * A possible explanation is that this status brings the best of both worlds\u2014the full-time job brings stability and benefits, while the part-time role brings not only some additional earnings but also flexibility and the chance to do something the worker truly enjoys.\n\nGig-only workers who are part of a team are also highly engaged.\n\n  * Of gig-only workers on teams, 21 percent are Fully Engaged, as compared with 15 percent of traditional workers.\n\nThe two most common reasons for taking gig work are flexibility of schedule and the chance to do something the worker loves, suggesting that, as we saw with part-time work, these two factors may well be one of the sources of the worker's higher level of engagement.\n\n  * The most common title of gig-only workers is president, suggesting that many people take gig work because they like to see themselves as their own boss.\n\nWhen we examine all of the eight engagement questions closely we see that gig-only workers score more positively on six of the eight, but significantly lower on the remaining two. The two questions where the gig-only workers scored lower than traditional workers were:\n\n  * \"In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values.\"\n  * \"My teammates have my back.\"\n\nThis suggests that, as other researchers have noted, gig-only workers may well feel more isolated than other sorts of workers. However, when we examined gig-only workers who were also on a team, the differences on these two questions disappeared. This implies that gig work does not necessarily have to be isolating, and that if a gig worker can work in a team then she will net all the benefits of gig work (greater flexibility, higher chance of doing work she enjoys, being her own boss) while at the same time feeling the benefits of traditional work (the safety and support of her teammates). One implication for companies is that, if they choose to use contractors or gig workers\u2014and today many do\u2014the faster and more genuinely they can introduce these workers into teams, the more engagement, more productivity, and higher retention they will see from these workers. The inverse is also true: that the more companies can make traditional full-time work similar to gig work\u2014as in, greater flexibility and ownership for team members, and a greater chance to do what they love\u2014the more engagement, productivity, and higher retention they will see from their full-time workers.\n\nIn all countries and industries, virtual workers\u2014so long as these workers are also team workers\u2014are more likely to be Fully Engaged than those who do their work in an office:\n\n  * Of virtual workers, 29 percent are Fully Engaged, versus 17 percent for traditional office workers.\n\nThis suggests both that physical proximity is not required to create a sense of team and that the flexibility and ease inherent in working virtually are appealing to all workers (as long as they feel part of a team).\n\nWorking virtually is not the same as traveling for work. Those workers who reported that they traveled for work displayed the lowest levels of engagement.\n\n  * Of those who travel for work, 11 percent are Fully Engaged, versus 16 percent for those who don't travel for work.\n\n7. Are workers with more education generally more engaged at work?\n\nYes they are.\n\n  * Of those with an advanced degree, 19 percent are Fully Engaged, compared with 12 percent for those with no college education.\n\n8. Are higher-level workers more engaged than entry-level workers?\n\nYes they are.\n\n  * Of C-suite\/VP-level workers, 24 percent are Fully Engaged.\n  * Of mid-level and first-level team leaders, 14 percent are Fully Engaged.\n  * Of individual contributors, 8 percent are Fully Engaged.\n\n9. Are millennials less engaged than boomers?\n\nSlightly. But contrary to our initial hypotheses, we found very little difference in engagement by generation.\n\n  * Of millennials, 16 percent are Fully Engaged, as compared with 18 percent of boomers.\n\n10. Are men more engaged than women?\n\nNo. The data actually points slightly in the other direction.\n\n  * Globally, 17 percent of women are Fully Engaged, compared with 15 percent of men. Given the large sample sizes these differences are statistically significant, but a two-point difference such as this is not practically significant.\n\n# Appendix B\n\n# Seven Things We Know for Sure at Cisco\n\nRoxanne Bisby Davis   \nAshley Goodall\n\nFour years ago, the human resources team at Cisco set out to measure the world of work as carefully and reliably as possible. Since then, we have led a group of a dozen researchers and data scientists in exploring the characteristics of Cisco's best teams, the relationship between attention and performance, the relative importance of team and company in our experience of work, and much more. Here are some highlights of what we've discovered so far.\n\n1. The best teams are built on strengths.\n\nWe began by seeking to understand in detail what the best teams at Cisco look like. Our study, which we called the Best Teams Study, replicated studies done over the last twenty years by Gallup, Deloitte, and others, and began with the hypothesis that the experience of working on a high-performance team is measurably different from that of working on a non-high-performance team.\n\nTo test this, in late 2015 we identified a study group of ninety-seven high-performing teams by asking leaders across the company to give us the names of teams they wished they had more of\u2014the teams they would clone if they could. We then defined a control group, which was a stratified random sample of 3,600 individuals across Cisco designed to represent the average team member's experience of his or her team. We deployed a confidential eight-item survey to both groups with identical messaging.\n\nOnce the survey responses were received we assessed content validity (assessed by item correlation), construct validity (established by confirmatory factor analysis, item-to-total correlations, and regression analysis), and criterion-related validity (measured through the strength of the connection of the survey items to the concurrent criterion of study- or control-group membership). Taken together, these tests told us that:\n\n  * The eight items were measuring a single factor (\"engagement\"), which is associated differentially with the best teams at Cisco.\n  * The item \"I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work\" exhibited the strongest connection to overall engagement and the strongest connection to other items in the survey. The item \"My teammates have my back\" showed the second-strongest connection, and the item \"In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values\" had the third-strongest connection.\n  * The study group (i.e., \"the best\" teams) outpaced the control group (i.e., \"the rest\") on six of the eight items at the aggregate (whole-company) level. The two items that did not differentiate between the groups were both scored the same. (See \"3. There are three distinct sources of engagement\" for our further investigation of this result.)\n\nOur study did show a statistically significant and meaningful difference between the best and the rest, suggesting that, at Cisco, the best teams harness the individual excellence of each team member, unlock the collective excellence of the team, and do so in an environment of safety and trust.\n\n2. More-frequent check-ins are associated with increased use of strengths.\n\nWanting to understand more about what differentiated our best teams, we wondered if the simple act of a leader's checking in on a frequent basis with his or her team members influenced the team members' engagement level.\n\nAfter completing the Best Teams Study described above, we gave every team leader at Cisco the ability to measure his or her own team on the eight engagement items we had used. While the data for a particular team was visible only to that team's leader\u2014it was intended to help leaders understand how they were doing, not to evaluate them\u2014we were able to use anonymized data for research purposes. We called our measure the Engagement Pulse.\n\nTo investigate the relationship between check-in and engagement, we selected as our sample team members who had responded to at least one Engagement Pulse over the course of two fiscal quarters. This gave us a research sample of 16,485 team members from the first quarter and 18,816 team members from the second quarter. We then determined for each quarter whether a team member was checking in frequently (80 percent of the time or more) or infrequently (less than 80 percent of the time).\n\nWe examined, for each quarter, the average response scores for all eight Engagement Pulse items, and looked for any differences between the group that was checking in frequently and the group that was not. In both quarters, we found that the team members who checked in frequently had statistically significantly higher scores for three of the eight items:\n\n  * Scores for the item \"I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work\" exhibited the largest difference between those who were checking in frequently and those who were not. Scores for the item \"In my work, I am always challenged to grow\" showed the second-largest difference, and those for the item \"I know I will be recognized for excellent work\" showed the third-largest difference.\n\nThis suggests that team members who check in with their leader frequently have an enhanced sense of being able to use their strengths every day, of being recognized for excellent work, and of having opportunities to grow. Although this study did not distinguish between correlation and causation (we could not tell whether the increased frequency of conversation led to increased engagement or vice versa), subsequent research, a portion of which is described in the final section of this appendix, indicated that it was in fact the increased attention, via frequent conversation, that led to the increased levels of engagement.\n\n3. There are three distinct sources of engagement.\n\nOur next piece of research set out to shed light on who has the biggest impact on a team member's engagement. To do this, we needed first to understand our engagement construct further and then to explore the difference, if any, between a team member's engagement across multiple teams.\n\nAs described in chapter 1 of this book, the eight items which most effectively capture team performance\u2014and which are the same as those in the Engagement Pulse\u2014can be divided into four \"we\" items, which capture team environment and company experience, and four \"me\" items, which capture each individual's experience of work. To further explore our engagement construct, we collected responses from 33,018 individuals who completed at least one Engagement Pulse survey over a six-month period, and performed two studies.\n\nFirst, using a split sample exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we discovered that (at least at Cisco) there are two factors of engagement within the Engagement Pulse. The first factor comprises all four \"me\" items together with the two \"we\" items that ask about team environment, and so consisted of:\n\n  * At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me. (Me)\n  * I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work. (Me)\n  * I know I will be recognized for excellent work. (Me)\n  * In my work, I am always challenged to grow. (Me)\n  * In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values. (We)\n  * My teammates have my back. (We)\n\nWe chose to call this factor _team engagement_. The other factor comprised the remaining two \"we\" items:\n\n  * I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company. (We)\n  * I have great confidence in my company's future. (We)\n\nWe chose to call this factor _company engagement_.*\n\nOur second study looked at how these two factors either varied for individuals who were part of more than one team, or changed as an individual moved from team to team. We found that changes in different parts of the engagement construct had different sources. In particular, we found that as someone moved from team to team, company engagement varied least, whereas the items \"In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values\" and \"My teammates have my back\" varied most.\n\nDrawing together this study and the Best Teams Study described earlier, we have greater insight into the relationships between engagement, teams, and team leaders, namely:\n\n  1. All eight engagement items are scored more highly on the highest-performing teams, and there is strong evidence (in our studies and others') that higher engagement causes higher performance.\n  2. Of the eight items, the two constituting the company engagement factor are least sensitive to the particular team an individual belongs to.\n  3. Of the eight items, \"In my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values\" and \"My teammates have my back\" are most sensitive to the particular team an individual belongs to.\n  4. Of the eight items, the \"me\" items (addressing expectations, use of strengths, recognition, and growth challenge) are most sensitive to an individual's relationship with his or her team leader.\n\nOne way to think of these results is to imagine a team leader having three distinct jobs. Her first is to ensure her team members feel connected to the purpose and future of the company, even though she may not directly define those. Her second is to ensure that her team members, _as a group_ , understand and support one another. And her third is to ensure that her team members, _individually_ , understand what's expected of them and how they can do their best work now and in the future, all while feeling recognized for who they are.\n\n4. Decreasing engagement leads to voluntary attrition.\n\nVoluntary attrition is generally high on the list of concerns for organizational leaders, so in this study we sought to explore the connection between a team member's engagement and his or her likelihood to choose to leave Cisco. More specifically, we wanted to identify which of the Engagement Pulse items influenced a team member's decision to leave voluntarily.\n\nWe used both termination and Engagement Pulse results from a fiscal year, and from this constructed a population for those who completed an Engagement Pulse survey and either remained at Cisco or voluntarily left in the same fiscal year. Using a range of methodologies, including Pearson's correlation between predictors and outcome variables, a variety of regression models, and the bootstrap method to ensure the stability of our findings, we discovered that four Engagement Pulse items are significant predictors of voluntary attrition. They are, from most to least predictive power:\n\n  * \"I have a chance to use my strengths every day at work.\"\n  * \"In my work, I am always challenged to grow.\"\n  * \"I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.\"\n  * \"I have great confidence in my company's future.\"\n\nThis finding validates that there is a connection between a team member's engagement and the likelihood of his or her subsequent decision to resign. It further demonstrates that the more positively people feel about their strengths, now and in the future (the first two items above), and about their company's mission and future prospects (the second two items above), the more likely they are to stay with that company. The subtlety here is that, as we saw above, the feeling of enthusiasm about a company's mission, and confidence in its future, _still vary team to team_. In other words, our experience of our company is significantly mediated by our experience of our team.\n\nThe implication of this study is that, above all else, a focus by team leaders on helping each team member play to his or her strengths helps insulate the team against attrition.\n\n5. Attending company events is associated with higher purpose and confidence.\n\nSince 2015, Cisco has held a monthly all-hands meeting\u2014led by our executive leadership team\u2014that we call the Cisco Beat. The intended outcome of this monthly ritual is that our people gain a stronger collective understanding of our purpose as a company and a stronger sense of confidence in Cisco's future.\n\nTo measure if this was happening we investigated the relationship between the following:\n\n  * The number of Cisco Beats a team member attended.\n  * The average Engagement Pulse responses for that team member for items relating to the company engagement factor (collective purpose and confidence in the future).\n\nUsing data from 52,819 team members who responded to an Engagement Pulse over three quarters, we then identified how many Cisco Beats each team member had attended out of the eight that had been held in that period. Attendance was defined as attending the event in person, watching the event live via Cisco's broadcasting technology, or watching the event replay within two weeks of the event. We then segmented the team members by attendance\u2014those who had attended no Beats, those who had attended from one to three, those who had attended from four to six, and those who had attended either seven or eight. We took this segmentation and looked at the average Engagement Pulse response for team members in each segment for the items \"I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company\" and \"I have great confidence in my company's future\" (the two items constituting the company engagement factor identified previously).\n\nOur analysis revealed that the more Cisco Beats a team member attends, the higher his or her average item response.\n\n  * Scores for \"I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company\" increased from 4.37 for the team members who did not attend any Cisco Beats to 4.48 for those who attended all Cisco Beats or all but one Cisco Beat. This increase was statistically significant.\n  * Scores for \"I have great confidence in my company's future\" increased from 4.25 for those who attended no Cisco Beats to 4.35 for those who attended all Cisco Beats or all but one Cisco Beat. This increase was also statistically significant.\n\nThose team members who are regularly attending Cisco Beats are more enthusiastic about our collective purpose and more confident in our future as a company. We have not yet explored whether attendance at these events subsequently increases engagement in this way, or whether those who are more engaged in the first place subsequently attend more Cisco Beats.\n\n6. Highly engaged people talk about work differently.\n\nWe have found in the course of our research that it is helpful to distinguish between those team members with a particularly high level of engagement and everyone else. We refer to those individuals in the high-engagement group as Fully Engaged and everyone else as Not Fully Engaged. Our research has led us to a good understanding of the quantitative differences between these two groups. However, we were curious about the difference in the way Fully Engaged team members talked about work versus the way their less engaged counterparts did.\n\nWe investigated open-text survey responses to answer the following:\n\n  * What was the sentiment of each group overall?\n  * What topics did each group discuss?\n  * Were there differences in sentiment and discussion topics between the two groups?\n\nTo do this, we used our Real Deal survey. This Cisco-developed survey is sent to a representative sample of our population each quarter, and includes open-text response items. We isolated responses from team members who responded to the Real Deal's open-text item \"What would you tell your functional leader about life in your function?\" and who also completed an Engagement Pulse survey during a given quarter. In all, 1,275 team members met both criteria.\n\nUsing both natural-language processing technology and our own analytical approach, we were able to investigate the differences in the sentiment of the Fully Engaged and Not Fully Engaged groups. We used each group's Emotional Promoter Score (a measure of sentiment ranging from \u2212100 to 100, calculated using a third-party algorithm) and the distinct words chosen in each group's text responses to spot differences in discussion topics and to automatically sort comments into themes. This allowed us to see how often each group discussed certain predefined topics.\n\nTaken together, these data sets revealed clear differences between the two groups:\n\n  * Those who were Fully Engaged had, on average, an Emotional Promoter Score of 26 and discussed excellence on a team and\/or hopes for the future in their comments. The following comment is representative of this group: \"It is very rewarding to see how the managers are willing to incorporate new ideas and new members to the team to improve and achieve sales goals. It is a very creative and productive way of working. If the teams are productive and happy, customers also perceive it.\"\n  * Those who were Not Fully Engaged had, on average, an Emotional Promoter Score of \u221216 and were more negative when describing their experiences on their teams. Comments from these team members reflected uncertainty about the future and frustration with internal bureaucracy. The following comment is representative of this group: \"I think we need some sort of 'offsite' so we can help build trust across the next level of the organization. There's still a lot of silo-based behavior a couple levels deep and it would be great to show how we're trying to break that down.\"\n\nAs we continue to explore the natural-language processing of open-text responses, our next major focus will be the words team members use to describe their careers and career aspirations.\n\n7. Some forms of attention are better than others in creating engagement.\n\nBeyond understanding which things in the world of work are related to which other things (that event attendance is related to confidence in the future, for example, or that high engagement is related to specific text responses in a survey), we are of course most interested in what causes what. This last summary is an example of this type of research.\n\nWe wanted to understand whether the different ways a leader chooses to pay attention to a check-in influences his or her team member's engagement over time. Could we discern that team members who received frequent attention from their team leaders had higher levels of engagement than those who did not, and that a live conversation between a leader and team member was the best type of attention for a leader to provide to a team member?\n\nTo do this we investigated the following:\n\n  * How often team members were receiving attention from their leader, in the form of responses to check-ins entered in our team technology.\n  * Whether any methods of giving attention (viewing a check-in in the technology, commenting on it in the technology, or having a live discussion) were better than others.\n  * Which patterns of attention over time were most common (no attention, some attention, constant attention).\n  * How team-member engagement changed over time given the type and frequency of attention.\n\nLooking at data from early 2018, we identified 6,726 team members who had responded to two or more Engagement Pulse surveys. We then used the first and last surveys for these team members to identify if they were Fully Engaged (FE) or Not Fully Engaged (NFE) at Time 1 and Time 2, respectively. This allowed us to identify those whose engagement, over the course of the study period, had increased (NFE at Time 1 to FE at Time 2), had decreased (FE at Time 1 to NFE at Time 2), or had stayed the same (either FE or NFE at both Time 1 and Time 2).\n\nWe then looked at check-in behavior and the different types of attention that can occur:\n\n  * For team members, we looked at whether they requested attention (by submitting at least one online check-in during this time period) or not.\n  * For team leaders, we looked at the four possible responses to a team member's request for attention: viewing a check-in online, entering a comment on a check-in online, having a live discussion with the team member (as subsequently confirmed by the team member), or providing no attention at all by not responding in any of the first three ways. After analyzing the data we grouped these possible responses into three segments: \"no attention,\" \"any type of attention,\" and \"attention that included a conversation.\"\n\nWe were now able to examine the changes in engagement between Time 1 and Time 2 as a function of the most frequent type of attention received by each person. Since most team members respond to an Engagement Pulse survey every three months, these changes reflect the effects of different amounts and types of attention over the course of three months.\n\n  * For team members who did not ask for attention by submitting a check-in, the proportion that were Fully Engaged decreased 13 percent and had the lowest absolute level.\n  * For team members who consistently or near-consistently checked in but did not receive any sort of attention in return, the proportion that were Fully Engaged decreased 2 percent. We have found that check-in frequency drops significantly when team leaders do not respond, so we imagine that this group will, over time, come to resemble the group above\u2014not checking in at all\u2014with a commensurately larger engagement decrease\n  * For team members who always received some type of attention from their leader, the proportion that were Fully Engaged increased by 2 percent.\n  * For team members who consistently received attention in the form of a conversation, the proportion that were Fully Engaged increased by 3 percent.\n\nWe can conclude that any attention is better than no attention, that frequent attention is better than infrequent attention, and that the type of attention a leader gives matters. When the type of attention a leader gives to his or her team members includes a live discussion, we see the highest levels of team-member engagement and the biggest positive change in team-member engagement over time, irrespective of the conversational skill of the team leader or the quality of the conversation.\n\nResearch Contributors\n\nJohn Lagonigro, Madison Beard, Mary Williams, Hanqi Zhu, and Thomas Payne\n\n*This is the discovery described in chapter 3.\n\n# Notes\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n. \"23 Economic Experts Weigh In: Why Is Productivity Growth So Low?\" Focus Economics, accessed November 10, 2018, <https:\/\/www.focus-economics.com\/blog\/why-is-productivity-growth-so-low-23-economic-experts-weigh-in>.\n\nLIE #1\n\n. To offer just one example, a recent article in _Harvard Business Review_ suggests that culture comes in eight flavors (Learning, Purpose, Caring, Order, Safety, Authority, Results, and Enjoyment); that each of these is measurable across a company as a whole; that companies can combine several of these into their overall culture; and that an important part of selecting senior leaders is to assess the degree of correspondence between their intrinsic characteristics and the desired corporate culture. Boris Groysberg et al., \"The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , January\u2013February 2018.\n\n. Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (London: James Dodsley, 1790).\n\n. Yuval Noah Harari, _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ (London: Harvill Secker, 2014).\n\n. Yuval Noah Harari, _Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow_ (London: Harvill Secker, 2016).\n\nLIE #2\n\n. Stanley McChrystal et al., _Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World_ (New York: Penguin, 2015).\n\n. _The Battle of Britain, August\u2013October 1940: An Air Ministry Record of the Great Days from 8th August\u201331st October, 1940_ (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1941).\n\n. McChrystal, _Team of Teams_ , 216.\n\n. Ibid., 217.\n\n. Cisco data, as presented at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), 2017.\n\nLIE #3\n\n. Lisa D. Ordo\u00f1ez et al., \"Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting,\" _Academy of Management Perspectives_ 23, no. 1 (2009): 6.\n\n. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, _The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work_ (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).\n\n. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook post, January 11, 2018, <https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/zuck\/posts\/10104413015393571>.\n\n. Cammie McGovern, \"Looking into the Future for a Child with Autism,\" _New York Times_ , August 31, 2017.\n\nLIE #4\n\n. See <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ch-vWyK2yJs>.\n\n. Stephen Pile, _The Ultimate Book of Heroic Failures_ (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 115.\n\n. Stated during an appearance in the 2017 documentary _George Michael: Freedom_ , directed by David Austin.\n\n. \"IBM Kenexa Core (Foundational) Skills and Competencies: A Framework with Core Skills Required for General Job Roles,\" IBM Corporation, 2015.\n\n. See <https:\/\/performancemanager4.successfactors.com\/doc\/roboHelp\/12-Getting_Familiar_With_PA_Forms\/ph_wa_use.htm> (retrieved 8\/25\/18).\n\n. See, for example, Dr. Robert Kegan's talk at the 2016 NeuroLeadership Summit, available here: <https:\/\/neuroleadership.com\/bob-kegan-feedback\/>.\n\n. Walter Isaacson, _Steve Jobs_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 42.\n\n. This story is told in more detail by Todd Rose in his wonderful book _The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2016). We're grateful to him for his permission to summarize it here.\n\n. Stated precisely, there was no evidence that the average characteristics of a group applied to any individual in that group.\n\nLIE #5\n\n. See <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EqVyHMtSvFE>.\n\n. Ray Dalio, _Principles_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).\n\n. Adam Grant, \"Billionaire Ray Dalio Had an Amazing Reaction to an Employee Calling Him Out on a Mistake,\" _Business Insider_ , February 2, 2016.\n\n. Brian Brim and Jim Asplund, \"Driving Engagement by Focusing on Strengths,\" _Gallup Business Journal_ , November 12, 2009.\n\n. Joseph LeDoux, _Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are_ (New York: Viking Adult, 2002).\n\n. Richard Boyatzis, \"Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights,\" _Ivey Business Journal_ , January\/February 2011.\n\n. Ibid.\n\n. Rick Hanson, \"Take in the Good,\" <https:\/\/www.rickhanson.net\/take-in-the-good\/>.\n\n. Including, according to one recent piece of research, by looking for a less critical social network so as to avoid hearing the negative feedback in the first place. See Scott Berinato, \"Negative Feedback Rarely Leads to Improvement,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , January\u2013February 2018.\n\n. David Cooperrider and Associates, \"What Is Appreciative Inquiry?\" <http:\/\/www.davidcooperrider.com\/ai-process\/>.\n\n. John M. Gottman and Nan Silver, _The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert_ (New York: Crown Publishers, 1999); and Barbara L. Fredrickson, \"The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions,\" _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences_ 359, no. 1449 (2004): 1367.\n\n. See <https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/blogs\/percolator\/the-magic-ratio-that-wasnt\/33279>.\n\n. Barbara L. Fredrickson, \"The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions,\" _The American Psychologist_ 56, no. 3 (2001): 218.\n\nLIE #6\n\n. Robert J. Wherry Sr. and C. J. Bartlett, \"The Control of Bias in Ratings: A Theory of Rating,\" _Personnel Psychology_ 35, no. 3 (1982): 521; Michael K. Mount et al., \"Trait, Rater and Level Effects in 360-Degree Performance Ratings,\" _Personnel Psychology_ 51, no. 3 (2006): 557; and Brian Hoffman et al., \"Rater Source Effects Are Alive and Well after All,\" _Personnel Psychology_ 63, no. 1 (2010): 119.\n\n. Steven E. Scullen, Michael K. Mount, and Maynard Goff, \"Understanding the Latent Structure of Job Performance Ratings,\" _Journal of Applied Psychology_ 85, no. 6 (2000): 956.\n\n. More precisely, according to the researchers' determination of how much of the ratings variance could be tied directly to someone's individual performance, the person being rated is 16 percent there and 84 percent not there.\n\n. Hoffman et al., \"Rater Source Effects Are Alive and Well after All.\"\n\n. This definition is from the _Financial Times_ , and can be found at <http:\/\/lexicon.ft.com\/Term?term=business-acumen> (retrieved 2\/17\/18).\n\n. James Surowiecki, _The Wisdom of Crowds_ (New York: Anchor Books, 2005).\n\n. See Galton's original letter sharing his findings at \"Vox Populi\u2014Sir Francis Galton,\" The Wisdom of Crowds blog, <http:\/\/wisdomofcrowds.blogspot.com\/2009\/12\/vox-populi-sir-francis-galton.html>.\n\n. This might be a little inside baseball for you, but please watch out for anything calling itself \"driver analysis.\" This describes an approach in which the creator of a survey includes many questions about a subject, such as employee engagement, and then at the end of the survey adds a short list of summary questions, such as, \"I am proud to work for my company,\" or, \"I plan to work for my company a year from now.\" The survey creator then runs a driver analysis to examine which of the questions in the body of the survey \"drive\" the summary items, and winds up pronouncing that certain items are the drivers of employee engagement because people who scored higher on them also scored higher on the summary items. Superficially this appears to be a conclusion based on valid data, but it isn't terribly helpful. One-off driver analysis doesn't tell you what drives behavior in the real world: it simply reveals that people who rated certain items more highly earlier in the survey also rated other items highly later in the survey; that people who were happy early in the survey were still happy later. Technically, this conclusion is valid. It just doesn't matter very much.\n\n. Lord Kelvin (n\u00e9 William Thomson)\u2014the British scientist who, among other things, determined the value of absolute zero and who therefore knew a thing or two about measurement (and thermometers)\u2014once said, \"In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and methods for practicably measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of _science_ , whatever the matter may be.\" Sir William Thomson, \"Electrical Units of Measurement,\" a lecture delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers on May 3, 1883, published in _Popular Lectures and Addresses_ , vol. 1, _Constitution of Matter_ (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889), 73.\n\n. We could also, by the way, use this type of approach to design a better 360-degree-feedback tool\u2014if we wanted to understand what someone's peers felt about his or her performance. In doing do, we'd have to be sure the questions asked each peer to rate him- or herself, as we've seen. But we'd also need to solve for two data-sufficiency issues: First, who makes up the right set of people to rate you, and how many of them do we need to respond to our survey? Second, how do we know that they know your work well enough to provide good data? These are tricky questions to solve.\n\nLIE #7\n\n. Douglas A. Ready, Jay A. Conger, and Linda A. Hill, \"Are You a High Potential?\" _Harvard Business Review_ , June 2010.\n\n. For a good discussion of this, see Ken Richardson and Sarah H. Norgate, \"Does IQ Really Predict Job Performance?\" _Applied Developmental Science_ 19, no. 3 (2015): 153.\n\n. See <https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Elon-Musk>.\n\n. John Paul MacDuffie, \"The Future of Electric Cars Is Brighter with Elon Musk in It,\" _New York Times_ , October 1, 2018.\n\nLIE #8\n\n. Kristine D. Olson, \"Physician Burnout\u2014A Leading Indicator of Health System Performance?\" _Mayo Clinic Proceedings_ 92, no. 11 (2017): 1608.\n\nLIE #9\n\n. We are not the first to make this point. But those who have arrived at it before us then continue by trying to identify the set of traits that all leaders should acquire in order to attract followers\u2014bringing us right back to the idea that _leadership is a thing_. Our line of inquiry has taken us in a different direction.\n\n. Donald E. Brown, _Human Universals_ (New York: McGraw Hill, 1991).\n\n. Pierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane, \"Why Leadership-Development Programs Fail,\" _McKinsey Quarterly_ , January 2014.\n\n. This list is taken from Claudio Fern\u00e1ndez-Ar\u00e1oz, Andrew Roscoe, and Kentaro Aramaki, \"Turning Potential into Success: The Missing Link in Leadership Development,\" _Harvard Business Review_ , November\u2013December 2017, 88.\n\n. Joseph Rosenbloom, \"Martin Luther King's Last 31 Hours: The Story of His Final Prophetic Speech,\" _The Guardian_ , April 4, 2018.\n\n# Index\n\nAbernathy, Ralph,\n\nAccenture,\n\nactive listening,\n\nActor-Observer Bias,\n\nAdele,\n\nADP Research Institute, , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nadvice, \u2013\n\nalignment\n\nattempt to create through goals,\n\nshared meaning and, ,\n\nAmabile, Teresa,\n\nAmazon,\n\nAmerican Management Association,\n\nAnthony, Susan B.,\n\nanticipation,\n\nApple, , \u2013\n\nAppreciative Inquiry, \u2013\n\nArcos Dorados Holdings Inc.,\n\nAriel 6 satellite, \u2013\n\nassumptions, \u2013\n\nabout expectations,\n\nof uniformity of experience, \u2013\n\n_See also_ truths about work\n\nAtari,\n\nattention\n\ncreating engagement and, \u2013\n\nexcellence creation and, \u2013\n\nneed for, \u2013\n\npositive versus negative, , \u2013\n\nstimulating growth through, \u2013\n\nstrengths-focused, \u2013\n\nin teams, \u2013\n\nattention, uncritical, human need for, \u2013\n\nattributions, biases in, \u2013\n\nattrition, \u2013\n\nauthenticity,\n\nbalance,\n\nflow versus, \u2013\n\nhistory of concept of, \u2013\n\nin positive versus negative attention, \u2013\n\nwork-life, \u2013\n\nBartlett, C. J.,\n\nBattle of Britain, \u2013, \u2013\n\n\"Best of Me\" questions, \u2013\n\n\"Best of We\" questions,\n\nBest Teams Study, \u2013\n\nBHAGs (big hairy audacious goals),\n\nbiases\n\nActor-Observer Bias,\n\nfeedback and, \u2013\n\nFundamental Attribution Error, \u2013\n\npotential rating and, \u2013\n\nin rating others, \u2013\n\nself-serving, \u2013\n\nBoston Consulting Group,\n\nbox-of-paints approach to advice, \u2013\n\nbrain development, \u2013\n\ngiving advice and, \u2013\n\nbrands and branding, ,\n\nBridgewater Associates, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nBrown, Donald,\n\nBruer, John,\n\nBuffett, Warren, ,\n\nBurke, Edmund,\n\nburnout, \u2013, , ,\n\nbusiness acumen, \u2013\n\ncareer derailers,\n\ncareer development,\n\ncheck-ins and, \u2013\n\ndeficit repair and, \u2013\n\nfailure and,\n\nleadership development and, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\noutcomes focus and, \u2013\n\npotential and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nteams and,\n\nusing strengths and, \u2013\n\ncatching people doing things right, \u2013\n\nCathy, Truett, \u2013, \u2013\n\nchange, planning and pace of, \u2013\n\nCharge of the Light Brigade, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins, \u2013, \u2013\n\nfrequency of, \u2013, \u2013\n\ntrust in leaders and, \u2013\n\nChick-fil-A, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\nChristian Movement for Human Rights,\n\nChumney, Frances, \u2013\n\nChurchill, Winston, ,\n\nCisco, \u2013\n\nintelligence system at,\n\npotential rating at, \u2013\n\nrating others at, ,\n\nteam experience at, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nClifton, Don,\n\nClinton, Bill,\n\nClooney, George, \u2013\n\ncoaching,\n\ncoercion, \u2013\n\ncollaboration, culture of, \u2013\n\nCollins, Jim,\n\ncomfort zones,\n\ncommunication\n\nabout expectations,\n\ncheck-ins versus meetings and, \u2013\n\nof praise and recognition, \u2013\n\nrituals in, \u2013\n\n_See also_ intelligence systems\n\ncompany events, \u2013\n\nCompaq,\n\ncompensation, \u2013\n\ncompetency model, \u2013\n\ndata reliability and, \u2013\n\ndeficit repair and, \u2013\n\ndiversity and, \u2013\n\nidiosyncratic excellence versus, \u2013\n\nleadership and, \u2013\n\nmeasurement issues with, \u2013\n\npurported benefits of, \u2013\n\nrating others and,\n\nconfidence, \u2013\n\nconformity, . _See also_ individuality\n\ncontrol,\n\nindividuality and, \u2013\n\nspan of,\n\n\"The Control of Bias in Ratings\" (Wherry and Bartlett),\n\nCook, James, n\n\nCooperrider, David,\n\nCorporate Executive Board,\n\ncortisol,\n\ncreativity, \u2013\n\nCuban Missile Crisis,\n\nculture, \u2013\n\nbest companies to work for and, \u2013\n\ncascading meaning and, \u2013\n\ndefinition of, \u2013\n\nintersubjective realities and, \u2013\n\nsignifiers and, \u2013\n\nof teams, \u2013, \u2013\n\n_See also_ experience of work\n\nCulture Audit,\n\nDalio, Ray, , \u2013,\n\nDallas Cowboys, \u2013\n\nDamon, Matt,\n\nDaniels, Gilbert S., \u2013\n\nDarwin, Charles,\n\ndata\n\nevaluating, \u2013\n\ninsufficiency, \u2013\n\nquality of, \u2013\n\nreliable, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsubjective,\n\nvalid, \u2013\n\nvariable, \u2013\n\nDavis, Roxanne Bisby, \u2013\n\ndeficits, correcting, \u2013\n\ndefining the adjustable seat, \u2013\n\nDeloitte,\n\ndetachment,\n\ndistractions,\n\ndiversity, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nDowding, Hugh,\n\nDowding system, \u2013,\n\ndream jobs, \u2013\n\nDrucker, Peter,\n\nDunkirk evacuation, \u2013\n\neducation levels, engagement and,\n\nEdward Jones,\n\nemergency-room nurses,\n\nendorphins,\n\nengagement\n\nattention in creating, \u2013, \u2013\n\ncascading meaning and, \u2013\n\nchanges in level of, \u2013\n\ncheck-in frequency and, \u2013\n\ncompany events and, \u2013\n\ncountries with highest and lowest levels of,\n\neducation and,\n\nfactors constituting, \u2013\n\nof full-time, part-time, virtual, and gig workers, \u2013\n\ngender differences in,\n\ngenerational differences in,\n\nglobal, weakness of,\n\nglobal study of, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\nsources of, \u2013\n\nteams in creating, \u2013\n\ntrust and, \u2013\n\nvoluntary attrition and, \u2013\n\nways of talking about work and, \u2013\n\nethics,\n\n_eudaimonia,_ \u2013. _See also_ flow\n\nexcellence\n\nattention and, \u2013\n\nleaders and, \u2013\n\nnoting and recognizing, \u2013\n\nteams in creating, \u2013\n\nexpectations,\n\nclarity of on teams, \u2013\n\nleaders and, \u2013\n\nsetting clear,\n\nunderstanding,\n\nexperience of work\n\nassumptions of uniformity of, \u2013\n\ncompetency model and, \u2013\n\nengagement and, \u2013\n\nimportant elements of, \u2013\n\nindividual, \u2013\n\nintersubjective realities of, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\nshared,\n\nteams and, \u2013\n\nexpressed values,\n\nextremism, \u2013\n\nFacebook, \u2013, , , ,\n\nuser feedback in, \u2013\n\nfactor analysis,\n\nfailure\n\ndevelopment through,\n\nexcellence versus,\n\nfallacy of the undistributed middle, n\n\nfeedback\n\nactive listening and,\n\nas attention, \u2013\n\nattention versus, \u2013, \u2013\n\nbiases and, \u2013\n\nat Bridgewater Associates, \u2013\n\ncandid,\n\ndeficit correction and,\n\nlearning and, \u2013\n\nmillennials' need for, \u2013, \u2013\n\nmirroring,\n\nnegative, giving, \u2013\n\nobjective,\n\npeople's need for, \u2013\n\npositive versus negative, \u2013\n\nrecognition and praise, \u2013\n\nsmartphones and,\n\nsocial media and, \u2013\n\nsuccess and,\n\n_See also_ performance appraisals; rating other people\n\nfight or flight,\n\nFloquet, Ethan, \u2013\n\nflow\n\nbalance versus, \u2013\n\nwhat it looks like, \u2013\n\nflow states, ,\n\nflourishing, \u2013\n\nfollowers, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nforcing the curve, \u2013\n\n_Fortune_ 's 100 Best Companies to Work For, \u2013\n\nfranchise agreements, \u2013\n\nFredrickson, Barbara,\n\nFreedom Riders,\n\nfreethinking leader,\n\nfulfillment,\n\nFundamental Attribution Error, \u2013\n\nfuture\n\nattention to, learning and,\n\nconfidence in the company's, , \u2013\n\nfear of the unknown and, \u2013\n\nmeaning and confidence in, \u2013\n\nplanning and lack of information about, \u2013\n\npotential and, \u2013\n\n\"The Future of Electric Cars Is Brighter with Elon Musk in It\" (MacDuffie),\n\nGallup Organization, \u2013, \u2013\n\nGalton, Francis, \u2013\n\nGen Y, \u2013\n\nGeorge VI, King of England,\n\ngig workers, \u2013\n\nGlassdoor,\n\ngoals, \u2013\n\nburden created by, \u2013\n\ncascading, \u2013\n\ncascading meaning versus, \u2013\n\ncategorization of, \u2013\n\ndata reliability about, \u2013\n\nas evaluators, , \u2013\n\ninvestments in setting,\n\nleader versus employee experience of, \u2013\n\nmarathon running, \u2013\n\npercent complete, , , \u2013\n\nas performance stimulators, \u2013\n\nas performance trackers, \u2013\n\npervasiveness of at work, \u2013\n\nqualities of good, \u2013,\n\nsmartphones and,\n\ntrends in,\n\nGoff, Maynard, ,\n\nGoldman Sachs,\n\nGoogle,\n\nGottman, John,\n\nGreat Place to Work Institute,\n\ngrowth,\n\nmindset for,\n\nstrengths versus weaknesses as areas for, \u2013\n\nHanson, Rick, \u2013\n\nHarari, Yuval Noah, \u2013\n\nHarlow, Harry,\n\nHawthorne Works, \u2013\n\nHayes, Mary, \u2013\n\nhealth-care profession, \u2013, \u2013\n\nhigh-priority interrupts, \u2013\n\nHippocrates,\n\nHoffa, Jimmy,\n\nHoffman, Brian,\n\n_Homo Deus_ (Harari), \u2013\n\nHoover, J. Edgar,\n\nHozier, \u2013\n\nhuman capital management tools, ,\n\nhumankind, success of as a species, \u2013\n\nhuman nature,\n\ntheories of others and, \u2013\n\nuncritical attention and, \u2013\n\n_Human Universals_ (Brown),\n\nhumoral theory of health, \u2013\n\nIdiosyncratic Rater Effect, \u2013\n\nindividuality,\n\nin brain growth, \u2013\n\ncompetency models versus, \u2013\n\ndefining the adjustable seat and, \u2013\n\ngiving advice and, \u2013\n\nin leadership, \u2013,\n\nin learning, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nmanaging and, \u2013\n\nperformance and, \u2013\n\npotential and, \u2013\n\nrating others and, \u2013,\n\nsimplification versus, \u2013\n\nteams and, \u2013, , \u2013\n\ninformation\n\nsharing, \u2013\n\nwisdom of crowds and, \u2013\n\n_See also_ intelligence systems\n\ninsights, \u2013\n\nintelligence,\n\ntrusting people with, \u2013\n\nintelligence systems, \u2013, \u2013\n\ncharacteristics of,\n\ncreating, \u2013\n\ndata usefulness and,\n\nfreeing information for, , \u2013\n\nmeetings and, \u2013\n\nplans versus, \u2013\n\ninter-rater reliability,\n\nintersubjective realities, \u2013\n\nIQ,\n\nJenkins, Florence Foster, \u2013,\n\njob descriptions,\n\nJobs, Steve, \u2013, , ,\n\nJohn, Elton,\n\nJoint Special Operations Task Force, \u2013\n\nJordan, Michael,\n\njoy, \u2013\n\ncompetency model and, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\n_See also_ love-in-work\n\nKenexa,\n\nKennedy, John F., , , ,\n\nKennedy, Robert F., ,\n\nkey performance indicators (KPIs),\n\nKim, Charlie,\n\nKimpton Hotels, ,\n\nKing, Billie Jean,\n\nKing, Martin Luther, Jr., \u2013, \u2013, , , \u2013, \u2013\n\nknowledge workers, rating, \u2013\n\nKorn Ferry,\n\nKramer, Steven,\n\nLandry, Tom, \u2013,\n\nLandsteiner, Karl,\n\nleaders and leadership, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nappeal of goals to, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins and, \u2013\n\ncoaching by, \u2013\n\ndefining, \u2013\n\ndevelopment of, \u2013\n\nextremism and, \u2013\n\nfear of the unknown and, \u2013\n\nfeedback by, \u2013\n\nfollowers and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nfreethinking,\n\nindividuality and, \u2013\n\nintelligence system creation by, \u2013\n\nmeaning making and,\n\nmodels of, \u2013\n\noutcomes focus by, \u2013\n\nqualities of, \u2013\n\nrarity of, \u2013\n\nrating others and, \u2013\n\nrecognizing universality and individuality in, \u2013\n\nrituals in communicating meaning, \u2013\n\nshortcoming of, \u2013\n\nspan of control and, \u2013\n\nstorytelling by, \u2013\n\nof teams,\n\nin team work experience, \u2013\n\ntraits of, \u2013\n\ntrust in, engagement and, , \u2013\n\ntruths about, \u2013\n\nwhy we follow, \u2013\n\n_Lean In_ (Sandberg),\n\nlearning\n\ndeficit correction and, \u2013\n\nfeedback and, \u2013\n\n\"Letter from Birmingham Jail\" (King), \u2013\n\nlistening, active,\n\nlove-in-work, \u2013\n\nencouraging, \u2013\n\npower of, \u2013\n\nself-assessment of, \u2013\n\nMacDuffie, John Paul,\n\nMalcolm X,\n\nmanagement\n\ngoals and,\n\nindividuality and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nmicro-,\n\nspan of control and, \u2013\n\nManagement by Objectives (MBOs),\n\nmass, \u2013\n\nmaximization, , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nMayo Clinic, \u2013, , , ,\n\nMcCarthy, Joe,\n\nMcChrystal, Stanley, \u2013, , \u2013,\n\nMcDonald's,\n\nmeaning\n\ncascading, \u2013\n\ncascading, goals versus, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins in making, \u2013\n\nexpressed values and,\n\nat Facebook, \u2013\n\nfollowing and, \u2013\n\nimposed goals versus, \u2013\n\ninsight and, \u2013\n\nleadership and, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nrituals and, \u2013\n\nshared, alignment through,\n\nstories and, \u2013\n\nmeetings, \u2013\n\nMemphis nonviolent protest, \u2013\n\nMessi, Lionel, \u2013, , ,\n\nmetrics, competency models and, \u2013\n\nmicromanagers,\n\nmillennials\n\nengagement of,\n\nreported desire for feedback, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsocial media and, \u2013\n\nmirroring,\n\nmission,\n\nleaders and, \u2013\n\nmeaning and, \u2013\n\nmomentum, \u2013\n\nbalance and, \u2013\n\nMontgomery bus boycott, , \u2013,\n\nMount, Michael K., , ,\n\nMurray, Andy,\n\nmusical performers,\n\nMusk, Elon, ,\n\nMyspace,\n\nNASA, Mission Control Center,\n\nNational Civil Rights Museum, \u2013,\n\nNational Health Service, \u2013\n\nNeruda, Pablo,\n\nneural plasticity, \u2013\n\nneurogenesis, \u2013\n\nNext Jump,\n\nNing,\n\nObjectives and Key Results (OKRs),\n\n_Ocean's Eleven_ (movie), \u2013,\n\nOperations and Intelligence (O&I) meetings, \u2013\n\noutcomes, promoting, \u2013\n\noxytocin,\n\nparasympathetic nervous system,\n\nPatagonia, ,\n\nPath,\n\nPatton, George, ,\n\nPayPal,\n\nperformance\n\nadvice and, \u2013\n\ndata reliability about, \u2013, \u2013\n\ndeficit repair and, \u2013\n\nfeedback and, \u2013\n\nflow states and,\n\ngoals as stimulators of, \u2013\n\ngoals in tracking, , \u2013\n\nidiosyncracy of excellent, \u2013\n\njoy and,\n\npast, potential and,\n\npotential and, \u2013\n\npredicting, \u2013\n\nof pub managers, \u2013\n\nrating others', \u2013\n\nof teams, work experience elements related to, \u2013\n\nusing strengths and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nperformance appraisals, , \u2013\n\naccuracy of, \u2013\n\ncompetency model and, \u2013\n\ngoals and, \u2013, \u2013\n\ntraditional, \u2013\n\nperformance improvement plans (PIPs),\n\nperformance management systems, \u2013\n\nperks, \u2013\n\npersonality assessments,\n\nphysicians, burnout among, \u2013, \u2013, ,\n\npilots, United States Air Force, \u2013\n\nplanning\n\nbased on generalizations versus realities,\n\nbenefits of,\n\nthe best plan wins and, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins and, \u2013\n\nconstraints from, \u2013\n\nintelligence systems versus, \u2013\n\npace of change and, \u2013\n\npatterns for, \u2013\n\nreality versus,\n\nreal-world experience and, \u2013\n\nstrategic,\n\nWWII RAF, \u2013\n\nPolunin, Sergei, \u2013\n\nPorter, Cole,\n\npotential, \u2013\n\ndamage from categorizing, \u2013\n\ndefining, , \u2013\n\ndetermining, \u2013\n\nmass and,\n\nmaximizing, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nmeasuring, \u2013\n\nmomentum versus, \u2013\n\nrating others', \u2013\n\ntraits versus states and, \u2013\n\nvelocity and, \u2013\n\n_The Practice of Management_ (Drucker),\n\npraise, ,\n\ngrowth\/development and, \u2013\n\nrecognition versus, \u2013\n\nPresidio of Santa Barbara,\n\n_Principles_ (Dalio), \u2013\n\nproductivity\n\nglobal decline in,\n\ngoals in promoting, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\nuse of strengths and, \u2013\n\n_The Progress Principle_ (Amabile and Kramer),\n\nPTSD, \u2013\n\npub managers, performance of, \u2013, \u2013\n\npurpose, \u2013\n\nquick market intelligence (QMI),\n\nrange, \u2013\n\nrater perspective, \u2013\n\n\"Rater Source Effects Are Alive and Well After All\" (Hoffman),\n\nrating other people, \u2013\n\ndata insufficiency in, \u2013\n\ndata quality and, \u2013\n\nengagement and,\n\nknowledge workers, \u2013\n\non potential, \u2013\n\nproblems with averaging, \u2013\n\nquestioning, \u2013\n\nrating yourself versus, \u2013, \u2013\n\nreliability of, \u2013\n\nsystems for, \u2013\n\nwisdom of crowds and, \u2013\n\nRawls, John, n\n\nreality\n\nobjective versus subjective, \u2013\n\nplanning versus, \u2013\n\nrecognition, ,\n\nfeedback and, \u2013\n\npraise versus, \u2013\n\nred threads,\n\nReiner, Carl,\n\nreliability of data, \u2013, \u2013\n\nrest and digest system, ,\n\nrituals\n\ncascading meaning through, \u2013\n\ndeath and,\n\nleadership and, \u2013\n\npraise\/recognition, \u2013\n\nsense-making, check-ins for, \u2013\n\nRobbins, Chuck,\n\nRonaldo, Cristiano, , \u2013\n\nRoyal Air Force (RAF), \u2013\n\nRoyal Ballet School, \u2013\n\nRoyal Observer Corps,\n\nrunning around your backhand,\n\nsafety,\n\nSalesforce, \u2013,\n\nsales quotas, , \u2013\n\nSam's Club,\n\nSandberg, Sheryl, \u2013, \u2013\n\n_Sapiens_ (Harari), \u2013\n\nScott, Robert Falcon, n\n\nScullen, Steven, ,\n\nsecrecy,\n\nSelection Research, Incorporated (SRI), \u2013\n\nself-assessments,\n\ngoals and, \u2013\n\nof love-in-work, \u2013\n\npersonality,\n\nself-presentation, positive, \u2013\n\nSelma march, \u2013\n\nsense-making rituals, check-ins as, \u2013\n\nShackleton, Ernest, n\n\nsignifiers, \u2013\n\nsimplicity,\n\nteams and,\n\nSinatra, Frank,\n\nSinek, Simon, ,\n\nsituational judgment tests,\n\nskills,\n\nSnapchat, \u2013\n\nsocial media, \u2013\n\nSouthern Christian Leadership Conference,\n\nSouthwest Airlines,\n\nspan of control,\n\nsports, \u2013, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nratings reliability in,\n\nstates versus traits, \u2013, \u2013\n\nstorytelling, \u2013\n\nstrategic planning, . _See also_ planning\n\nstrengths\n\nability and passion with, \u2013\n\nadvice to avoid overuse of, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins and, \u2013\n\ncompetency model and, \u2013\n\ndaily chances to use, , , \u2013\n\ndeficit repair and, \u2013\n\ndefinition of, \u2013, ,\n\nfeelings related to,\n\nflow\/balance and, \u2013\n\nas growth areas, \u2013\n\njoy and, \u2013\n\nleadership and, ,\n\nlearning and, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work and, \u2013\n\nmeasuring, \u2013\n\nteam diversity and, \u2013\n\nteams built on, \u2013\n\nsubjectivity,\n\nsuccess\n\nculture and,\n\nfeedback and,\n\nSummit, Pat,\n\nSun Microsystems, ,\n\nSurowiecki, James, \u2013\n\nsyllogisms, n\n\nsympathetic nervous system,\n\n\"Take Me to Church\" (Hozier), \u2013\n\ntalent reviews, \u2013\n\n_Team of Teams_ (McChrystal), \u2013\n\nteams\n\nbuilt on strengths, \u2013\n\ncascading meaning and, \u2013\n\ncheck-ins with, \u2013\n\nclarity of expectations on, \u2013\n\nconfidence in company's future and, \u2013\n\ncultural signifiers versus, \u2013\n\nengagement and, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nexcellence creation and, \u2013\n\nexperience of work and experience of, \u2013\n\nfactors in creating highly engaged,\n\nhow work actually gets done and, \u2013\n\nidentification with,\n\nimportance of overlooked by companies,\n\nindividuality and, \u2013\n\nintelligence system creation for, \u2013\n\nintersubjective realities and, \u2013\n\nleaders in creating experience of, \u2013\n\noutcomes-based, \u2013\n\npace of change and, \u2013\n\nperformance of, work experience elements and, \u2013\n\nplanning and, \u2013, \u2013\n\npositive attention in, \u2013\n\nrating people on, \u2013\n\ntechnology\n\nfeedback and,\n\ngoals and,\n\nfor rating others, \u2013\n\nTesla,\n\n360-degree assessment, \u2013, \u2013\n\nToyota,\n\n\"Trait, Rater, and Level Effects in 360-Degree Performance Ratings\" (Mount),\n\ntraits versus states, \u2013, \u2013, , \u2013\n\ntransparency, radical, \u2013\n\ntrust\n\ncheck-ins and, \u2013\n\nculture of, \u2013\n\nengagement and, , \u2013\n\ngoals and,\n\nintelligence systems and, \u2013\n\nleadership and,\n\nteam leaders and, \u2013\n\nTrust Index,\n\nturnover,\n\nUltimate Software,\n\nUnited States Air Force, \u2013\n\nuniversality, \u2013, \u2013\n\nvalidity of data, \u2013\n\nvalues\n\ndiversity and,\n\nexpressed,\n\ngoals and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nshared, , ,\n\nvariability of data, \u2013\n\nVeil of Ignorance, n\n\nvelocity,\n\nvirtual workers, \u2013\n\nWalmart, \u2013\n\nWalton, Sam, \u2013\n\nWegmans, \u2013\n\nwell-rounded people, \u2013\n\nareas of excellence and, \u2013\n\ncompetency model and, \u2013\n\ndefining the adjustable seat and, \u2013\n\nidiosyncracy of high performance versus, \u2013\n\nleadership and, ,\n\noutcomes focus and, \u2013\n\nspiky people versus, \u2013,\n\nstrengths and, \u2013\n\nWells Fargo,\n\nWestern Electric, Hawthorne Works, \u2013\n\nWherry, Robert J., Sr.,\n\nwisdom of crowds, \u2013\n\nWittgenstein, Paul,\n\nWonder, Stevie,\n\nwork-life balance, \u2013\n\ncompensation and, \u2013\n\nimpossibility of, \u2013\n\nlove-in-work versus, \u2013\n\nphysicians and, \u2013\n\nWorld War II, \u2013\n\nWright, Corinne, \u2013\n\nX.com,\n\n_Yes, Prime Minister_ (TV show), n\n\nZuckerberg, Mark, \u2013, \u2013\n\n# Acknowledgments\n\nThere's one other pattern in the eight engagement items that we haven't explored yet. The first two\n\n1. I am really enthusiastic about the mission of my company.\n\n2. At work, I clearly understand what is expected of me.\n\naddress how we experience purpose, collectively and individually, at work. The next two\n\n3. On my team, I am surrounded by people who share my values.\n\n4. I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.\n\ncapture how those around us help us achieve excellence, again collectively and individually. The next two\n\n5. My teammates have my back.\n\n6. I know I will be recognized for excellent work.\n\nare all about support, and how we get that from our team and from the individuals around us. And the last two\n\n7. I have great confidence in my company's future.\n\n8. In my work, I am always challenged to grow.\n\ncapture how those around us help us see our collective and individual future.\n\nSo we thought it only appropriate to thank all those who've helped us write Nine Lies About Work in these categories\u2014as each of their contributions has helped make the two of us a stronger team.\n\nFor helping us understand more clearly our own purpose in writing this book, thanks to our wonderful editor, Jeff Kehoe, to Adi Ignatius for his calm and compelling support, and to our incomparable agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. For the questions, and for the challenges to hone our message and serve our true reader, thanks to Fran Katsoudas, Tracy Hutton, and Amy Leschke-Kahle.\n\nFor pushing us to be better in every chapter, every paragraph, and every turn of phrase, and for helping us glimpse what excellence could be, thanks to Adrienne Fretz, Yosi Kossowsky, Adam Grant, Alli Walton, and Katie Flores. For sharing with us their reactions to the manuscript, thanks to Jen Waring, Ania Wieckowski, Amy Bernstein, and the entire HBR editorial and production team. For living out our shared commitment to rigorous research methodology and the definitive data-driven discoveries to which it leads, our thanks to Drs. Mary Hayes, Fran Chumney, and Corinne Wright at the ADP Research Institute and to Roxanne Bisby Davis and the Team Analytics and Research squad at Cisco. And to Lisa and Andy and Miles and many unnamed others, thank you for allowing us to share your stories of what excellence looks like and feels like in the real world of work.\n\nFor supporting us on what has been an immensely rewarding journey from idea to proposal to manuscript to book, thanks to, at Cisco, Chuck Robbins, Megan Barba, Gianpaolo Barozzi, Christine Bastian, Megan Bazan, Madison Beard, El Cavanagh-Lomas, Jen Dudeck, Shannon Fryhoff, Dan Gibbs, Leslie Gordon, Scott Herpolsheimer, Charlie Johnston, Jean Kerr, Robert Kovach, John Lagonigro, Alicia Lopez, Amy Manning, Elaine Mason, Dolores Nichols, Jason Phillips, Oliver Roll, Rachel Samitt, Shari Slate, Tschudy Smith, Gaby Thompson, Mary Williams, and Tae Yoo. All of you know how messy the real world of work can be, and by dint of your efforts, each day you're making it better and more human.\n\nAt ADP, thanks to Carlos Rodriguez, Don Weinstein, Dermot O'Brien, Sreeni Kutam, Joe Sullivan, Charlotte Saulny, and the entire StandOut team; to Meredith Bohling for your prose and your community building, to Kevyn Horton for your web building, to Darren Raymond for your \"potential,\" and to Christian Gomez for the power of your persuasion.\n\nAt HBR, thanks to our designer, Stephani Finks, and to our publicity and marketing team, Julie Devoll and Erika Heilman.\n\nAnd for giving us the confidence to keep hammering away at the keyboard, for challenging us to put as much of ourselves into this as we possibly could, and for pushing us to write something that might actually make the future world of work meaningfully better, thanks to our families\u2014Chris, Jenny, William, Graeme, Jo, Jack, Lilia, Marshy, Fitz, and Mojo.\n\nFrom Ashley to Tina: I knew when I married you twenty years ago that you would be a better partner and friend than I had ever dreamed of finding on this earth, and that has proven to be so in more ways than I could have imagined. And although I also knew back then that you were a wonderful word-wrangler, and the most magical idea-honer I have ever known, the thought that one day my words would be beneficiary of your keen attention never entered my mind. How lucky I am.\n\nAnd finally, from Marcus to Myshel: from \"Who do these lies serve?\" to \"What does Picasso say about creation and destruction?\" to \"What can the freethinking leader teach the rest of us?\" your questions have given voice to how our reader thinks and feels. And more, your patience in the process, your wit in the face of my writer's block, and your joy\u2014love even\u2014in the words we chose, all are red threads we have woven into the fabric of this book. Thank you for these, and above all, for the passion.\n\nOne lesson of this book is that no one fits perfectly in any category we can think up, and of course the same is true for all the wonderful people we've listed in the categories above\u2014so many of you have helped us in so many ways. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.\n\n# About the Authors\n\n**_Marcus Buckingham_** is a bestselling author and global researcher focusing on all aspects of people and performance at work. During his years at the Gallup Organization, he worked with Dr. Donald O. Clifton to develop the StrengthsFinder program, and coauthored the seminal business books _First, Break All The Rules_ and _Now, Discover Your Strengths_. He designed the StandOut strengths assessment completed by over one million people to date, and authored the accompanying book, _StandOut: Find Your Edge, Win at Work_. He currently heads all people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute. _Nine Lies About Work_ is his ninth book.\n\n**_Ashley Goodall_** is the Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco Systems. In this role he has built a new organization focused entirely on serving teams and team leaders\u2014an organization that combines learning and talent management, people planning, organization design, executive talent and succession planning, coaching, assessment, team development, research and analytics, and performance technology. Prior to joining Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte, where he was responsible for Leader Development and Performance Management.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nOverview Map Key\n\nSouthern\n\n1 Stewart and Indian Lakes\n\n2 Good Luck Cliffs\n\n3 Jockeybush Lake\n\n4 Groff Creek\n\n5 Tenant Creek Falls\n\n6 Hadley Mountain\n\n7 Crane Mountain\n\nWest-Central\n\n8 Panther Mountain and Echo Cliffs\n\n9 Mitchell Ponds\n\n10 Bear and Woodhull Lakes\n\n11 Black Bear Mountain\n\n12 Bubb, Sis, and Moss Lakes\n\n13 Cascade Lake\n\n14 Gleasmans Falls\n\nCentral\n\n15 Auger Falls\n\n16 Shanty Brook\n\n17 East Branch Sacandaga Gorge\n\n18 Snowy Mountain\n\n19 Chimney Mountain\n\n20 Peaked Mountain\n\n21 Castle Rock\n\n22 Blue Ledges\n\n23 Hoffman Notch\n\nEastern\n\n24 Sleeping Beauty Mountain\n\n25 Shelving Rock Falls\n\n26 Black Mountain\n\n27 Tongue Mountain Range\n\n28 Pharaoh Mountain [day or overnight hike]\n\n29 Pharaoh Lake [overnight hike]\n\nNorthern\n\n30 Owls Head Mountain\n\n31 Cat Mountain\n\n32 High Falls [overnight hike]\n\n33 Lampson Falls and Grass River\n\n34 Floodwood\n\n35 Saint Regis Mountain\n\n36 Debar Mountain\n\nHigh Peaks\n\n37 Ausable River: West River Trail\n\n38 Ausable River: East River Trail\n\n39 Giant's Nubble\n\n40 Hanging Spear Falls and Opalescent River [day or overnight hike]\n\n41 Indian Pass\n\n42 Algonquin Peak\n\n43 Avalanche Pass\n\n44 Little and Big Crow Mountains\n\n45 Pitchoff Mountain\n\n46 Ampersand Mountain\n\nHOFFMAN NOTCH BROOK (Trail 23, Hoffman Notch)\n\nFive-Star Trails: Adirondacks: Your Guide to 46 Spectacular Hikes\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2017 by Tim Starmer\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nPublished by Menasha Ridge Press\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\nDistributed by Publishers Group West\n\nSecond edition, first printing\n\nCover design: Scott McGrew\n\nText design: Annie Long\n\nCartography and elevation profiles: Scott McGrew, Thomas Hertzel, and Tim Starmer\n\nCover and interior photos: Tim Starmer\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Starmer, Timothy, 1975- author.\n\nTitle: Five-star trails, Adirondacks : 40 spectacular hikes in upstate New York \/ Tim Starmer.\n\nDescription: Second edition. | Birmingham, Alabama : Menasha Ridge Press, 2017.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2016053971 | ISBN 9781634040525 (paperback)\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Hiking\u2014New York (State)\u2014Adirondack Mountains\u2014Guidebooks. | Trails\u2014 New York (State)\u2014Adirondack Mountains\u2014Guidebooks. | Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)\u2014 Guidebooks. | BISAC: TRAVEL \/ United States \/ Northeast \/ New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT). | SPORTS & RECREATION \/ Hiking. | HEALTH & FITNESS \/ Healthy Living.\n\nClassification: LCC GV199.42.N652 A34735 2017 | DDC 796.51097475\u2014dc23\n\nLC record available at https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2016053971\n\nISBN: 978-1-63404-052-5; eISBN: 978-1-63404-053-2\n\n**MENASHA RIDGE PRESS**\n\nAn imprint of AdventureKEEN\n\n2204 First Ave. S, Ste. 102\n\nBirmingham, Alabama 35233\n\n800-443-7227, fax 205-326-1012\n\nVisit menasharidge.com for a complete listing of our books and for ordering information. Contact us at our website, at facebook.com\/menasharidge, or at twitter.com\/menasharidge with questions or comments. To find out more about who we are and what we're doing, visit blog.menasharidge.com.\n\nDISCLAIMER This book is meant only as a guide to select trails in the vicinity of the Adirondacks and does not guarantee your safety in any way\u2014you hike at your own risk. Neither Menasha Ridge Press nor Tim Starmer is liable for property loss or damage, personal injury, or death that may result from accessing or hiking the trails described in this guide. Please be aware that hikers have been injured in the Adirondacks. Be especially cautious when walking on or near boulders, steep inclines, and drop-offs, and do not attempt to explore terrain that may be beyond your abilities. To help ensure an uneventful hike, please read carefully the introduction to this book, as well as safety information from other sources. Familiarize yourself with current weather reports and maps of the area you plan to visit (in addition to the maps provided in this guidebook). Be aware of park regulations, and always follow them. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this guidebook, land and road conditions, phone numbers and websites, and other information is subject to change.\nContents\n\nOVERVIEW MAP\n\nOVERVIEW MAP KEY\n\nDEDICATION\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nPREFACE\n\nRECOMMENDED HIKES\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nSouthern\n\n1 Stewart and Indian Lakes\n\n2 Good Luck Cliffs\n\n3 Jockeybush Lake\n\n4 Groff Creek\n\n5 Tenant Creek Falls\n\n6 Hadley Mountain\n\n7 Crane Mountain\n\nWest-Central\n\n8 Panther Mountain and Echo Cliffs\n\n9 Mitchell Ponds\n\n10 Bear and Woodhull Lakes\n\n11 Black Bear Mountain\n\n12 Bubb, Sis, and Moss Lakes\n\n13 Cascade Lake\n\n14 Gleasmans Falls\n\nCentral\n\n15 Auger Falls\n\n16 Shanty Brook\n\n17 East Branch Sacandaga Gorge\n\n18 Snowy Mountain\n\n19 Chimney Mountain\n\n20 Peaked Mountain\n\n21 Castle Rock\n\n22 Blue Ledges\n\n23 Hoffman Notch\n\nEastern\n\n24 Sleeping Beauty Mountain\n\n25 Shelving Rock Falls\n\n26 Black Mountain\n\n27 Tongue Mountain Range\n\n28 Pharaoh Mountain [day or overnight hike]\n\n29 Pharaoh Lake [overnight hike]\n\nNorthern\n\n30 Owls Head Mountain\n\n31 Cat Mountain\n\n32 High Falls [overnight hike]\n\n33 Lampson Falls and Grass River\n\n34 Floodwood\n\n35 Saint Regis Mountain\n\n36 Debar Mountain\n\nHigh Peaks\n\n37 Ausable River: West River Trail\n\n38 Ausable River: East River Trail\n\n39 Giant's Nubble\n\n40 Hanging Spear Falls and Opalescent River [day or overnight hike]\n\n41 Indian Pass\n\n42 Algonquin Peak\n\n43 Avalanche Pass\n\n44 Little and Big Crow Mountains\n\n45 Pitchoff Mountain\n\n46 Ampersand Mountain\n\nAPPENDIX A: MANAGING AGENCIES\n\nAPPENDIX B: GEAR LISTS\n\nAPPENDIX C: HIKING CLUBS\n\nAPPENDIX D: SUGGESTED READING\n\nABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nMAP LEGEND\n\nTOP OF THE FIRST FALLS ALONG TENANT CREEK (Trail 5, Tenant Creek Falls)\nDedication\n\nThis book is dedicated to my parents, who first inspired in me a love of the great outdoors and helped in innumerable ways in completing this book.\nAcknowledgments\n\nFIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank everyone who braved the trails with me and endured my repetitious mumblings into my voice recorder. Your company was appreciated and helpful.\n\nSecond, I must acknowledge all the work that my parents contributed to this project, from editing my rough drafts to retyping hikes I lost when my computer crashed to loaning me a car when my truck broke down, sadly more than once.\n\nFinally, I would like to acknowledge the tireless efforts of all the trail crews who maintain the thousands of miles of trails in the Adirondacks. Your work is greatly admired and appreciated.\n\n\u2014T. S.\nPreface\n\nWORKING ON THIS BOOK was definitely an experience to remember. I lost two hard drives; had to rewrite a handful of hikes from memory; fried a camera, a voice recorder, and a GPS unit; sprained my ankle; was nearly blown off a mountaintop; and was stranded in the middle of the Adirondacks when my truck broke down and AAA redefined 24\/7 service as weekdays only during business hours. It was memorable and\u2014quite simply\u2014great. Planning and replanning hikes, followed by days in the woods, is more than most hikers can ask for; to do so in the Adirondacks is definitely more than most get.\n\nFor those who don't know, the Adirondack Park is huge. The park's boundaries encompass 9,375 square miles, which is larger than each of the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. It is only 240 square miles smaller than Vermont. Compared to national parks, the Adirondack Park is larger than Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, and Big Bend National Parks combined. In fact, its boundaries, also known as the blue line, encompass more acreage than any of the national parks in the Lower 48 states. Not all of the land within the blue line is owned or managed by the state. Towns, villages, and two entire counties, as well as vast tracts of privately held land, lie within its boundaries. However, don't let the land classification fool you\u2014the park is truly a vast wilderness. Of the 6.1 million acres, almost 45%, or 2.6 million acres, is owned by the state, though donations and purchases continue to expand the state-owned land. Of the remaining land, less than 1% is municipal property and about 6% is classified as low-level residential, which is almost equivalent to the amount of acreage of water within the park. The remaining land is either rural or privately owned forests.\n\nNo matter how you frame it, the park is a huge wilderness, and you sense it almost immediately after passing the blue line. As you drive toward any of the hundreds of trailheads, you can feel the forest encroaching on the fields and houses along the roads. You know that the boundary between civilization and a sprawling wilderness is just beyond the treeline. Soon the forests have overrun manicured lawns, and fields give way to staggering boulders and craggy cliffs that loom close to the roadside. You sense that at any point, you could stop your car, step out into the woods, and within feet completely leave civilization behind. All the while, should you choose to stop at a diner for lunch in between hikes, forget camera batteries, need to refuel, or need replacement gear, there is typically a spot to resupply within a half hour of a trailhead. This is the charm of the Adirondacks: A vast wilderness, in which you can spend days in solitude, is at your fingertips, and yet civilization is still close at hand. For many beginning hikers, this is a great comfort, while experienced hikers can revel in the idea of a warm meal or cold drink at the end of a journey.\n\nMy goal in writing this book was to cater to both beginning and experienced hikers by providing easy and challenging hikes in all corners of the park. I could have easily found 40-plus hikes in any single region, and all would have been rewarding. Some of the hikes will be familiar, others less known, but all are rewarding examples of the many facets of the Adirondack Park and its thousands of miles of trails.\n\n\u2014Tim Starmer\nRecommended Hikes\n\nBest for Solitude\n\n1 Stewart and Indian Lakes\n\n4 Groff Creek\n\n27 Tongue Mountain Range\n\n31 Cat Mountain\n\n32 High Falls\n\nBest for Waterfalls\n\n5 Tenant Creek Falls\n\n15 Auger Falls\n\n25 Shelving Rock Falls\n\n33 Lampson Falls and Grass River\n\n37 Ausable River: West River Trail\n\n38 Ausable River: East River Trail\n\n40 Hanging Spear Falls and Opalescent River\n\nBest for Lakes and Ponds\n\n7 Crane Mountain\n\n12 Bubb, Sis, and Moss Lakes\n\n20 Peaked Mountain\n\n29 Pharaoh Lake\n\n34 Floodwood\n\n43 Avalanche Pass\n\nBest for Mountains\n\n18 Snowy Mountain\n\n20 Peaked Mountain\n\n24 Sleeping Beauty Mountain\n\n27 Tongue Mountain Range\n\n42 Algonquin Peak\n\n45 Pitchoff Mountain\n\n46 Ampersand Mountain\n\nEasiest Hikes\n\n4 Groff Creek\n\n11 Black Bear Mountain\n\n13 Cascade Lake\n\n15 Auger Falls\n\n25 Shelving Rock Falls\n\n33 Lampson Falls and Grass River\n\n44 Little and Big Crow Mountains\n\nMost Challenging Hikes\n\n27 Tongue Mountain Range\n\n36 Debar Mountain\n\n37 Ausable River: West River Trail (p. 254) combined with\n\n38 Ausable River: East River Trail\n\n40 Hanging Spear Falls and Opalescent River\n\n42 Algonquin Peak\n\n43 Avalanche Pass\n\nBest for Fall Colors\n\n6 Hadley Mountain\n\n18 Snowy Mountain\n\n24 Sleeping Beauty Mountain\n\n30 Owls Head Mountain\n\n46 Ampersand Mountain\n\nBest for Wheelchair Accessibility (portions)\n\n10 Bear and Woodhull Lakes\n\n12 Bubb, Sis, and Moss Lakes\n\n33 Lampson Falls and Grass River\n\nSPLIT ROCK BAY ON PHARAOH LAKE (Trail 29, Pharaoh Lake)\n\nSANDY BEACH AT BLUE LEDGES (Trail 22, Blue Ledges)\nIntroduction\n\nAbout This Book\n\nAN ESTIMATED 6 MILLION\u201310 MILLION TOURISTS visit Adirondack Park every year. With 3,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 2,000 miles of hiking trails, and more than 100 mountains, it is no surprise. Unique is barely adequate to describe the character of the Adirondacks. It stands out as the largest park in the Lower 48 states; however, unlike its rivals, it's managed solely by the state. It has the only mountains in the Northeast that are not geologically Appalachian. The mountains, though geologically new, are from old rock. Ecologically, the park lies on the transition of the boreal forests of the north and deciduous hardwood forests of the south. The Adirondack region was also at the forefront of conservation when, in 1894, the Forever Wild character of the forest preserve was added to the state constitution, making it the first preserve with constitutional protection.\n\nNew mountains from old rock seem a contradiction, but this is what makes the Adirondack Mountains distinct from their Appalachian neighbors along the East Coast. Unlike the Appalachian Mountains, which were formed by plate tectonics, the Adirondack Mountains were formed by uplift. Indeed, the Adirondacks are still rising. Granted, the rate is only about 3 millimeters per year, but this rate is faster than the rate of erosion, so the mountains are creeping ever upward. So the next time someone comments that life was tougher in his day, you can quip that at least his mountains were shorter.\n\nThe protruding old rock was formed when the Adirondacks were part of a giant inland sea. Over millennia, miles of sediment were deposited and later transformed by high pressure and heat into metamorphosed rock. The deposits and formation took place 1 billion years ago, and the metamorphosed rock lay miles beneath the surface until erosion removed enough material for a 160-mile-wide bulge to begin swelling above the surrounding landscape about 5 million years ago. Further stages of uplift, erosion, and the scouring of the landscape by great ice sheets have exposed the metamorphosed rock and caused the uplift to increase. These powerful forces of uplift, erosion, and scouring transformed the region into the rugged wilderness we see today.\n\nAmerican Indians did not settle in the Adirondacks, but rather used them mostly as hunting grounds. As Europeans began to explore and settle the continent, they stayed on the fringes of the wilderness, mostly along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain. These lakes formed a major strategic territory for mastery of the continent. The Iroquois and Algonquin often fought over the water route long before the pitched battles of the French and Indian War. During this war, the French controlled Fort Carillon, later named Fort Ticonderoga, on the northern shore of Lake Champlain, while the English controlled Fort William Henry on the south end. James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans depicts one of the major events in this contest over the water route: the surrender of Fort William Henry followed by a massacre of the retreating English troops on their way to Fort Edward. The magnitude of the massacre has been estimated from dozens to thousands, though it is generally agreed that Cooper's depiction is exaggerated. Later epic battles were fought during this war and then again during the American Revolution. However, during all this time, the interior of the Adirondack wilderness was rarely broached.\n\nSettlement in the region did not begin in earnest until the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution's growing demand for natural resources turned its eyes on the vast stands of timber and newly discovered veins of iron ore. Great wealth was created during the Gilded Age, and consequently, the Adirondacks became a popular vacation area with great camps and resorts. At the same time, conservation and a love of the outdoors were taking hold of the public, and the devastation of the Adirondack forests became a growing concern among these newly arrived vacationers. In 1885 the state created the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which directed that \"the lands now or hereafter constituting the Forest Preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.\" Later in 1892 the state established the Adirondack State Park and drew the infamous blue line to encompass the Adirondack Forest Preserve, as well as millions of acres of private land. Despite these protections, the forest preserve law was still violated; in 1894 the \"forever wild\" clause was added to the state constitution of New York. Tourism continued to thrive in the region and saw increases after World War I and World War II. Second homes within the park became a growing concern, and in 1971 the Adirondack Park Agency was created to develop and oversee land-use plans with consideration of the \"forever wild\" clause.\n\nToday the park still maintains a delicate balance between the interests of private landholders and the public lands owned by the state. To say that tourism is a mainstay of the region is an understatement. There are 130,000 people living year-round in the 9,375 square miles encompassed by the blue line, with an estimated 200,000 seasonal residents and anywhere from 6 million to 10 million tourists. So odds are that if you ask someone for directions, the person won't be from around there. Tourism is year-round, with winter attracting snowmobilers, skiers, and snowshoers in as many numbers as summer's vacationers and fall's hunters. About the only downtime is in early spring during the mud season.\n\nThe hikes within this book are meant to provide a wide range of experiences over the vast area of the park. For decades the park has informally been divided into regions in various ways. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has regions that sprawl across the blue line; counties divide the park but also cross the line; and varying tourist centers divide the region based on proximity to major lakes or towns.\n\nMost people adhere to the six regions originally devised by the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) in its earlier versions of the Forest Preserve series of guidebooks. I have similarly divided the region because it proves useful for hikers seeking nearby trails or additional maps and is generally understood by most hikers as the way the park is divided. Though regions often overlap, some distinctions between the regions help to describe the area to be explored.\n\nSouthern Region\n\nThe southern foothills are not known for their mountains, so it may seem odd that the two mountains featured here are actually some of the steepest hikes. They are not as tall as those in the High Peaks, but their straight-up ascents make them reasonably challenging, yet well within the novice hiker's range. Similar to the west-central and central regions, the terrain here is mostly level, and lakes and other bodies of water are the primary focus of trails. Several unmarked trails are also featured in this region but are easy to follow with a little navigational experience.\n\nWest-Central Region\n\nAlong the western border of the park are the foothills that lead to the Adirondack Mountains. Few mountains are in this area; most trails follow the shores of lakes and rivers and feature generally flat terrain. The few mountain trails in this area are well liked, so expect lots of company. Indeed, the region, especially around the towns of Old Forge and Inlet, is extremely popular with tourists. Many of the great camps were built here, and it serves as a staging point for longer expeditions into the Adirondacks. Several excellent campgrounds, outdoors stores, and outfitters are in the area, making it a good point to resupply or pick up forgotten items as you head deeper into the park. It does not take long to leave the vestiges of civilization behind here, so the purist should not shun this region simply because it is well known.\n\nCentral Region\n\nAs might be expected, the central region lies in the center of many of the other Adirondack regions; consequently, many of its trailheads lie literally across the street from a trail in another region. Many of the trails described in this region are unmarked and considered bushwhacks but generally are well trodden. Additionally, these trails follow the course of streams, so navigating them should be relatively easy. The area is essentially bound by NY 28 to the north and NY 8 to the south. Several mountains are in this region, though most are easy to climb. An abundance of waterfalls in this region makes it an excellent area for exploring waterscapes. Many of the campgrounds in the area provide solitude and scenery, making them excellent staging areas for exploring all the regions in the park.\n\nEastern Region\n\nHikes in this region focus on the shores of Lake George and feature spectacular vistas from the mountains that surround the beautiful lake. The southern tip of Lake George is full of tourist trappings and won't be high on the list for most devoted hikers. However, it does provide a good staging area, the opportunity to reconnect with civilization, and quick access to the excellent wilderness areas nearby. Pharaoh Lake and Mountain are featured in the book but cover just a small portion of the vast Pharaoh Lake Wilderness Area.\n\nNorthern Region\n\nThe northern region looks and feels like a giant river basin. The mostly level terrain is dotted with innumerable ponds, lakes, and marshes, which are all bisected by a network of streams and winding rivers. The Floodwood and High Falls loops described in this guide typify the region and are fascinating areas to explore. Not as built-up or commercial as other areas in the park, the northern region is definitely the most remote and probably the hardest area in which to resupply. Cranberry Lake, Tupper Lake, and Saranac are the largest developed areas, but you'll pass through them quickly. Hikes here are generally more secluded; however, as is the case in most regions, the peaks attract the most hikers.\n\nHigh Peaks Region\n\nRugged and wild, the High Peaks typify the Adirondacks. Hikers who put off venturing into the High Peaks region for decades often never return to their earlier stomping grounds once they get a taste of the High Peaks. Generally, trails here are steeper, cliffs and waterfalls are taller, and the sheer quantity of peaks in this region changes your view of what rugged looks and feels like. This book offers just a sampling of the adventures that lie in the High Peaks and leans toward the beginner level for the region. However, beginner High Peaks trails are typically more difficult than more advanced trails in other regions.\n\nHow to Use This Guidebook\n\nOverview Map, Map Key, and Map Legend\n\nThe overview map on the inside front cover depicts the location of the primary trailhead for all of the hikes described in this book. Each hike's number appears on the overview map, on the map key facing the overview map, and in the table of contents. A hike's full profile is easy to locate as you flip through the book\u2014just watch for the hike number at the top of each page. A map legend that details the symbols found on trail maps appears on the inside back cover.\n\nTrail Maps\n\nEach hike contains a detailed map that shows the trailhead, the complete route, significant features, facilities, and topographic landmarks such as creeks, overlooks, and peaks. I gathered map data by carrying a GPS unit (Garmin eTrex) while hiking each route, and then sent that data to the publisher's expert cartographers. However, your GPS is not really a substitute for sound, sensible navigation that takes into account the conditions you observe while hiking.\n\nFurther, despite the high quality of the maps in this guidebook, the publisher and author strongly recommend that you always carry an additional map, such as the ones noted in each entry opener's listing for \"Maps.\"\n\nElevation Profiles\n\nThe elevation profile represents the rises and falls of the trail as viewed from the side, over the complete distance (in miles) of that trail. On the diagram's vertical axis, or height scale, the number of feet indicated between each tick mark lets you visualize the climb. To avoid making flat hikes look steep and steep hikes appear flat, varying height scales provide an accurate image of each hike's climbing challenge. For example, one hike's scale might rise to 800 feet, while another goes to 6,000 feet.\n\nAlso, each entry's opener will list the elevation at the hike trailhead, and it will list the elevation peak.\n\nThe Hike Profile\n\nEach hike profile opens with the hike's star ratings, GPS trailhead coordinates, and other key at-a-glance information\u2014from the trail's distance and configuration to contacts for local information. Each profile also includes a map (see \"Trail Maps,\"). The main text for each profile includes three sections: \"Overview,\" \"Route Details,\" and \"Directions\" (for driving to the trailhead area).\n\nFlip through the book, read the \"Overview\" summaries, and choose the hikes that appeal to you. A list of recommended hikes will also help you choose a hike to fit your mood and group.\n\nStar Ratings\n\nThe hikes in Five-Star Trails: Adirondacks were carefully chosen to give the hiker an overall five-star experience and represent the diversity of trails found in the region. Each hike was assigned a one- to five-star rating in each of the following categories: scenery, trail condition, suitability for children, level of difficulty, and degree of solitude. While one hike may merit five stars for its stunning scenery, that same trail may rank as a two-star trail for children. Similarly, another hike might receive two stars for difficulty but earn five stars for solitude. It's rare that any trail receives five stars in all five categories; nevertheless, each trail offers excellence in at least one category, if not others. Here's how the star ratings for each of the five categories break down:\n\nFOR SCENERY:\n\nUnique, picturesque panoramas\n\nDiverse vistas\n\nPleasant views\n\nUnchanging landscape\n\nNot selected for scenery\n\nFOR TRAIL CONDITION:\n\nConsistently well maintained\n\nStable, with no surprises\n\nAverage terrain to negotiate\n\nInconsistent, with good and poor areas\n\nRocky, overgrown, or often muddy\n\nFOR CHILDREN:\n\nExcellent choice for introducing young kids to hiking\n\nFun for anyone past the toddler stage with some hiking experience\n\nGood for young hikers with proven stamina\n\nNot enjoyable for children\n\nNot advisable for children\n\nFOR DIFFICULTY:\n\nGrueling\n\nStrenuous\n\nModerate (won't beat you up\u2014but you'll know you've been hiking)\n\nEasy with patches of moderate\n\nGood for a relaxing stroll\n\nFOR SOLITUDE:\n\nPositively tranquil\n\nSpurts of isolation\n\nModerately secluded\n\nCrowded on weekends and holidays\n\nSteady stream of individuals and\/or groups\n\nGPS Trailhead Coordinates\n\nAs noted in \"Trail Maps\" I used a handheld GPS unit to obtain geographic data and sent the information to the publisher's cartographers. In the opener for each hike profile, the coordinates\u2014the intersection of the latitude (north) and longitude (west)\u2014will orient you from the trailhead. In some cases, you can drive within viewing distance of a trailhead. Other hiking routes require a short walk to the trailhead from a parking area.\n\nYou will also note that this guidebook uses the degree\u2013decimal minute format for presenting the latitude and longitude GPS coordinates. The latitude and longitude grid system is likely quite familiar to you, but here is a refresher, pertinent to visualizing the GPS coordinates:\n\nImaginary lines of latitude\u2014called parallels and approximately 69 miles apart from each other\u2014run horizontally around the globe. The equator is established to be 0\u00b0, and each parallel is indicated by degrees from the equator: up to 90\u00b0N at the North Pole, and down to 90\u00b0S at the South Pole.\n\nImaginary lines of longitude\u2014called meridians\u2014run perpendicular to latitude lines. Longitude lines are likewise indicated by degrees. Starting from 0\u00b0 at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, they continue to the east and west until they meet 180\u00b0 later at the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. At the equator, longitude lines also are approximately 69 miles apart, but that distance narrows as the meridians converge toward the North and South Poles.\n\nTo convert GPS coordinates given in degrees, minutes, and seconds to the degree\u2013decimal minute format used in this book, the seconds are divided by 60. For more on GPS technology, visit usgs.gov.\n\nDistance and Configuration\n\nDistance notes the length of the hike round-trip, from start to finish. If the hike description includes options to shorten or extend the hike, those round-trip distances will also be factored here. Configuration defines the trail as a loop, an out-and-back (taking you in and out via the same route), a figure eight, or a balloon.\n\nHiking Time\n\nDistances given are absolute, but hiking times are based on an average hiking speed of 2\u20133 miles per hour, with time built in for pauses at overlooks and brief rests. Hiking time varies for each hiker, but I like to use the rule of thumb of 3 miles an hour plus an additional hour for every thousand feet of ascent. For trails over 9 miles, I usually add another hour to account for more time to take in the sites and\/or a slower pace near the end. Hikers new to the Adirondacks will probably want to pad their time a bit more as they accustom themselves to the more rugged trails.\n\nHighlights\n\nWaterfalls, historic sites, or other features that draw hikers to the trail are emphasized here.\n\nElevation\n\nIn each trail's opener, you will see the elevation at the trailhead and another figure for the peak height on the route. The full hike profile also includes a complete elevation profile.\n\nAccess\n\nFees or permits required to hike the trail are detailed here\u2014and noted if there are none. Trail access hours are also shown.\n\nMaps\n\nResources for maps, in addition to those in this guidebook, are listed here. As previously noted, the publisher and author recommend that you carry more than one map and that you consult those maps before heading out on the trail to resolve any confusion or discrepancy. Common abbreviations listed here include DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) and USGS (U.S. Geological Survey).\n\nFacilities\n\nThis section alerts you to restrooms, phones, water, picnic tables, and other basics at or near the trailhead.\n\nWheelchair Access\n\nAt a glance, you'll see if there are paved sections or other areas for safely using a wheelchair.\n\nComments\n\nHere you will find assorted nuggets of information, such as whether dogs are allowed on the trails.\n\nContacts\n\nListed here are phone numbers and website addresses for checking trail conditions and gleaning other day-to-day information.\n\nOverview, Route Details, and Directions\n\nThese three elements provide the main text about the hike. \"Overview\" gives you a quick summary of what to expect on that trail; the \"Route Details\" guide you on the hike, start to finish; and \"Directions\" should get you to the trailhead from a well-known road or highway.\n\nWeather\n\nWeather in the Adirondacks should not be taken lightly. Conditions can change rapidly during all seasons, and the conditions at the base of a tall mountain will certainly not be the same as at the top. When I set out to hike Ampersand Mountain, it was a bright, sunny day in the height of summer. Clouds rolled in, and an unpredicted and severe thunderstorm set in quickly with little warning. Those at the peak sheltered near large boulders at the top, while those at the base turned back. Unfortunately, I was caught in the treeline just below the peak. The situation soon became precarious, as the wind howled and bent trees near the point of snapping. Heavy rains flooded the path, making footing slick. Turning around meant passing through an area where blowdown was likely and unpredictable, and the steep, rocky path became slicker by the minute\u2014hurrying would not be an option. I managed to shelter near the top, where the treeline broke, and descended during a brief break in the weather. When I finally reached my truck, the system had passed, clear skies prevailed, and little evidence of the severe storm remained. Despite raingear, my clothes told a different story than the skies. So as a rule, prepare for the worst case, even if the best is forecasted.\n\nGenerally speaking, the Adirondacks are cooler than the rest of New York. This is a welcome respite during summer, but it also means that snow may fall from September into May. Summer temperatures rarely go into the 90s, while winter temperatures often go below zero. Average temperatures are in the mild range, with high 70s typical in summer. Though it varies year to year, the hiking season is generally May\u2013October, though proper attire and preparation is always advised.\n\nSnowshoeing and skiing are also popular in this area, and all but the steepest of the trails described in this book can be done with snowshoes. Indeed, though temperatures often plummet below zero, snowshoeing is often the best way to get some solitude on the more popular trails. Late March and early April, also called the mud season, are likely the least advisable times for hiking in the Adirondacks, and most seasonal roads are closed during this time. Additionally, trail erosion is worst during mud season, and the Department of Environmental Conservation has asked that hikers refrain from hiking in areas above 3,000 feet, as the erosion is particularly damaging to alpine vegetation at this time.\n\nThe table on the previous page lists average temperatures and precipitation by month for Adirondack Park. For each month, \"Hi Temp\" is the average daytime high, \"Lo Temp\" is the average nighttime low, and \"Rain or Snow\" is the average precipitation.\n\nWater\n\nWith cool temperatures, 3,000 lakes and ponds, and 30,000 miles of streams and rivers, concern for water may seem overly cautious. However Giardia lamblia, commonly referred to as giardia, has contaminated many water sources in the Adirondacks. Also known as beaver fever, the intestinal parasite causes\u2014well, put politely\u2014intestinal problems weeks after ingestion, the likes of which most would not wish on their enemies. The words watery, explosive, foul, and rotten have also been used to describe the aftereffects, so caution is simply necessary. The single-celled organism is transported by all warm-blooded animals, which in turn contaminate water sources. Because beavers are typically in the water and fail to wash their hands, or even leave the water, after using the lavatory, they are often the culprits of the spread and have been rewarded with the disease's moniker. Beavers also abound in the Adirondacks, and many, if not most, streams have beaver activity in or around them. Humans are also culprits in the transporting and contamination of water sources. To prevent contamination, follow the appropriate guidelines for waste disposal as outlined by the Department of Environmental Conservation and as described later in this book (see page 26).\n\nAside from the inherent risks of drinking untreated water, many of the ponds and lakes are fairly stagnant and taste bad. Effective and proper water treatment is essential for using any source found along the trail. Boiling water for 2\u20133 minutes is always a safe measure, as are iodine tablets, approved chemical mixes, filtration units rated for giardia, and UV filtration. Some of these methods (such as filtration with an added carbon filter) remove bad tastes, while others add their own taste. My suggestion is to research a filtration method, devise a way to make it palatable, always carry along a means to purify water, and carry enough water for the hike. A cool drink waiting in the car is always a welcome reward, but it's of little use on the trail. Carry a means of purification to help in a pinch or if you underestimate your consumption, but always bring a couple of water bottles for everyone in your group.\n\nHow much is enough? Well, one simple physiological fact should convince you to err on the side of excess when deciding how much water to pack: a hiker working hard in 90\u00baF heat needs approximately 10 quarts of fluid per day. That's 2.5 gallons\u201412 large water bottles or 16 small ones. In other words, pack along one or two bottles even for short hikes. Hydrate prior to your hike, carry (and drink) 6 ounces of water for every mile you plan to hike, and hydrate after the hike.\n\nClothing\n\nProper attire will make the difference between enjoying the trail and having a miserable experience. In the worst case it could even save your life. I add these words of caution not to be dramatic but because it is so easy to disregard simple considerations, especially on short trips and especially when it comes to clothing. Weather is unpredictable, trail conditions change or become impassable, we overestimate our abilities and underestimate required hiking times, and wrong turns happen. On a backpacking trip, we are usually prepared for these eventualities because we know that we will be out in the woods for a long time. Don't get me wrong\u2014I'm not advocating hiring a Sherpa or bringing your entire wardrobe, but proper attire at the outset will mitigate most problems.\n\nA few simple guidelines will avert most inconveniences and help you avoid most disasters. When hiking, wear hiking boots and not sandals, flip-flops, or sneakers. Trails in the Adirondacks are hardened, which means they traverse rocky paths to minimize erosion. It protects the forest but is hard on the ankles, so wear suitable footwear. Proper layering is also essential to comfortable hiking without excessive perspiration, so wear or pack all layers for the season. Dress for the day and prepare for the worst. This means that if it is 75\u00baF and sunny, dress in what is comfortable for you, but bring raingear and do not leave it in the car if the weather looks good. In spring or fall always wear or bring a wool hat and gloves. On the trail I wear pants with zip-off legs and always bring a pack with food and water, as well as a change of socks and shirt, raingear, gaiters, and a warm hat. With these few extra items, you are prepared for any condition or eventuality without adding much weight. In fall, winter, and spring, remember that \"cotton kills,\" so wear silk, wool, or synthetics. In summer cotton may be passable but only if you bring a change of clothing that will not get wet. In an emergency you are only prepared with what you have on or with you. Remember, the worst may include spending the night in the woods in spring or fall when daytime and nighttime temperatures vary drastically, so be prepared.\n\n**BOULDER CAVE ON THE WAY TO GOOD LUCK CLIFFS** (Trail 2, Good Luck Cliffs, page 35)\n\nEssential Gear\n\nAlong with proper attire, there are several other essential items that every hiker should bring with him or her, even on short day hikes. As I alluded to in the section about clothing, no one plans on a 1-hour hike turning into a night lost in the woods, but it happens all the time to novice and experienced hikers alike. A complete list of items to bring along for day trips and backpacking trips is found in Appendix B but I've listed the essentials here. These items can be carried in your pockets if carefully packed, but carrying a light backpack is often easier. In addition to carrying the items listed below, you need to know how to use them, especially the ones involving navigation.\n\nWater: Bring a means to carry it and purify it (for example, water bottle and iodine or a filter).\n\nNavigation: Always carry a map, preferably a topo and a trail map with route description, and a high-quality compass.\n\nKnife or multitool: A pocketknife and\/or multitool with pliers\n\nLight: A flashlight or headlamp with extra bulb and batteries\n\nFire: Windproof matches and\/or a lighter, as well as a fire starter\n\nFirst aid kit: See below for a list of basic items to be kept in your kit.\n\nExtra food: Trail mix, granola bars, or other high-energy foods\n\nExtra clothes: Raingear, warm hat, gloves, and a change of socks and shirt\n\nSun protection: Sunglasses, lip balm, sunblock, and a sun hat\n\nFirst Aid Kit\n\nA typical first aid kit may contain more items than you might think necessary. These are just the basics. Prepackaged kits in waterproof bags are available. Even though quite a few items are listed here, they pack down into a small space.\n\nAdhesive bandages\n\nAntibiotic ointment (Neosporin or the generic equivalent)\n\nAthletic tape\n\nBenadryl or the generic equivalent, diphenhydramine (in case of allergic reactions)\n\nBlister kit (such as moleskin or Spenco 2nd Skin)\n\nButterfly-closure bandages\n\nElastic bandages or joint wraps\n\nEpinephrine in a prefilled syringe (for people known to have severe allergic reactions to such things as bee stings, usually by prescription only)\n\nGauze and compress pads (one roll and a half dozen 4-by-4-inch pads)\n\nHydrogen peroxide or iodine\n\nIbuprofen or acetaminophen\n\nInsect repellent\n\nMatches or a pocket lighter\n\nSunscreen\n\nTweezers\n\nWhistle (more effective at signaling rescuers than your voice)\n\nGeneral Safety\n\nTo some potential mountain enthusiasts, the deep woods seem inordinately dark and perilous. It is the fear of the unknown that causes this anxiety. No doubt, potentially dangerous situations can occur outdoors, but as long as you use sound judgment and prepare yourself before hitting the trail, you'll be much safer in the woods than in most urban areas of the country. It is better to look at a backcountry hike as a fascinating chance to discover the unknown rather than a chance for potential disaster. If you're new to the game, I suggest starting out easy and finding a person who knows more to help you out. In addition, here are a few tips to make your trip safer and easier.\n\nAlways let someone know your plans in advance. Tell your safety person which trails you will be on, when and where you expect to depart from, and when and where you expect to return. Though you are primarily responsible for your safety, your safety person is your backup plan and will alert rescuers where to look for you. Remember to tell your safety person all changes in your plans and check in to let him or her know your trip went well.\n\nAlways sign in and out of the trail registers provided. If you are hiking several trails, it will alert rescuers where you are and, sometimes more important, where you are not.\n\nWhile getting lost is unlikely on shorter trails, injury is a distinct possibility, as indicated by numerous warning signs of precipitous cliffs. While bravado may foolishly deter people from using the registers for the first reason, the following reason may appeal more to their self-interest. The Department of Environmental Conservation and the state base many of their trail-maintenance and funding decisions on trail registers. So if you want to see your favorite trails maintained or want more like them, then let the registers act as your democratic voice in the wilderness.\n\nNever rely on a cell phone, but bring one just in case. Reception is spotty at best and virtually nonexistent in most areas\u2014and your phone won't work as kindling.\n\nAlways carry food and water, whether you are planning to go overnight or not. Food will give you energy, help keep you warm, and sustain you in an emergency until help arrives. You never know if a stream will be nearby when you become thirsty. Bring potable water or treat water before drinking it from a stream. Boil or filter all found water before drinking it.\n\nStay on designated trails. Most hikers get lost when they leave the path. Even on the most clearly marked trails, there is usually a point where you have to stop and consider what direction to head. If you become disoriented, don't panic. As soon as you think that you may be off track, stop, assess your current direction, and then retrace your steps to the point where you went astray. Using a map, a compass, and this book, and keeping in mind what you have passed thus far, reorient yourself and trust your judgment on which way to continue. If you become absolutely unsure of how to continue, return to your vehicle the way you came in. Should you become completely lost and have no idea how to return to the trailhead, remaining in place along the trail and waiting for help is most often the best option for adults and always the best option for children.\n\nBe especially careful when crossing streams. Whether you are fording the stream or crossing on a log, make every step count. If you have any doubt about maintaining your balance on a log, ford the stream instead. When crossing, use a trekking pole or stout stick for balance and face upstream as you cross. If a stream seems too deep to ford, turn back. Whatever is on the other side is not worth risking your life.\n\nBe careful at overlooks. While these areas may provide spectacular views, they are potentially hazardous. Stay back from the edge of outcrops and be absolutely sure of your footing; a misstep can mean a nasty and possibly fatal fall.\n\nStanding dead trees and storm-damaged living trees pose a real hazard to hikers and tent campers. These trees may have loose or broken limbs that could fall at any time. When choosing a spot to rest or a backcountry campsite, look up.\n\nKnow the symptoms of hypothermia. Shivering and forgetfulness are the two most common indicators of this stealthy killer. Hypothermia can occur at any elevation, even in the summer, especially when the hiker is wearing lightweight cotton clothing. If symptoms arise, get the victim shelter, hot liquids, and dry clothes or a dry sleeping bag.\n\nTake along your brain. A cool, calculating mind is the single most important asset on the trail. Think before you act. Watch your step. Plan ahead. Avoiding accidents is the best way to ensure a rewarding and relaxing hike.\n\nAsk questions. State forest and park employees are there to help. It's a lot easier to ask advice beforehand, and it will help you avoid a mishap away from civilization when it's too late to amend an error.\n\nAnimal, Insect, and Plant Hazards\n\nBLACK BEARS Black bears are found throughout New York state but are most frequently encountered in the Adirondacks and occasionally in the Catskills. Though attacks by black bears are virtually unheard of, a bear tearing up your gear or rummaging about outside your tent will give anyone a start. If you encounter a bear at your campsite or while hiking, remain calm and never run away. Make loud noises to scare off the bear and back away slowly.\n\nBlack bears normally avoid humans, but you should always leave them an escape route if you encounter them. They can sprint up to 35 miles per hour and are strong swimmers and great tree climbers.\n\nIn primitive and remote areas, assume that bears are present; in more developed sites, ask the park staff about the current bear situation. Most encounters are food related, as bears have an exceptional sense of smell and will eat anything. A clean site, combined with care and caution, will keep these foragers away from your campsite. Store all food, cooking equipment, and garbage in tightly sealed containers and place well away from your tent. In remote areas or those with recent bear activity, store all items in storage lockers or bear canisters, or suspend them in a sack 12 feet above the ground, 6 feet below branches, and 12 feet from neighboring trees. Make sure that your site is clean, and never leave food unattended. Wash utensils and cooking equipment at least 100 feet from your site, and never dump uneaten food on the ground. Do not bring food into your tent, and do not sleep in clothes worn while preparing food. Never leave scented products of any kind\u2014food, beverages, or personal-\u00adcare products, such as lotion or sunscreen\u2014in your vehicle or unattended in the park area. Generally, proper food preparation and garbage disposal will help maintain a pristine wilderness, the safety of bears and other wildlife, and an enjoyable camping experience for everyone. For updated information and rules regarding acceptable bear canisters (required for overnight trips in the Eastern High Peaks Wilderness area), see the Department of Environmental Conservation website: www.dec.ny.gov\/animals\/7225.html.\n\nRATTLESNAKES New York has a variety of snakes\u2014including garter, milk, and water snakes\u2014most of which are benign. Timber rattlesnakes, northern copperheads, and eastern massasauga rattlesnakes are the exceptions, though they primarily dwell in very isolated areas. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, the massasauga is found in two isolated marshy areas: one near Syracuse and the other near Rochester. The copperhead is found mostly along the Hudson Valley but is largely absent from the Catskills. Timber rattlesnakes are the most widely dispersed of the three and are found in rugged deciduous forests along the southern edge of the state and up into the eastern Adirondacks. Encounters with any of these species are very rare.\n\nWhen hiking, stick to well-used trails and wear over-the-ankle boots and loose-fitting, long pants. Rattlesnakes like to bask in the sun and won't bite unless threatened. Do not step or put your hands where you cannot see, and avoid wandering around in the dark. Step on logs and rocks, never over them, and be especially careful when climbing rocks or gathering firewood. Always avoid walking through dense brush or willow thickets. Keep in mind that rattlers want to avoid confrontation and generally will alert you if you wander too close for their comfort. Hibernation season is October\u2013April.\n\nThe only known treatment for a snakebite is intravenous antivenom, only available at a hospital. If you are hiking alone and get bitten, calmly walk to where you can get help. If someone in your group has been bitten, send another person to get help quickly while the victim rests.\n\nMOSQUITOES You will encounter mosquitoes on most of the hikes described in this book. Insect repellent and\/or repellent-impregnated clothing are the only simple methods to ward off these pests. Mosquitoes in New York are known to carry the West Nile virus, so all due caution should be taken to avoid mosquito bites.\n\nBLACK FLIES Though certainly a pest and maddening annoyance, the worst a black fly will cause is an itchy welt. They are most active mid-May\u2013June, during the day, and especially before thunderstorms, as well as during the morning and evening hours. Insect repellent has some effect, though the only way to keep them from swarming is to keep moving.\n\nINSIDE THE FIRE TOWER ON TOP OF SNOWY MOUNTAIN (Trail 18, Snowy Mountain)\n\nTICKS Ticks are often found on brush and tall grass, waiting to hitch a ride on a warm-blooded passerby. Adult ticks are most active in New York between April and May and again between October and November. Among the local varieties of ticks, the black-legged tick, commonly called the deer tick, is the primary carrier of Lyme disease. Several strategies reduce the chances of ticks getting under your skin. Some people choose to wear light-colored clothing, so ticks can be spotted before they make it to the skin. Most important, be sure to visually check your hair, back of neck, armpits, and socks at the end of the hike. During your posthike shower, take a moment to do a more complete body check. For ticks that are already embedded, grasp the tick as close to the skin's surface as possible with tweezers, and pull upward with steady, even pressure. Do not puncture a tick, as this might release harmful bacteria. Use disinfectant solution on the wound.\n\nPOISON IVY, OAK, AND SUMAC Recognizing and avoiding poison ivy, oak, and sumac are the most effective ways to prevent the painful, itchy rashes associated with these plants. Poison ivy occurs as a vine or ground cover, 3 leaflets to a leaf; poison oak occurs as either a vine or shrub, also with 3 leaflets; and poison sumac flourishes in swampland, each leaf having 7\u201313 leaflets. Urushiol, the oil in the sap of these plants, is responsible for the rash. Within 14 hours of exposure, raised lines and\/or blisters will appear on the affected area, accompanied by a terrible itch. Refrain from scratching because bacteria under your fingernails can cause an infection. Wash and dry the rash thoroughly, applying a calamine lotion to help dry out the rash. If itching or blistering is severe, seek medical attention. If you do come into contact with one of these plants, remember that oil-\u00adcontaminated clothes, pets, or gear can easily cause an irritating rash on you or someone else, so wash not only any exposed parts of your body but also clothes, gear, and pets, if applicable.\n\nHunting\n\nUnlike many national and state parks, hunting is allowed in Adirondack Park. Separate rules, regulations, and licenses govern the various hunting types and related seasons. Though there are generally no problems, hikers may wish to forgo their trips during the big-game seasons, when the woods suddenly seem filled with orange and camouflage. The following is a list of big-game seasons.\n\nEarly bear season: The first Saturday after the second Monday in September; lasts four weeks\n\nArchery season (deer and bear): September 27 to opening of regular season\n\nMuzzle-loading season: Seven days prior to regular season\n\nRegular season: Next-to-last Saturday in October through the first Sunday in December\n\nTips for Enjoying Adirondack Park\n\nOne of the best features of Adirondack Park is its democratic nature. It is meant for the public to enjoy its wild character and is open to all. There are few if any fees, permits, or licenses required for this enjoyment\u2014\u00adand none for those who simply wish to hike the trails. Simply drive to your trailhead, get out of your car, and hit the trail. It is a luxury and a responsibility. Without park staff cleaning, maintaining, and policing the way they typically do in other parks, the burden for cleanliness, maintenance, and your own safety lies on your own shoulders. Practicing the ethos of carry-in and carry-out will ensure that other hikers enjoy the wilderness as much as, and in the same way, you have. By maintaining campsites, lean-tos, and fire rings, you will ensure others get to enjoy them and find them useful too. Avoiding destructive behavior, such as chopping down trees for firewood or causing unnecessary erosion by taking shortcuts, means the forever-wild character of the Adirondacks will remain.\n\nBackcountry Advice and DEC Regulations\n\nThe entire park lies under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and its rules and regulations regarding hiking and backcountry camping apply for all state lands within the park. Camping is permitted within the forest preserve without a permit as long as you follow the regulations below. The DEC's rules and regulations are essentially the same sound, safe, and practical advice I would offer, so I recap them below.\n\nCamping is prohibited within 150 feet of any road, trail, spring, stream, pond, or other body of water, except at areas designated by a camp here disk.\n\nGroups of 10 or more persons or stays of more than three days in one place require a permit from the New York state forest ranger responsible for the area.\n\nLean-tos are available in many areas on a first-come, first-serve basis. Lean-tos cannot be used exclusively and must be shared with other campers.\n\nUse pit privies provided near popular camping areas and trailheads. If none are available, dispose of human waste by digging a hole 6\u20138 inches deep at least 150 feet from water or campsites. Cover with leaves and soil.\n\nDo not use soap to wash yourself, clothing, or dishes within 150 feet of water.\n\nDrinking and cooking water should be boiled for 5 minutes, treated with purifying tablets, or filtered through a filtration device to prevent instances of giardia infection.\n\nFires should be built in existing fire pits or fireplaces if provided. Use only dead and down wood for fires. Cutting standing trees is prohibited. Extinguish all fires with water, and stir ashes until they are cold to the touch. Do not build fires in areas marked by a no fires disk. Camp stoves are safer, more efficient, and cleaner.\n\nCarry out what you carry in. Practice Leave No Trace camping and hiking guidelines.\n\nKeep your pet under control. Restrain it on a leash when others approach. Collect and bury droppings away from water, trails, and campsites. Keep your pet away from drinking-water sources.\n\nObserve and enjoy wildlife and plants, but leave them undisturbed.\n\nRemoving plants, rocks, fossils, or artifacts from state land without a permit is illegal.\n\nExcept in an emergency, or between December 15 and April 30, camping is prohibited above an elevation of 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks.\n\nAt all times, only emergency fires are permitted above 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks.\n\nTrail Etiquette\n\nWhether you're on a city, county, state, or national park trail, always remember that great care and resources (from nature as well as from your tax dollars) have gone into creating these trails. Treat the trail, wildlife, and fellow hikers with respect.\n\nHike on open trails only. Respect trail and road closures (ask if not sure), avoid possible trespassing on private land, and obtain all permits and authorization as required. Also, leave gates as you found them or as marked.\n\nLeave only footprints. Be sensitive to the ground beneath you. Stay on existing trails rather than blazing new ones. Pack out what you pack in. No one likes to see the trash someone else has left behind.\n\nNever spook animals. An unannounced approach, a sudden movement, or a loud noise startles most animals. Surprised animals can be dangerous to you, to others, and to themselves. Give them extra room and time to adjust to your presence.\n\nObserve the yield signs that are displayed around the region's trailheads and backcountry. They advise that hikers yield to horses, and bikers yield to both horses and hikers. A common courtesy on hills is that hikers and bikers yield to any uphill traffic.\n\nWhen encountering mounted riders or horse packers, hikers can courteously step off the trail, on the downhill side, if possible. Speak to the riders before they reach you and do not hide behind trees. You are less spooky if the horse can see and hear you. Resist the urge to pet or touch the horses unless you are invited to do so.\n\nPlan ahead. Know your equipment, your ability, and the area in which you are hiking\u2014and prepare accordingly. Be self-sufficient at all times; carry necessary supplies for changes in weather or other conditions. A well-executed trip is satisfying.\n\nBe courteous to other hikers, bikers, equestrians, and others you encounter on the trails.\n\nSouthern\n\nCRANE MOUNTAIN (Trail 7)\n\n1 STEWART AND INDIAN LAKES\n\n2 GOOD LUCK CLIFFS\n\n3 JOCKEYBUSH LAKE\n\n4 GROFF CREEK\n\n5 TENANT CREEK FALLS\n\n6 HADLEY MOUNTAIN\n\n7 CRANE MOUNTAIN\n\n1\n\nStewart and Indian Lakes\n\nWOODLAND TRAIL\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 10.790' W74\u00b0 30.295'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.6-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Two secluded lakes\n\nELEVATION: 1,603' at trailhead, 2,044' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThis easy hike is a great destination for people who wish to explore two remote, picturesque lakes for fishing or a picnic. With a few moderate climbs, it is a good trail for children, and wildlife viewing at both lakes provides additional interest.\n\nRoute Details\n\nLocated in the Shaker Mountain Wild Forest, the trail uses old logging roads, so the grades are mostly gentle and easily accessible to hikers of all experience levels. The area had been heavily logged before state acquisitions, and much of the forest is still in a phase of regeneration. However, the acquisitions occurred decades ago, and traces of past logging have disappeared. Wild forest areas\u2014in contrast to wilderness, primitive, or canoe areas\u2014are considered less ecologically fragile, allowing for a greater variety of uses and more intensive activities. Don't let the distinction fool you, though, as they are definitely wild places and provide excellent wilderness experiences. Access to the parking area is at the left fork along Green Lake Road, which appears to be little more than a driveway. The well-maintained and spacious lot provides parking for the Kane Mountain Trail as well, but it can easily accommodate a dozen cars, so space should not be a concern.\n\nThe trail begins to the right of the trail register on the north end of the parking lot. Shrouded in tall pines, it follows an access road to a small fish hatchery created by the damming of Otter Lake's outlet, and you can hear water spilling over the concrete dam in most seasons. The trail diverges from the road shortly before the pond on your right. The exact path may be a little hard to discern, but a wooden bridge and a sign prohibiting the use of baitfish will steer you.\n\nA note to anglers: The Department of Environmental Conservation has gone to great lengths to reestablish native brook trout and the endangered round whitefish in some of the isolated waters of the Adirondacks. Reestablishment methods vary but include treating entire lakes with rotenone to remove competing, nonnative species and then restocking the waters with native fish. Due to the physical characteristics of the various Adirondack waterways, the success of this technique is limited and expensive. When the technique is successful, those same physical characteristics mean there will be lasting success and that native fish populations can thrive. Unfortunately, the reintroduction of nonnative species is almost exclusively a consequence of the unintentional release of baitfish by anglers into the reestablished ecosystems. So leave the bait bucket at home when visiting the prized fishing waters of the Adirondacks.\n\nOnce on the trail, you will notice that it is emblazoned by yellow trail markers and very easy to follow the rest of the way. A quick climb takes you along a low ridge overlooking the pond to your left. The trail climbs through a mixed hardwood forest dominated by birch and beech trees. The grade is very moderate for the first 0.7 mile, at which point you encounter a muddy area. The trail climbs more steeply after this muddy area, but at approximately 1.2 miles it levels off to a more gently rolling terrain. Farther along the trail, the forest canopy gets higher and the understory thins, allowing deeper views into the surrounding forest. You catch glimpses of Stewart Lake as you approach 1.3 miles, where there is a fork in the trail. The main trail continues on the right toward Indian Lake, while the left fork takes you through a stand of pine and hemlock to a boggy area that surrounds Stewart Lake. The marshland prevents you from gaining direct access to the lake but makes for good wildlife viewing.\n\nBack along the trail, you encounter some mucky areas that you will have to negotiate on your own, as no good way bypasses the muck. At 2 miles, you pass a thick carpet of club moss, which at first glance looks like tree saplings but is actually more closely related to ferns. At this point, you begin the descent to Indian Lake, where the trail ends at the shore. A path to the left follows the shoreline toward a rock that juts out into the lake and provides additional vantage points. The remote setting promises a wonderful opportunity to view a variety of wildlife, including a beaver lodge.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the southern intersection of NY 10 and NY 29A in downtown Caroga Lake, head north on NY 10\/NY 29A. At 3.4 miles past the intersection, turn right onto Green Lake Road.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 8 and NY 10 in Piseco, head 19.6 miles south on NY 10, and turn left (1.9 miles past the northern intersection of NY 10 and NY 29A near Pine Lake Park) onto Green Lake Road. Follow Green Lake Road north along the west edge of the shore. At 0.5 mile, bear left onto the parking area drive.\n\n2\n\nGood Luck Cliffs\n\nGOOD LUCK LAKE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 15.352' W74\u00b0 32.292'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 3.4-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Dramatic cliffs, panoramic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,693' at trailhead, 2,284' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nSheer cliffs are almost standard in the High Peaks region, but in the southern foothills, these dramatic cliffs are unique and rival those anywhere in the Adirondacks. Though the path to Good Luck Cliffs is technically a bushwhack, the cliffs are frequented enough that even in the height of winter, you can find your way to the mountaintop.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe parking area is a few hundred yards north of the second bridge that crosses the West Branch of the Sacandaga River along NY 10 in the town of Arietta. Coming from the south, the parking area is a large pulloff on the right-hand side of the road.\n\nThe trailhead is across the street and has signs indicating that Dexter Lake is 4.1 miles, Potter Homestead is 7.1 miles, and Good Luck Lake is 0.4 mile, though the latter is along a separate trail. The trail register is approximately 0.5 mile ahead at a trail junction. Follow the snowmobile and red trail disks west along mostly level terrain. Shortly after passing through a wet section, you reach the trail register and junction with other trails. To the right is a snowmobile trail that parallels NY 10. Straight ahead is the trail to Dry and Dexter Lakes, 1.6 and 2.4 miles respectively. The left trail takes you to the west shore of Good Luck Lake (including some tent sites), Spectacle Lake, and the unmarked path to the cliffs and Good Luck Mountain summit.\n\nThe trail has several muddy and wet sections as you make your way south toward the lake, and it even shares space with a stream for a while. The trail begins to descend from this junction, and at approximately 1 mile in, the lake comes into view. A designated campsite to the left of the trail offers a great view of the lake. The cliffs soon become visible, looming off to your right, and you continue past the western tip of the lake through a marshy area, where the evergreens become denser. After crossing a short bridge, you reach the crest of a tiny hill, at 1.3 miles, below which is another bridge that crosses a stream that feeds Good Luck Lake. To your right is the unmarked path that leads to the cliffs.\n\nThe path parallels the feeder stream briefly on your left, along an elevated knoll, before swinging northwest toward the cliffs. Shortly after, the trail climbs and you rock-hop across a stream that cuts the gorge along the cliff's southwest face. The path follows within a few hundred feet of this stream all the way to a notch that lies just below the cliffs. In winter, icicles form sheets of ice along the southern tumble of boulders, creating an amazing winter wonderland setting.\n\nThough the cliffs have been visible through most of the climb, their full grandeur is not fully expressed until you reach the small saddle beneath the west face of the cliff. The trail swings north here, and you will navigate your way around a jumble of boulders that covers the valley floor. The huge boulders provide an opportunity for exploration, including many small caves that are formed in the mass of rock. You pass a noteworthy cave on the right at 1.4 miles.\n\nYou probably have heard the stream flowing on your right, and at 1.5 miles, you recross it before the final ascent to the clifftop. The trail is much steeper and the path less distinct, but as long as you keep the cliffs to your right, you will eventually make your way to the north, or back, side of the cliffs. About 0.1 mile from the stream crossing, you reach a fork in the trail in a stand of spruce trees. To the left is a slight northward jog in the trail that leads to the clifftop, while the right trail leads to the clifftop a little more steeply but more directly. Either way, you reach the top shortly; from there, take any of the numerous paths that weave their way from outlook to outlook. Along the southwest edge is a particularly amazing vista that shows expansive views down to the valley, with Spectacle Lake in the foreground.\n\nSNOWSHOEING ALONG THE UNMARKED PART OF THE TRAIL\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of NY 29A and NY 10, north of Caroga Lake near Pine Lake Park, head 6 miles north on NY 10. The large parking area is on the right just past the second bridge crossing the Sacandaga River in the town of Arietta.\n\nFROM THE NORTH From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 10 in Piseco, head 11.6 miles south on NY 10. The large parking area is on your left.\n\n3\n\nJockeybush Lake\n\nJOCKEYBUSH LAKE NEAR OUTLET\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 18.057' W74\u00b0 33.905'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 2.3-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Pristine lake, waterfall\n\nELEVATION: 1,755' at trailhead, 1,964' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: During the spring thaw, Jockeybush Outlet may require wading, so plan accordingly.\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAnother one of the short hikes featured in the book, Jockeybush Lake promises a varied experience, from streamside hiking and stream crossings to lakeside camping and even a small waterfall. As with other short hikes, this one promises a great experience for beginning hikers and a pleasant trip for the whole family.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking for Jockeybush Lake is a pulloff on the west side of NY 10, just across from Lake Alma. Essentially a pond, Lake Alma has a large painted sign with a green pine tree that is clearly visible when approaching from the south. Coming from the north, keep an eye out for the Department of Environmental Conservation trail signs.\n\nThe trail begins in the northwest corner of the pulloff, and the trail register is a few yards along the path. The trail is well marked with blue trail disks and has no intersections, so finding your way is straightforward. Roughly 0.3 mile in, you cross a seasonal stream that has a few mucky spots, and you will likely have to find a crossing off the trail. You will soon see Jockeybush Outlet flowing on your left and will cross to its southern bank across a rocky wash. During summer this crossing will barely break your stride, but during times of high water, you may have to wade. Shortly after crossing the outlet, you pass a small waterfall on your right that feeds into the outlet. The cascade weaves its way down moss-covered ledges into a verdant jumble of rocks. You can rock-hop around and eventually scramble to the top of the cascade some dozen feet above the outlet to see another tiny cascade.\n\nAfter the short diversion at the falls, the trail weaves its way along the southern banks of the outlet for the rest of the way to Jockey\u00adbush Lake, almost without incident. The one exception is a long muddy section, about a mile in, that fills the entire trail. You'll have to either traverse the muck or bypass along one of the newer footpaths that hikers have made. As is the case with most trails, it is best to minimize your impact on the surrounding forest by following a path already worn by previous hikers than tramping on undisturbed areas. Soon after the mire, you will find yourself on the eastern end of Jockeybush Lake. The lake is deep, as far as Adirondack lakes are concerned, but it's not readily apparent at this end as it is shallow here. Bushwhacks along either shore reveal that the lake is deeper than it first appears. At this end of the lake, a logjam forms a dam, as well as a means to the opposite bank of the outlet, where a designated campsite is situated in a small stand of hemlocks. The campsite has admirable views west along the fingerlike lake and is an ideal spot to picnic during a day trip. Numerous footpaths diverge from the end of the trailhead and campsite, promising other vantage points and even a prime swimming spot, but the trail described ends here. Return the way you came for a round-trip of 2.3 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of NY 29A and NY 10, north of Caroga Lake near Pine Lake Park, head 9.6 miles north on NY 10. The parking area is on the left, opposite Lake Alma, and has a large brown-and-white sign.\n\nJOCKEYBUSH LAKE AS SEEN FROM THE CAMPSITE ON ITS EASTERN TIP\n\nFROM THE NORTH From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 10 in Piseco, head 7.9 miles south on NY 10. The parking area is on your right, opposite Lake Alma.\n\n4\n\nGroff Creek\n\nUPPER PORTION OF GROFF CREEK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 18.823' W74\u00b0 15.402'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.0-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Two unique waterfalls\n\nELEVATION: 918' at trailhead, 1,322' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Silver Lake Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/100874.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe two unique waterfalls along Groff Creek make this a must-\u00adexperience trip for waterfall lovers. Though technically a bushwhack (the trail is unmarked), it is very easy to follow all the way to the marsh at the end.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trail is at the end of the maintained section of River Road. The trail continues along this road briefly, but a sign warns that the road farther on is abandoned and you are proceeding at your own risk. Park along the pullout to the west of this sign, and make your way north along the broad, flat road. The road parallels and provides pleasant views of the Sacandaga River. At 0.2 mile, you will pass a designated camping area on your right that is encircled by tall pines and provides ample room to set up. Views of the river are limited from this site. Shortly past the designated campsite, you will see the remains of an old stone foundation on your left. A little more than 0.3 mile along the road, pass the posts for an old vehicle barrier and then a small white building on your left. A wooden bridge crosses Pete's Creek just past this building. Approximately 0.3 mile after the bridge, you reach an intersection in the road. Continue straight on the right-hand side of the fork another 0.1 mile, where you reach Forest Preserve lands.\n\nYou will pass a pulloff along the road on your left and then a small parking area at 0.8 mile. This marks the end of the road and the farthest point reached by vehicle if you should chance the abandoned road. The trail to your left still follows an old logging road, but nature has reclaimed much of it, and only a narrow footpath remains. The trail begins to climb for the next 0.5 mile as you work your way to the north side of Groff Mountain. The terrain falls off steeply on your right down to Groff Creek, and about 1.8 miles from the start, you will glimpse the first waterfall along the creek. There is no clear path down to view the waterfall, so pick your way carefully down the hillside and through the tall hemlocks to the top of the falls. The banks of the creek surrounding the waterfall are extremely steep on this side, but if you make your way to the top of the falls, you can cross to the other side and then zigzag your way down to the base. The nearly 30-foot vertical drop ends in a shallow pool, which is surrounded on three sides with vertical walls. Inside this natural amphitheater, the tumble of the falls drowns out all other sounds.\n\nThe second waterfall along this section of the creek is 0.1 mile farther west along the trail. Unlike the previous waterfall, this one is visible from the trail. Similar to the first one, no distinguishable path leads to it, though the route down is less steep. A frothy cascade, this waterfall steps its way down a series of ledges to a shallow pool as well. Downstream are a series of flumes and cascades that add waterscapes of their own.\n\nWhile exploring these falls, you are in prime habitat of the red-spotted newt. The adult newt is olive green with red spots along its back, but you are far more likely to encounter and recognize it in its terrestrial juvenile stage. The juvenile, known as a red eft, is brilliant orange with red dots and is common in woodlands near creeks and streams.\n\nSECOND WATERFALL ALONG GROFF CREEK\n\nThe trail continues another 0.5 mile west to where the creek levels off and a marsh forms. It continues along the south side of the marsh, though where it truly ends is hard to discern. Another set of waterfalls is said to be found on the opposite shore if you follow a tributary stream around a major bend. This would require serious bushwhacking, as there is no clear path. I attempted to find them during a heavy rain but soon decided to leave their discovery for another expedition. Return back along the path for a total trip length of 5 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of NY 30 and NY 30A in Gloversville, head 13.6 miles north on NY 30, and turn left onto County Road 6\/Benson Road. Within a couple hundred feet, turn right onto River Road. Follow River Road north 4.6 miles to where the signs warn that the road is abandoned. Park to the left of the road.\n\nFROM THE NORTH From the intersection of NY 30 and NY 8 in Wells, head 15.8 miles south on NY 30, and turn right onto CR 6\/Benson Road. Within a couple hundred feet, turn right onto River Road. Follow River Road north 4.6 miles to where the signs warn that the road is abandoned. Park to the left of the road.\n\n5\n\nTenant Creek Falls\n\nTHIRD FALLS ALONG TENANT CREEK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**       (second and third falls)\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 20.792' W74\u00b0 11.404'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.6-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Three unique waterfalls\n\nELEVATION: 1,054' at trailhead, 1,340' at highest point along the trail\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: Pit toilet\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: In 2016 the trail was rerouted to avoid a section of trail that crossed private property. December 1\u2013April 1 the last 1.4 miles of Hope Falls Road is closed. To access the trail during these months, park in the pulloff area near the barrier gate and hike Hope Falls Road roughly 1 mile to the new trailhead.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nReaching the first of these three beautiful and distinct waterfalls is relatively easy. Its cascading waters over exposed rock faces are impressive and sure to please. Finding the second and third falls requires a bit of bushwhacking along a maze of paths, but the two serene and Zen-like waterfalls are excellent compensation.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trail, marked with yellow trail markers, begins on the western edge of the parking area and climbs slightly northeast to the trail register. From here until the intersection with the old trail at Tenant Creek, 0.8 mile ahead, the path winds around the northeastern contours of Rand Mountain. It adds roughly 0.25 mile of length, 200 feet of climb, and 100 feet of descent to the trail than the previous route, but it's not particularly challenging and makes reaching the first falls just a touch more rewarding. Roughly halfway along the way to the old trail, pass a giant boulder with hemlock growing atop it. The boulder and long sinuous roots of the hemlock are unmistakable and a great landmark to and from the falls. Shortly after passing the boulder, the climbing ends, and you follow a brief flat section and then begin the descent to Tenant Creek. After a looping switchback, rock-hop across a feeder brook and follow this tributary northward to intersect the old trail that wends along Tenant Creek. By now, the roar of the falls is distinct and draws you forward through a coppice of hemlocks to the falls. You will likely leave the trail to scrabble among the myriad paths that weave down to the base of the falls.\n\nTumbling over a sloping rock face, water falls 40 feet into a large basin at the foot of the falls. Tall hemlocks frame the pool, and numerous boulders along its rocky shore provide places to stop and contemplate the scene. The marked portion of trail ends at the top of the falls, and this is likely as far as many visitors come because the trail\u2014or more accurately, path\u2014is less distinct and practically disappears on occasion as it winds upstream. However, it's hardly a problem, as your destination is along this creek. If you follow it upstream and keep it on your left, you will find the second and third falls.\n\nScramble back up to the top of the falls, and begin to pick your way along the creekbank. The transition from trail to multiple paths is at its worst at this point, so stay close to the creek and you will eventually find the trail again. Though it is not difficult, you will have to be nimble to pick your way through the rocks and tangle of roots. The creek forms a small bulge, or horseshoe, around 1.4 miles, after which the flow levels off and the banks become grassy. Around 1.5 miles you will cross a tiny stream, and then the trail climbs slightly uphill away from the creek. The trail follows an elevated ridge briefly and then descends to the creek again. After crossing and recrossing a tiny branch of the creek, you come out on a ledge across from the second falls, which cascade into a broad pool before you. I noticed many salamanders in the pool around the remains of crayfish.\n\nThe third falls is a few hundred yards upstream, with the best view from a sloped boulder next to the trail. Both falls are small, but the sheer rock ledges and encroaching forest make each feel wild and isolated. The pools at the bases are deep and enclosed, making excellent spots to take a swim. The roaring of the falls in their mini amphitheaters resonates deeply and drowns out the sounds of the surrounding forest. It is very easy to be drawn in and enchanted by these serene and wild places, so plan to spend some extra time to enjoy the solitude.\n\nTREE GROWING ATOP ROCK NEAR FIRST FALLS\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of County Road 6\/Benson Road and NY 30 in Northville, head north along NY 30. In 0.8 mile, after crossing the Sacandaga River, turn right onto CR 15\/Old Northville Road. Continue 1.4 miles, and turn left onto Hope Falls Road\/CR 7 (dirt road). Follow the road past several designated primitive campsites to the parking area at 7 miles.\n\n6\n\nHadley Mountain\n\nVISTA FROM THE SUMMIT OF HADLEY MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 22.421' W73\u00b0 57.033'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 3.6-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, accessible fire tower\n\nELEVATION: 1,144' at trailhead, 2,675' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nA short and steady climb to the top of this 2,680-foot bald summit provides great views of the southern Adirondacks. With a climbable fire tower; summertime summit steward; and broad, open mountaintop ideal for a picnic, Hadley Mountain is a great choice for family outings.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trailhead parking area accommodates dozens of vehicles, but the trail's popularity means that you will likely have to park on the side of the dirt access road. The trailhead is clearly marked with a painted Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) sign, as well as a historical marker detailing the story of the fire tower. Several fires at the opening of the 20th century swept the area, and most of the forest, including the topsoil, was burned off. A wooden tower was erected in 1916, according to a placard, but other sources date it to 1917. After it blew over in severe winds, a steel tower with guylines took its place in 1920. Because the risk of forest fires in the Adirondacks is generally negligible, the use of fire towers for fire suppression has given way to aerial observation; consequently, the tower, cabin, and trail fell into disrepair. However, within the past couple of decades, the Hadley Mountain Fire Tower Committee has restored the tower, cabin, and trail, and the old observer's cabin is now manned daily from the Fourth of July until Labor Day by a tower steward. According to the DEC Unit Management Plan, the steward is also available on weekends through Columbus Day.\n\nThe beginning of the trail is surrounded by a thick stand of hemlocks that continues to provide shade up to the trail register, where the evergreens give way to a mainly beech and birch forest that is thick with saplings and shades the trail for most of the climb. The trail, marked by red DEC markers, begins to ascend immediately and continues steadily uphill for nearly 1 mile, where it levels off for a while before the final climb to the summit. Over this first section, large rocks and cobbles are strewn across many portions, while other parts proceed up bare bedrock. Chances are that you will need to step off the trail frequently, as many hikers will be either ascending or descending. The trail is so clear that directions are hardly needed.\n\nUpon reaching the ridgeline, views to the southeast glimpsed through the canopy hint at the truly panoramic views that await you shortly ahead. Along the ridgeline, the flora is mostly scrubby trees or saplings, and the trail is largely clear of the rocks and cobbles that previously covered the path. You will pass through a small notch in the bedrock, followed by a sharp turn left before the last climb to the summit. The mountaintop is almost entirely exposed bedrock with many places to sit and enjoy the views. In fact, when I reached the summit, there were more than a dozen families or groups, with ample room for people to spread out to enjoy an afternoon picnic. Panoramic views in all directions are available, and you can see even farther into the surrounding country if you climb the fire tower. To the southwest, you can see Great Sacandaga Lake; to the north, some of the famous High Peaks; to the south, glimpses of the Catskills; and to the east, the foothills surrounding Lake George and even the Green Mountains of Vermont or the Berkshires in Massachusetts. A steady breeze helps to keep the infamous black flies at bay, and with the spectacular views, it is clear why this is a popular picnic spot for families.\n\nNEAR THE SUMMIT OF HADLEY MOUNTAIN\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 9N\/West Maple Street and Main Street in Corinth, head 5.1 miles north on NY 9N, crossing the Hudson River in Hadley, and turn left onto School Street in Lake Luzerne. Continue west onto Bridge Street. Cross the Hudson River again, and keep left onto County Road 4\/Rockwell Street. Turn right onto CR 1\/Stony Creek Road, approximately 0.5 mile from your turn onto School Street. Head north on CR 1, and veer left at 3.1 miles onto Hadley Hill Road. Continue along Hadley Hill Road 4.3 miles, and turn right onto Tower Road (dirt road). Continue 1.4 miles north along Tower Road; the trailhead parking area is on the left.\n\nTHE FIRE TOWER ATOP HADLEY MOUNTAIN\n\n7\n\nCrane Mountain\n\nCRANE MOUNTAIN POND\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 32.224' W73\u00b0 58.120'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.6-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 5\u20136 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic view, bald summit, pristine pond\n\nELEVATION: 2,078' at trailhead, 3,254' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nCrane Mountain is one of the most popular hikes in the southern Adirondacks: with its spectacular views and beautiful mountain pond, it is easy to see why. The climbing is steep, the descent bone-jarring, and the trail varied. It is a wonderful hike, but don't expect privacy, as dozens of groups visit the peak each day.\n\nRoute Details\n\nAfter the long, steep drive up the mountain along Ski Hi Road, you might begin to wonder how much climbing is left. The short answer is: plenty. The trail climbs more than 1,100 feet in less than 0.8 mile. The climb is nearly vertical in sections, and you will have to use both hands in many places. Though it's certainly within the grasp of most hikers and many children, those with bad joints or balance won't find the climb or descent very enjoyable.\n\nHead to the north end of the parking area, where you'll find the trail register a short distance up the trail on your left. Keep right at the fork (to your left is the return leg), and begin climbing among mixed hardwoods. Approximately 0.25 mile in, the vertical climb begins, and you have to pick your way over rough rocks and boulders. Because of the popularity of the trail, you will likely encounter other hikers along your way. There are many places to step off the trail to let others pass, and many of them are outlooks with outstanding views. At approximately 0.5 mile, the trail swings to the right, and you come out onto an open portion of ledge. Looking straight up the ledge, you will see a rock cairn that indicates where you pick up the trail again. At 0.7 mile, you come to a T; to your left is Crane Mountain Pond, while the right leg is the Crane Mountain summit. Head right toward the summit. The trail leads down, over a small hillock ahead, and then down again to the base of another vertical climb. At 0.8 mile, you come to the first of two wooden ladders that assist hikers over impassable vertical sections. After you climb the short ladder, the trail levels off briefly as it winds through stunted evergreens along the base of the summit's cliff. Chances are that you will see or, at the very least, hear other hikers who are sitting at the mountaintop. After heading east briefly, the trail switchbacks north, and you come to some steeper sections before the summit. A much longer ladder at 1.2 miles signals that the climb is nearly over. Upon reaching the summit at 1.4 miles, you will see numerous open sections along the cliff's edge. Hikers congregate here to enjoy the views and rest after the steep climb. There are plenty of places to rest, so if a section is occupied by another group, continue along the trail, and you will surely find a spot to yourself.\n\nAlong the peak, the trail weaves in and out of evergreens to the various lookouts along the cliff's edge. Many of these lookouts are visible from previous points, so you might want to leave someone behind to take a dramatic picture.\n\nThe climb down to Crane Mountain Pond is very steep and slippery and has the added hazard of many blown-down pines across the trail. Their whorls of broken branches make a veritable barricade of sharp stakes, so take your time making your way along this descent. The trail begins to level off when you reach a hardwood forest dominated by birches and maples. At 2.3 miles, you will come to a fork in the trail; straight ahead is a short path to an exposed boulder that sits above a wetland on Crane Mountain Pond's southeastern shore. From the fork, the main trail heads to your left and, after a brief foray into the woods, descends to the pond's shore. A fallen tree hides the trail along the shore, but undoubtedly you will have walked to the shore's edge to admire the view. Directly across a tiny bay in the pond is a sloping ledge that gradually enters the water. Hikers also congregate here, as it is popular for swimming. To reach this ledge, continue left along the shore through a small wet area and then though a dense coppice of cedars. Dragonflies will likely dive-bomb you through this section and as you step out onto the ledge. The spur back to the fork, at 0.7 mile, is near this sloped ledge. You can head back along it and then down the initial ascent to the parking area, if you choose not to follow the rest of the trail.\n\nSTEEP SECTION OF TRAIL ALONG DESCENT\n\nThe trail continues to wind along the pond's shore and, after passing a small rocky bay on your right, crosses Putnam Brook. An arrow indicates that the trail continues left, but no mileage or details are given. The footpaths that head off in other directions are angler's paths or bushwhacks. Head west along the main trail, recross Putnam Brook, and come out onto a large, open portion of bedrock. There is no indication as to where the trail picks up again across this open rock face, but if you stick to the northern edge, next to Putnam Brook, you will find it. The trail begins to descend steeply again; be careful and take plenty of time along this stretch, as it is steeper\u2014if you can believe it\u2014than the ascent. The trail is very rocky, and you will likely need to crab-walk or scoot down several sections. Impressive views open up all over to the southwest, but keeping your eyes on the trail should be your main concern. The true path is often hard to discern because you traverse long sections of ledge or hop exclusively from boulder to boulder, both of which mask the footprints of previous hikers. Don't worry though; red Department of Environmental Conservation disks are clearly visible on the many maple trees that shade the trail. After 0.5 mile of descent, the trail levels off, and you will notice a small wetland to your left, around 3.2 miles. Shortly after, cross over the stream that flows out of this wetland along a natural bridge. To either side of the bridge, you will see deep holes. Venturing to the rims of these holes reveals a water-carved cave underneath the bridge. Shortly after crossing, you descend to a feeder stream of Putnam Brook, as well as an intersection with the overgrown Crane Mountain Road. To your right, the road crosses the stream and enters private property, while to your left is a vehicle barrier and the return trip to the parking area. The abandoned road climbs steadily but gently through a mixed hardwood forest back to the parking area. The last mile of the hike is easygoing and free of obstructions, a welcome break from the more difficult ascent and descent. At 4.3 miles, you come to a fork where the road continues straight ahead and a trail heads left. The trail leads to the register and north end of the parking lot. The road intersects Ski Hi Road a few hundred feet south of the parking area.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 28 and NY 8 in Wevertown, head 1.5 miles southwest on NY 8. Turn left onto South Johnsburg Road, and go 6.8 miles. In the hamlet of Thurman, turn right onto County Road 72\/Garnet Lake Road. Proceed 1.2 miles, and turn right onto Ski Hi Road. Ski Hi Road is a steep, rough dirt road, but it is maintained and drivable by most cars. Follow Ski Hi Road 1.8 miles, and bear right at the vehicle barrier. The road terminates at the parking area 0.1 mile past the barrier.\n\nWest-Central\n\nSEASONAL STREAM ON THE WAY TO WOODHULL LAKE (Trail 10, Bear and Woodhull Lakes)\n\n8 PANTHER MOUNTAIN AND ECHO CLIFFS\n\n9 MITCHELL PONDS\n\n10 BEAR AND WOODHULL LAKES\n\n11 BLACK BEAR MOUNTAIN\n\n12 BUBB, SIS, AND MOSS LAKES\n\n13 CASCADE LAKE\n\n14 GLEASMANS FALLS\n\n8\n\nPanther Mountain and Echo Cliffs\n\nATOP ECHO CLIFFS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 24.689' W74\u00b0 33.468'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 1.4-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 1.5 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,736' at trailhead, 2,420' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nDefinitely the shortest trail described in this book, Panther Mountain and Echo Cliffs are not short on scenery. With less than a mile to the scenic lookout, hikers are quickly rewarded with panoramic views of Piseco Lake. The scenic vista, combined with some stunning cliffs beside the trail, makes it an excellent excursion in one short package. Its popularity in the summer attests to its beauty, so plan on going in the off-season or early morning hours to avoid the crowds.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking for the Panther Mountain and Echo Cliffs Trail is on the eastern side of County Road 24, just south of the entrance to Little Sand Point Campground. Piseco Lake actually has three campgrounds along its shores; I recommend Best Tent Camping: New York State for further descriptions of the campgrounds. Located on the boundary between the west-central and southern regions and fairly close to the central region, Piseco Lake makes a great base camp from which to explore the Adirondack foothills.\n\nThough the trail is often described as Panther Mountain, your actual destination is the ledge along Echo Cliffs. The ledge is 2,420 feet in elevation, 300 feet less than the Panther Mountain summit. The mountain apparently got its name from the abundance of mountain lions, or panthers, in the area in the early 1800s. The town board of Arietta consequently offered a bounty of $20 to purge the area of panthers in 1837. Also known as cougars, the large predators have been absent from New York and the Adirondacks since the 1800s. Rumors abound regarding recent sightings throughout the Adirondacks, and the rumor mill has gone so far as to claim that the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is releasing cougars to curtail the deer population. The rumors have spread wildly through online chat rooms and even sprouted YouTube videos suggesting a conspiracy. The DEC has refuted the claims numerous times and even created a Web page to clarify the issue. The official stance is that a self-sustaining population of cougars does not exist in New York, that sightings are almost always cases of mistaken identity, and that the extremely rare actual cougars are escapees or releases from private owners.\n\nThe parking area is a long pulloff that is about 50 yards long and could easily accommodate dozens of vehicles. A DEC trail sign with a blue disk marks the trailhead on the opposite side of the road.\n\nThis trail is ideal for novice hikers, children, or simply a quick climb for a scenic view. Well worn and clearly marked, the path is easy to follow. The trail, marked with blue disks, is obviously popular; heavy use has turned the path into a wide swath along the forest floor. Under the dense canopy of birch, maple, and beech trees, the trail is mostly level as you head generally northwest, but it gradually becomes steeper after you pass through a jumble of angular boulders and begin to head west.\n\nApproximately 0.6 mile in, you pass a large square boulder on your left. After the square boulder, the trail turns north, and you soon pass under sheer rock walls to your left. The trail is much steeper along this section, but the climb is brief, and after you pick your way up the roots of a hemlock tree that grows on the right side of the trail, you are rewarded with views of Piseco Lake. The lookout is the top of Echo Cliffs, and while the summit of Panther Mountain is behind you to the northwest, no clear path leads to it. The long, exposed outcrop provides a panoramic view of most of Piseco Lake, including Higgins Bay and Spy Lake to the east and directly across the lake, as well as portions of Irondequoit Bay, Big Bay, and the Piseco outlet to the south.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE WEST From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 365 in Cold Brook, head 19.4 miles east on NY 8, and turn left onto County Road 24\/Old Piseco Road. Continue 2.6 miles, and look for the pulloff on your right. If you reach Little Sand Point Campground, you are 0.5 mile too far north.\n\nFROM THE EAST From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 30 in Speculator, head 8.8 miles west on NY 8, and turn right onto CR 24\/Old Piseco Road. Follow Old Piseco Road around the northern tip of Piseco Lake, and look for the parking area on your left, 0.5 mile south of Little Sand Point Campground, 5.4 miles along CR 24\/Old Piseco Road.\n\n9\n\nMitchell Ponds\n\nACCESS ROAD ALONG TRAIL TO MITCHELL PONDS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 40.589' W74\u00b0 42.490'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.6-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Lakeside hiking, beaver dam\n\nELEVATION: 1,839' at trailhead, with no significant rise\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745); National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Moose River Plains Wild Forest: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53596.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nNestled in the middle of the Moose River Plains Wild Forest, the trail to Mitchell Ponds is an easy stroll along an old logging road, followed by a quick jaunt along the lake. The trail follows mostly level ground and is easy to follow, so expect to make good time. Trail conditions also make it a great introduction to hiking.\n\nRoute Details\n\nTo reach Mitchell Ponds, you have to enter the Moose River Plains Wild Forest. Purchased in 1963 from the Gould Paper Company, the 50,000-acre block is bisected by a network of rough roads and myriad roadside campsites\u2014more than 170 mostly primitive sites. The roads are gravelly and filled with potholes and other hazards characteristic of lightly maintained backwoods roads, so a four-wheel-drive, high-clearance vehicle is recommended. Registration booths are at the entrances to the area, and the whole road system is open to vehicles from Memorial Day to the end of hunting season. It is a popular destination during hunting season, and you might think that more vehicles are in the recreation area than on the main roads.\n\nThe parking area is essentially an access road, but there is room for a handful of vehicles on either side of the road. The trail, marked with yellow disks, is a continuation of this access road and heads nearly due west. After a few hundred feet, you pass a barrier gate. The trail is mostly level, and because it is an old access road, you can easily walk two abreast. The trail is free from obstructions, so you can easily observe the surrounding landscape as you make good time along the road. At 1.4 miles, you will see a small stream and wetland on the left, though most of the trip is through dense woods.\n\nAt 1.8 miles, you reach a clearing and a fork in the trail. Straight ahead is a designated campsite on the eastern tip of Mitchell Ponds. It has a picnic table and beautiful views of the water, making it an ideal stopping point even if you don't plan to camp.\n\nBack at the intersection, the trail continues to your right through a very wet section and over a deteriorating bridge. Just on the other side of the bridge is a second intersection on your left. Straight ahead is the trail that leads to the north access point on Limekiln Lake\u2013Cedar River Road, while the trail along the shores of Mitchell Ponds is on your left. From this point on, the path is no longer a wide forest road but a typical Adirondack foot trail. It weaves along Mitchell Ponds' northern shore, providing views and a tranquil setting. At 2.2 miles, you reach an old fire pit in the midst of the trail and an old sign reminding you of the carry-in, carry-out policy that is in place for the entire Adirondack Park. Past the fire pit, the trail becomes more rugged, narrower, and a little harder to make out, but there is nothing that exceeds the skills of even novice hikers.\n\nShortly after the fire pit, the trail swings southwest as it weaves its way to the western tip of the ponds. A jumble of boulders fills the steep hillside to your right, forming many small caves and crevices. At 2.8 miles, you reach this tip and the end of the trail, where a beaver dam blocks the outflow of the pond. You can get a few views back on the ponds from the large rocks, but crossing the outlet would probably be wet and difficult. Return the way you came for a round-trip of 5.6 miles.\n\nMITCHELL PONDS\n\nDirections\n\nFrom NY 28 in Inlet, 0.8 mile east of the intersection of NY 28 and South Shore Road in Inlet and 9.8 miles west of the intersection of Sagamore Road and NY 28 in Raquette Lake, head southwest on Limekiln Lake Road\/County Road 14. Continue 1.9 miles on Limekiln Lake Road to the registration booth. From the registration booth, follow Limekiln Lake\u2013Cedar River Road east and south 8.1 miles. The parking area is on your right.\n\n10\n\nBear and Woodhull Lakes\n\nREMSEN FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 36.749' W75\u00b0 05.429'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 10.2-mile loop, 1.2-mile out-and-back side trip\n\nHIKING TIME: 5\u20137 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Lakeside hiking, waterfall\n\nELEVATION: 1,547' at trailhead, 2,003' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, along Remsen Falls side trip\n\nCOMMENTS: A newly constructed lean-to is available at Bear Lake, in addition to the popular lean-to at Woodhull Lake.\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; Black River Wild Forest: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/75310.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nMore than half of the loop to Bear and Woodhull Lakes includes gravel and dirt access roads, but these roads are closed to traffic or lightly traveled. The trail portions are truly excellent and include two lakes, a pond, and seasonal streams to hike beside. A side trip to Remsen Falls is easily accessible along the loop as well. The Remsen Falls side trip is wheelchair accessible, with a special parking area located closer to the falls.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trail network in the Woodhull Lake area is bisected by a gravel road that provides access to several designated roadside campsites as well as the wheelchair-accessible Remsen Falls picnic and camping area. If camping is part of your agenda, you may want to consider the roadside sites or backpack to the lean-to and designated sites by Woodhull Lake. Camping in other areas is permitted as long as you follow the basic backcountry camping guidelines laid out by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The best parking is available in the McKeever parking area at the end of McKeever Spur Road. Hiking counterclockwise around the loop brings you into the wilderness soonest and leaves the easier roadside hiking for the return trip.\n\nFrom the parking area, head southeast past the barrier gate along the gravel road. The road climbs gently but is free of obstruction, so you quickly cover the first 0.7 mile and reach the first designated campsite. You pass a second campsite within a couple hundred feet, a bridge at 0.8 mile, and yet another campsite at 1.1 miles. You reach the beginning of the foot trail on your right at 1.3 miles. The trail sign indicates that to your right are Bear Lake, 1.7 miles, and Bear Creek parking area, 8.8 miles. Continuing straight, you reach Remsen Falls in 2.4 miles, Woodhull Mountain in 6.9 miles, and Woodhull Lean-To in 4.6 miles. This intersection is immediately before another bridge.\n\nHead south (right) on the blue-marked trail toward Bear Lake. The trail immediately traverses a flat, wet section that could easily swallow a boot or two. The trail climbs more than 300 feet over the next 0.5 mile through the familiar birch, beech, and maple forest of the western Adirondacks. You reach the crest of your climb at 1.9 miles in a saddle between two hills, where glimpses of Bear Lake are heavily obscured by the forest canopy but promise a picturesque destination. As you weave your way down the next 0.5 mile to the lake, steep ledges become exposed on your left. More than 40 feet high in sections, the ledges reinforce the rugged wilderness feel that hikers so frequently seek along the myriad trails of the Adirondacks. Depending on the season and water level, you might be privy to a tiny waterfall cascading along these ledges around 2.3 miles. Certainly not a frothing cascade, the rivulet breaks through a cleft in the ledge and is seasonal. The trail's descent ends abruptly on the shores of Bear Lake, which is admirably framed before you by a large black cherry tree. A little farther along the trail is an abandoned fire ring, where more exceptional views of the lake await.\n\nThe trail winds its way along the northern and then eastern shore of Bear Lake for the next 0.3 mile, where you encounter a feeder stream. After rock-hopping across the stream, you will find a trail intersection on the opposite shore. Straight along the blue-marked trail is Bear Lake Trail, 1.9 miles, and the Bear Creek parking area, 6.9 miles. To your left and marked in yellow are the Woodhull Lean-To, 2.4 miles, and Remsen Falls, 5.2 miles. Continue to your left (east) along the yellow-marked trail.\n\nThe trail parallels the stream for the next 0.3 mile as you begin to climb away from Bear Lake. While traversing this section of the trail, I encountered several colors of flagging tape riddled with notes. Because it was hunting season, I first suspected that it was the work of hunters trying to retrace their steps. After a while, the magnitude of the flagging and the consistent spacing showed that it was instead the work of rescue crews trying to find a lost hunter. Every year, hunters and hikers get lost in the woods, and many are not found. Upon returning to civilization, I learned that this case had a happy ending; the hunter was found miles away after spending two cold November nights alone in the woods. Not all are as fortunate, and it is a stark reminder that it is essential to communicate your plans and have regular check-ins.\n\nAs you near the crest of your climb, 4.3 miles, the trail swings south. This southern jog of 0.4 mile brings you close to the shores of Bloodsucker Pond, a small pond fed by a stream from Woodhull Lake. When you reach the pond and stream, 4.7 miles, the trail swings east again, and the stream accompanies you as you head east another 0.1 mile to a major trail intersection. To your right is a series of trails that takes you deeper into the Black River Wild Forest as well as to our major destination, the Woodhull Lean-To, at 0.3 mile. To your left are the return leg of the loop with Remsen Falls, 2.5 miles away, and the McKeever parking area, 5.4 miles. To reach the lean-to, turn right and head over the bridge into a giant mire, where the trail to the lean-to, marked in red, diverges to the left from the other trails that delve further into the Black River Wild Forest. The trail down to the lean-to is basically a long mire, so expect to be nimble and inevitably end up with muddy boots anyway. As you near the lean-to, you first notice a pit toilet and, if you're anything like me, can't help but wonder if future routes might avoid long mires that end at toilets. Regardless of your musings on trail routing, you reach the large lean-to on Woodhull Lake shortly after, 5 miles overall. It has obviously been worked on recently and is the equivalent of two lean-tos. Situated within 10 feet of the shore, it has wonderful views and is a great stopping point. But be forewarned, it is a popular destination and, due to its proximity to the road, likely occupied. Return through the mire to the intersection you encountered before the bridge to continue along the loop, 5.2 miles from the start.\n\nBOAT ON THE SHORE OF BEAR LAKE\n\nHeading north from the intersection, you will follow red snowmobile markers and quickly reach a vehicle barrier gate. The road you intersect continues to the right down to Wolf Lake Landing, but you will head to your left (north) toward Remsen Falls. Pass several campsites as you head north 1.1 miles along the road to the next major intersection. This intersection is just past two closely spaced campsites and is marked by a trail sign. The designated parking area for the wheelchair-access road to Remsen Falls is at this intersection. To the right is Remsen Falls, 0.6 mile, while continuing along the main access road to your left takes you back to the McKeever parking area in 3 miles. Even if you don't plan to take the side trip to Remsen Falls, a more pleasant return leg is along the red-marked trail.\n\nContinue to your right along the wheelchair-access road, marked in red, another 0.1 mile, where you reach another intersection. To your right is Woodhull Mountain, 4.5 miles; straight ahead is Remsen Falls, 0.5 mile; and to your left is the return trip to the McKeever parking area, 3.1 miles.\n\nSide Trip to Remsen Falls\n\n(Mileage along loop does not include this 1.2-mile trip.)\n\nThe side trip to Remsen Falls adds 1.2 miles to your total trip, but because it follows wheelchair-accessible paths, this diversion takes little time and effort. Heading almost due north along the wide, flat, and sandy access path, you quickly reach Moose River just above the falls. You can see a lean-to on the opposite shore, and you find a fire pit, picnic table, and designated camping area at the end of the trail. Continue along well-worn paths past the picnic table to get farther downriver to view the falls. When you reach a second picnic table, the falls are clearly visible. Less of a falls and more of a broad rapid, the tumble of water drowns out most surrounding sounds. Another fire pit is located farther downstream if you desire more privacy. Return the way you came to complete the loop.\n\nBack on the main trail, head west along the dirt access road, marked in red. This access road is closed to vehicles, though you might see mountain bikers, as this is a popular biking area. The return trip is mostly level and easygoing and passes without incident. You pass a large culvert at 8 miles, Bear Lake Trail on your left at 8.9 miles, a second culvert at 9.1 miles, and a trail register at 9.8 miles. This second register seems to be used primarily by people visiting the falls or heading straight to the mountain. Head past the barrier gate, where there is a large turnaround, and continue west to the McKeever parking area for a total trip length of 10.2 miles, 11.4 including the side trip.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom NY 28, turn east onto McKeever Road, 16.2 miles northeast of the intersection of NY 12 and NY 28 in Alder Creek or 10.4 miles southwest of Old Forge. Continue to your right onto McKeever Spur Road at 0.3 mile, past an old railroad station. Continue another 0.4 mile. The parking area is on your right and marked with DEC signs.\n\n11\n\nBlack Bear Mountain\n\nNEAR BLACK BEAR PEAK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 45.808' W74\u00b0 47.572'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.9-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 3 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Bald mountain, scenic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,751' at trailhead, 2,432' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745); National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Be aware that the first section of the trail is a multiuse trail and mountain biking is becoming more popular in the region. The trail to the summit is hiking only.\n\nCONTACTS: Moose River Plains Wild Forest: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53596.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nA popular destination in summer and fall, this tiny peak provides views of the Fulton Chain of Lakes. It is a great choice for children and beginner hikers, but if you wish for solitude, then plan to go during the off-season, especially winter.\n\nRoute Details\n\nFrom the southeast corner of the parking area, head south, paralleling the road. After passing a deteriorating concrete bridge on your left, you will quickly reach a sign indicating the trailhead to your left (east). The trail register is just inside the treeline. The trail\u2014marked in yellow hiking, skiing, and biking disks\u2014heads northeast through mixed hardwoods. Approximately 0.3 mile in, a stream becomes visible on your left. At 0.7 mile you reach the intersection with the return leg of the trip on your right. This trail, also marked in yellow, is a more direct and steeper ascent to the peak, but returning along this trail provides some great views along the descent.\n\nTo make the longer and more scenic loop, continue northeast along the left fork (east) through some muddy sections. At approximately 1 mile, you reach a clearing encircled by small firs, with rock cairns marking the path. Shortly after, you cross a couple of streams over log-and-plank bridges and will soon see the mountain looming off to your right. The grade along the north side of the mountain is relatively flat, and you soon reach another trail intersection at 2.3 miles, just before the halfway point. To your left are Uncas Trail, 0.6 mile, and Uncas Road parking area, 1.5 miles. To your right are the summit, 0.5 mile, and the return to NY 28, 2.6 miles.\n\nThe trail begins to climb immediately, and the forest transitions from maple and beech to evergreens fairly quickly. A quarter mile from the intersection, 2.5 miles from the start, you reach an opening in the evergreens and a lookout on your left. From here you have an incredible view of Seventh Lake, part of the Fulton Chain of Lakes.\n\nThe Fulton Chain is a series of connected lakes that begins at Old Forge Pond and ends with Eighth Lake. It is a popular destination for a wide variety of boaters and is the beginning of the North Forest Canoe Trail. In fact, First through Fifth Lakes compose an unbroken length of 14 miles. A series of channels separates Old Forge Pond and Sixth through Eighth Lakes from this main expanse. The connection of these lakes was part of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton's vision of an Adirondack Canal. Though the canal was never built, the chain still bears Fulton's name.\n\nReturning to the trail, the path winds in and out of stands of evergreens and over long spans of open ledge. At 2.8 miles the trail runs into a 4-foot ledge that you navigate to reveal another opening in the canopy and yet another lookout on your left. Head northeast into the dense evergreens to find the yellow-marked trail that quickly leads you to the summit about 0.1 mile ahead. The actual summit is hard to distinguish along the mostly flat, bald peak, but a series of small ledges to the left of the trail makes a great spot to dangle your feet and enjoy the view. To the south, you can see portions of the town of Inlet as well as Sixth and Seventh Lakes. To the west, you can make out portions of Fourth Lake.\n\nThe trail back to the parking area heads generally west but is now mostly marked with blue trail disks. The descent is steeper than the ascent but provides better views of Fourth Lake than any of the lookouts or even the summit. After you weave your way down the many small ledges, some 0.4 mile from the peak, the trail levels off, and you encounter a few more wet areas. At 3.7 miles the blue markers begin to thin, and yellow markers become more prevalent. After a short jog where the trail swings north, the return trail parallels the inbound trail awhile and, after descending along a broad road, you reach the first intersection at 4.2 miles. Hike the remaining 0.7 mile back to NY 28 and the parking area for a total trip length of 4.9 miles.\n\nTRAIL TO BLACK BEAR MOUNTAIN\n\nDirections\n\nComing from the west, from the junction of County Road 1\/Big Moose Road and NY 28 in Eagle Bay, head east on NY 28 and go 1.2 miles. The spacious parking lot is on your left. From the east, from the junction of County Road 1\/South Shore Road and NY 28 in Inlet, head north 0.9 mile along NY 28, and look for the parking area on your right. There are two entrances, so if you miss the first in either direction, simply enter the second.\n\n12\n\nBubb, Sis, and Moss Lakes\n\nBUBB LAKE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Sis and Bubb parking: N43\u00b0 46.001' W74\u00b0 50.675' Moss Lake parking: N43\u00b0 47.386' W74\u00b0 50.763'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 7.0-mile balloon\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Lakeside hiking\n\nELEVATION: 1,741' at trailhead, 1,924' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Fulton Chain Map: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/75305.html; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Portions of the trail and day area at Moss Lake are accessible.\n\nCONTACTS: Fulton Chain Wild Forest: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/75305.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThese three pristine lakes offer a variety of activities and feature trails with varying levels of accessibility, making this an ideal trip for the entire family. The Moss Lake circuit, with its broad, flat trails and wheelchair-\u00adaccessible sections, provides an opportunity for the very young\u2014or those no longer interested in hiking rugged trails\u2014to enjoy the beauty of the Adirondacks. On the other hand, the Bubb and Sis Lakes section features rugged trails and remote lakes that are easily combined with the circuit for extended and more invigorating trips.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThere are a variety of ways to explore these pristine lakes. The Moss Lake circuit has long sections that are wheelchair accessible, and the majority of the trail is flat, broad, and easy to navigate. Two larger parking areas are also available near Moss Lake along Big Moose Road (also known as County Road 1). These parking areas should be used for extended stays, end-to-end hikes, and day use in the Moss Lake area because the Bubb and Sis parking area can realistically accommodate only five to six vehicles, and two of those spaces are designated handicapped parking. You can make it an end-to-end hike if you start at the Bubb and Sis trailhead along NY 28 and get picked up or meet at one of the Moss Lake parking areas along Big Moose Road. The trip described here includes taking a straight route past Bubb and Sis Lakes, then following the circuit around Moss Lake, and finally returning along the straight route between Bubb and Sis Lakes.\n\nThe trail, marked with yellow disks, begins in the northwest corner of the small parking area along NY 28. The trail climbs immediately, and after a few dozen yards you reach the trail register. The trail then swings north with a steep incline, and you quickly reach the intersection with the Vista Trail, marked in blue, on your left. Continue straight ahead (northwest), and the trail soon levels off. It is mostly level from this point on, and within 0.5 mile of the start, Bubb Lake comes into view. You encounter a minor fork just before the lakeshore. To the left is the main trail, while straight ahead are an excellent point from which to view the lake and a designated campsite nestled off to the right of the short path that leads to the lake.\n\nContinuing left (west) along the main trail, you'll cross a small stream as you skirt the southern edge of Bubb Lake. Within minutes you'll reach a stand of hemlocks along the edge of Sis Lake. In the height of summer, this is a very tranquil area, and the calls of loons can be heard throughout. From this grove of hemlocks, the trail swings north and passes an informal campsite on the left. This site has benches, a fire pit, and an informal path that follows the western edge of Bubb Lake. Just past this site is a boardwalk, 0.8 mile, that crosses the small wetland between the two lakes.\n\nOnce on the opposite shore, the trail swings east and follows the northern shore of Bubb Lake. After 0.8 mile you reach the northeastern tip of the lake and encounter yet another heavily used area to the right of the trail. There are several fishing regulation signs, and a bit farther east off the trail is a fire pit. The main trail veers to the left of this heavily used area, and at 1.6 miles you cross a small stream over a log-and-plank bridge and notice a wooden dam on the left. The trail becomes broader after this crossing and soon swings north as it heads to the Moss Lake circuit, which you reach at 2.3 miles. To the right is the most direct route to the parking areas along Big Moose Road and the day-use areas around the lake. Turn left and head clockwise around the circuit.\n\nThe trail around Moss Lake is broad and sandy and easily accommodates two or more abreast. It is a popular circuit for groups of walkers, so don't expect much solitude. The lake is hidden from view until you reach a bridge that crosses a stream and wetland that sprawls out to the west. Climb a short hill, and wind your way north along the western edge of the lake. At mile 3.1 cross another log-and-plank bridge, after which the trail swings northeast. As you near the eastern edge of the lake, you pass a road that intersects the trail on the left, 3.7 miles, and head into the day-use area of the lake. Dotting the eastern shore are myriad paths, picnic areas, and designated campsites, as well as an observation deck, that are more easily explored than described. The circuit path bypasses most of these areas and soon reaches the first of two parking areas. At the second parking area is a trail register, campsite register, historical information placard, and map of the circuit and campsites.\n\nContinuing along the main circuit, you'll pass side trails leading to a couple of campsites on your right and then enter an open field with a research station with tall fences off to the left. At 4.3 miles, you pass a side trail to the left that leads to Big Moose Road, followed by a bridge that crosses Moss Lake's main inlet. You soon reach the intersection with the Bubb and Sis Lakes Trail, 4.7 miles. Return the way you came for a total trip of 7 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nSIS AND BUBB LAKES PARKING AREA From the intersection of Crosby Boulevard and NY 28 in Old Forge, head northeast 7.9 miles along NY 28; the parking area is on the left. From the intersection of County Road 1\/Big Moose Road and NY 28 in Eagle Bay, head southwest 1.4 miles along NY 28; the parking area is on your right.\n\nMOSS LAKE PARKING AREA From NY 28 in Eagle Bay, head north 2.2 miles on CR 1\/Big Moose Road; the large parking area is on your left.\n\n13\n\nCascade Lake\n\nCASCADE LAKE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 46.887' W74\u00b0 49.909'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.9-mile balloon\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Lakeside hiking, tall waterfall, historic site\n\nELEVATION: 1,873' at trailhead, 1,940' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Pigeon Lake Wilderness Area: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/102484.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nNot to be confused with Cascade Lake in the High Peaks region, this scenic loop in the town of Inlet offers an excellent trip around the lake and includes a 43-foot waterfall. The roughly 6-mile circuit follows old access roads that are wide enough for two to walk side by side nearly the entire way. Wonderful camping spots are found along the north shore.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trailhead is located in the southeast corner of the spacious parking area along Big Moose Road. A painted map of the Pigeon Lake Wilderness trail system is also located next to the trail register. The trail briefly parallels the road in a southeasterly direction before swinging east under the canopy of pole-size hardwoods. Trail markers switch between yellow cross-country skiing disks and red foot-trail disks. Because most of the trail is along old access roads, it would be hard to lose your way. The roads once led to Camp Cascade, originally a summer camp for Charles E. Snyder that easily could have been considered one of the \"Great Camps.\" It was later sold at a fraction of the asking price to Dr. George Longstaff. Longstaff, already an owner of a sailing camp on nearby Moss Lake, transformed the property into an all-girls equestrian camp. When the camp began to falter during World War II, it became coed. The state acquired the property in 1962 and had plans to build a campground, but shortly afterward the state removed the buildings in accordance with the Forever Wild initiative.\n\nAbout 0.3 mile in, you intersect this old road and begin to head northeast. As it was in the past, the broad road is clearly used by horses in the summer (watch your step) and would make a great skiing trail in the winter. Numerous wet spots dot the road but are easily bypassed along the shoulders. At 1 mile the road intersects the south-shore trail on your right. Though the south-shore trail parallels the lake's southern shore, you will not be able to see the lake until you reach the eastern tip near the waterfall. However, the circuit seems to make the most sense hiked in a counterclockwise direction, so mileage and directions are given accordingly.\n\nThe forest matures as you head farther along the trail, and two can walk easily abreast for almost the entire circuit. A few mucky areas sprawl across the trail during the next couple of miles, but overall it is a very pleasant woodland walk. At 2.5 miles you catch your first glimpse of the lake as the forest becomes thicker with evergreens. Roughly 3 miles from the parking area, you come across an open meadow with a stream cutting its way west to Cascade Lake. Head a brief distance east into the surrounding forest, along any of the numerous footpaths, to find the namesake waterfall. The narrow cascade falls 43 feet onto the rocks below before trickling out into the meadow. To the right of the falls is a path that climbs through a narrow passage to the top. The plateau of bedrock at the top is ideal for sitting and enjoying the falls.\n\nContinuing along the loop, the trail quickly reaches a long wet and muddy section. Stay on the path and pick your footing carefully, as the broad marshland will quickly suck the ill-placed foot knee-deep into the muck. As I can attest, you will likely have to wait until you reach the lakeshore, almost 0.5 mile ahead, before you can wash off the black muck. Upon reentering the woods, the trail weaves uphill briefly before joining the north-shore road at 3.3 miles. The north-shore road drops down to the lake at 3.5 miles and skirts it fairly closely for the next mile with views of the water as well as a few remnants of the abandoned girls camp. The first relic is an old stone fireplace and foundation approximately 0.1 mile after reaching the lake. Small hardwood saplings are starting to reclaim this clearing and many of the other sites farther along. The camp stopped operating in the 1950s and was acquired by the state in 1962, so the regenerative growth is a great example of how quickly nature reasserts itself. The next clearing has a thick carpet of ferns, with dense eastern white pine regeneration that will quickly close in the open space. The most striking reestablishment is at 3.8 miles, where an old tennis court is being broken up and covered by a carpet of grass to the left of the trail. Saplings form a thicket around this formerly impervious surface, and you can tell that it won't be long before roots begin to assist the grasses in breaking up the surface.\n\nCASCADE FALLS IN THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER\n\nMany of these clearings would make great campsites, but the more popular ones, found farther along, have better views of the lake. None of the sites are designated (they're often referred to as informal sites), so Department of Environmental Conservation regulations dictate that you must be 150 feet from both the lake and the trail. One such grassy location is found near the lakeshore a little past the tennis court. Probably the most desirable and likely occupied lakeside campsite is found at 4 miles. An old stone retaining wall holds back the forest on your right, while a heavily shaded lawn sprawls out on your left. The parklike setting is an obvious destination, and its proximity to the road means that weekend campers likely pack in far more than the backcountry camper could. Shortly after, you leave the shores of the lake and reach a fork in the trail. A trail to the right, 4.5 miles from the start, heads to Chain Ponds, Queer Lake, Chub Pond, and the rest of the Pigeon Lake Wilderness. Continue straight ahead (southwest) 0.1 mile to a short steel bridge that crosses the outlet of Cascade Lake. A broad, picturesque wetland sprawls out on your right, and you notice substantial beaver activity in the vicinity. Immediately after, pass by another clearing to the left of the trail and quickly reach the intersection with the south-shore trail. From here, it is another mile back to the parking area.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom NY 28 in Eagle Bay, head north on County Road 1\/Big Moose Road. The spacious parking lot is 1.3 miles on the right.\n\n14\n\nGleasmans Falls\n\nTOP OF GLEASMANS FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 48.490' W75\u00b0 16.589'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.8-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Beaver dam, series of small waterfalls cascading in a narrow gorge\n\nELEVATION: 1,290' at trailhead, 1,350' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: adirondackstughill.com\/maps\/BeachMillTrails.pdf; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Independence River Wild Forest: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/58192.html; Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nSituated on the western fringe of the park boundary, this relatively level out-and-back hike is a great trip for hikers who like a little solitude when they arrive at their destination. The falls roar through a narrow gorge, and you can view this torrent from high atop the gorge's sheer walls. Another unique feature is a close-up view of an old beaver dam along the trail.\n\nRoute Details\n\nAfter driving up the long, bumpy road, you will already feel removed from the rest of the world. Indeed, finding the parking area among the unnamed roads will likely be the hardest aspect of this clearly defined trail. You will be following the Beach Millpond Trail, which provides access to a more extensive trail system in the Independence River Wild Forest. From the parking area, you walk down a gravelly path to an open, grassy area with a winding, tannin-laden creek. Burnt Creek is the outflow of the previously dammed Beach Millpond, where a sawmill once produced lumber. You will have to negotiate a few small muddy spots on the way to a recently constructed wooden footbridge. On the other side of the bridge, you will enter the forest again, where tall pines and hemlocks shade the trail thoroughly. The trail, emblazoned with yellow Department of Environmental Conservation trail markers, is wide and clearly visible among the leaf and needle litter. With few obstructions and roots, typical of most Adirondack trails, the hike is very easygoing. At 0.2 mile, you will pass the trail register, and the forest transitions from mostly conifers to mixed hardwoods. Interspersed with the dominant beech and maple trees are large cherry trees, all of which provide a dense, high canopy. The ground cover is mostly trout lily, and the lack of saplings or brush allows deep views into the surrounding forest. The trail meanders north briefly, and you glimpse Beach Millpond off to your left through a dense stand of hemlocks.\n\nAt 1.6 miles, you come to the outflow of an old beaver dam. Planks laid lengthwise help you traverse a few muddy spots and are followed by a log-and-plank bridge. After crossing the bridge, the trail immediately turns east to skirt the edge of the beaver pond. A section of the dam has been breached, so the water is not as high as it might have been. The skeletons of pine trees left standing in what is now less a pond and more a marshland provide a stark contrast to the dense forest that sits atop a slight ridge to your right. You will find some good birding and aquatic wildlife viewing in this area, but I doubt that you will linger long, as mosquitoes and black flies relish in ambushing curious hikers here. The muddiest area of the trail is along this edge, and because the slight ridge restricts the trail, your options for avoiding the muck are limited.\n\nAfter leaving the beaver dam area, the trail passes through a small meadow and then rises to a more scrubby area where the canopy is significantly more open and lower. This brief foray into an open hilltop setting adds nice variety to the trail's ecological niches. After hopping over a few narrow, seasonal creeks, the trail transitions back to a dense forest where pines are the dominant species. At 2.3 miles, the trail has a small switchback that descends to the confluence of Second Creek and the boulder-strewn Independence River. Another recently constructed log-and-plank bridge crosses Second Creek, after which the trail climbs slightly over a small hillock dotted with large, moss-covered boulders and then descends to Independence River.\n\nUPSTREAM OF THE FALLS\n\nTHIS BRIDGE CROSSES OVER A FEEDER STREAM.\n\nThe first of the series of falls is visible here, and a slight scramble to the river's rocky banks will give some glimpses of the falls upriver. You begin to view the roaring falls from atop the narrow gorge after passing a fire pit and informal campsite. These dramatic views of the rushing waters are your true reward and are especially powerful during the spring melts. None of the falls is very tall, but the channeling of the river through this narrow gorge, combined with huge boulders, creates a beautiful scene of cascading and foaming waters. As the trail continues to climb the cliffs alongside the river, the views become more panoramic, with several spectacular views straight down the sheer gorge walls onto the falls. Indeed, the views get successively better along the trail, so do not stop until the trail turns north, back into the forest, around 3 miles. The trail eventually winds back to the river, but the falls will be behind you at this point, and only a scramble back along the rocky wash above the falls will provide any views.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom NY 12\/NY 26\/South State Street in Lowville, go east on River Street, which turns into Number Four Road\/County Road 22. After 4.3 miles, continue straight onto Pine Grove Road\/CR 26. Turn left onto Chase Lake Road after 0.7 mile, 5 miles from Lowville. Continue east along Chase Lake Road, and turn left onto Erie Canal Road in 3.9 miles. Turn right onto Beach Mill Road after 0.6 mile. Continue on the rough and bumpy Beach Mill Road, bearing left at the fork, 1 mile, until the road ends, 3.1 miles.\n\nCentral\n\nRAPIDS ALONG EAST BRANCH SACANDAGA RIVER (Trail 17, East Branch Sacandaga Gorge)\n\n 15 AUGER FALLS\n\n 16 SHANTY BROOK\n\n 17 EAST BRANCH SACANDAGA GORGE\n\n 18 SNOWY MOUNTAIN\n\n 19 CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN\n\n 20 PEAKED MOUNTAIN\n\n 21 CASTLE ROCK\n\n 22 BLUE LEDGES\n\n 23 HOFFMAN NOTCH\n\n15\n\nAuger Falls\n\nSACANDAGA RIVER UPSTREAM OF AUGER FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 28.267' W74\u00b0 15.109'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 1.1-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 1 hour\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular waterfall, riverside stroll\n\nELEVATION: 1,348' at trailhead, with no significant rise\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe powerful falls on the Sacandaga River are truly a sight to see. Channeled into a narrow flume, the river plunges 40 feet in a torrent of foamy waters. As a short-distance loop, this is a great introductory hike for children, but take caution near the falls because the cliffs are steep and potentially slippery.\n\nRoute Details\n\nIt is easier on your car to park in the large lot that is straight ahead after turning off NY 30. Consequently, directions and mileage are from this point rather than the parking area down the bumpy access road, which is closer to the foot trail's start. From the main parking area, head back toward NY 30, and turn left (southeast) down the access road. Continue down the bumpy, rutted dirt road until you see the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) trail sign on your left at 0.3 mile. The trail register is a short distance down the foot trail.\n\nSome people may scoff at the need to sign in for such a short trail, but I encourage hikers to sign in on this and every hike. The DEC and the state base many of their trail-maintenance and funding decisions on trail registers. If you want to see your favorite trails maintained or want more like them, then let the registers act as your democratic voice in the wilderness.\n\nOn the trail, walk along the rolling terrain a little more than 0.3 mile through mixed hardwoods. Ahead, you will begin to hear the roar of the falls, and it is likely that you will abandon the trail to explore the numerous paths that diverge from the main trail to find the best vantage point. Many of the paths that offer views and photo ops of the torrential falls are worn and crumbling, so watch your step. The most dramatic part of the waterfall occurs where the river is channeled into a cataract and then plunges down into the gorge formed by the sheer walls of the river. The cliffs on the opposite shore are spectacular, and the dwarfed trees clinging to its ledges only add to the sense of wildness. Photo-worthy views of the opposing sheer cliff and waterfall are found below the falls. Indeed, you can easily reach the middle of the river by hopping along the large boulders that are strewn about at the outwash of the falls. Huge trees lie tangled among the boulders, and it is not hard to picture the powerful flow of water hurling boulders and trees about. To relocate the trail, head back toward the top of the falls, and you will eventually see the yellow disks that mark the trail. It will take you to a beautiful exposed portion of ledge that sits atop the cataract, where an old fireplace has been partially demolished. This spot marks the halfway point and makes an excellent place to stop with the falls thundering below.\n\nTo complete the loop, head upstream along the worn, but unmarked, path. Dense conifers crowd the trail in many locations, and you often have to skirt or climb over fallen trees. The calm waters of the river above the falls are a striking contrast to the turbulent waters below. Keep an eye out for a wooden footbridge on the opposite shore, as this indicates that you are nearing the point to turn back west toward the parking area. When you reach a sandy beach near a broad, flat calm in the river, climb over the hillock to your left, and you will come out on the northern end of the parking area.\n\nAUGER FALLS\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of County Road 16 and NY 30 in Wells, head north on NY 30. At 3.3 miles, bear left to stay on NY 30\/NY 8. At 1.8 miles, turn right onto the unmarked gravel drive that leads to the parking area.\n\nFROM THE WEST AND NORTH From the junction of NY 8 and NY 30 in Speculator, continue east on the merged roads NY 30 S\/NY 8 N for 8.2 miles; the unmarked gravel drive will be on the left.\n\nFROM THE EAST From the junction of NY 8 and NY 30 north of Wells, turn right onto NY 30\/NY 8 toward Speculator. At 1.8 miles, turn right onto the unmarked gravel drive that leads to the parking area.\n\n16\n\nShanty Brook\n\nSHANTY BROOK SEEN ABOVE THE FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Parking area: N43\u00b0 32.131' W74\u00b0 08.487' Trailhead: N43\u00b0 32.258' W74\u00b0 8.447'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 7.6-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 4\u20135 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Waterfall, swimming hole, remote pond\n\nELEVATION: 1,387' at trailhead, 1,693' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThough not difficult, this unmarked trail varies from a narrow footpath to an outright bushwhack, so unseasoned hikers should be prepared before undertaking this adventure. One of the more notable preparations is to expect to have wet feet. There is almost no getting around this, so plan accordingly, and you will be able to enjoy the beautiful waterfall, swimming hole, and remote pond.\n\nRoute Details\n\nMost of the parking areas along NY 8 are unmarked, so finding the right one can be tricky. Fortunately, paying attention to your odometer readings and your GPS should steer you in the right direction. The parking area for Shanty Brook is distinct because it is on the south side of the road and is the only one that is U-shaped; most are large lots or gravel pulloffs right next to the road. The trail is unmarked, and though portions are well worn, this hike definitely counts as a bushwhack. You have to wade across the East Branch of the Sacandaga River, so either bring water shoes or plan to hike in wet boots. Additionally, the rocks in the river are slippery, so you will appreciate having a change of clothes in a dry sack should the crossing not go according to plan.\n\nTo reach the river crossing, head northeast along NY 8 a few hundred feet to where a short dirt road provides access to a designated campsite along the river. A steep drop-off leads down to the East Branch of the Sacandaga River on the left side of the road. Across the river, you will see where Shanty Brook meets the river, and you should start looking for a good crossing point. The trail is on the west side of the brook, and I found that an easy way down to the river is about midway down the road, where an old wooden stand once provided access to a cable crossing. The cable crossing was removed, but the stand remains a good landmark. This is less than 100 feet downriver from the confluence of the brook and river. On the opposite shore, you can see where the vegetation has been beaten down where the cable used to be connected. Carefully wade across the river, or rock-hop if the season has been dry enough; do not count on keeping your feet dry.\n\nOn the opposite shore, a well-worn path leads to the western bank of the brook. The trail parallels the brook and crosses several muddy sections as you begin a gentle climb. A little less than 0.8 mile in, you will see a path to your right and notice that the rumble of the brook has gotten louder. Follow the path to the right to reach the top of the waterfall. The falls plunge 12 feet, though they seem taller, into a deep pool that is enclosed within the steep banks of the brook. To reach the base of the waterfall and the swimming hole, jump across the brook to the opposite shore, and scramble down the banks over roots and rocks to the base of the falls. The pool at the base of the falls is not large but is deep enough to swim in, and you can swim right into the falls. A little upstream on the east shore is a designated campsite that would be ideal for a short overnight trip.\n\nBack along the main trail, the path climbs a bit more but quickly levels off for most of the rest of the trip. A quarter mile from the falls, the trail veers away from the brook but then turns briefly east and crosses the brook 0.8 mile from the falls, 1.5 miles from the start. You will pass an open area and beaver dam along the brook at approximately 2.3 miles. This is the first of two open areas along the brook that provide views of the surrounding hills. At the second open area, 2.6 miles, the trail seems to abruptly terminate in a sandy wash. The meadow lies straight before you, rather than to your left as it was previously. This is where you need to recross the brook to reach Mud Ponds. The path on the opposite shore is hard to discern in the summer growth and flooded-out areas, but as long as you keep the brook on your right, you will eventually find a well-worn section of the path. I found that by following a small seasonal channel between an evergreen-dotted island on your right and the surrounding hillside to your left, you can more easily work your way north to the more distinct portions of the path.\n\nSHANTY BROOK FALLS\n\nThe trail from this point on is not traveled as heavily, and blowdown and washouts make navigating a little more difficult. Hikers who are not familiar with basic navigation, lack a compass and map or a good sense of direction, or are uncomfortable with unmarked trails would probably be better served returning before the crossing instead of finishing the hike to Mud Ponds. If you choose to continue, gaiters provide a welcome reprieve from the leg lashings of brambles and fallen trees that encroach on the trail.\n\nA third of a mile from the recrossing, 3 miles from the start, the trail swings west as you follow Shanty Brook, now on your right, toward Mud Ponds. The brook now flows over mostly level ground and is much more placid than before. At 3.2 miles, you reach what appears to be the eastern tip of Mud Ponds, but it is only a widening of the brook due to beaver activity. The actual eastern tip is at 3.6 miles. The path weaves its way along the southern shore of the pond through thick overgrowth and wet sections. At 3.7 miles, you pass a grassy channel that connects the two main ponds and soon reach a small hill that lies between the ponds. Atop this hill is an informal campsite with benches and a fire pit, which, for all intents and purposes, marks the end of the bushwhack. Farther on are more paths, but they soon end in impassable brambles or mires.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 30 and NY 8 in Wells, follow NY 8 northeast 8.9 miles. The parking area is on your right in the shape of a U.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 28 and NY 8 in Wevertown, follow NY 8 west 14.5 miles. The parking area is on your left in the shape of a U.\n\n17\n\nEast Branch Sacandaga Gorge\n\nRAPIDS ON THE EAST BRANCH SACANDAGA RIVER\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 34.146' W74\u00b0 06.798'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 2.4-mile loop or out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 1\u20132 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Waterfall, swimming hole, scenic river gorge\n\nELEVATION: 1,435' at trailhead, 1,510' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe East Branch of the Sacandaga River has a spectacular gorge with a serene waterfall and swimming hole that you can reach in two ways. The most direct and clearest route is to follow the eastern footpath to Square Falls. The most scenic and adventurous route is to ford the river and then bushwhack along the western banks. Neither route is very long, and the two are easily combined if you choose to ford the river twice.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThere are no trail signs or indications of the trailhead either in the expansive parking area or from NY 8, so pay attention to your odometer, as there are numerous unmarked parking areas along NY 8. Additionally, there is no trail register, and the trail is not marked, but if you pay attention to the directions below, the paths are fairly easy to find and follow. The trail begins on the northeastern edge of the parking area along an old road. The abandoned dirt road descends generally northwest from the main road into the forest. Approximately 0.1 mile down, you reach the end of the road and a turnaround on your left. Large boulders on your right barricade the remaining trail from vehicular travel. Wind your way down the trail to the small stream crossing shortly ahead. Once across the stream, you must decide which route you will choose to explore the gorge. The path along the eastern edge is hard to make out amid the debris of seasonal flooding but is easily distinguished by climbing the tiny hill directly to your right. The western bushwhack is accessed by continuing straight ahead and then heading toward the river along numerous footpaths. Both options, described separately below, terminate at Square Falls, where you can easily ford the river if you wish to combine the trips. If you choose to take the eastern path and return along the western edge, then you should scope out the condition of the river now before continuing. There are two reasons to do so: First, you will need to recognize where to recross the river; second, you will need to determine whether the river is shallow enough to rock-hop or if wading in the strong current will be necessary. Upriver, several narrow areas make crossing easier.\n\nEAST BRANCH SACANDAGA RIVER BELOW THE GORGE\n\nEastern Path\n\nFollowing the eastern path is by far the easiest, safest, and fastest approach to the falls. If it were not for the dramatic scenery offered along the western bushwhack and the lack of scenery on this bank, I would recommend this route to all hikers. Once you're on this well-trodden path, it is hard to lose. For the most part, the path winds atop the gorge cliffs, so views of the river and the dramatic walls are obscured by dense foliage below, but the torrent of water can be heard most of the way. Roughly 0.3 mile in, you arrive at the cascade at the end of the gorge, where an old fire pit is situated close to the riverbank. A tenth of a mile ahead, you pass the double-cable crossing described below. At 0.6 mile, the trail climbs very steeply away from the banks, and you walk high above the river 0.3 mile before winding your way back down to the river. You have passed the gorge portion of the hike, but the falls and swimming hole await you 0.3 mile ahead. The river is visible along this last portion of the trail and makes for some beautiful scenery, but this route has nowhere near the dramatic contrasts of the western bushwhack.\n\nWestern Bushwhack\n\nIf you choose this option instead of the eastern path, upon reaching the banks of the East Branch of the Sacandaga River, you will face the decision of where to cross. Only hikers who are nimble and willing to wade should attempt the crossing. Rock-hopping is a better choice and might get you across (or, as I found, most of the way across) with short sections remaining to be waded. Despite appearing relatively flat, the current is strong, and the round rocks that line the riverbed are slick with slime, so be mindful of your footing. Now that the caveats have been established, let us recognize that in summer, wading across the river can be quite fun and refreshing. Besides, you are headed to a swimming hole. I found an easily recognizable section to cross upriver where two large boulders sit on the southern bank.\n\nOnce on the opposite bank, the path is not readily clear, but rest assured that you will find it if you head upriver close to the rocky banks. Hemlock saplings crowd the banks, while mature trees shade the west side of the river. The informal path on this side of the river is distinct in some areas and disappears among the dense saplings and fallen trees in others, but if you keep the river within sight on your right, you will find your way to the falls. Roughly 0.3 mile into the hike, the gorge begins with a small cascade among the boulder-strewn banks. As you hike, you will notice that the bank on the eastern side is nearly vertical; in sections it ranges from 50 to 100 feet high, and with the frothy water churning beneath, the scenery has a distinctly wild and rugged character. Approximately 0.5 mile into the hike, the steep riverbanks draw close together, with a nearly 20-foot drop to the river. A double cable strung between large eastern white pines on the opposing banks provides a crossing over a deep pool. I don't recommend this crossing except for experienced hikers who have a means to tie off and are in the company of other hikers. Above the pool, the river contracts to a narrow flume through which it spurts out a torrent of foam. You will pass several other small cascades on your way upriver, all of which may seem like Square Falls. However, you won't reach Square Falls until you have hiked 1.2 miles; you can distinguish it from the other cascades because it forms a 6- to 8-foot cascade across the entire river. Additionally, a wide pool lies at its base, while a broad, tabular portion of bedrock forms its top.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 30 and NY 8 in Wells, travel east on NY 8. The parking area is 11.7 miles ahead on your left.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 28 and NY 8 in Wevertown, head west on NY 8. The parking area is 11.7 miles ahead on your right.\n\n18\n\nSnowy Mountain\n\nPANORAMA FROM THE FIRE TOWER\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 42.081' W74\u00b0 20.090'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 7.4-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 4.5\u20135.5 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, accessible fire tower\n\nELEVATION: 1,807' at trailhead, 3,899' at Snowy Mountain peak\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: The trail signs indicate that the distance to the peak is 3.4 miles, but the actual distance is closer to 3.7 miles. The final ascent is very steep and difficult, so plan accordingly and take your time.\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nSnowy Mountain is considered by many as the 47th High Peak, even though at 3,899 feet tall, it falls just under the 4,000-foot threshold to be considered one of the famous 46 High Peaks. However, recent surveys have shown that 4 of the 46 peaks are under 4,000 feet and 2 (Nye Mountain and Couchsachraga) are actually shorter than Snowy Mountain. Unlike many mountain hikes featured in the book, this is not one of the \"bald\" peaks that provide the awe-inspiring views for which the Adirondack mountaintops are famous. But just because it is not a bald peak does not mean the mountain is short on views. Indeed there are a couple of stunning lookouts near the peak, but the real gem is the 360-degree panorama atop the 45-foot-tall accessible fire tower.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking along the eastern side of NY 30 is more than adequate for a dozen cars or more, but the trail is so popular that often dozens more line the road to the north and south of the parking area. The assemblage of vehicles is actually a useful landmark as the trail sign\/trailhead is often obscured by the thick foliage along the west side of the road. The trailhead is nearly directly opposite the pulloff\/parking area, and you find the trail register just beyond the thick vegetation.\n\nLOG STAIRS MAKE THE CLIMB EASIER.\n\nThe trail, marked with red trail markers, heads briefly uphill and then begins a 1-mile, relatively flat course (200' elevation gain) west through deciduous forest. Along the way it crosses several small, seasonal brooks and traverses several wet areas atop zigzagged planks. Beaver Brook soon becomes visible down to the right, but there is one more seasonal brook crossing before you descend to the first of several crossings of Beaver Brook, indicated here by a painted arrow sign.\n\nRock-hop across, and climb the opposite bank. After briefly navigating a wet area over a corduroy bridge, the trail diverges from Beaver Brook and begins a modest climb (roughly 200 feet over the next 0.25 mile). Log steps cut into the earth assist you along this climb, after which the trail levels off. At 1.5 miles from the trailhead, a placid creek bisects the trail in an open, marshy area. Cross along the log-and-plank bridge, and continue 0.4 mile along level ground to where you intersect Beaver Brook again.\n\nThe trail begins a steady climb west as you crisscross Beaver Brook over the next 0.5 mile, and you will have to pick your way carefully through several long, boot-sucking mires as you ascend beside the brook. The final crossing of Beaver Brook, roughly 2.5 miles from the trailhead, is distinct from other crossings in that stone steps beckon you forward on the southern bank. The steps also allude to the increasing grade of the climb ahead (nearly 1,500 feet in less than 1.25 miles).\n\nAt this point the trail has covered roughly two-thirds of the distance to the peak but only one-third of the elevation gain. The grade grows steadily steeper and requires using your hands to climb as you near the peak. About 0.75 mile ahead, the trail swings nearly due south and there is a brief slackening of the grade and short respite along the climb. This relatively flat section of trail lies within an evergreen stand and is a good stopping point to get ready for the even steeper portions ahead. Whereas the trail had gained roughly 800 feet over the previous 0.75 mile, along the next section, the trail gains 600 feet in less than 0.3 mile.\n\nThe new ascent begins as the trail swings more westerly, but calling parts of the next section \"a trail\" is a bit misleading because the path soon becomes what is actually a jumble and wash of large boulders and an inclined ledge so broad that the canopy gives way to the open sky. Some portions have no defined route and will likely require the use of both hands as you climb. Follow this open swath upward, picking your way carefully through the vertical maze of rocks. At the top is a small, flat area where you can pause before continuing on to the last bit of climbing. Bear right (west) and begin the final ascent (200 feet) that ends after you pass a sheer rock wall on the right and reaches the first of two lookouts found near the peak.\n\nThe first lookout is to the right of the trail in an open field with a steep ledge you can sit on along the northern edge. Other hikers are likely to congregate here because it is a better place to stop and rest before beginning your descent than the actual peak and fire tower less than 0.1 mile ahead.\n\nThe second lookout is along the western edge of the peak and is more isolated and private. To reach it, you will have to follow some of the unmarked footpaths that weave and meander across the peak; to find the right one, bear right off the main trail onto one of these paths, and you should find it easily. The lookout is atop an exposed ledge, encircled by stubby evergreens, that has an almost perfect natural bench on which to sit in relative solitude and take in the view. However, depending on the time of year, this area may be a bit buggy on calm days.\n\nAs it is for most hikers, the fire tower is likely your ultimate destination and can be found by following the footpaths that lead south over a couple of short hillocks. The actual highest point of the peak lies here, but the peak is heavily wooded, so vistas are available only to those who climb the extra 45 feet to the top of the tower. Like the other fire towers that dot the Adirondack peaks, space within the tower is limited, so hikers will have to take turns inside. Because the stairs are narrow, without much room to pass, it is best to let previous occupants come back down before trying to climb up.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of NY 8 and NY 30 in Speculator, head north along NY 30. Continue 17.1 miles; the pulloff will be on the right.\n\nFROM THE NORTh From the intersection of NY 28 and NY 30 in Indian Lake, head south along NY 30. Continue 7.3 miles; the pulloff will be on the left.\n\n19\n\nChimney Mountain\n\nTHE WINDOW AT CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 41.289' W74\u00b0 13.809'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 2.2-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 1 hour\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Interesting geological formations\n\nELEVATION: 1,751' at trailhead, 2,703' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no permits required; $2 parking fee\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nIn a region noted for beautiful lakes and panoramic mountains, this geological oddity adds a spectacular variation. Formed over millennia, Chimney Mountain provides a great opportunity to view the geological forces that shaped the Adirondacks. Exploring the numerous formations will occupy most for hours, but for the spelunker and amateur geologist, a day trip probably will not suffice.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe parking area for Chimney Mountain, as well as Puffer Pond and Kings Flow East Trails, is on private land, with a day-use fee of $2 per car. Many of Adirondack Park's best hikes and features are available through cooperation between private landholders and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). To ensure this cooperation and to encourage future collaborations, please respect private property, and pay the day-use fee.\n\nTo reach the trailhead, walk up the gravel drive past several cabins, approximately 0.2 mile from the parking area. The register is located beneath the shade of the encompassing forest. The Puffer Pond and Kings Flow East Trailheads are to your right, while the Chimney Mountain Trail is to your left. Trail maps often show the two sharing a section of the trail, but the portion shared is actually the access road before the trail register. Mileage given is from the actual trailhead and not from the parking area.\n\nPassing through a thick band of saplings along the forest's edge, you will quickly notice that the trail is wide, well worn, and easy to follow. Blue DEC disks mark the trail but are hardly necessary except near the top, where numerous paths lead to caves and other geological points of interest. Shrouded in tall hardwoods, most notably birches and maples, the trail is fairly level until 0.2 mile, where you cross a brook and the climbing begins. The grade is moderate at first but steadily increases toward the peak. The forest eventually transitions from the deep woodlands to a more open and parklike setting approximately 0.7 mile along. On steeper sections of the trail, take a look back, and you will see Round Lake, which seems to hover at the bases of Crotched Pond Mountain and Kunjamuk Mountain.\n\nCloser to the summit, you will begin encountering informal paths that wind off to your left. This maze of paths leads to some lesser rock formations, to numerous crevices and caves, and to another elevated ridge from which you can look back at the chimney. The caves have precipitous drops, so be cautious when off the main trail, especially with curious and bold children. Exploring the caves should be left to people who are properly experienced and equipped. Do not attempt these activities if you are a novice. However, there are plenty of wonders and much to explore along the main trail, so don't feel like you are missing out if you do not explore off the trail.\n\nThe spire, an amalgamation of metamorphosed rocks, will begin to tower ahead and draw you through ledges that flank the trail. The marked trail ends here, but do not let that stop you from scrambling among the rocks. Just be cautious near the northern edge, as the drop-off is precipitous. The convoluted layers of different materials will likely raise an eyebrow as you puzzle over how such rocks come into being. See page 1 for an elementary description. The story of these epoch transformations is revealed in the exposed portions of Chimney Mountain.\n\nA description of all the interesting formations and ways to find and explore them is beyond the scope of this book and, frankly, this author. However, I will name a couple that you can easily and safely access from the main trail. The main passage you encounter has the jumble of rocks that make up the Chimney to your left and a narrow ledge called the Ship's Prow. The prow is easily walkable, but it narrows and the fall is more precipitous as you go\u2014know your limits before attempting to walk to its end. Turning left at the trail's end, you walk under a striking overhang and come out with the Chimney looming to your right. Climbing along its base to the opposite side will reveal the Window; it frames the western ledge and is easy to crawl into. In addition to the formations, various points offer panoramic views of the ridge to the west, as well as seemingly endless peaks in every direction.\n\nChances are that as you looked up onto the spire when you climbed, you missed a path to the right, which leads to an informal campsite. As you leave the Chimney, this path is more obvious off to your left. Just past the campsite, the path leads not only to the actual summit of Chimney Mountain but also to an interesting view through the surrounding trees of Ship's Prow with the Chimney towering behind it.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 30 and NY 28 in Indian Lake, head south on NY 30. Turn left onto County Road 4\/Big Brook Road at 0.6 mile. Follow Big Brook Road across Lake Abanakee, and take a sharp right at 6.1 miles. At 7.8 miles park in the designated parking area and pay the day-use fee.\n\n20\n\nPeaked Mountain\n\nPEAKED MOUNTAIN SEEN ACROSS A BEAVER MEADOW\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 43.125' W74\u00b0 07.110'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 7.2-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 4 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Lakeside hiking, cascades along a stream, beaver dams and meadows, isolated pond, panoramic views from a peak\n\nELEVATION: 1,726' at trailhead, 2,919' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Accessible campsites and bathrooms are at Thirteenth Lake.\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nCan't choose between lakeside hiking, exploring an isolated pond, hiking beside frothy cascades, or climbing a mountain for a panoramic view? Why choose? Peaked Mountain has it all. The main trail is easy and features a variety of waterscapes, including a pristine lake, a cascading brook, and several beaver dam meadows. The last 0.8 mile along the trail is steep and difficult, but the summit has a unique perspective. At the peak, you can clearly trace your entire trip back to the shore of Thirteenth Lake.\n\nRoute Details\n\nAccess to Peaked Mountain is at the north end of Thirteenth Lake, which also has car-top boat access, accessible picnic areas, and free primitive camping. Most of the vehicles in the large and spacious parking area are for camping and day use. To access the trail, walk down the main gravel drive to the trail register. The register also serves as a record of day-use activities, so do not be surprised to see a lot of entries. To the left is the boat launch, while access to the foot trail is down the right fork. Head toward the lake past a couple of campsites and picnic tables, and then look for the trail sign on your right near the last picnic table. Mileage given is from this point, which is a little more than 0.1 mile from the parking area.\n\nThe trail winds along the shore of Thirteenth Lake, weaving through paper birches and other hardwoods. Beaver activity is evident everywhere, from chewed stumps and recently felled trees across the path to several lodges that are within feet of the trail. The trail is relatively flat, with a few dips and hills that follow the contours of the lake. You will encounter a couple of designated primitive campsites along the trail as well, so be aware that you may be walking through or near someone's site.\n\nThe shores of Thirteenth Lake are undeveloped and pristine. Though not common, motorboaters are occasionally heard, which is odd because the lake is nestled in the middle of a wilderness area. (Wilderness Area land-use plans typically prohibit the use of motorized boats; hopefully the state will enforce this standard in the future.) Typically, the lake is dotted with canoeists and kayakers, and in fact, many of these boaters paddle to where the trail diverges from the lake, around 0.8 mile on the right.\n\nThis junction occurs where Peaked Mountain Brook empties into Thirteenth Lake. Shortly after you begin following the brook uphill, you encounter a trail sign indicating Hour Pond to your left. However, to reach Peaked Mountain and its pond, continue northwest uphill alongside the brook. You will be following Peaked Mountain Brook through numerous transformations all the way to the pond and the foot of the mountain. Innumerable small falls and cascades characterize the brook until you cross it upstream, at 1.5 miles, and provide an interesting contrast to the flat and quiet waters of the lake behind you. You will have to rock-hop across the brook to a tiny island and then again to the opposite bank.\n\nThe trail levels off after crossing the brook. Shortly after, you will notice a clearing to your right, a result of the first dammed section of the brook. From the trail, hemlocks frame the grassy wetland and an outstanding view of Slide Mountain. Farther along, the trail winds closer to the wetland, and looking east, you will see Big Thirteenth Lake Mountain. This is the first of three distinct beaver-dammed sections along the brook, but with all the evident beaver activity, the landscape could easily change from year to year. It is tempting to think that one of these dammed sections is Peaked Mountain Pond and that one of the mountains is Peaked Mountain. However, the pond is a broader expanse of still water, and Peaked Mountain has exposed sheer faces with less tree cover.\n\nAfter looking across the wetland at Big Thirteenth Lake Mountain, you will pass very close to a large beaver dam at 1.9 miles. Shortly after, you cross the brook again and head back into the woods briefly before another wetland opens up to your left. A couple of rocks along the trail's edge provide a good vantage point of the dammed wetland, which surrounds a tiny, cedar-dotted island. The trail hugs the eastern edge of this wetland and then recrosses Peaked Mountain Brook at the northern edge of the wetland. The crossing is little more than a step across the brook, where it passes between two broad rocks, and you are roughly two-thirds of the way to the pond. The third and final major dammed section gives you the first real glimpse of Peaked Mountain's large, exposed face. This section contains a lot more large dead trees, with the additional distinction of large boulders strewn about.\n\nAfter a short section of walking through dense woods, you climb a small hill to discover Peaked Mountain Pond straight ahead at 3 miles. At this point, paths lead off to your left, but the trail is to your right. A fallen tree makes this a convenient spot to sit next to the pond. However, a nice place to rest is also a little farther up the trail in a small area of spruces. The trail so far has been fairly easy and accessible to most hikers. However, the climb to the summit is much steeper and requires a lot more effort. It is certainly worth the ascent, so take time to rest and enjoy the view of the beautiful pond.\n\nThe trail up the mountain passes through the previously mentioned stand of spruces and past a fork in the trail, which indicates a designated camping area to the left. The trail climbs slightly, among beeches and maples, and then descends to a stream crossing with views of the pond to your left. Climbing begins immediately after you cross the stream. This section is steep, with large, exposed rocks, and the forest is almost entirely paper birches. Blown-down birches often cover the trail, making spotting the actual trail and finding the best footing difficult at times. However, red disks mark the trail, and alternate paths around the blowdown are evident.\n\nPEAKED MOUNTAIN POND VIEWED FROM A LOOKOUT NEAR THE PEAK\n\nPEAKED MOUNTAIN BROOK\n\nAfter the first steep section, the grade eases a bit through a section where sheer rock is on your left and a rock hump is to your right. The trail swings left just past a massive boulder and becomes steep again. Climbing is steady until just before the top, and there are several tricky spots, so take your time and make room for other hikers as they pass. When evergreens dominate the forest, you'll know that you are close to the summit. A large, open portion of bedrock provides views down onto the pond, but the best part is at the true summit. After a brief foray back into the evergreens, you are once again out in the open. Sprawling out beneath you is your entire trip from where you left Thirteenth Lake. Peaked Mountain Pond and the beaver-dammed sections are obvious, as is the path the brook has cut into the landscape. In the height of summer, dragonflies perform aerial acrobatics for your viewing pleasure, and the bedrock provides a great spot to sit and look out at the beautiful vista.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE WEST From the intersection of NY 28 and NY 30 in Indian Lake, head 12.1 miles east along NY 28, and turn right onto County Road 78\/Thirteenth Lake Road in North River. Bear right onto Beach Road at 3.3 miles. End at the large parking area at 0.7 mile.\n\nFROM THE EAST From the intersection of NY 28 and NY 28N in North Creek, head 5.2 miles west along NY 28. Turn left onto CR 78\/Thirteenth Lake Road. Bear right onto Beach Road at 3.3 miles. End at the large parking area at 0.7 mile.\n\n21\n\nCastle Rock\n\nBLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE SEEN FROM CASTLE ROCK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 52.370' W74\u00b0 27.071'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 3.7-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 2 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Scenic views, cliffs\n\nELEVATION: 1,880' at trailhead, 2,430' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Central and Southern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9200.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nFrom a glance at a map, this trail looks deceptively uninteresting, but it has a lot to keep your attention. The analogy to a castle is well founded, and those with active imaginations will find themselves naming gates, turrets, and other structures while exploring the area. As a short loop, it provides a refreshing change from the innumerable out-and-backs typical of summits and other trails in the park.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe parking area is a small pulloff near the Minnowbrook Conference Center. The trail register is just up the road within sight of the sandy parking area. However, the trail does not begin until a little more than 0.3 mile down the road. Mileage given here is from the trail register. Follow the private gravel road, and bear right where the conference center driveway rejoins the road. Red trail markers on the right tell you to bear right at the next fork in the road.\n\nAt 0.3 mile, you will finally reach the trail on your right. On your left is the outlet of Chub Pond that flows into Blue Mountain Lake. Shortly after the trail portion starts, you come to a log bridge crossing this stream and a fork in the trail. To your left is the south route to Castle Rock, while to your right is Upper Sargent Pond and the north route. Cross the bridge to follow the south route, a rolling trail through mixed hardwoods. Yellow disks emblazon the trail, and at 0.6 mile you can see Chub Pond and a broad wetland to your right. The view is limited, but better views of the pond are available on the return trip along the northern route. When I hiked the trail, rain had been falling sporadically for days, so the trail was very wet; in fact, it was basically a stream in some sections (particularly on the northern route). But judging by the number of mucky spots, it is safe to say that this trail is typically wet.\n\nThe trail is a deep-woods walk among tall hemlock, birch, maple, and spruce trees. The landscape is dotted with large, mossy boulders that hint at the large rock faces to come. At 0.8 mile you will find a small dip, as well as a fork, in the trail; 0.3 mile to your left is Blue Mountain Lake, while Castle Rock is 0.7 mile to your right. After crossing a small brook, the trail begins to climb steadily. Openings in the forest canopy indicate that the lake sprawls off to your left, but you cannot see it until you reach the summit.\n\nAt 1.2 miles, you come to what I imagine to be the castle's gates. The base of the large granite outcrop towers above you on your right, with a narrow passage between it and some of the boulders that lie among the cliff's talus. Running water babbles underneath the sheer castle wall, sparking images of activities on the other side. Paths that eventually lead back to the main trail weave through the maze of boulders, providing opportunities for exploration.\n\nBack along the trail, a brief climb brings you to the intersection of the northern route, on your left. The climb to Castle Rock's final lookout is on your right, through spruces and paper birches. You reach the summit as you squeeze through another narrow passage. Climbing atop the rock ledge on your left reveals views of the tree-covered mountains to the north. While this view is beautiful and panoramic, the real gem is the view from atop the ledge, or rather the southern turret, on your right. This sheer cliff 700 feet above Blue Mountain Lake provides vistas of the wooded islands that dot the lake. The cliff's sheer walls and the way it juts out above the treeline evoke the feeling of being atop a lookout tower and, in combination with the \"gate\" at the base, give rise to the impression of a castle. Take caution around the cliff edge during wet or icy conditions.\n\nReturning along the northern route, the trail is less steep and descends gradually with numerous stream crossings. This portion is marked with red Department of Environmental Conservation disks and is easy to follow. At 1.9 miles you cross a stream and come to a fork in the trail; the Upper Sargent Pond Trail heads off to your left, while to the right is the return to the trailhead and parking area. While the southern route definitely has some wet areas, the northern route has notably more and longer mucky spots. The forest matures as you descend, and you rock-hop across multiple streams that flow to your right. At 2.3 miles, you come to a meadow, where the sound of water rushing to your right is much more distinct. The trail flattens out a bit more, and the mucky areas become more frequent. You encounter Chub Pond again at 2.8 miles, with views of Castle Rock through the hemlocks that surround the wetland. Multiple vantage points of the pond are available along the trail, and shortly you come back to the juncture where the log bridge crosses the outlet of Chub Pond. The stroll back to the parking area passes quickly along the flat roads.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 28\/NY 30\/NY 28N in Blue Mountain Lake village, head north on NY 30\/NY 28N. Turn left onto Maple Lodge Road at 0.6 mile. Continue on Maple Lodge Road 1.2 miles until you see the trail register, and park at the pulloff on the left side of the road before the Minnowbrook Conference Center.\n\n22\n\nBlue Ledges\n\nHUDSON RIVER DOWNSTREAM FROM BLUE LEDGES\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 49.957' W74\u00b0 06.506'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.0-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Vertical cliffs in the Hudson River Gorge\n\nELEVATION: 1,592' at trailhead, 1,345' at lowest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Northville\/Raquette Lake (#744)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Siamese Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/53172.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe beautiful stroll through a deep forest would be excuse enough to go on this hike, but the spectacular cliffs and sandy beaches in the Hudson River Gorge make it a must-do. In the height of summer, it's an excellent picnic or swimming destination, with the option for riverside camping. On dam-release days, especially during spring and fall, you will likely see rafters and kayakers navigating the turbulent rapids that flow at the base of these gigantic cliffs.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trail, marked with blue disks, begins across the road from the parking area on the left. Immediately cross a stream over a log-and-plank bridge, after which you'll find the trail register within a mucky area. The trail heads west toward the shore of Huntley Pond, where you have to pick your way through mud and tangles of roots. The walk along the shoreline requires a good deal of rock- and root-\u00adhopping to stay out of the muck, but this is very brief and followed by a slight climb into the hardwood forest.\n\nAt 0.5 mile pass between two large, moss-covered boulders, and then descend 0.3 mile to a stream. After crossing the stream, the trail levels off, and it is easy going over the next 0.8 mile. The high canopy allows deep views into the forest on your left, while broad openings along the meandering stream to your right provide a stark contrast. You will likely notice some very large eastern white pines interspersed with birch and maple trees. At 1.5 miles you begin a 0.5-mile climb on the hill whose contour you have been following since the stream crossing. As you climb south, larger pine trees loom along the trail, and you will hear the Hudson's rushing waters to your right. Despite the thundering rapids that seem to be just beyond the treeline, you will not be able to see the river until you reach the trail's end. At 2 miles you cross a large, exposed portion of ledge that marks the beginning of the descent to the river. This lookout reveals nothing through the thick foliage of summer, but when the leaves fall, it promises excellent views. The last 0.5 mile of the trail is the steepest section but is easily managed on both the descent and the return climb. The eastern white pines sporadically encountered along the trail earlier now dominate the forest as you reach the riverbank.\n\nYou see glimpses of the ledges through the evergreen canopy, but the scale of the cliffs is not apparent until you reach the end of the trail. As you emerge directly on the riverbank, the Blue Ledges loom 300 feet high on the opposite shore.\n\nThe vertical wall of rock draped by pines and cedars, seen across the broad river, makes a dramatic and peaceful setting. Paths leading both up- and downriver explore the riverbank and take you to several sandy beaches. High water during spring and fall makes for whirlpools and rapids that are best observed or rafted with commercial outfitters. During periods of lower water in the summer, sheltered areas provide a good opportunity for swimming. If you choose to swim, be mindful that the river still has a powerful current and that dam releases from Lake Abanakee on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays raise the river by 2 feet. Upstream and around the bend is one major rapid, while downstream are some major Class IV and V rapids. These rapids are visible from the trail's end and provide a popular amusement shortly after midday on dam-release days. Designated riverside camping areas are also downstream near these treacherous rapids. You can reach the campsites by passing through a thicket of brush near the river's edge. Camping is limited to these areas, and they seem to fill up. Otherwise, Department of Environmental Conservation regulations require backpackers to set up camp at least 150 feet from any body of water. The Hudson River Gorge is an exceptionally beautiful destination in the Adirondacks, and unless you are willing to raft down the river, this trail is virtually the only way to see its beauty.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of County Road 29\/Main Street and NY 28N in Minerva, head 4.4 miles north on NY 28N, and turn left onto North Woods Club Road. The turn is more like bearing left, but it is located along a curve and hill, so you will likely miss it heading south along NY 28N, 11.7 miles south of the intersection of NY 28N and Blue Ridge Road in Newcomb. The dirt road is smooth and accessible for most vehicles. At 3.7 miles, you cross the Boreas River and see designated roadside camping on both sides of the road. The road climbs steeply afterward. As it descends, the trail sign is visible on the left at 6.7 miles. The parking area along North Woods Club Road could accommodate close to a dozen vehicles if parked close together and perpendicular to the road.\n\n23\n\nHoffman Notch\n\nBRIDGE ACROSS HOFFMAN NOTCH BROOK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Southern trailhead: N43\u00b0 52.091' W73\u00b0 53.338' Northern trailhead: N43\u00b0 57.235' W73\u00b0 50.196'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 7.5-mile point-to-point\n\nHIKING TIME: 4\u20135 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Isolated pond, streamside hiking\n\nELEVATION: 1,650' at trailhead, 1,190' at lowest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Hoffman Notch Wilderness: tinyurl.com\/hoffnotchmap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Hoffman Notch Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/81598.html; Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nPassing through this notch provides hikers with scenery and solitude. You follow a flat stream to a serene marsh, where Hoffman Mountain is framed in the background, and then down a fast-falling brook with innumerable small cascades. The trail is fairly easy, so fast and experienced hikers will find that they can traverse the notch in half the time, but this precludes enjoying the privacy along the picturesque trail.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThis point-to-point trail would be excellent in either direction but is probably easier and most enjoyable heading from south to north. Deciding which end to leave a car or where to be picked up all depends on circumstance, but it might be advisable to leave a car at the southern lot for extended trips. The southern lot is large and off the main road, while the northern end is probably easiest to give directions to. This would also be a great trip for the key-pass technique, where two parties start at opposite locations and exchange car keys when they pass each other, as no detours or side trips might cause them to miss each other. Directions here are given heading south to north.\n\nThe trail begins on the northwest corner of a large, grassy parking area off Loch Muller Road, which has ample space for dozens of cars. A 1-mile trail to Bailey Pond, on your left, is also located at the beginning of the Hoffman Notch Trail. Continue straight ahead on the abandoned road, marked in yellow for the entire trail, through the mixed hardwood forest. The wide, open road makes for easy travel, and you will quickly come within sight of the West Branch Trout Brook approximately 0.3 mile in. The trail heads west briefly, and you descend to a log-and-plank bridge. Like the numerous bridges near the end of the trail, the bridge has been handsomely built with substantial cribbing and stonework to bolster the crossing. Shortly after crossing the bridge, the road begins to transition into trail, but the going is still easy over the mostly rolling terrain.\n\nYou will encounter a few seasonally muddy sections before reaching the only other trail intersection at 1.3 miles. The main trail continues straight ahead following yellow disks, while the trail to the right is marked in blue and leads to another access point along Hoffman Road. If you seek an extended trip, you can add almost 6 miles by starting at Hoffman Road. The North Branch Trout Brook begins to flow on your right after you pass this intersection and accompanies you all the way to Big Marsh at the halfway point. Approximately 2 miles in, you pass an enormous erratic alongside the trail. Though many may think I am an erratic on the trail, talking into the voice recorder dangling from the front of my pack, erratics are actually large boulders that were deposited by receding glaciers. They are termed erratic because they typically do not fit in with the surrounding landscape, due to either their composition or, more likely, their location. The trail winds to and from the banks of the brook numerous times, and at 2.3 miles, it passes nearly through the water as it cuts its way north along the mossy banks. The brook flows over mostly flat terrain and consequently is very slow moving, especially when you reach the beaver dam at 2.5 miles. Evergreens dot the banks along this section, and you will notice that the terrain grows ever steeper on your left as you head toward the midpoint of the notch. Here, the notch is the low point between the Washburn Ridge on your left and the Texas Ridge on your right. Roughly 0.5 mile ahead, the marshland truly begins, with grassy islands interspersed along the brook as it meanders wider near the notch's peak. The marshlands create broad, open sections in the forest, and soon Hoffman Mountain begins to loom across the scenic wetlands. At 3.5 miles the trail descends briefly to the wide, open waters of the marsh\u2014though lake or pond would likely be a more apt description. A few skeletal trees remain in the open waters, enhancing the wild character of this remote area.\n\nNumerous vantage points for scenic photos are found all along the trail as it winds along the hemlock- and birch-lined western shore. You leave Big Marsh's shores at 4 miles, but the trail continues along flat terrain through mixed hardwoods another 0.8 mile. A small, seasonal brook joins you on your left, and shortly after it, you reach Hoffman Notch Brook, which tumbles in at a small cascade on your right and forms a deep pool that can be passed across a worn tree. Rock-hopping might be a better option in wet conditions, as the tree is nearly worn smooth.\n\nThe trail continues on the opposite shore under a thick canopy of hardwoods, and several wet sections turn the trail into a mire at points. At this point the brook is descending rapidly, forming innumerable cascades with a low rumbling that drowns out most other forest sounds. The trail parallels the brook on an elevated ridge along the eastern banks approximately 0.3 mile before descending to the rock- and boulder-strewn brook at 5.1 miles, where you cross to the western bank. Trail markers are absent or difficult to follow in this section, but if you keep the brook in sight and look for the worn path, you can easily find your way to the crossing and the yellow trail markers. The waters are falling rapidly at this point, but the boulders are so large that it's easy to hop across the brook to the opposite shore, where the trail continues to descend on the western bank.\n\nThe notch is very distinct along this portion of the trail, as you pass the several sheer rock faces of Washburn Ridge on your left and the terrain, Hornet Cobbles, grows steeper on the right. Roughly 5.8 miles in, the trail transitions into an abandoned road with built-up banks, and the hiking gets easier. At 6 miles you pass a rusted piece of abandoned track machinery on your right that reminds you of the persistent regenerative power of nature.\n\nAt 6.1 miles you reach a rocky wash where a low bridge spans Hoffman Notch Brook. This crossing marks the end of the descent, and it is mostly rolling terrain for the next 1.4 miles to the northern terminus. At 6.5 miles you pass through a clearing where power lines have cut a swath through the wilderness; shortly after, you reach another sturdy bridge that re-crosses Hoffman Notch Brook. This flat section of the trail is a rerouting of the often-flooded north end and crosses a couple more bridges. The trail swings east through a notable stand of cedars and then intersects the old north road at 7.4 miles. The rusted front end of a classic car is found at this junction, only a few hundred yards from the trail terminus at Blue Ridge Road.\n\nDirections\n\nSOUTHERN TRAILHEAD From I-87, take Exit 28, and head east on NY 74. Immediately turn right onto US 9 in Schroon Lake. In 2.9 miles, turn right onto County Road 24\/Hoffman Road. In 5.4 miles, turn right onto Potash Hill Road. At 1.1 miles turn right onto Lock Muller Road. Follow Lock Muller Road 1.3 miles, and look for a gravel drive on the right. Follow the gravel drive a short way to the large, grassy parking area.\n\nNORTHERN TRAILHEAD From I-87, take Exit 29 (Newcomb\/North Hudson). Head west on CR 84\/Blue Ridge Road and go 5.5 miles. The parking area is a small gravel drive on the left.\n\nEastern\n\nLAKE GEORGE SEEN FROM SLEEPING BEAUTY MOUNTAIN (Trail 24, Sleeping Beauty Mountain, page 166)\n\n 24 SLEEPING BEAUTY MOUNTAIN\n\n 25 SHELVING ROCK FALLS\n\n 26 BLACK MOUNTAIN\n\n 27 TONGUE MOUNTAIN RANGE\n\n 28 PHARAOH MOUNTAIN\n\n 29 PHARAOH LAKE\n\n24\n\nSleeping Beauty Mountain\n\nVIEW OF LOWER LOOKOUT FROM UPPER LOOKOUT\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 32.971' W73\u00b0 33.369'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 3.3-mile out-and-back from Dacy Clearing (seasonal access) or 6.5-mile out-and-back from Hog Town parking area\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Sheer cliffs, panoramic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,335' at trailhead, 2,347' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required. Access along Shelving Rock Road is seasonal and subject to town of Fort Ann approval. Dacy Clearing Road is not plowed and is closed during mud season (early spring).\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: Picnic tables, pit toilets\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Timber rattlesnakes are known to occupy the shores of Lake George, so be cautious when stepping over logs. Read more about timber rattlesnakes in the section on Animal, Insect, and Plant Hazards.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe sheer cliffs are a spectacle in and of themselves, but once you add the views of Lake George from Sleeping Beauty's summit, this becomes a must-visit trail. Though the hike is steep in sections, the short distance from Dacy Clearing places it easily within the grasp of hikers of all experience levels. A longer approach or additional circuit can be added for hikers who desire a more extensive adventure.\n\nRoute Details\n\nTo reach the trailhead at Dacy Clearing, you can either drive or hike 1.6 miles from the Hog Town parking area. The road, though a bit narrow, is in good shape, and vehicles in good condition should have no difficulty reaching the clearing. This way passes multiple campsites, historic sites, and additional trailheads, so hikers wishing for additional interest or mileage may want to consider starting from the Hog Town parking area.\n\nDacy Clearing has a large parking area, as well as some day-use facilities, including picnic tables and pit toilets, so don't be surprised to find many people who choose this as a destination in itself. The trailhead is in the southern corner of the parking area, just to the side of a vehicle barrier and stream. Yellow disks mark this portion of the trail. The trail heads south but almost immediately switches back north and begins a steady climb. The trail register is a few hundred yards from the switchback, and when you see how full it is, it is obvious that this is a popular trail. The trail, wide enough for two to hike side by side, was once a part of the Knapp Estate's road network that weaves through the area. In 1931, 4,300 acres of the Knapp Estate were acquired by the state, including much of the southeastern section of Lake George Wild Forest.\n\nLess than 0.5 mile in, the trail switches back southeast, and the climb slackens a bit. During the height of summer, the dense canopy masks the sheer cliffs of Sleeping Beauty, but in the fall or winter, the cliffs are more visible and soon loom ahead of you. A large, angular boulder at 0.6 mile marks a T in the trail, and the magnitude of the cliffs becomes apparent even with leafed-out trees. The trail to the left, marked in yellow, leads to Bumps Pond as well as a circuit trail that returns to Sleeping Beauty Summit. The alternate route is more than 2 miles to the summit, while to the right, the distance to the summit is a little over a mile. To the right, marked with blue disks, is a more direct and, in my opinion, more impressive route to the summit because you hike along the base of the cliffs.\n\nThe trail to the right leaves the old road network behind, and you traverse a narrow foot trail through a tiny hemlock grove. For the next 0.4 mile, you will be hiking along a flat plateau on the south side of the mountain, with truly impressive views of the sheer cliff and the tumble of boulders at its base. Through the surrounding canopy, you can catch brief glimpses of the mountains to the southwest, but they don't compare to the vistas at the summit. The grade is basically flat, and though there are a few wet spots, it is easy going. At 0.8 mile, you cross a 10-foot bridge, and the trail swings east. The trail dips down briefly, but at 1 mile you begin the climb to the summit. Multiple switchbacks make the climb easier, and at 1.1 miles, you make your way up a substantially built-up switchback with a high rock wall.\n\nAfter this point, the trail weaves its way north on the east side of the cliffs, and views disappear as the forest becomes more coniferous. At 1.6 miles, you reach a Y in the trail. To the right is the trail to Bumps Pond and the circuit mentioned previously, while straight ahead is the summit, 0.1 mile. When you reach the end of the trail, you can view the panorama that opens out before you from several open ledges. Immediately in front of you is a large outcrop where people congregate; a higher but smaller outcrop is also to your right and slightly behind you, and a large, lower one is to the south. At the lower lookout, you have the advantage of seeing your path along the base of the cliffs. Expansive views to the west, south, and north show various portions of Lake George and the surrounding mountains from all of these lookouts, and there is plenty of room to sit and enjoy the views. Return the way you came for a total trip length of 3.3 miles, or take the circuit for a total length of 4.4 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of US 9 and NY 149 in Queensbury, south of Lake George and north of Glens Falls, head east along NY 149. Turn left onto Buttermilk Falls Road at 6 miles. Keep left at 3.1 miles where Buttermilk Falls Road turns into Sly Pond Road. Sly Pond Road turns into Shelving Rock Road at 5.7 miles, just past the intersection with Hog Town Road on the right. Continue on Shelving Rock Road 0.8 mile to the Hog Town parking area. Park here if you desire a longer trip. Otherwise, continue down the one-lane road 1.6 miles to Dacy Clearing.\n\n25\n\nShelving Rock Falls\n\nSHELVING ROCK FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 33.357' W73\u00b0 36.184'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 1.5-mile out-and-back to falls, 4.1-mile loop along lake\n\nHIKING TIME: 2 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular waterfall, lakeside hiking, old foundation\n\nELEVATION: 450' at trailhead, with no significant rise along trail\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required; access along Shelving Rock Road is seasonal and subject to town of Fort Ann approval\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Timber rattlesnakes are known to occupy the shores of Lake George, so be cautious when stepping over logs. Read more about timber rattlesnakes in the section on Animal, Insect, and Plant Hazards.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nFollowing the shore of Lake George, the trail system around Shelving Rock Falls was once carriage roads and therefore makes for some of the easiest hiking in the Adirondacks. Though the trails are easy, they are beautiful and offer an array of scenery and history. You can explore the trails and destinations in a variety of ways, so consider the system of trails more of a destination than simply a hike.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThough many smaller parking areas are along Shelving Rock Road, the spaces are very limited, often with room for only one or two cars, and not clearly marked as parking areas. Because the entire roadside is plastered with signs warning that cars parked along the road will be ticketed or towed, I would not plan on finding parking except in the large parking area for which the signs are obvious and directions are given. Likewise, trails leading to Lake George's shores are not clearly marked at the other parking areas, while the trail from the main parking area is impossible to miss.\n\nOn the right side of the parking area, walk past the vehicle barrier and down the broad access road. You have probably noticed that there is no trail register, nor are there any trail markers, but it is practically impossible to lose your way. Likewise, Shelving Rock Road and Lake George border the trail system, so you cannot wander far off the trail before regaining your bearings. Less than 0.3 mile in, you will come to a fork in the trail. Straight ahead is the main portion of the lakeside trails, while to your left are the falls. Continue to the left, and cross Shelving Rock Brook over a wooden bridge at 0.4 mile. On the opposite side of the bridge, you may notice a footpath to your left. This footpath can be used to climb to\u2014or as your return route from\u2014the falls. The stroll along the designated trail is an easier approach and has its own charms near the top.\n\nYou may have noticed that the trail system is more like a network of roads. Indeed, this area of Lake George Wild Forest was once a part of the Knapp Estate, and the trails were formerly carriage roads. The extensive work employed to level the terrain and build these roads becomes evident when you pass a large rock retaining wall on your left. The wall is part of a switchback that leads up the hill that eventually climbs to the top of Shelving Rock Falls. Tall pines thoroughly shade the area, and as you reach the height of the climb, you will notice a lone-wolf pine on your right.\n\nLone-wolf trees are trees that grow in open fields and eventually get overtopped when the forest takes over the field. Often short and gnarly, they eventually get shaded out and die, but they become excellent shelter and den trees. Any doubts that the environment has undergone a major transition are removed when you see the remains of a foundation behind the lone-wolf pine. This ruin adds an interesting spot for exploration, but the roar of the falls ahead will likely keep you from dallying long.\n\nThe carriage road takes you to the dam above the falls. Off to the right, the carriage road continues back to Shelving Rock Road, but straight ahead you can make out the caissons that once supported a bridge over the artificial wetland that sprawls out before you. Across the dam, you can see a trail and might be tempted to cross the top of the dam, but do not attempt it. Bear in mind that the dam is narrow and covered in slick algae, and many people have been injured or have died here. The best and, coincidentally, most scenic way to reach the other side is at the base of the falls.\n\nBASE OF SHELVING ROCK FALLS\n\nA short scramble downhill will take you there. Keep an eye out for a protruding rock on the right that makes an outstanding point from which to view and photograph the falls. The falls cascade 70\u201380 feet through and over large protrusions of ledge, with a deep pool beneath. You can return along the carriage road or take the more interesting footpath down beside Shelving Rock Brook. Besides adding a little more interest to the hike, this path has the benefit of revealing another smaller falls about midway down to the bridge previously crossed. You will have to scramble along rocks and roots to get down, but the trail is no different from typical Adirondack trails.\n\nBack on the trail, you have the option to head back to your vehicle, but it would be a shame to miss the walk along Lake George that awaits you by continuing to your left at the first fork. The trail along the lakeshore is level, passes within feet of the lake for long portions, and has a few excellent lookouts. The trail ends at private property, and you can return to the parking lot along Shelving Rock Road, but the trail along the lake is so pleasant that it is by far your better option.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of US 9 and NY 149 in Queensbury, south of Lake George and north of Glens Falls, head east along NY 149. Turn left onto Buttermilk Falls Road at 6 miles. Keep left at 3.1 miles, where Buttermilk Falls Road turns into Sly Pond Road. Sly Pond Road turns into Shelving Rock Road at 5.7 miles, just past the intersection with Hog Town Road on the right. Continue on Shelving Rock Road 1.8 miles, where you pass the parking area for primitive campsites and register for the area. Continue to the left on Shelving Rock Road another 1.8 miles to the parking area on your left. This is the second parking area on the south side of the road, past the Shelving Rock Mountain parking area on the north side of the road.\n\n26\n\nBlack Mountain\n\nLOOKING SOUTH AT LAKE GEORGE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 36.702' W73\u00b0 29.612'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 6.7-mile balloon\n\nHIKING TIME: 4\u20135 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, remote ponds, beaver activity, lake views\n\nELEVATION: 1,564' at trailhead, 2,646' at Black Mountain peak\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Timber rattlesnakes are known to occupy the shores of Lake George, so be cautious when stepping over logs. Read more about timber rattlesnakes in the section on Animal, Insect, and Plant Hazards.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nBlack Mountain is the highest peak in the southeastern Adirondack\u2013Lake George region. It lies a little farther from the bustling heart of Lake George, so hikers seeking more solitude in the eastern Adirondacks may find this an excellent choice. By summiting from the north and descending along the southern slope, you will traverse a wide variety of environs and maximize the number of panoramic views.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe parking area off Pike Brook Road is sufficient for roughly a dozen cars conscientiously parked. The trailhead and trail register are on the western edge of the pulloff. The initial section of the trail, marked in red, follows a gravel access road that almost immediately turns sharply left and climbs steadily up and away from the parking area. After swinging west, the road levels off and continues 0.6 mile to where a building with a metal roof comes into view. A vehicle barrier blocks the road, and the trail\u2014indicated by a brown trail sign\u2014diverges to the right into the forest along a more traditional footpath.\n\nThe trail continues a little more than 0.3 mile along flat terrain among maple and beech trees to a trail intersection, 1 mile overall. To the left (south) are the remote ponds and return leg of the trip. Continue straight, and you soon have to hop across a small stream, after which you continue west along a fairly gentle grade. About 0.5 mile past the intersection, the trail is bisected by another seasonal stream that spills into a stream flowing to the left. Shortly after rock-hopping across the seasonal stream, the trail takes a sharp turn right (north). It parallels the stream briefly north, swings west, and then becomes steeper once it heads west again, briefly paralleling and running through the seasonal stream as it climbs.\n\nA BRIDGE ALONG THE TRAIL KEEPS YOUR FEET DRY AT THIS CROSSING.\n\nAfter crossing and leaving the streambed, you will pass a rock cairn on the left, 1.9 miles from the start. Shortly after, the trail swings west and the climbing continues to steepen. Spruce and birch trees dominate the forest along with verdant, moss-covered rocks. The primeval and dark setting of the northern, shaded side of the mountain is in stark contrast to the brighter deciduous, southern slope found on the return leg. This dark setting is even more dominant as the trail swings nearly south. Along a brief level section of trail, you pass by a large, square boulder to the left, just before a fork in the trail, 2.5 miles overall.\n\nThe left fork is a lightly worn path, while the right fork is a more heavily worn, cobble-strewn trail that leads to the summit. Bear right and head uphill to where the trail swings sharply north as you make the final ascent. The inaccessible fire tower and a windmill soon come into view as you make the final approach along an exposed ledge. Just before heading up to the peak and its amalgam of technology, check out the small lookout on the right near a memorial placard nailed to a tree. At the peak, there are limited places to stop and take in the view, so on busy or windy days this lookout may be the more desirable place to take a break.\n\nOn top of the summit are a windmill, a power transfer station, solar panels, fencing, and a fire tower, all dedicated to emergency communications. They occupy most of the summit, and there are not many places that would be considered a good place to rest. The one exception is atop a rock outcrop on the northern tip of the peak, just behind the fire tower. To reach this spot, head between the windmill and fence to where a trail sign indicates the direction to the return trip, and head right. A large rock partially shields you from the incongruous pieces of civilization, and great panoramic views of the northern tip of Lake George sprawl out before you.\n\nTo return, you could head back the way you came, but you would miss some of the great views of southern Lake George and wildly different ecosystems encountered along the northern pond route. Head back to the trail sign, and proceed southeast in the direction of Black Mountain Pond Trail junction.\n\nAs you begin the descent (roughly 900 feet over the next mile), the trail takes on a very different character. Instead of the boreal and wet setting of the northern slope, the southern slope is dry and grassy with a canopy of deciduous trees, most notably oaks farther down the mountain. It's a stark contrast but also the perfect setting for timber rattlesnakes that like to bask in the sun on open ledges, so be mindful when stepping over logs and rocks. The open ledges are also the best spots to take in the panoramic views of Lake George available at several locations along the steep descent. Access the first lookout by following one of several herd paths through the surrounding scrub, about 0.1 mile down. Because of the aforementioned snakes, this might not be the best for those who are squeamish. The second lookout is along a ledge near a large boulder beside the trail, about 0.25 mile farther along the descent; it requires a small amount of navigating off trail. Don't worry if you don't want to bushwhack to these lookouts because another splendid one is found 0.3 mile farther.\n\nThe third lookout, located at 3.3 miles overall, is a broad opening along the trail with a beautiful view of the southern portion of Lake George; you reach it just after a large switchback that leads beneath a steep wall of rock. One final lookout of note is a little less than 0.1 mile ahead. This one is just to the left before another switchback swings the trail west. The open, grassy ledge is nestled among tall oaks and provides a view of not only Lake George but also the pristine ponds found farther along the trail. This is the last of the great viewing areas along the descent, which continues along many switchbacks another 0.25 mile and 200 feet to where the trail levels off and soon swings east.\n\nAt 3.6 miles reach the Black Mountain Pond Trail junction to the right and the return to Pike Brook Road via Black Mountain Pond straight ahead. Continue straight, now following blue trail markers, less than 0.25 mile to where Black Mountain Pond comes into view. Once up and over a small knoll, the dark pond and a grassy marsh sprawl out before you. Nearby you traverse an open ledge that dives into the water; the Black Mountain Pond Lean-To sits just uphill from this ledge. The trail continues to skirt the pond's edge briefly before veering off into the surrounding forest. As you leave the pond behind, pass through a long, wet area, and then reach a stream crossing, 4.2 miles. This is the beginning of the long, sinuous wetland that feeds Round Pond. Once across this feeder brook, bear right and follow the wetland to the cattail-lined pond. The trail weaves along the shore, often within inches of the high water, along sections where the cattails are so thick and close that they form a veritable wall.\n\nAs the trail heads away from Round Pond, a mossy swamp flanks the trail to the right and shortly reaches another trail intersection, 4.6 miles overall. To the right are Millman and Fishbrook Ponds, while to the left is the trail back to Pike Brook Road. Turn left (north) following yellow trail markers, and quickly reach one more intersection. To the right (south) is the 0.1-mile-long trail that leads to the Lapland Pond Lean-To. The left fork, straight, leads north to Pike Brook Road.\n\nContinue north roughly a mile to reach the first trail junction and end of the loop portion of the hike. Initially all along this northward trek, the sections of the trail weave in and out of a streambed and include some long, muddy portions. About halfway to the junction, you will have to rock-hop across a rocky brook that bisects the trail. As you near the intersection, the trail dips down toward a wide, marshy area with a beaver dam. At the tip of this marsh, you reach a heavy timber-and-log bridge that crosses the marsh's outlet, 0.2 mile shy of the junction ahead. Once you reach the junction, turn right and follow the path previously trodden 1 mile to Pike Brook Road for an overall trip length of 6.7 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE SOUTH From the intersection of US 4 and NY 22 in Whitehall, continue north 7.1 miles along NY 22, and turn left onto County Road 6. After 2.6 miles turn left onto Pike Brook Road. After 0.8 mile the parking area will be on the right.\n\nFROM THE NORTH From the intersection of NY 9N and NY 22 in Ticonderoga, head southeast 19.2 miles along NY 22 S\/NY 74 E. Turn right onto CR 6. After 2.6 miles turn left onto Pike Brook Road. After 0.8 mile the parking area will be on the right.\n\n27\n\nTongue Mountain Range\n\nVIEW OF LAKE GEORGE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 37.767' W73\u00b0 36.489'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 12.6-mile loop (side trips not included)\n\nHIKING TIME: 8\u201310 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Multiple peaks with panoramic views, lakeside hiking, waterfall\n\nELEVATION: 403' at trailhead, 1,725' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Timber rattlesnakes are known to occupy the shores of Lake George, so be cautious when stepping over logs. Read more about timber rattlesnakes in the section on Animal, Insect, and Plant Hazards.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThere are multiple ways to explore the Tongue Mountain Range, but this loop combines some of the best features into an extended day hike. Multiple peaks offer innumerable panoramic views of Lake George, as well as some pleasant hiking along old Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) horse trails following the lakeshore. Along the ridgeline, there are few sources of water, so bring your own supply to drink.\n\nRoute Details\n\nTimber rattlesnakes are one of the few venomous species of snakes found in New York and are seldom seen, even in areas where they are known to live. The Tongue Mountain Range, as well as other areas along Lake George, is one of these few places and, though it is unlikely that you will encounter one, it is advisable to take precautions. See the section on animal hazards, and educate anyone unfamiliar with snakes. The simplest ways to avoid a mishap are to look where you step and to give the snake plenty of room should you see one.\n\nThe trailhead is a short distance south of the parking area along NY 9N. Turn left onto the trail, marked in red, and you will find the trail register several hundred yards ahead. The trail descends through a stand of pines, and you pass what looks to be a fork on your left but is actually just a short footpath. Continue to your right downhill, and soon reach a boardwalk that crosses the marsh surrounding Northwest Bay Brook. You reach a fork in the trail at 0.4 mile. To your right is the return leg of your trip along the Northwest Bay of Lake George, marked in blue. Continue straight, along the red-marked trail, which soon begins its ascent to the ridgeline. You will hear a waterfall off to your right shortly after the intersection. To view the 20-foot-high cascade, follow the barely discernible path on your right, or let the sounds of the falls guide you to the steep banks overlooking them.\n\nThe trail continues to climb, and you will cross and recross the seasonal stream that leads to the waterfall over log-and-plank bridges. The pitch has steadily increased, and soon steep ledges loom on your left. After walking in the shadow of these ledges, you make a final ascent over a built-up switchback to a brief plateau, a little less than 1 mile from the start. The approximate 0.3-mile stroll along the hemlock-shrouded plateau is a welcome break from the ascent, but you soon begin to climb again along a switchback. After more marshy areas and a little more climbing, you soon reach a four-way intersection at 2 miles. To your left, marked in blue, is the ridge trail north to Five Mile Mountain, Deer Leap, and the northern trailhead along NY 9N. Straight ahead, marked in red, is the trail down to Five Mile Point on the shores of Lake George. Follow the blue-marked trail south, to your right, toward Fifth Peak, French Point Mountain, and Montcalm Point along Lake George. The trip south is a bit like a roller coaster as you navigate up and down the numerous peaks and valleys that make up the dragon spine\u2013like ridge.\n\nThe trail climbs the next 0.4 mile to where you reach the intersection with Fifth Peak Trail, marked in yellow. The summit is 0.3 mile along this spur. A lean-to is also located along this trail for those wishing to make it an overnight trip. There is no water, so campers should plan accordingly, as it is a steep climb to the lakeshore or any other source of water.\n\nThe trail continues straight, still marked in blue, around the west side of the mountain along a fairly level section. Views of the main portion of Lake George to the east are shortly followed with a view straight down to the Northwest Bay. The trail descends steeply after this point, and the roller coaster\/sawtooth portion of the trail begins in earnest. After descending roughly 350 feet in less than 0.3 mile, you immediately begin to climb again to an unnamed knob, 3.6 miles at its top. This begins a series of steep ascents to fine views of the lake, followed by sharp descents. Each tiny summit provides a great place to stop, but if you plan on making only one stop along your traverse, I recommend waiting until you reach French Point Mountain, roughly 0.8 mile ahead after this first major descent. You scramble up, over, and down yet another knob, 4 miles, before you begin the final climb to French Point Mountain, 4.3 miles and 1,756 feet of elevation. If you haven't taken in the beauty of the roughly 200 verdant islands dotting the deep blue of Lake George, now is surely the time. The steep eastern side of the range has been swept with fire numerous times, and only scrubby trees dot the slope down to the lake, so panoramic views, open fields, and ledges are the norm and provide innumerable spots to stop.\n\nYou weave up and down another tiny knob before seeing First Peak looming to the south. This peak is the last major dip and climb of the dragon's spine before the trail makes its last descent to Lake George at Montcalm Point. The trail descends approximately 500 feet before climbing another 300 feet over the next 1.4 miles on your way to First Peak, 5.7 miles from the start. Breathtaking views await you here, as well as along the majority of the descent to the lake. You are a little less than halfway through the hike, though you will have probably spent more than half of your planned time along the trail. Not to worry\u2014the trail is mostly downhill or level as you complete the loop. Views of the Lake George Narrows sprawl out before you as you descend the mostly exposed portion of the tongue. Mileage to the innumerable vantage points would probably provide more confusion than any measure of progress. However, you reach the final knob approximately 0.5 mile after First Peak and, shortly after, delve back into the deeper woods. You reach the final intersection along the trail, 7.6 miles, at a wide and mucky area. To the left is Montcalm Point, 0.2 mile, a welcome respite along the shores. Though the side trip is definitely worth a visit, those pressed for time can rest assured that numerous sections along the return trip come within feet of the lake and provide points to stop and soak your feet or even take a swim.\n\nTRAIL BESIDE NORTHWEST BAY\n\nTo return, continue straight\/right along the blue-marked trail north. Shortly after the intersection, the trail passes within feet of the lake but soon arcs east into the forest to bypass a small section of private land. After this brief diversion, you rejoin the lakeshore and find that the trail generally follows the lake. The farther north you go, the better the condition of the trail and the easier the path. You pass several openings along the lake, along with stream crossings, abandoned fire pits, and swimming holes, so if time permits, enjoy the numerous points of interest, or plan to take a late-hike rest.\n\nFormer CCC work is evident all along this return portion as you pass built-up crossings, rock walls, and other trail developments that make this portion of the trail truly a pleasure. At 10.6 miles, you reach the marsh where Northwest Bay Brook meets its namesake bay. It is only 1.6 miles back to the intersection and 2 miles to the parking area. An occasional passing truck along NY 9N will remind you of this proximity, though the trail heads northeast into the forest a bit, and roadside noise is mostly drowned out. The trail climbs slightly during this 0.8-mile arc into the forest and soon descends back toward the marsh. Soon after the descent, you reach the trail intersection at 12.2 miles. Continue left back to your vehicle at the quarry-side parking area for a total trip of 12.6 miles (not including side trips).\n\nDirections\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 24 (County Road 11\/Bolton Landing\/Riverbank Road), and head 4.7 miles east on CR 11\/Riverbank Road. Turn left onto NY 9N\/Lake Shore Drive, and head northeast 4.5 miles. The parking area is on your right in front of an old quarry.\n\n28\n\nPharaoh Mountain\n\nLOOKING DOWN ON PHARAOH LAKE FROM PHARAOH MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Crane Pond Road parking area: N43\u00b0 51.548' W73\u00b0 41.312'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 9.2-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 6\u20137 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular views, scenic marsh\n\nELEVATION: 1,060' at trailhead, 2,556' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Accessibility along the rough and partially flooded Crane Pond Road has deteriorated to the point where even high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles frequently get stuck. Plus, driving on the road is illegal. As such, trail directions and mileage have been updated.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAn excellent peak in the eastern section of the Adirondacks, Pharaoh Mountain is an exceptional destination in itself or as a side trip in the heart of the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness. Atop the mountain are great views of the eastern Adirondacks and, on a clear day, the High Peaks to the north as well as the Green Mountains in Vermont. A longer loop is available for hikers who descend to Pharaoh Lake and return via the Glidden Marsh Trail (11.8-mile loop).\n\nRoute Details\n\nCrane Pond Road is officially closed at the end of the pavement, where a small parking area has been established. However, in the past locals and others accessing Crane Pond and Pharaoh Lake Wilderness routinely used the unmaintained road. The road was barricaded in the 1980s, but local residents removed the barricade the following spring. When Earth First! tried to erect a new barrier, a conflict arose that involved a pugilistic encounter between a local politician and an Earth First! representative. The whole incident was caught on camera and eventually made it to the national news. At present, there are no barriers, and the road is left open and used by hikers, anglers, boaters, and campers alike. Be aware that the road is not maintained and is very rough. Even high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles get stuck along the remaining 1.9 miles to the Crane Pond parking area, so I do not recommend planning on driving farther along the road.\n\nContinue south along the rough road as it winds 1.5 miles through a dense forest to where the road descends to a flooded section, which varies in depth and length, depending on recent rain and the season. If you drove farther along the closed road, do not count on being able to drive farther. If you can't cross, there is a bypass trail north of the flooded section. Past the flooded section, the road continues to wind through the forest, passing the Long Swing Trail at 1.7 miles and eventually reaching the first of two grassy parking areas. If you thought one would have to be crazy to ford the flooded section, you will be surprised to find several vehicles that made the crossing.\n\nProceed east to the boat launch and second parking area, and then head south past a downed pine tree and a trail sign on your right, 1.9 miles. A wide bridge crosses the outlet of Crane Pond, which is on your left, as it flows into Alder Pond on your right. The trail, marked by red disks, uses primarily old access roads, so it is broad and free of obstructions. Additionally, there are very few muddy areas, so this trail is one of the few in the Adirondacks that are in exceptional condition. The wide trail climbs gently as it winds through a mostly hemlock forest a little less than 0.3 mile to the trail register. It continues over level terrain another 0.5 mile under the canopy of towering hemlocks and eastern white pines to a fork in the trail. This intersection, 0.7 mile from Crane Pond, 2.6 miles overall, is situated on the northern tip of Glidden Marsh. Looming straight ahead over the marsh's placid water is Pharaoh Mountain. To the right is the direct approach to the summit, as well as a route to Pharaoh Lake, while on the left is another route to Pharaoh Lake via Glidden Marsh. If you desire a longer trip, descend from the summit to Pharaoh Lake, skirt the lakeshore on the northern trail (not shown on most maps), and then head back along Glidden Marsh Trail for a circuit of 11.1 miles. For a description of the return leg along Glidden Marsh, see the Pharaoh Lake overnight section.\n\nTRAIL TO PHARAOH MOUNTAIN\n\nBear right at the fork in the trail, and proceed along the western shore of Glidden Marsh. You will cross a couple of log bridges as you navigate the next 0.3 mile over level terrain. At 2.9 miles, the climb to the summit begins. As you ascend, the forest transitions from the towering evergreens to a mostly hardwood forest. The mixture features oak and cherry trees at first, and then gives way to predominantly maple and beech. At 3.6 miles, you reach a fork with an overgrown abandoned road on the left, but the trail continues on your right. The easy hiking along old roads gives way to rougher hiking as you pick your way along exposed bedrock and through the rocks and cobbles that dominate the trail. Approximately 3.9 miles in, the canopy height begins to diminish and the forest transitions back to evergreens, though the composition is now stunted firs dotted with birches.\n\nAt 4.2 miles, you will have to rock-hop across a stream, and the climbing becomes much steeper. Over the next 0.5 mile, the trees become stunted, and the trail, flanked by alpine mosses, crosses over exposed portions of bedrock. As you approach the summit, several exposed ledges are either on the trail or mere feet to your right, with amazing views to the north and west. I suggest taking some time to admire the views to the north, as the panorama at the summit is mostly to the west and south. At the summit, the trail passes through a shallow cleft that bisects what are essentially the two summits of Pharaoh Mountain. The northern knob is to your left and has exceptional views to the west, especially of Schroon Lake. Footpaths meander about the northern knob, where a couple of informal campsites are interspersed among the windswept firs. Follow the main path a very short distance south to find the footpath that leads to the southern knob. The exposed portions of bedrock on this knob offer incredible views of Pharaoh Lake.\n\nNote: The Pharaoh Lake overnight trail begins at the end of this trail.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 28, and head east on NY 74. Immediately turn right onto US 9 in Schroon Lake. In 0.6 mile turn left onto Alder Meadow Road. Follow Alder Meadow Road 2.1 miles, and bear left onto Crane Pond Road. The parking lot is on the left where the pavement ends and Crane Pond Road turns into an unmaintained road at 1.4 miles.\n\n29\n\nPharaoh Lake\n\nWINTER GREEN POINT ON PHARAOH LAKE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Crane Pond Road parking area: N43\u00b0 51.548' W73\u00b0 41.312'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 17.3-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: Overnight\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Exceptional lakeside camping, waterfall\n\nELEVATION: 2,500' at trailhead (at the end of Pharaoh Mountain Trail), 992' at lowest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake George\/Great Sacandaga (#743)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: The trail description presumes access via the Pharaoh Mountain Trail. Bypassing the summit via the Glidden Marsh Trail cuts 1.5 miles and 1,000 feet of elevation change from the hike.\n\nCONTACTS: Eastern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9199.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe lean-tos and designated campsites along the shores of Pharaoh Lake are some of the best in the Adirondacks. The sheer number of sites in this virtual wilderness campground means that you will likely find a spot even on busy holiday weekends. If you crave solitude, choose an off-peak weekend or shy away from the lean-tos and pick a remote tent site. The designated sites and lean-tos are nearly all next to the shore with scenic views, and it's clear why they are popular.\n\nRoute Details\n\nNumerous trails lead to Pharaoh Lake, but the description provided here is from the end of Pharaoh Mountain Trail, described. Bear in mind that parking for the Pharaoh Mountain Trailhead along the unmaintained portion of Crane Pond Road is no longer recommended or feasible. See the Pharaoh Mountain Trail description for details.\n\nFrom the end of Pharaoh Mountain Trail, descend the southern slope following the red trail markers, 4.6 miles from the end of the paved portion of Crane Pond Road. Shortly after leaving the summit, you must climb down a vertical portion of exposed ledge that is several feet high and requires the use of both hands. Footholds are available in a small cleft next to the adjoining sheer rock face on your right. The descent is steeper than the climb to the summit, and the forest quickly transforms from alpine evergreens and birches to dense maples and beeches. At 6.2 miles, a sheer cliff looms to your right and indicates that you are nearing the lakeshore. Soon after, you traverse a wet section across planks laid lengthwise. By now, you can catch masked glimpses of the lake through the thick beech saplings.\n\nAt 6.4 miles, you reach the intersection with the north lakeside trail. From here, you can circle the lake in either direction. Counterclockwise, to your right, is the fastest and most direct approach to the majority of the lean-tos. On the other hand, heading clockwise brings you to some of the best campsites, as well as Split Rock Bay and the final return route via Glidden Marsh; this northern section of the trail is not shown on most maps of the area. The description and mileage here are given for the clockwise direction.\n\nTurn left and follow the west-shore trail, marked with blue disks, toward Split Rock Bay. This portion of the trail is roughly 0.7 mile long and follows the shoreline very closely. It also features three great designated camping areas. The first of these is just off the trail at 6.6 miles. A fire pit has been placed along an exposed portion of ledge within feet of the lake, and a long, rocky peninsula makes a superb spot to admire the view. A little less than 0.3 mile ahead, you will pass a yellow Department of Environmental Conservation designated camping disk with an arrow. These arrow disks indicate that a designated site is nearby. Usually these sites are farther off the trail and can be easily located by following the arrows. On occasion, disks will be missing or the indicated direction of the arrow may lead you astray, so use the disks as a means to zero in on the spot rather than as absolute markers. In this case, wander out along the southern edge of the peninsula, just below an elevated ridge, and you will find the picturesque site. Surrounded by tall pines and small blueberry bushes, it sits high on the elevated peninsula and offers commanding views of the lake.\n\nBack along the loop, the trail dips down and follows a cattail-filled bay briefly before reaching another designated camping disk at 6.9 miles. To reach this site, head east onto another small peninsula, where you will find a site very similar to the last one near the peninsula's tip. The intersection with Glidden Marsh Trail back to Crane Pond is at 7 miles.\n\nShortly after the intersection, the trail, now marked in yellow, winds along another bay with large boulders sticking up in the middle. This is Split Rock Bay, and while the rocks do look split from this shore, their appearance from the opposite shore is more dramatic. From that shore, the split rocks appear to be a pair of obelisks with an eerie and unnatural quality. On your way to the opposite shore, you will pass an abandoned fiberglass boat, which, had you come from the other direction, would not seem unusual. At 7.6 miles, you reach Lean-To 4 (also known as Split Rock Bay Lean-To), which is within a couple dozen feet of the shore and has an open view south out onto the lake.\n\nIt's likely that you will see a boat pulled up on the shore nearby, and the mystery of the abandoned boat will start to resolve itself. In fact, all the lean-tos around the lake have some sort of boat, usually a canoe or small rowboat, located nearby. Improvised paddles are typically found nearby as well, but they are, in some cases, little more than flat logs. If you have the foresight to pack an ultralight paddle, you could easily become the most popular guest at the lake.\n\nThe trail swings northeast at the lean-to and heads into a thick hemlock forest. This area is heavily shaded and has few saplings, so the views into the surrounding forest are expansive. Dotted with mossy, wet areas, this brief foray into a hemlock swamp is a pleasant change of pace from the standard hardwoods, but the trail delves back into mixed hardwoods after 0.4 mile. At 8.3 miles, you reach another intersection. To your right is a side trip to Winter Green Point, marked with red disks, while straight ahead is the continuation of the lakeside trail. The less than 0.3-mile side trip to the rocky point is definitely worthwhile and provides views of the lake as well as Pharaoh Mountain.\n\nCAMPSITE ON PHARAOH LAKE\n\nBack on the trail, you quickly reach another fork; to the left are Grizzle Ocean and Putnam Pond Campground, 5.8 miles away, while the lakeside trail continues straight ahead. Roughly 0.3 mile ahead, you reach a wide stream crossing where the log cribbing is all that remains of an old bridge. You can easily rock-hop across, but you might want to bushwhack a short distance upstream to where a tiny waterfall splashes into a deep, boulder-dammed pool. The trail winds up and down a few hillocks through a mixed pine forest before reaching another intersection at 8.6 miles. Lean-To 3 is off to your right, while the east-shore trail continues ahead. The lean-to sits on an elevated cliff along the lake and offers outstanding views. Before finally dropping to the lakeshore, the ledge has several wide step-downs, all of which make excellent spots to dally.\n\nThe trail continues southwest among the mixed pines for a while, and you reach another designated campsite at 9 miles. The site is just off the trail but is quite close to the lake and is a good spot for anyone wishing to avoid the crowds that congregate at lean-tos. From this point on, many portions of the east-shore trail hug the shoreline, and views of Pharaoh Mountain are superb. Highbush blueberries crowd the trail along the exposed portions of lichen-covered ledge that form the shoreline and much of the trail. At 9.3 miles, you cross a plank bridge to a small peninsula and pass an informal campsite that sees regular use. A quarter mile later you pass a designated campsite with exceptional views of Pharaoh Mountain across the lake.\n\nYou reach another major intersection at 9.9 miles. To the left and marked in red are Springhill Pond, 4.5 miles, and New Hague Road, 8.3 miles, while the east-shore trail continues straight ahead, still marked in yellow. Shortly ahead, you reach Lean-To 2. This is the largest of the lean-tos\u2014double the capacity of the others\u2014with a pleasant grassy field sloping down to the lake in front of it. The view is less desirable than in other locations but seems very popular nonetheless. The trail toward the outlet and Lean-To 1 is an old road that passes through a tall hemlock-and-pine forest. The wide road is free of obstructions and allows deep views into the surrounding forest. As you come down a slight hill, you see the side of Lean-To 1. Close to the shore, it has beautiful views of the north shore and, like the rest of the lean-tos, has a watercraft stowed nearby.\n\nThe wide road continues south to the outlet of the lake, but you have to pass through a long mire before the canopy opens up at the grassy southern tip of the lake, 10.7 miles. The trail, now marked with red disks, heads north along the lakeshore, and you quickly reach another yellow camping disk with an arrow indicating a site nearby. The site lies atop the small knoll to your right. Though it's high above the water, views of the lake are shielded by a rise in the hill and the saplings that line the hill. Nonetheless, it is a fine site and ideal for those seeking privacy and a sheltered setting. A little more than 0.3 mile from the outlet, you reach a fork in the trail; veer left to follow the trail, or head right following yellow disks to Lean-To 6. Though it is situated more than 100 yards from the lakeshore, it has excellent views, and the deep evergreen forest that shades the site makes it feel uniquely isolated.\n\nThe trail continues north, winding through hemlock groves along the lakeshore and up into deciduous hilltops. At 11.4 miles, you pass another designated site, which is situated on the forest side of the trail. This is probably the least desirable of the sites but would make a good stopping point if the lean-tos are full and night is coming on. At 11.6 miles, you reach yet another fork in the trail. To your left is the main trail, while straight ahead is Lean-To 5 (also known as Watch Rocks Lean-To). The lean-to trail is marked in yellow and closely follows the shoreline. Located near the tip of the peninsula, it has views in all directions, the most exceptional being at the point itself.\n\nThe main trail, rougher here than in other sections, climbs slightly and weaves its way mostly through a thick hardwood forest. The lake is no longer visible, and there is very little of note until you return to the intersection with Pharaoh Mountain Trail, 12.4 miles. Continue until you reach the intersection with Glidden Marsh Trail, 13 miles. Emblazoned with yellow disks, Glidden Marsh Trail climbs away from the lake immediately. The rocky climb is through mostly deciduous forest, and there are noticeably more ash trees along the slope than elsewhere along the hike. After roughly 0.3 mile, the trail levels off as you begin to pass a broad wetland on your right. The wetland, the result of beaver activity, becomes quite broad, and the trail often passes through its muddy edges for the next mile. The trail leaves the marshy section and reenters the forest as you begin a 0.3-mile descent to another fork in the trail. Straight ahead and marked in yellow is Crane Pond, while off to the right is Crab Pond Spur Trail that passes Crab and Horseshoe Ponds.\n\nShortly after this intersection at 14.6 miles, a log bridge spans a feeder stream of Glidden Marsh, and you reach the eastern shore of the marsh soon after. The trail closely follows the broad, grassy marshland, where you can see several beaver lodges in the center of the deeper water. At 15.2 miles, you come to the intersection with Short Swing Trail, which passes Oxshoe Pond, on your right. The main trail, Glidden Marsh Trail, and Short Swing Trail are marked with blue disks. You lose sight of Glidden Marsh as you pass on the eastern side of a small hill that flanks the marsh. Another marsh down to your right is a dammed stream that feeds Crane Pond before the trail turns west. The trail crosses a log bridge and then climbs a rocky hill before descending to the intersection with Pharaoh Mountain Trail. Heading north on the old, abandoned road, the mileage is as follows: less than 0.5 mile to the trail register, 0.7 mile to the Crane Pond parking area, and 2.6 miles to the designated parking area. This section of the trail is marked with red disks and is easy to follow, but for a more thorough description, read the Pharaoh Mountain Trail section.\n\nLEAN-TO 4 AT PHARAOH LAKE\n\nDirections\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 28, and head east on NY 74. Immediately turn right onto US 9 in Schroon Lake. In 0.6 mile turn left onto Alder Meadow Road. Follow Alder Meadow Road 2.1 miles, and bear left onto Crane Pond Road. The parking lot is on the left where the pavement ends and Crane Pond Road turns into an unmaintained road at 1.4 miles.\n\nNorthern\n\nOSWEGATCHIE RIVER SEEN FROM HIGH ROCK (Trail 32, High Falls)\n\n 30 OWLS HEAD MOUNTAIN\n\n 31 CAT MOUNTAIN\n\n 32 HIGH FALLS\n\n 33 LAMPSON FALLS AND GRASS RIVER\n\n 34 FLOODWOOD\n\n 35 SAINT REGIS MOUNTAIN\n\n 36 DEBAR MOUNTAIN\n\n30\n\nOwls Head Mountain\n\nVISTA FROM ATOP OWLS HEAD FIRE TOWER\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N43\u00b0 57.812' W74\u00b0 27.173'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 6.3-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, fire tower, historic site\n\nELEVATION: 1,665' at trailhead, 2,762' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nOn the boundary of the west-central and northern sections of the Adirondacks is scenic Owls Head. By climbing the accessible fire tower on the summit, you have a 360-degree view of the surrounding hills and lakes. The remains of an old observer cabin add historical interest.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trailhead and register are located on the left side of the small parking pullout. The parking area is located on a curve along Endion Lane and may accommodate a dozen cars if visitors park thoughtfully. The trail, marked with red disks, immediately begins to ascend amid a dense maple-and-beech hardwood forest. After 0.3 mile the trail levels off and follows mostly rolling terrain another 1.3 miles. At 1 mile from the trailhead, you reach an intersection with another trail. To your left is the trail to Owls Head summit, 2.1 miles away, while to your right is a trail to NY 30, 3.5 miles, and Lake Eaton Campground, 3.8 miles. Shortly after the first intersection, you pass an abandoned foot trail on your right, followed by an old road that joins the main trail from behind. The old road has orange placards with white diamonds. A few of these placards, as well as snowmobile disks, are interspersed with the red Department of Environmental Conservation trail markers along the main trail. Aside from the previously mentioned intersections, the trail runs in a relatively straight southwest direction to the summit and is easy to follow.\n\nAt 2 miles, the trail swings south and begins to ascend gradually and then more steeply at 2.3 miles. A seasonal stream flows on your left as you climb through sections of heavy erosion. You reach a crest in the trail at 2.7 miles. You have not yet reached the summit but are passing between two points along the mountain that resemble the horns of an owl. The trail dips down, less than 100 feet of elevation, into a small valley before climbing steeply to the summit. Before you make the final ascent, you pass by the former site of the cabin used by the fire tower's observer.\n\nAround the turn of the 20th century, forest fires swept the Adirondack region, and nearly 1 million acres of forest burned throughout the preserve. In response to this destruction, the state erected fire towers atop many peaks throughout the Adirondacks. The tasks of state-employed observers included locating and triangulating fires. On the side, they also provided innumerable hikers with information and conservation education. A wooden fire tower was erected on the peak of Owls Head around 1911. It was replaced by a steel tower in 1919 and closed in 1979. After restoration work was complete, it was reopened in 2004, and efforts are currently under way to continue maintenance of the tower.\n\nThe final climb to the summit passes over exposed portions of ledge and includes multiple small switchbacks. You will need to use both hands in several sections. The trail suddenly ends as you come through a thick stand of firs near the base of the steel fire tower. Multiple grassy patches threaded through the exposed portions of the summit (elevation: 2,812') make excellent picnic areas. A large slab of exposed rock juts out to the southwest, providing an outstanding lookout. For a 360-degree view of the area, you should climb the fire tower. The fence-enclosed stairs lead to a wooden platform covered by a steel cap typical of the fire towers still in use in the Adirondacks.\n\nOWLS HEAD FIRE TOWER\n\nOn your way up, you may have seen old utility poles alongside the trail. If not, they are more noticeable on your way back down. The two opposing \"branches\" on these poles also resemble owls' horns, making the name of this trail doubly apt.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the north intersection of NY 30 and NY 28N in Long Lake, head northwest on NY 30. In 1.3 miles turn left onto Endion Lane. Follow Endion Lane 1.6 miles, and look for the gravel pullout on the right.\n\n31\n\nCat Mountain\n\nGLASBY POND\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 07.989' W74\u00b0 54.915'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 9.7-mile out-and-back (from Wanakena) or 4.8-mile out-and-back (if boating to Janacks Landing)\n\nHIKING TIME: 5\u20136 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Scenic pond, beautiful vistas\n\nELEVATION: 1,502' at trailhead, 2,260' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Five Ponds Wilderness map: tinyurl.com\/5pondsmap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Five Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/34719.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nCat Mountain is a beautiful little peak that offers excellent views. Combined with the High Falls overnighter, it makes a nice side trip or an extended day trip on its own. To add a bit more adventure to the hike, you can boat in from Cranberry Lake to Janacks Landing and bypass roughly 5 miles of the round-trip hike.\n\nRoute Details\n\nHike in from the western terminus of the High Falls Loop in Wanakena or boat to Janacks Landing in the Dead Creek Flow arm of Cranberry Lake. The trail described here will be from Wanakena with a side note about boat access; boaters can pick up the trail and follow the description from the Janacks Landing intersection.\n\nThe trail and register are elevated a few feet above the spacious parking area on the southern edge. The trail begins heading east but quickly swings south along an abandoned logging road. The wide and flat roadbed, over relatively level terrain, allows for easy hiking for the first 2 miles. You will make quick time, except where flooding due to beaver activity inundates the trail. You will encounter several mires, as well as sections of knee-deep water. The nearly black, murky waters are deceptive: most of the time the water is less than 1 inch deep when it flows over the berms and beaver dams, but occasional breaks in dams and the soft mud underfoot can lead to drops of 1 foot or more, with little evidence provided by the placid waters. Hiking sticks act as probes in questionable spots and, as is the case at most trailheads, previous hikers typically leave decent sticks at the trail register.\n\nThe road, emblazoned with red disks, gently descends most of the way, and at approximately 1.5 miles, the waters of Dead Creek Flow become visible. The road closely follows the shoreline 0.4 mile, at which point you come across a large campsite. Boaters often use this and the other 46 designated primitive sites along the lakeshore. At this point, the road ends, and the trail becomes a typical Adirondack trail. It crosses Dead Creek at 2.3 miles and then swings around the bay of Dead Creek Flow and heads east 0.5 mile.\n\nAfter the short easterly jog along the trail, you intersect the Janacks Landing Trail. The trail is now heading nearly due south and gradually climbs to Sand Hill Junction. The climb is steady and crisscrosses a small stream in several places before reaching a junction at 3.6 miles. Straight ahead is the easterly leg of the High Falls Loop, while the Cat Mountain summit and Glasby Pond are to your left along the Cowhorn Junction Trail.\n\nThe trail, marked with yellow disks, climbs steadily along Glasby Creek past a few small cascades, and the rush of water on your right is a pleasant addition to the trail. After passing through a small, bramble-filled meadow, you come out on the western shores of Glasby Pond at 3.8 miles. The steep cliffs of Cat Mountain provide a striking view across the pristine waters. You will pass through a large campsite before weaving your way up and over a tiny hillock, after which the pondside trail becomes a continuous mire. The terrain grows steadily steeper as you head away from the pond, and you soon reach the final fork in the trail. The Cowhorn Junction Trail continues off to your right toward Cowhorn and Cat Mountain Ponds, marked by yellow disks; to reach the Cat Mountain summit, veer left and follow the red trail markers.\n\nThe next 0.6 mile to the summit is the steepest section, and the trail is a mix of short scrambles over bedrock and boulder-strewn steps. The hardwoods at the base of the mountain give way to windswept evergreens as you weave your way through small switchbacks. Paths on the left reach a few rocky outlooks. These offer nice views, but the best are available at the summit. The trail finally winds its way out onto the southern clifftops. You'll find a solar-powered weather station and the remnants of an old fire tower here at the trail end. Enjoy beautiful views on this portion of the cliffs, or search for better ones by dipping into the coppice of evergreens behind you and making your way along paths to the next section of the clifftop. The drop-off to the south is quite sheer, allowing spectacular views down to Cat Mountain Pond as well as Roundtop and Threemile Mountains along the horizon.\n\nA note about boat access: A public boat launch is located just off NY 3, on Columbian Road near Cranberry Lake's dam in the village of Cranberry Lake. The hard-surface launch can accommodate trailer launches and, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation, can fit 55 vehicles. Navigating from the launch site to Janacks Landing should not be too difficult if you follow the western shore into Dead Creek Flow Bay.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 3 and Youngs Road in Star Lake, head 6.1 miles east on NY 3, and then follow the directions below. From the intersection of NY 3 and Lone Pine Road in Cranberry Lake, head 8.3 miles west on NY 3, and follow the directions below.\n\nTurn southeast onto County Road 61\/Main Street. Bear right at 0.8 mile onto Main Street, which becomes South Shore Road; continue 0.5 mile and cross the steel bridge over the Oswegatchie River. After the bridge, go another 0.5 mile, and the parking area and trailhead are on the right.\n\n32\n\nHigh Falls\n\nHIGH FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 07.911' W74\u00b0 55.383'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 16.2-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: Overnight\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Isolated waterfall, numerous beaver dams, wetlands and ponds, winding-flat river, lakeside hiking, berry picking\n\nELEVATION: 1,490' at trailhead, 1,660' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Five Ponds Wilderness map: tinyurl.com\/5pondsmap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Old Forge\/Oswegatchie (#745)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Five Ponds Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/34719.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nWith a wide variety of habitats and mostly easy trekking, this is a great introductory backpacking trip. Beaver activity is practically everywhere, with several dam tops forming part of the trail, so don't expect to keep your feet dry for long. In midsummer, the abundance of blueberries practically turns foraging into hike-by food service.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking is available on either end of the loop, with roughly 0.5 mile of road in between. You will have to make the roadside trek either before or after your wilderness experience. With merely 0.5 mile and limited parking in each area, the use of two cars seems extravagant. My recommendation is to stow your pack at the trailhead on which you wish to start, park at the other trailhead, and walk back to your desired start. You can hike the trail in either direction: heading counterclockwise, High Falls is 9.0 miles; heading clockwise, it is 6.5 miles. You can add a side trip to Cat Mountain (described) to the clockwise approach or on the return, making the mileage on the eastern leg the same. I recommend camping at High Falls, but if time or weather forces you to camp early, designated riverside campsites (briefly described below) are located along the western leg, while camping along the eastern leg will require short bushwhacks to adhere to Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) wilderness camping regulations. Trail directions below are heading counterclockwise.\n\nFrom the western parking area, walk around the tennis court down the private road to a vehicle-barrier gate just past a residence on your right. The trail register is a little beyond the barrier and has a map of the area, including 46 designated campsites along the Oswegatchie River. Most of these sites are either across the river or require bushwhacking, so these are mainly used by canoeists and kayakers. The first mile of the trail is along a grass-covered gravel road, which provides access for municipal water. With the trail free of any obstructions, you will have the opportunity to look out for wildlife in the dammed section of Skate Creek on your left. A little more than 0.5 mile in, you will cross Skate Creek, and its wetland will sprawl off to your right. These broad, marshy areas are very common in the northern section of the Adirondacks and are often seen from the road but are not frequently traversable on foot.\n\nApproximately 1 mile in, the trail crosses a stream that feeds into Skate Creek and begins to climb as you plunge into a mixed hardwood forest. It would be hard to get lost along this wide-open road, but red DEC markers assure you that you are headed in the right direction. At 1.8 miles, you will come to a clearing where an overgrown road climbs to your left. In the past, numerous roads and paths headed more directly to the High Falls area, but the microburst windstorm of 1995 created so much blowdown that these trails have been abandoned. Beyond the clearing, ferns and other deciduous plants encroach on the trail, but its past use as a road is unmistakable, as it is broad, flat, and free of typical obstructions and is elevated above the surrounding terrain. The western half of the trail consists almost entirely of abandoned roads, which makes its 9.0 miles nearly equivalent in effort to the 6.5-mile hike along the eastern leg.\n\nAt 2.3 miles, the canopy opens, and another creek with a broad wetland sprawls out on your right. Despite being flanked by short evergreens, the trail is open to the sky. At this point, you have reached the plateau that the western leg traverses, and the rest of the way gently rolls along at this elevation. During the summer, the trailside will be thick with highbush blueberries.\n\nONE OF THE MANY AREAS THAT HAVE FLOODED DUE TO BEAVER ACTIVITY\n\nAt 3.8 miles, you reenter the hardwood forest and come to a fork in the trail. High Rock, which overlooks the Oswegatchie River, is 0.1 mile to your right. The boulder that provides an outlook across the meandering river is actually not very high. However, the plain through which the river cuts its veritable maze is so broad that you can see quite far. A popular campsite is also located here, so do not be surprised to see your first group of boaters. Though the Oswegatchie flows north to the west of the trail, this side trip will be your only opportunity to see it for several miles.\n\nHeading south, you walk over a stone-and-concrete bridge that spans a stream at 4.3 miles. At 5.3 miles, you encounter the first of many beaver dams that have created wide marshlands both up- and downstream. To cross this and future dammed sections, you will walk along the tops of the dams. Picking your way atop the dams is not difficult, but wet feet are inevitable. Aside from the wet areas created by the beaver dams, the trail is relatively level and easygoing along these old logging roads. Less than 1 mile ahead, mile 6.1, you traverse another dammed section, and then shortly after reenter the forest.\n\nIn 0.5 mile the trail meets the Oswegatchie, as well as the first of three easily accessible designated campsites along the river. The first site, with no number, is directly on the trail, while a short way ahead a path leads to site 28, which is masked by a stand of thick saplings. This site also has the advantage of sitting just above a small flume that adds interest to the mostly flat river.\n\nShortly after this brief encounter with the river, you head back into wetland territory along another stream and then back into the forest, where you reach a fork in the trail, 7.5 miles. Trail signs indicate that High Falls is 1.5 miles ahead, while the fork to the right takes you deep into the Five Ponds Wilderness. Shortly ahead, you enter an area where Glasby Creek and the Oswegatchie River meet. This confluence creates a broad wetland and meadow setting with beaver activity throughout. Yellow disks indicate a couple of designated campsites in the area, but their locations escaped me. Many of the designated campsites either were affected by the 1995 microburst storm or see little use because most people are headed to the High Falls lean-tos or campsites. After crossing a log-and-plank bridge, the trail climbs through a short section of stunted pines that gradually gives way to mixed hardwoods.\n\nAt mile 8.6 you reach an intersection; High Falls is 0.5 mile to the right, while it is 6.1 miles back to Wanakena along the eastern leg. Along the trail to High Falls, you will come upon an abandoned and heavily rusted piece of machinery. Its presence adds a quaint reminder that, not too long ago, this area was used by industry, but the wilderness quickly reestablishes itself and wipes out all but the most persistent traces of human activity. After a brief climb, you will hear High Falls and then come to designated campsite 16 and the confluence of several paths, 9.1 miles. The trail directly to the right is the canoe carry that bypasses the falls. A path slightly to your right leads to a boulder at the base of the falls. A path to the left leads to one of the pit toilets in the area. The path straight ahead leads to the start of the canoe carry, the top of the falls, and the lean-to on this side of the river. The falls are only 20 feet tall but are still excellent. The water bifurcates, forming a spray on the left and a rushing torrent on the right. The pool at the base is deep enough to swim in, and while I was there, a heron fishing for brown trout occupied it.\n\nThe return trip along the eastern leg is a sharp contrast to the easy hiking along the old logging roads of the western leg. However, it is no different from typical trails in the Adirondacks, except perhaps for the vast amount of beaver activity. Following blue DEC disks, head east from the junction with the western leg; total mileage before starting this leg is 9.6 miles. After picking your way up and over a hillock, where damage from the 1995 microburst storm is still evident, you reach a broad wetland in less than 0.5 mile. A large fallen pine tree forms a bridge over the stream, which should be carefully negotiated, especially when wet. The next 2.2 miles take you along the base of Threemile Mountain through myriad wetlands created by successive beaver dams. The mix of forest and open marshlands created by the beaver dams creates some very interesting scenery complemented by abundant opportunities to pick berries, including blueberries, raspberries, blackcaps, and blackberries, depending on the season.\n\nABANDONED MACHINERY ALONG HIGH FALLS TRAIL\n\nAt 12.2 miles you reach the intersection of the eastern leg, with Cowhorn Junction Trail on the right. This intersection is Sand Hill Junction, where a side trip up to Cat Mountain is highly recommended. Red DEC disks now mark the trail, and you will be heading generally north as the trail begins to descend. You will have to negotiate a few more wet areas before reaching a trail register at the intersection with Janacks Landing Trail. Less than 0.3 mile to the right is a lean-to and boat landing for hikers who wish to boat in and avoid the initial 2.8 miles of the hike along the eastern leg. The nearest boat launch is 7.8 miles away, as the crow flies, in the village of Cranberry Lake; the boat launch is off NY 3 near the dam. Most of the remaining hike is along old logging roads, so hiking in is likely the fastest and most direct approach.\n\nFrom the intersection, the trail veers west 0.5 mile, where it crosses Dead Creek Flow, which is the largest submerged bay of Cranberry Lake. The distinction may sound peculiar until you realize that this bay was previously the creekbed until Cranberry Lake was dammed in 1867. The hike around the western point of Dead Creek Flow adds yet another scenic element. After coming around the western point, you reach a large designated campground and the beginning of the old logging road, which will take you back to Wanakena. The road climbs with a gentle grade, and you will encounter a few more beaver-flooded areas before reaching the eastern parking area at 16.2 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 3 and Youngs Road in Star Lake, head 6.1 miles east on NY 3, and then follow the directions below. From the intersection of NY 3 and Lone Pine Road in Cranberry Lake, head 8.3 miles west on NY 3, and follow the directions below.\n\nTurn southeast onto County Road 61\/Main Street. Bear right at 0.8 mile onto Main Street, which becomes South Shore Road; continue 0.5 mile to cross the steel bridge over the Oswegatchie River. The western trailhead is accessed along a dirt road 0.1 mile past the bridge and on the right. The closest parking area to this trailhead is a little farther along South Shore Road, also on the right just past the tennis court. The eastern trailhead and its parking area are 0.5 mile past the bridge on the right side of the road.\n\n33\n\nLampson Falls and Grass River\n\nLAMPSON FALLS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 24.302' W75\u00b0 03.680'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 1.0-mile out-and-back to falls, 3.0-mile out-and-back including riverside trail\n\nHIKING TIME: 1\u20132 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Waterfall, riverside walk\n\nELEVATION: 820' at trailhead, 740' at lowest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Saranac\/Paul Smiths (#746)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes, on the section of the trail leading to the waterfall lookout\n\nCONTACTS: Northern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9196.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAs one of a few hikes with sections that are wheelchair accessible, this trail is ideal for families with limited mobility or who just prefer a trip that does not require constant weaving around obstacles. If you prefer obstacles, you can always extend your trip to include the riverside trail and a little extra bushwhacking downstream to explore some interesting cataracts and flumes. Lampson Falls is also a popular swimming spot during the summer, but if you continue along the riverside trail, you will find solitude.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking for the trailhead is parallel to County Road 27; two of the five designated spaces are reserved for handicapped parking, though an additional car or two could fit in behind the regular parking spaces. The trail begins at the southern end of the pullout, past a vehicle barrier. The trail is actually a crushed-gravel access road, which is why it is designated universally accessible. The trail register and a map of the trail system are located a little less than 0.3 mile past the vehicle barrier. The forest is a mixture of eastern white pines and hardwoods with a lush and thick understory of ferns. The terrain, befitting a wheelchair-accessible trail, is exceptionally flat, and you will hear the roar of the falls long before you reach the wheelchair-accessible viewing area. Follow the wide path through a series of switchbacks and numerous turning points, constructed out of landscape timbers and filled with gravel, to the viewing spot above the falls. From the top of the falls, it is easy to see why this is a popular attraction, as the Grass River cascades down over the exposed bedrock in a frothy torrent. From this vantage point, keep an eye out for the swifts that swoop and dive as they ride updrafts and feast on insects caught above the falls. To reach the base of the falls, you can choose any number of footpaths or scramble down the rocks, but the accessible portion of the trail ends here.\n\nAt the base of the falls is a sandy beach that is an obvious congregation point and an unfortunate reminder that not all people follow the Department of Environmental Conservation's carry-in, carry-out policy. This is an easy place to implement one of my preferred policies: carry in, carry one more out. From the sandy beach, you can scramble up a steep hillside to reach exposed portions of bedrock directly across from the waterfall. This is my favorite vantage point of the falls and is an excellent spot to stop and enjoy the view. Back among the tall pines is a designated camping area that includes the standard pit toilet but offers no views of the waterfall or river. Continue along the bedrock, across from the falls, to a rocky peninsula for another picnicking spot, as well as the beginning of the riverside trail.\n\nThe trail was in serious disrepair in 2009, with multiple areas of nearly impassable blowdown. However, Department of Environmental Conservation and volunteer trail crews clear blowdown regularly, so the trail may have been returned to a suitable condition, making it an easy riverside stroll. Marked with red disks, the trail is evidently rarely used, and thick overgrown vegetation on either side masks the conditions underfoot. Brambles are a significant part of the overgrowth, so gaiters are recommended during the summer. Additionally, numerous beaver-plunge holes are hidden by the dense overgrowth, so use caution when you cannot see your footing.\n\nACCESSIBLE TRAIL TO LAMPSON FALLS\n\nIn sharp contrast to the turbulent falls, the river seems almost placid, and its grass- and fern-lined banks make for a tranquil setting. At 1.5 miles the trail intersects an overgrown road to your right, and the remnants of a foundation are visible on both banks. Readers of the old trail guides will discover that the bridge connecting the two banks was washed out in 1998 and has not been replaced. The foundations sit on either side of a small flume, where the river narrows from dozens of feet to just a few feet. This is the formal end of the trail, which is unfortunate because several flumes, falls, and cataracts farther downstream add great interest to the trip. To see these spectacles, you will have to follow old footpaths and bushwhack a bit, but rest assured, other hikers have been here before, so the path is distinct most of the way. Over the next 0.3 mile, the placid waters transform into frothing cascades as the river drops quickly and the lush, wide banks constrict to rocky ledges. You will see multiple flumes and falls along the paths, but my favorite is where the river forks at a tiny, rocky island. The eastern fork drops vertically to form a narrow waterfall, after which the flow diminishes into slack water, while the western leg forms a frothing cataract. You can reach the island by crossing above the tiny waterfall or rock-hopping in the slack water. This section of the river coincides with the disappearance of the old footpaths and makes a good end for the river exploration.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 3 and Youngs Road in Star Lake, head 6.3 miles northwest along NY 3, and turn right onto CR 27\/CR 27A. Continue 0.8 mile, and turn right onto CR 27\/Degrasse-Fine Road heading north. Follow CR 27 north 7.8 miles, and turn right to stay on CR 27, now also known as Fine-Canton-Lisbon Road. Continue on CR 27 another 4.5 miles, passing the airstrip along the way. The parking area will be on your left.\n\n34\n\nFloodwood\n\nMIDDLE POND SEEN FROM FLOODWOOD ROAD\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 18.497' W74\u00b0 21.550'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 8.5-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Multiple ponds\n\nELEVATION: 1,590' at trailhead, with no significant rise along the trail\n\nACCESS: $8 day-use fee during camping season; free when camping at Fish Creek Pond\/Rollins Pond Campgrounds or with an Empire Passport. Campgrounds open mid-April\u2013late-October; check the Department of Environmental Conservation campground schedule for exact dates: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/7820.html.\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Saranac\/Paul Smiths (#746)\n\nFACILITIES: Restrooms, swimming beach, boat rentals when campgrounds are open\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Access is allowed and the day-use fee is waived during the off-season, but hikers will have to hike in along the access road from NY 30, which adds 0.8 mile to the trip. Campground roads are not plowed during the winter.\n\nCONTACTS: Fish Creek Pond Campground: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/24466.html; Northern Adirondacks trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9196.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAt first glance, this hike may seem long, but the gently rolling terrain makes it an easy and relatively quick hike. Winding through a hardwood forest, the trail leads you from one pristine pond to another, offering scenery and solitude the whole trip. Though the trail starts and ends in a bustling campground, it is likely that the only people you will encounter are canoeists at the numerous portages that crisscross the trail.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trailhead is slightly different from the other Adirondack trailheads in that access is through a campground, which includes a day-use fee of $8; no designated parking is located immediately nearby; and there is no trail register. The fee is waived if you are camping at either Fish Creek Pond or Rollins Pond Campgrounds; for a description of the latter, see Best Tent Camping: New York State. The parking areas closest to the trailhead are in the day-use area near the swimming beach (go left after the registration booth) or near the basketball courts, the recreation area, and campsite 50, past the boat launch area (go right after the registration booth). Make sure to grab a campground map, as it makes finding the trailhead easier and includes a trail map.\n\nThe trailhead is located on the access road for Fish Creek Pond campsites C1\u2013C7. While walking up the road, you will see red Department of Environmental Conservation snowmobile trail markers and will come upon two log stumps that act as vehicle barriers on your right. You can begin here or farther up the road, near campsite C7. The trail description included here is from the vehicle barrier heading north along the eastern leg and returning south along the western leg. There is little difference heading clockwise or counterclockwise, though if you plan to walk only one leg of the trip, then I would choose the western leg, as it is in better shape and a flooded area on the eastern leg may seem impassable.\n\nThe trail winds north under a canopy of tall pines as well as multiple species of birch, and within a few hundred yards you will catch glimpses of Echo Pond. Dense pine saplings quickly dampen the noise from the campground, and you feel removed and remote. Another element you will notice is that the trail is basically flat, and your pace will be closer to walking along a sidewalk than hiking. Trail markers switch between snowmobile and foot-trail disks, but the path is so distinct that very little marking is necessary. You will catch glimpses of the much larger Follensby Clear Pond to your right and quickly come to a distinct intersection at mile 0.7. The east\u2013west trail that bisects the hiking trail is the first of several canoe carries and provides a portage from Fish Creek Pond to Follensby Clear Pond. You will cross this portage again on the return trip, but for now it provides a convenient way to get an up close view of the pond to the west. The more heavily trodden canoe carry reveals that canoeing is the dominant activity in the area, which provides the hiker a bit more solitude on the trail.\n\nContinuing straight ahead, you will notice that the hemlocks and birches are quite large and tower overhead. Deep views into the forest contrast with limited views out onto the bodies of water, as hemlock saplings crowd the shorelines. You first encounter Horseshoe Pond and walk along its edge through thicker hemlocks 1 mile from the start. At 1.4 miles, you come to a large moss-covered, mucky area that is the beginning of a spruce swamp bisected by the trail. At 1.8 miles it may seem like you are coming up on another pond, but it is the opposite leg of Horseshoe Pond. The shore is distinctly more visible to your right as you head more directly north. At 2.3 miles, you come to the outlet of Little Polliwog Pond as it empties into Horseshoe Pond. A sign warns that the bridge is out; indeed, the bridge has fallen apart, though remnants of rickety boards laid on logs provide a zigzag crossing. On the other side, the trail briefly shares the canoe carry between Little Polliwog and Horseshoe Ponds. At mile 2.9 you come across the canoe carry between Little Polliwog and Polliwog Ponds through a stand of hemlocks.\n\nAround 3 miles you arrive at a broad, flooded section of the trail created by a recently constructed beaver dam. At this point your options for crossing the flooded section are limited. Crossing on top of the dam will likely be your driest option, but don't count on having dry feet afterward. The trail on the other side is less clear and is overgrown, and trail markers seemed to be missing when I was there. However, though the trail appears to be more of a herd path, it does continue through a couple of muddy areas, and red trail markers are visible again in less than 0.3 mile. You pass by another bay of Polliwog Pond at 3.2 miles, and at 3.4 miles you come to a T in the path. Signs indicate that the snowmobile trail continues to your left. The path joining the trail from your right is the canoe carry between Polliwog Pond and Middle Pond. Head west (left) along the combined trail and portage less than 0.3 mile, where the portage continues straight and the trail veers right toward Floodwood Road. Less than 0.1 mile ahead is Floodwood Road, which you will follow 1 mile west to pick up the western leg of the loop. It might seem odd to include a road with a trail, but the road is actually a pleasant variation on the trip. This seldom-used dirt road passes within feet of Middle Pond, and because it is free of roots and other obstructions, you can spend the mile looking out on the placid waters of the pond. You will pass one of several designated primitive campsites along the road.\n\nWOOD PALLETS ACROSS AN INLET OF FLOODWOOD POND SERVE AS A BRIDGE.\n\nAt 4.7 miles you pick the trail up again and head back into the woods along a ridge that sits above Middle Pond. In less than 0.3 mile the trail heads east, and you cross a log bridge. You will have left the shores of Middle Pond by now, but you have another chance to return to its shores at 5.1 miles, when you arrive at a fork in the trail. Continuing south along the trail, you catch glimpses of Floodwood Pond just before you reach yet another fork; the path ahead leads to the pond's shores, while the trail continues on your left. Pallets laid in pairs form a bridge across a stream, the outlet of Middle Pond into Floodwood Pond, at 5.4 miles. Shortly after the crossing, you come back to Floodwood Pond and stroll along its shores for the next 0.5 mile. At 6 miles, you pass through a designated campsite near where Floodwood Pond flows into a creek. Take a left at the campsite, and briefly head west, where you reach another fork in the trail. To the right are Floodwood Passage Bridge and Otter Hollow Trail; these take you back to the campgrounds, while the Floodwood Trail continues straight ahead beside the creek. Follow the Floodwood Trail as it climbs slightly alongside the creek and then descends around 6.5 miles to another designated campsite. These designated campsites are used by canoeists and kayakers, but if they are vacant, their picnic tables make an excellent spot to stop, sit, and enjoy the scenery. The trail turns left at the campsite and continues along the shore of Little Square Pond through a couple more designated campsites.\n\nThe trail continues southeast along Little Square Pond as it transitions into Fish Creek Pond. From this point on, the trail delves deeper into the forest, and views of the water are limited to occasional glimpses. At mile 8 you pass the first canoe carry you encountered near the beginning and quickly come to the end of the trail at campsite C7.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom Tupper Lake, head east on NY 3\/NY 30. At 5.3 miles, turn left to stay on NY 30. After another 5.4 miles, turn left at the main entrance to the Fish Creek Pond and Rollins Pond Campgrounds. You will have to pay a day-use fee of $8 unless you are camping at either campground. The main parking area is to the left of the registration booth. The trailhead is along the access road to campsites C1\u2013C7.\n\n35\n\nSaint Regis Mountain\n\nTRAIL REGISTER FOR SAINT REGIS MOUNTAIN TRAIL\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 25.826' W74\u00b0 17.950'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 6.7-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, fire tower\n\nELEVATION: 1,622' at trailhead, 2,874' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Saranac\/Paul Smiths (#746)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Northern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9196.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nBest known for its mostly flat terrain, the northern section of the Adirondacks has many excellent extended canoe trips. Most notable is the Saint Regis Canoe Area. However, looming over this area of hundreds of ponds, lakes, and interconnected waterways is Saint Regis Mountain. For a truly majestic view, its summit is unsurpassed.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe actual trailhead is a short distance south of the large and well-maintained parking area. From the parking area, no signs point you to the trail. To reach it, head south down Topridge Road across the Saint Regis River, whose rushing waters you probably noticed as soon as you parked. Approximately 0.1 mile down the road, you will see the trail register just off to the right. Next to the register is a finely built log-and-plank bridge that is indicative of ongoing work to maintain the trail. Indeed, the presence of so many mucky areas, despite the amount of maintenance, shows how popular this trail is. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) constructed the bridge when it rerouted the trail in 1999, but forestry students from Paul Smith's College and stewards have done much of the work evident throughout. Anyone wishing for solitude atop the mountain would be wise to follow a few rules of thumb: First, hike during the week rather than on weekends, and especially avoid holiday weekends. Second, hike when school is in session. Last, start earlier, which usually ensures you some time to yourself at the peak and other destinations where hikers typically congregate.\n\nThe trail, marked with red disks, follows generally rolling terrain through mature hardwoods dotted with large hemlocks. Approximately 0.3 mile in, you will pass a sheer rock face covered in moss and ferns. This adds some variation to the hike, but the dominant feature before the summit is the deep forest. At 1 mile, you will walk over a small hillock heavily shaded by hemlocks and then descend briefly back into the mixed hardwood forest. The trail becomes very straight and begins to climb afterward, but the grade is gradual and almost difficult to notice. You pass an orange-painted pipe surrounded by stones on the left at 1.7 miles; this is approximately the halfway point of the trail. After a slight descent around mile 2.1, you come to a fork and a bridge that crosses a small stream. The trail to your left is the old trail that is no longer maintained.\n\nOnce you cross the bridge, the ascent to the summit truly begins. Gradual at first, it becomes much steeper as you near the summit. The stream you crossed flows on your right as you climb and occasionally flows over the trail nearer the summit. Stone steps built along the trail help prevent further erosion, but long sections of muddy areas become inevitable. Indeed, the trail has been worn into a rut more than a foot deep. Estimating how far along the trail these mires are is futile, as one slick seems to grow larger than the previous one, and you quickly lose track of how many you cross. At 2.9 miles, you pass a vertical rock face almost entirely covered in moss. Another distinct landmark is at mile 3.1, where you pass a large balancing rock on your left and another boulder directly to your right. Passage between these boulders is essentially the last portion of steep climbing, and the final elevation gains are over flatter portions. Winding around the contours of the peak, the trail is shaded by mostly paper birches with an occasional mountain ash. Keep an eye out on your right for a lookout, which offers good panoramic views and a glimpse of the fire tower.\n\nAt the summit, you have 360-degree views of the myriad lakes and ponds nestled among forested hills and small mountains within the immediate vicinity, with the High Peaks towering off to the south. The fire tower has gone through renovation by the DEC, Student Conservation Association Adirondack AmeriCorps Program, and Friends of St. Regis Mountain Fire Tower. The restoration of the fire tower is complete, and the tower is now publicly accessible. Its location in a canoe area had been a much-debated issue. The DEC Master Plan calls for the removal of fire towers from wild forest areas, which include canoe areas, but revisions and conflicts with the New York Historic Preservation Act of 1980 complicate the matter. Many groups have formed to protect and restore fire towers on this and other peaks, claiming that fire towers are part of the region's history and that their stewards were instrumental in educating the public and helping to protect and preserve the wilderness.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom Tupper Lake, head east on NY 3\/NY 30. Turn left to stay on NY 30 at 5.3 miles. At 14.2 more miles turn left again to stay on NY 30. Turn left onto Keeses Mill Road at 6.9 miles. The DEC parking area is 2.6 miles ahead on the left.\n\n36\n\nDebar Mountain\n\nSCENE ATOP DEBAR MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 34.639' W74\u00b0 16.735'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 8.8-mile out-and-back, 7.4-mile out-and-back from trailhead parking area (seasonal)\n\nHIKING TIME: 4.5\u20135.5 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, Bald Peak, old foundation\n\nELEVATION: 1,564' at trailhead, 3,305' at Debar Mountain peak\n\nACCESS: $8 day-use fee during camping season; free when camping at Meacham Lake Campground or with an Empire Passport. Campground open mid-May\u2013mid-October; check the Department of Environmental Conservation campground schedule for exact dates: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/7820.html.\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Saranac\/Paul Smiths (#746)\n\nFACILITIES: Restrooms, swimming beach, boat rentals when campgrounds are open\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Access is allowed and the day-use fee is waived during the off-season, but you will have to hike in along the access road from NY 30, which adds 2 miles to the trip. Campground roads are not plowed during the winter. The final 0.25-mile section to the peak will likely require crampons and an ice ax in winter.\n\nCONTACTS: Meacham Lake Campground: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/24481.html; Northern Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9196.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nLike many peak trails in the Adirondacks, this trail begins along level terrain but quickly steepens as you approach the summit. Near the peak, the trail is particularly steep\u2014near vertical in some sections\u2014and will require use of your hands in some sections. But the climb is worth it, and you will be rewarded with a sprawling panorama of the Northern Adirondacks.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe first decision you will have to make is whether to park in the public parking area located near the beach or at the trailhead parking area, via the access road. The distance from the public parking area to the end of the access road is roughly 0.7 mile, so parking at its end will reduce the trip by about a 1.4 miles overall. The road is in good condition, so most vehicles with have little trouble along the flat drive. But it is a seasonal road and may be closed, so plan your trip to include the access road just in case. Directions and mileage given here include the access road.\n\nFrom the parking area in front of the Meacham Lake Recreation Field (near campsites 45\u201347), head north away from the beach to the main campsite road. Follow this road east a short distance, and take the first left, near campsite 48. Continue north along the road past campsite 37 to a vehicle-barrier gate and the start of the access road; signs indicate this is the trail to Debar. The access road is flat and wide and meanders north another 0.5 mile to the trailhead, second parking area, and trail register.\n\nThe second parking area is a large pulloff on the north side of the road, a short distance before another vehicle-barrier gate and the trail register. Past the barrier gate, the trail still follows an old road, but its closure to regular vehicle traffic has allowed nature to encroach back on the road, transforming the route into a nice broad footpath. With a sandy base and moss- and grass-lined shoulders, the path is quite an easy and pleasant stroll following a mostly level course. The trail weaves between a single- and doubletrack, and two hikers could walk side by side much of the way. You will cross a mossy brook, a tributary to Winnebago Brook, a little over 0.75 mile past the trail register. Less than 0.25 mile farther, 1.6 miles overall, is the intersection with the main trail to Debar Mountain on your left. Straight ahead, the Debar Game Management Trail continues past Debar Meadows, 5 miles, to County Road 26, 6.3 miles.\n\nTurn left (north) onto the main Debar Mountain trail. The trail is sporadically marked with red and yellow trail disks, but they are so infrequent that they are not as reliable as the path worn by the many previous hikers. The trail narrows from here forward, with the grade growing steadily steeper as you begin the 1,700-foot ascent to the peak. The first ascent (roughly 700 feet over the next 1.5 miles) culminates at the saddle between Black Peak to the north and an unnamed knob to the south. Along the first part of this ascent, you will pass a log-and-plank bridge over a seasonal stream, shortly followed by a large, square boulder that interrupts the trail about three-quarters of the way up. At the saddle, the trail levels off and then dips down to cross Hays Brook, after which the climbing begins again.\n\nFrom the brook crossing, another 1.1 miles and roughly 1,000 feet of ascent remain. In less than 0.25 mile, pass the Debar Mountain Lean-To on the left. A little over 0.1 mile ahead, pass through a clearing along the trail. Look to your right and you will find the remains of the fire tower cabin foundation.\n\nTHE DEBAR MOUNTAIN LEAN-TO MAKES A GREAT REST STOP.\n\nPast the clearing, the grade begins to steepen even more, and you may find you need your hands to negotiate some of the steeper sections. A half mile later and 650 feet higher, you reach a recent slide that looms over the trail, 4.1 miles overall. At first glance it appears that the trail passes beneath this imposing and nearly vertical outcrop of rock, but the trail actually ascends to its left. If you didn't need to use your hands to assist your climb before, you surely will now. Water flows freely through the vertical jumble of rocks and roots, making choosing your footing especially tricky at times. In winter this portion may be impassable for those who did not bring crampons or an ice ax. (Remember, winter in the Adirondacks can start as early as late September and continue into early May.) It is another 0.25 mile and roughly 200 feet to the peak.\n\nThe trail levels off briefly before you reach the actual summit. There may be a bit of confusion as to how to best reach it as dense spruce surrounds the bald peak. You can either scramble up a short rock face on the left or continue onto the north side of the peak and double back, pushing your way through the dense evergreens. Either way, what awaits is a sprawling panorama of the Northern Adirondacks. From the peak, you are looking back southwest onto Meacham Lake and Clear Pond and can practically trace the path you traversed. Also atop the bald peak are the remains of the old fire tower foundation and anchor points. Return the way you came, taking your time descending the vertical portions for a round-trip of 8.8 miles.\n\nA GNARLY TREE ON THE WAY TO THE SUMMIT\n\nDirections\n\nFrom Tupper Lake, head east on NY 3\/NY 30. At 5.3 miles, turn left to head north on NY 30. After 14.2 more miles turn left to remain on NY 30. Follow NY 30 another 18.5 miles north, and the entrance to the Meacham Lake State Campground will be on the right. Follow Meacham Road to the campground entrance, 0.6 mile, and turn left. Continue another 0.5 mile to the main parking area, a short distance east past the registration both.\n\nHigh Peaks\n\nAUSABLE LAKE SEEN FROM FISH HAWK CLIFFS (Trail 38, Ausable River: East River Trail)\n\n 37 AUSABLE RIVER: WEST RIVER TRAIL\n\n 38 AUSABLE RIVER: EAST RIVER TRAIL\n\n 39 GIANT'S NUBBLE\n\n 40 HANGING SPEAR FALLS AND OPALESCENT RIVER\n\n 41 INDIAN PASS\n\n 42 ALGONQUIN PEAK\n\n 43 AVALANCHE PASS\n\n 44 LITTLE AND BIG CROW MOUNTAINS\n\n 45 PITCHOFF MOUNTAIN\n\n 46 AMPERSAND MOUNTAIN\n\n37\n\nAusable River: West River Trail\n\nADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN RESERVE GATES\n\nSCENERY:\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Parking area: N44\u00b0 08.986' W73\u00b0 46.075' Trailhead: N44\u00b0 08.992' W73\u00b0 46.843'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 10.8-mile out-and-back or 9.7-mile loop if combined with Ausable River: East River Trail\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours one-way\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular waterfalls, scenic lookout, riverside stroll\n\nELEVATION: 1,266' at trailhead, 2,493' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required. Guests must register at the gatehouse.\n\nMAPS: Adirondack Mountain Reserve map: tinyurl.com\/adkmtnreserve; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: This trail is on private property, but access to the public is granted through an easement. However, special rules apply; these are briefly described on the following pages and available on the Department of Environmental Conservation website (below).\n\nCONTACTS: Adirondack Mountain Reserve: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/100916.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe East Branch of Ausable (pronounced \"aw-say-bull\") River is a smorgasbord of waterfalls. From mossy cascades and powerful flumes to misty veils and thunderous sheer drops, the variety and multitude of waterfalls make this an ideal hike for waterfall lovers. The hike is rich with scenic lookouts and riverside strolling\u2014overall an excellent excursion.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe trail lies entirely within the property lines of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR), so hikers should be aware of several restrictions. The rules are strictly enforced and posted when entering the property. The main restrictions are that pets are not allowed, and no firearms, camping, hunting, fishing, swimming, or boating is allowed. Additionally, off-trail travel, bushwhacking, and rock climbing are prohibited. Despite the restrictions, one major advantage of the trail's being on private property is its superb condition. There are few muddy areas, trails are clear of blowdown, and bridges are all in great condition. Parking is approximately 0.7 mile from the trailhead and register but is included in the mileage given.\n\nThe large parking area near NY 73 can accommodate dozens of cars, so finding a spot should be straightforward. Head west along Ausa\u00adble Club Road. At a little more than 0.1 mile, you pass the trailhead for Round and Dix Mountains. Roughly 0.3 mile later, you pass a second trailhead junction, Stimson Trail, as well as a golf course. Just past the tennis courts, you will see a large lime-green building and reach Lake Road at 0.6 mile. Turn left down the road, and head past several small cabins to the AMR trail register. All hikers must sign in and out at the register. Continue down the road past the ornate wooden gate. A gabled arch, constructed from round and irregular logs and branches, vaults the gate, which is constructed similarly and has AMR built into its center. The gate was reconstructed in 1986 as part of the AMR's centennial observances and is a replica of the original.\n\nShortly after the gate, you pass Ladies Mile Trail, which, if you want to get off the club's road sooner, also leads to West River Trail. A second intersection with Ladies Mile Trail is 0.3 mile past the gate, 1 mile total. This junction connects to West River Trail directly, but yards ahead is a junction with East River Trail (an alternate way to reach West River Trail) and likely your return trip if you make the complete loop. Cross the wooden plank bridge, and head 0.3 mile west to another trail junction. Straight ahead are East River Trail and the path back to Lake Road, while Bear Run, Cathedral Rocks, and West River Trails are off to the right. Cross the bridge over the East Branch of Ausable River, and turn left onto the trail. West River Trail, marked with yellow markers, heads west, while Bear Run and Cathedral Rocks Trails, marked in red, head north.\n\nThe trail heads west under towering hemlocks and climbs gradually above the river gorge. At times you hike close to the river, but you veer away into the surrounding forest over many sections. Grades are gentle, and at 1.7 miles, you cross Pyramid Brook, after which the trail heads back toward the river. At 1.8 miles, you reconnect with Bear Run, Cathedral Rocks, and Pyramid Brook Trails. Approximately 0.1 mile ahead, you reach another junction and a green trail sign indicating East River Trail, Lake Road, and Canyon Bridge to your left; West River Trail and Wolfjaw straight ahead; and Bear Run, Cathedral Rocks, and West River Trails back the way you came. The trail climbs a bit past this intersection, and the drop down to the river is significant at this point. You can see small cascades and flumes along the river, and the roaring of the water drowns out most sounds. The sounds and views decrease as you climb away from the river for the next 0.5 mile, but you soon return; at 2.4 miles you come across a lookout to a waterfall along the river. This lookout is to the left of the trail, and there is a precipitous drop, so take care while viewing the waterfall. Shortly after, the trail swings north to follow a feeder brook, Wedge Brook, a short distance and then crosses the brook over a bridge. The bridge spans the brook between two waterfalls. The lower is really a small cascade, and the second is a small waterfall that branches around a large rock and tumbles into a pool above the bridge. On the other side is Wedge Brook Trail to Lower Wolfjaw, and a sign indicates that the Wedge Brook Cascades are a couple hundred yards away. A short climb along this trail reveals a series of small cascades that weave their way down mossy crevices in the rock to the small pool below.\n\nBack along the main trail, you reach the river in less than 0.3 mile, and you will notice that it is now surging through tight flumes and small cascades at many points. At 2.9 miles, you see another waterfall, which is approximately 25 feet high, with a very powerful surge of water that spurts out nearly horizontally as the river is restricted to a few feet through the narrow gorge. Occasional vantage points are available, but take care when trying to view this fall, as the river gorge is very steep and treacherous. After this waterfall, the river levels off and spreads out among the boulders, but many tiny falls and cascades remain throughout.\n\nAt 3.3 miles, the trail reaches a small brook and turns north, almost immediately after which you reach Beaver Meadow Falls. Unlike the last falls, which fell in a powerful surge, Beaver Meadow Falls is almost like a light rain or mist. Often referred to as a bridal-veil falls, Beaver Meadow Falls is about 60 feet high. A bridge that spans the brook provides a great place to admire and photograph the falls.\n\nBEAVER MEADOW FALLS\n\nWest River Trail continues along the river west through some marshy sections and slow-flowing waters that add variety and interest. However, a side trip along Lost Lookout Trail provides an inspiring view of Lower Ausable Lake and a particularly interesting view of Rainbow Falls.\n\nTo reach the Lost Lookout Trail, climb the log ladder on the other side of Beaver Meadow Falls. As you climb alongside Beaver Meadow Falls, you can see its entirety. The trail, marked in blue, leads to Gothics and Armstrong Mountains and climbs fairly steeply. You quickly reach the Lost Lookout fork on your left, which is marked in red disks and is 0.2 mile from Beaver Meadow Falls, 3.5 miles from the start. The trail climbs steadily through the beech-and-maple forest another 0.3 mile, where you reach the first of two lookouts. You can see Lower Ausable Lake, Indian Head, and Fish Hawk Cliffs nearby, as well as Bear Den, Dial, and Nippletop Mountains, among other peaks to the south. The second lookout is nearby and offers the same views after you traverse a short but steep descent. The trail continues southwest and descends for the next 0.8 mile. You will begin to hear the deep roar of Rainbow Falls and soon glimpse the 150-foot waterfall. Extremely sheer drop-offs are beside the trail, so do not attempt to climb down to get to the falls from here. A separate trail farther ahead brings you to the base of Rainbow Falls. The trail winds down steeply for the next 0.3 mile, after which you reach the intersection with West River Trail. The trail, marked in yellow, quickly leads to a dam that marks the end of Lower Ausable Lake and the head of the East Branch of Ausable River. After crossing Cascade Brook, you reach a long log-and-plank bridge that crosses the river below this dam and leads to East River Trail, as well as Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs on the left. A trail to the right leads to Sawteeth and Gothics Mountains, as well as Rainbow Falls. You will return to this point, 4.9 miles from the start, so that you can head back along East River Trail.\n\nBefore returning, take the blue-marked trail to the right to see these spectacular falls, less than 0.3 mile away. Shortly after beginning along the blue trail, you reach a fork with a yellow-marked trail that indicates Sawteeth Mountain (via the scenic route) on the left and Gothics Mountain, Sawteeth Mountain (presumably along a hideous stretch of trail), and Rainbow Falls off to the right on the blue trail. A few hundred feet later, the trail to Gothics and the others, marked in blue, diverges to the left, while the path to the falls continues to your right but is now marked sporadically in red. You will pass several pipes, both plastic and steel, as you weave your way through boulders to the base of the sheer cliffs that form the falls. A sheer rock wall forms on your left as you work your way up alongside Cascade Brook to the base of Rainbow Falls. The canyon formed by the sheer rock walls amplifies the thundering of the falls as the water drops 150 feet. Mist sprayed on the opposite wall provides a haven for moss, while the water has scoured clean the rock wall on the waterfall side. The contrast of verdant green and jet black on the opposing walls is a unique scene that invites lingering. Head back to the dam to reach East River Trail as well as the spectacular views from Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 30 for US 9, and head north. Go 2.2 miles on US 9, and make a slight left onto NY 73. In 5.4 miles look for Ausable Club Road on your left just after descending a steep hill.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 9N and NY 73, head southeast on NY 73. In 6.1 miles, Ausable Club Road is on your right, directly across from the Giant Mountain parking area, described. The parking area is almost immediately on your left after you turn onto Ausable Club Road.\n\n38\n\nAusable River: East River Trail\n\nSIGN AT BULLOCK DAM\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Parking area: N44\u00b0 08.986' W73\u00b0 46.075' Trailhead: N44\u00b0 08.992' W73\u00b0 46.843'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 9.7-mile loop if combined with Ausable River: West River Trail (see page 254), or 8.6-mile out-and-back, plus 1.6-mile out-and-back side trip to Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours one-way\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Scenic views, dramatic cliffs, spectacular waterfall, riverside stroll\n\nELEVATION: 1,960' at trailhead, 2,657' at highest point (on side trip)\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required. Guests must register at the gatehouse.\n\nMAPS: Adirondack Mountain Reserve map: tinyurl.com\/adkmtnreserve; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: This trail is on private property, but access to the public is granted through an easement. However, special rules apply; these are briefly described on the following pages and available on the Department of Environmental Conservation website (below).\n\nCONTACTS: Adirondack Mountain Reserve: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/100916.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nEast River Trail is the return leg of a loop along the East Branch of Ausable (pronounced \"aw-say-bull\") River. This section has fewer waterfalls, but it does include a side trip to Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs, which have impressive views and dramatic scenery of their own.\n\nRoute Details\n\nYou can hike the east section of Ausable River on its own, but I found it to be an excellent return trip for West River Trail (described on page 254). A side trip to Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs reveals amazing views and is well worth the extra 1.6 miles. Directions back to the parking area along NY 73 and for the side trip are given from the end of West River Trail.\n\nFrom the intersection of West River Trail with the trail that leads to Sawteeth and Gothics Mountains and Rainbow Falls, proceed east across the long bridge. On the other side of Ausable River, you intersect East River Trail to your left and a path to your right that heads uphill to Lake Road, as well as the trail to Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs. Mileage given is from this point and does not include the total loop or the side trip to the cliffs.\n\nIndian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs\n\nAs you head uphill, you pass a maintenance building on your left and, shortly after, reach Lake Road. The road continues downhill to your right to where Adirondack Mountain Reserve (AMR) members have access to the Ausable Lakes. Hikers are prohibited from entering this area, so be mindful and keep on the designated trails. Head a short distance east along the road, and look for the trailhead on your right. The trail is marked with yellow disks, and you quickly reach what appears to be a fork in the trail. However, the trail on the right leads to an AMR boathouse and is private, so keep left. The trail has several switchbacks that make the ascent a little more enjoyable than the typical rocky and straight scrambles to the top found on most Adirondacks trails. However, the trail is still considered steep, and several ladders have been built where short vertical sections over mossy and slick ledges would otherwise be difficult.\n\nApproximately 0.3 mile in, you reach a fork in the trail and a sign indicating Gothics Window\u2014117 feet to your right. The \"window\" is a slightly obscured view through the trees to the exposed portions of the Gothics. Though it's interesting, saplings threaten to engulf the view, and more-impressive vistas are found farther along the trail. The side trip doesn't take long, though, so you will probably find it worth the diversion.\n\nYou reach the first of the ladders shortly after this fork, and the zigzags become tight and more frequent. After climbing several ladders and switchbacks, the trail levels off briefly under the base of a mossy cliff that adds a neat feature along the trail. Views of the Gothics are more prominent now, and the trail, though steep, has fewer turns in it.\n\nAt 0.8 mile, you reach the crest of the ridge and a four-way intersection. To the left is Gill Brook Trail, straight ahead and down leads to Fish Hawk Cliffs, and to the right is the trail to Indian Head. Thick evergreens now encompass the trail, and you briefly traverse the spine of this ridge before coming out on the exposed portions of the cliff that make up Indian Head. Spectacular views open up all around you, and you will quickly snap a dozen pictures. Rugged peaks with sheer cliffs fill the panorama to the north and west, but the most stunning views are of Lower Ausable Lake cradled between Colvin and Sawteeth Mountains. Continue along the exposed portion of bedrock along worn footpaths to a second, lower tier for a slightly different vantage point of the same spectacular view.\n\nDAM AT AUSABLE LAKE\n\nTo reach Fish Hawk Cliffs, go back to the four-way intersection, and head down the trail, which is now on your right. The descent is steep and takes you down 160 feet into a col (saddle) near a pool called Wizard's Washbowl. Shortly ahead, 0.3 mile from the four-way intersection, you reach the cliffs, from which you have the interesting perspective of looking back upon Indian Head. To return, go back to the four-way intersection and straight down to Lake Road and then East River Trail.\n\nEast River Trail\n\nEast River Trail has fewer waterfalls than the west one but has its own unique character and elements that make it a great return trip. The trail meanders along the river briefly and then diverges east into the surrounding woods. Approximately 0.3 mile from the bridge, you navigate through a jumble of boulders that lie at the base of a cliff on your right. Shortly after, you pass Bullock Dam on your left. After the dam, the river levels off and flows through a grassy meadow. On the opposite shore, you see exposed cliffs and many views of the mountains to the west.\n\nJust shy of a mile, you reach a fork in the trail; Beaver Meadow and the Gothics are to your left over a bridge and marked in blue, while East River Trail and the road, marked in red, continue straight ahead. Almost immediately after this intersection, you reach yet another fork, with East River Trail continuing straight ahead, and the road to your right.\n\nThe trail delves into tall and thick hemlocks, and you soon reach a beautiful waterfall along the river. You might remember seeing this more-than-20-foot-high waterfall and its constricted flume from the opposite shore. However, on this shore there are far better points from which to view the falls and its washed-out spillway. You are now high above the river canyon, and this is one of the last places to view the river. Farther on, you hear the rumble of the turbulent waters but will only have glimpses of the river from afar, as the trail winds its way back down to the gatehouse.\n\nThe trail becomes steep in a few sections but levels off about 2.5 miles from the start. Gill Brook joins you on your right, and shortly after this you will cross the brook over a bridge built from two sturdy beams. Soon after the bridge, you rejoin Ausable River as it flows northeast, and the trail follows the river 0.3 mile. At 3.1 miles, you reach another fork. Straight ahead is a bridge to West River Trail, while to your right is East River Trail and the path back to the road. In 0.1 mile, you will come in sight of the road. Follow it back to the gatehouse to sign out and then back to the parking area by NY 73, completing a trip of 4.3 miles from the bridge at Lower Ausable Lake, 10 miles to complete the loop, and a total of 11.6 miles, including the side trip.\n\nDirections\n\nThe East River Trail begins at the end of the West River Trail, so the parking area is the same.\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 30 for US 9, and head north. Go 2.2 miles on US 9, and make a slight left onto NY 73. In 5.4 miles look for Ausa\u00adble Club Road on your left just after descending a steep hill.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 9N and NY 73, head southeast on NY 73. In 6.1 miles, Ausable Club Road is on your right, directly across from the Giant Mountain parking area, described on page 276. The parking area is almost immediately on your left after you turn onto Ausable Club Road.\n\n39\n\nGiant's Nubble\n\nGIANT'S WASHBOWL SEEN ALONG DESCENT\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 09.026' W73\u00b0 46.027'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.4-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular waterfall, primitive campsites, outstanding views\n\nELEVATION: 1,307' at trailhead, 2,750' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Giant Mountain Wilderness map: tinyurl.com\/giantwildernessmap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: Giant Mountain Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/100750.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThis trip combines a tall waterfall, scenic outlook, and picturesque pond within a very short distance. Don't let the distance or description fool you though; the rugged trail provides you with plenty of climbing, along with the majestic scenery associated with the High Peaks region.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe asphalt parking area is tucked away on your right as you come down a steep hill along NY 73, so watch the odometer and be ready to make a sharp right. The parking area can easily accommodate a dozen cars, but if it's full, there is room on the shoulder of NY 73 or across the road in the Ausable River parking area.\n\nThe register and trailhead are at the eastern end of the lot.\n\nThe trail is broad and flat, and you can just barely glimpse Roaring Brook through hardwoods off to the right. During the peak of summer, the brook runs dry and indicates that the falls ahead may not be as majestic as during rainy conditions or during the winter melt. About 0.1 mile in, you reach a fork in the trail. To the right is the trail to the base of Roaring Brook Falls, while to the left the trail climbs to the top of the falls, Giant's Nubble, Giant's Washbowl, and Giant Mountain.\n\nThe Base of Roaring Brook Falls\n\nContinue to the right past the sheer rock wall on your left until you reach Roaring Brook. Straight across the brook are four designated campsites. These sprawling sites lie under a thick canopy of tall hemlocks, and each has a large stone fire pit. They are shielded from view of the falls by a steep hill to the north but are fairly close to another stream, the outflow of Chapel Pond. The sound of the stream and the thundering of the falls will likely drown out the sound of the road, which is still close by, though the occasional loud vehicle might disturb the tranquil setting. To reach the falls, you have to scramble up the rocky brook a very short distance. The falls, the entirety of which can be seen from the road, are nearly 325 feet high, depending on where you measure the start. They cascade in three tiers, with only the lowest section visible at the base.\n\nGiant's Nubble, Giant's Washbowl, and Giant Mountain\n\nThe trail climbs steadily from the fork and passes a tiny lookout shortly after you begin the ascent. After the first section of climbing, the trail levels off briefly and then climbs gently again as it winds briefly south around the contours of the hillside. As the trail swings east again, views across the valley begin to sprawl out before you. Approximately 0.5 mile in, you reach a fork in the trail; to your right are a designated campsite and the top of the falls, while straight ahead are Giant's Nubble, Giant's Washbowl, and the summit. The campsite, situated to the left of the falls path, is spacious, and there are plenty of spots to set up camp under the maple-and-ash canopy.\n\nTo reach the top of the falls, follow any of the footpaths to Roaring Brook, and then rock-hop downstream. From the top of the falls, very little of the waterfall is visible because the drop is so precipitous and the water flows through a deep cleft in the bedrock. However, there are spectacular views out to the western horizon. The rocks at the top of the falls have been worn smooth by innumerable visitors and slope gradually toward a sheer drop-off, so use extra caution, especially during wet conditions.\n\nThe main trail, marked by red disks, continues to head east and climbs steadily for the next 0.5 mile, where you reach another fork. To the left are two more designated campsites, both of which are situated under a heavy canopy of hemlocks and offer lots of room to set up. Shortly after this intersection, you wind around a large boulder and then turn quickly south as you rock-hop across Roaring Brook. On the opposite bank, you reach yet another fork. The trail to your left leads to the Giant Mountain summit, 2.5 miles, while the nubble and washbowl are off to your right. Trail signs indicate that the nubble and washbowl are both 0.9 mile away, but the actual mileage is roughly 0.3 mile less. A tenth of a mile ahead, you reach the fork where the trails to the nubble and washbowl diverge from each other. This is also the terminus of the loop around both features and a return point back to NY 73. A trail sign indicates that the nubble is still 0.9 mile ahead while the washbowl is 0.8 mile ahead on the right. You can hike the loop in either direction, though I recommend hiking the nubble first, as there are some truly stunning views of the washbowl as you descend.\n\nThe trail up to the nubble, now marked with yellow trail disks, is a bit rougher than sections previously covered but no more than the usual Adirondack trail.\n\nLooming off to your left is the southern-exposed face of Giant Mountain, which can be glimpsed occasionally through the surrounding fir trees. Many portions of the trail traverse moss-covered bedrock, and you pass by a square ledge of this oddly lush rock on your right shortly before you reach the fork in the trail, at 1.6 miles, that leads to the nubble. Veering right at the fork, you quickly reach the southeastern tip of the nubble, and a vast panorama of the eastern High Peaks opens up before you. Footpaths weave in and out of the exposed, lichen-covered bedrock and wind-stunted fir trees as you make your way to the northern tip of the nubble. The lookout reveals a panorama of the northern High Peaks, as well as a beautiful vista of Giant Mountain off to the east. If the drive into the region did not give you an appreciation of the ruggedness of this area, then the views from atop the nubble certainly will.\n\nEXPOSED BEDROCK AT THE NUBBLE\n\nThe descent to the washbowl, initially marked with yellow disks, can be quite steep but has numerous lookouts as well. Less than 0.3 mile from the nubble is a truly wonderful lookout that sits almost directly above the washbowl. The almost jet-black basin is nestled in a long depression between the base of the nubble and a ridgeline before the slope of the mountain precipitously drops more than 800 feet to the valley floor in less than 0.3 mile. From this vantage point, the pond seems to simply hang in the air. The trail weaves its way down through evergreens to the intersection with Giant's Ridge Trail at 2.1 miles. A green-and-white trail sign marks the intersection and indicates that the washbowl is a mere 0.3 mile farther on your right. The trail is heavily trodden but well maintained, and you quickly pass another designated campsite on your left, shortly before reaching the southeastern tip of the washbowl.\n\nA path along the eastern shore of the pond leads to another designated campsite that sits close to the water's edge, but the main trail winds to your left. You quickly pass the last intersection along this loop, where trail signs indicate that the Chapel Pond parking area along NY 73 is 0.7 mile ahead on your left, marked in blue, while the trail back to Roaring Brook Falls continues to your right, with red markers. The rocky nubble looms over the washbowl and provides some dramatic scenery as you hike along the western ridge that contains the pond. The brief shoreline hike north is basically flat and rocky, with numerous rocks jutting out on the pond, all of which provide points from which to view the pond and nubble. After leaving the washbowl's shore, you climb briefly along the base of the nubble and then begin your descent back to the beginning of the nubble and washbowl loop.\n\nTRAIL CROSSING OF ROARING BROOK\n\nDirections\n\nFrom I-87, take Exit 30 for US 9, and head north. Go 2.2 miles on US 9, and make a slight left onto NY 73. In 5.4 miles the parking area is on your right, just after descending a steep hill; it's directly across from the southern intersection of Ausable Club Road and NY 73.\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 9N and NY 73, head southeast on NY 73. In 6.1 miles, the parking area is on your left.\n\n40\n\nHanging Spear Falls and Opalescent River\n\nFLOWED LANDS\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 05.353' W74\u00b0 03.381'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 13.7-mile loop or 11.0-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 7.5\u20138.5 hours (overnight)\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Waterfall, remote lake, dramatic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,748' at trailhead, 2,800' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: Pit toilet at trailhead\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: While returning along East River Trail, there is a point where you will have to ford the Opalescent River, which could be hazardous during high water and\/or cold weather. Water depth is commonly knee- or thigh-deep but is ankle-deep in summer\/low water. No matter what, your feet will get wet, so plan accordingly.\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nDeep in the remote High Peaks Wilderness is a stunning waterfall. Combine that with evocative names such as Hanging Spear, Flowed Lands, and Opalescent River and this adventure promises to be a spectacular trip, and it does not let you down. Because most hikers in the High Peaks are set on bagging the various peaks, chances are that you will be able to enjoy this isolated waterfall all to yourself. A protracted climb, a river ford, the remote location, and the length of the trail mean that this trip is best left to experienced hikers. You will want to give yourself plenty of time not only to complete the hike but also to enjoy the magnificent views at the falls and elsewhere along the loop.\n\nRoute Details\n\nNote: Though the trip to the falls can be shortened to an 11.0-mile out-and-back by returning along the Calamity Brook Trail, completing the loop along the Hanging Spear Trail adds 2.6 miles but is not as rough and generally easier going\u2014that is, the path is free of cobbles and requires less climbing. During winter or times of high water along the Opalescent River, the out-and-back route may be the only safe option. The full loop requires a full day and an early start, but the trail can also be treated as an overnight by either following the camping at-large rules laid out by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) or by using designated camping areas and lean-tos mentioned within the description. The lean-tos at the end of the Calamity Brook Trail and within the Flowed Lands, four of which are readily accessible along the described route, are ideal spots to spend the night. There is also a designated campsite on the ascent, and a couple are located on the descent before reaching the Opalescent River crossing.\n\nMONUMENT TO DAVID HENDERSON\n\nThe Upper Works parking area is quite large and easily accommodates dozens of vehicles. The trail, marked with yellow disks, begins to the right of the trail register in the northeast corner of the lot. At roughly 0.25 mile you reach a wooden bridge that crosses the Hudson River. Just after the bridge, the road forks, with the trail continuing to the right. Just under 0.4 mile, you enter a meadow with a fork in the trail. The trail to the left leads to Duck Hole and Indian Pass marked with yellow disks, while the trail to the right is the Calamity Brook Trail, indicated here as Lake Colden Dam, Mount Marcy.\n\nContinue along the right fork (east) following the red trail disks. The next mile of trail follows an old abandoned gravel road that weaves its way through rocks and boulders mostly out in the open. You will hear Calamity Brook shortly before the trail reaches it, a point where the brook makes a sharp southerly turn. The trail proceeds along an elevated berm between the tannin-colored Calamity Brook, with its bleached gravel banks on the right and a sprawling wetland on the left. From here forward, the trail more closely resembles the wooded foot trails that hikers are accustomed to.\n\nA little over 0.3 mile ahead, 1.6 miles overall (despite what the trail sign reads), is another trail intersection. Straight and north, marked in red, is another route to Duck Hole and Indian Pass. To the right and over a bridge, marked in blue, is the continuation of the route to Mount Marcy via Lake Colden. Turn right and cross the tributary stream of Calamity Brook. The trail continues along level ground interspersed with a few mucky areas and soon rejoins Calamity Brook as the trail swings west. Shortly after passing a closed trail with a washed-out bridge on the right, you reach a tributary brook that you rock-hop across, after which the climbing to the Flowed Lands truly begins\u2014roughly 800 feet gain over the next 2.5 miles.\n\nCalamity Brook is no longer tannin laden and meandering but rather a crystal-clear babbling brook that tumbles through a boulder-\u00adstrewn bed. The trail weaves its way to and from the brook as you ascend. You pass a camping disk on the right at 2.7 miles, about midway up a hill, before the trail levels out briefly at a wet area. This is one of many long mires that trail crews have tried to bypass with logs, log-and-plank boardwalks, and other configurations that vary in success in keeping your boots dry and keeping you out of the muck. At some point along the climb, you will likely have to trudge through the muck, but not here.\n\nHANGING SPEAR FALLS\n\nAt roughly 3 miles reach an unmarked fork in the trail just before reintersecting Calamity Brook. During most of the year, you can cross Calamity Brook by rock-hopping, but during times of high water and flooding, mostly during the spring, you will want to continue uphill and to the left to the high-water crossing: a cable bridge that was replaced after floodwaters from Hurricane Irene washed out the previous bridge in 2011. The high-water bypass reconnects with the main trail a little uphill on the opposite bank.\n\nThe trail continues to climb steadily past this crossing, and you will encounter a series of wet and mucky areas that become increasingly harder to navigate. Calamity Brook flows down to your left, and much of the trail resembles a cobble-strewn brook in its own right. As the trail nears the top of the climb, it emerges from the surrounding forest into an open upland wetland, roughly 4 miles from the start. The trail swings around the southern and eastern edges of the wetland that surrounds Calamity Pond. A short side path found along the southern edge takes you through the encircling shrubs and provides a photo opportunity of the upland wetland. As you near the northeastern edge of the wetland, keep an eye out for a worn footpath leading north, located just before the trail bends east and away from the wetland. This short trail will take you to the headwaters of the pond and a stone monument dedicated to David Henderson, who died from an accidental gunshot here in 1845. You'll find another scenic view of the wetland and pond at the inlet.\n\nBack along the main trail, continue east, through one long boot-sucking mire, and soon reach the Calamity #1 Lean-To and trail register for the inner High Peaks Wilderness. (There are special regulations for the inner High Peaks, mostly regarding camping and the use of bear-resistant canisters. For camping rules, see www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/7872.html; for information on bear-resistant canisters, see www.dec.ny.gov\/animals\/7225.html.) A major trail intersection is also located at the trail register. To the left and marked in red are the trails leading to Lake Colden Dam, Avalanche Lake, and Mount Marcy. Straight ahead and marked in red are the trails to Flowed Lands and Hanging Spear Falls. Continue straight (east) and quickly reach a short path leading down to the eastern edge of the Flowed Lands, where a sprawling panorama of a winding wetland is framed by Mount Colden to the east and the foot of Mount Marshall to the west. It's a stunning scene and a good spot to break, as the next best stop, the Flowed Lands Lean-To a little farther on, is likely occupied. Alternatively, wait until you reach the lookout opposite Hanging Spear Falls, a truly amazing and tranquil setting, 1 mile farther.\n\nHeading south and away from this vista, the trail heads uphill briefly before descending into a depression just in front of the Flowed Lands Lean-To, 4.7 miles. At this point it is not immediately apparent where the trail continues. With the lean-to straight ahead, look right and scramble uphill, where you find red trail disks and a sign leading to a nearby pit toilet and the trail becomes more evident. Continue heading nearly due south another 0.3 mile to where you reach the end of the Flowed Lands and the head of the Opalescent River.\n\nYou will hear the sounds of the outflow of the Flowed Lands a short distance before you reach the crossing point just upstream from the old dam. The dam was originally created by the McIntyre Iron Works, which the aforementioned David Henderson helped establish, but the dam was deemed unsafe and was breached by the DEC in 1984. Scramble down from the trail to the gravel beach. Red trail disks are visible on the opposite shore, and you will have to pick your way atop a collection of rocks that loosely form a bridge across.\n\nOnce atop the opposite bank, you reach a trail intersection; to the left and marked in yellow is the Livingstone Point Lean-To, 0.4 mile away, while the path forward is to the right (south) following red trail disks. As you begin heading south along East River Trail, look immediately to the right for a point where you can snap a few pictures atop an old section of the dam. Nearby, a sign warns that the bridge across the Opalescent River, 4.2 miles farther along the trail, is out and you will have to ford the river. As the sign indicates, this could be hazardous during high water and during cold weather because inevitably you will have to wade or at the minimum get your feet wet during the crossing.\n\nAs the trail leads south to Hanging Spear Falls, it follows the Opalescent River quite closely along a narrow footpath. Long strands of algae cling to river rock, giving the river a green tinge. And though you may think that the green algae is the source of the river's name, the name was given by a state geologist who found the riverbed filled with opalescent feldspar, also known as labradorite. Under the right conditions the labradorite looks blue, and sometimes green, bronze, gold, or even iridescent. About 0.25 mile along the descent, a small unnamed waterfall, really a flume, with a small pool can be found among car-sized boulders. Farther along the trail you will hear other small waterfalls just out of sight, and you may be tempted to bushwhack in to see if they are Hanging Spear Falls, but rest assured, the site to view the actual falls is evident. Indeed a sign with an arrow indicates that the \"falls\" are available along a side trail, a little less than 0.5 mile from the crossing, 5.5 miles overall.\n\nOnce on the side trail, follow it a short way to the viewing area, a flat spot directly south of the falls. It might be tempting to try to descend a worn herd path visible to the side of the trail, but this path is dangerous, easily eroded, and likely to get you injured, if not trapped, near the base of the falls. At the viewing area, the surrounding canopy perfectly frames the 75-foot-high falls, and there is even an ideally placed root upon which you can sit and admire the majestic view. If you look upstream you will see not only Hanging Spear Falls but also a series of falls farther north. Incidentally, the falls are so named because during full flow they tend to bifurcate and give the appearance of a spearhead suspended in the air. This is only during times of high flow, but even at modest flow the falls are impressive.\n\nTo continue along the trail, you can either backtrack to the main trail or continue along the side trail, which loops back to the main trail a little farther downhill. Continue downhill on the main trail, and soon reach a brook crossing, the first along this section of trail and a useful landmark in case you missed the lookout side trail. For the next 0.75 mile the trail winds its way through dense understory out of earshot and sight of the river. Shortly after the Opalescent River comes back into view, some 40\u201350 feet below, the trail winds down to a point directly along its banks. The trail then weaves along the eastern bank through some mucky sections and then crosses a gravel outwash of the river high water\/old riverbed near a designated campsite 0.3 mile ahead, 6.8 miles overall. This marks the end of the descent, and the rest of the trail follows mostly level ground.\n\nGradually the trail leads away from the river and climbs slightly to a clearing among a network of old access\/logging roads. An arrow staked in the clearing indicates that the trail follows the western edge of this clearing. At 7.6 miles reach Upper Twin Brook, which is easily crossed atop several large boulders just downstream on the right. On the other side, pass an informal campsite and soon reach a trail intersection. Left is the trail to Allen Mountain, while right, following yellow trail markers, is the continuation of East River Trail to the Upper Works trailhead parking.\n\nThe trail now follows a narrow, worn path that heads generally southwest through open fields dotted with small evergreens and raspberry bushes. Hiking in the open is indeed a change of scenery from the typical forested trails and provides some interesting views of Calamity Mountain and Mount Adams to the north and west, while Allen Mountain looms to the east; you will have to turn around to catch this photo op. For the next 1.2 miles this setting is dominant with only a few exceptions; the most notable is 0.25 mile ahead, where the trail delves briefly into the forest and crosses Lower Twin Brook.\n\nAt roughly 9 miles, after reentering the forest, the trail leads down to the banks over the Opalescent River once again. Bear left and follow the river another 0.1 mile to where it broadens at the designated crossing. Dozens of feet across at low water, the crossing necessitates getting your feet wet and\/or wading, depending on the depth. Once across, turn left and follow an old road south; no trail markers are readily apparent, but the wide access road is easy to follow. The Opalescent is now broad and meandering as it accompanies you on the left as the trail gradually swings east.\n\nHIGH-WATER BRIDGE\n\nA little over 0.75 mile from the crossing, 9.9 miles overall, reach a red vehicle-barrier gate close to a point where the Opalescent turns sharply south. Past the barrier gate, the road continues southwest awhile but gradually begins to curve northwest. Sanford Hill can be seen off to the left, while Popple Hill dominates the view to the right. A half mile past the barrier gate and at a point heading nearly due north, the trail departs from the road and continues along a worn footpath. Rocks and branches are laid across the road, and you will see a yellow trail arrow on the right through the foliage.\n\nThe trail follows an almost due-north course, and within 0.3 mile you can glimpse Lake Sally through the surrounding forest on the left. This is the southern bay of Lake Sally, and after briefly diverting into the surrounding forest about 0.25 mile, you reach its northern bay. The trail climbs slightly around this bay and intersects a slightly overgrown gravel road, roughly 11.2 miles overall. Bear right and follow this road another 0.3 mile north to where it bends left (northwest) near where an old logging road continues straight ahead. A quarter mile farther, and roughly 0.6 mile from the intersection with the road, pass the trail to Mount Adams, marked in red on the right. Just a little farther, reach two green buildings, the Mount Adams fire tower cabins.\n\nThe trail bears left (south) at the cabins and soon bends west and quickly reaches the northern bay of Lake Jimmy, less than 0.3 mile from the cabins, 12.3 miles overall. Old maps show a bridge crossing this bay, but the bridge no longer connects the two shores; beaver activity had undermined it to the point that it was no longer safe. To get around the bay, turn right and head north, where logs and planks help you navigate through the wetland that surrounds Lake Jimmy. Soon the trail swings west and you cross the two outlets of Jimmy in quick succession. After turning left and briefly heading south, reconnect with the old trail, and head due west through a deep forest another 0.25 mile to where you intersect the Hudson River once again. A suspended steel-grate bridge with fenced-in sides carries you high above the Hudson. Once on the other side, it is a short distance to the East River Trail parking area. Turn right onto Upper Works Road, and continue 0.75 mile to the Upper Works trailhead and parking area for a round-trip of 13.7 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE WEST From the intersection of NY 30 and NY 28N in Long Lake, head 18.9 miles east along NY 28N, and turn left onto Blue Ridge Road. At 0.3 mile Tahawus Road\/County Road 25 merges with Blue Ridge Road on the left. Continue 0.9 mile, 1.2 miles from NY 28N, and bear left onto Tahawus Road\/CR 25. After another 6.3 miles bear left onto Upper Works Road\/CR 25A. Continue north another 3.5 miles to the end of the road and the Upper Works parking area.\n\nFROM ALL OTHER POINTS From I-87 take Exit 29 toward Newcomb\/\u00adNorth Hudson. Head 17.5 miles west along Blue Ridge Road\/CR 84, and turn right onto Tahawus Road\/CR 25. At 6.3 miles, bear left onto Upper Works Road\/CR 25A. Continue north another 3.5 miles to the end of the road and the Upper Works parking area.\n\n41\n\nIndian Pass\n\nWALLFACE MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 05.353' W74\u00b0 03.382'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 8.8-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 5\u20136 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Maze of boulders, sheer cliffs, panoramic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,758' at trailhead, 2,855' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: Pit toilet at the parking area\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe trail leading to Indian Pass is an enjoyable excursion in its own right, and you can't help but feel the remoteness of the High Peaks Wilderness that surrounds you. The first three-quarters of the trail is, however, not that different from many deep-woods hikes. It's the last 0.8 mile that really sets this trail apart and makes it a must-have adventure. After navigating your way through a maze of enormous boulders, you soon reach Summit Rock, and the spectacle of Wallface Mountain is truly impressive.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe Upper Works parking area for Indian Pass is quite large and easily accommodates dozens of vehicles. Indeed, it is one of the major access points for the High Peaks Wilderness and all the adventure that the area encompasses. The trail, marked with yellow disks, begins to the right of the trail register in the northeast corner of the lot. The trail starts along a gravelly road within the boundaries of the Tahawus Preserve, a vast area of wilderness that was acquired by the Open Space Institute in 2003, with major sections now jointly managed by the institute and the Department of Environmental Conservation. After 0.3 mile, you reach a wooden bridge sturdy enough for vehicles to cross. Congratulations! You have just crossed the Hudson River at its headwater. Just after the bridge, the road forks, with the trail continuing on the right. At 0.4 mile you enter a meadow with a fork in the trail. The trail to the left leads to Duck Hole and Indian Pass, marked with yellow disks, while the trail to the right, marked with red disks, is Calamity Brook Trail and Mount Marcy via Lake Colden. Calamity Brook Trail is also the return trip if you decide to take an extended trip, day or overnight, by crossing over the McIntyre Mountains via Cold Brook Pass.\n\nContinue along the left trail, which is a mostly open road with occasional views of Lake Henderson on your left. The road has many muddy areas, and regrowth encroaches in several places. At 1.1 miles, you encounter what appears to be a fork but is actually a route around a mucky area. Choose the right-hand path to avoid the worst of the mud. Just after this rerouting, you come close to Lake Henderson again, but thick hemlocks obscure most of the view.\n\nIndian Pass Brook now flows off to your left, and at 1.5 miles, you reach another fork in the trail. At this point, you leave the broad road and stick to the foot trails. To the left is a log-and-plank bridge, and signs indicate that the Duck Hole Lean-To is 5.3 miles and Coreys, 23.3 miles. Similarly, the sign indicates Henderson Lean-To is 0.2 mile, Indian Pass is 2.7 miles, and the Adirondak Loj is 10.4 miles straight ahead. (The mileage to the Loj must include a detour because a straight path along the entire Indian Pass Trail brings you to the Loj in 10.4 miles, and you have already hiked 1.5 miles.)\n\nContinue straight along mostly flat terrain, now marked with red disks. In 1.7 miles you pass the Henderson Lean-To on your left. On a Saturday morning this lean-to is usually filled with hikers who started late on Friday and want to get moving early. After reaching a meadow Indian Pass Brook is again within sight, and you quickly reach the last fork of this trip, 2.1 miles. Signs indicate that to the left, Wallface Lean-To is 0.6 mile, Indian Pass is 2.3 miles, and the Adirondak Loj is 6 miles. (Once again, the mileage to the Loj seems to be mistaken, but the others are correct.) The trail straight ahead, marked in blue, is the Calamity Brook Crossover trail, with Calamity Brook at 2.1 miles and Lake Colden at 6 miles.\n\nBRIDGE OVER INDIAN PASS BROOK\n\nAfter taking the left trail, marked in red, you quickly reach a bridge over Indian Pass Brook. The recently constructed bridge has round rails and posts, as well as a large, rock-filled crib on the opposite shore. Shortly after reaching the opposite shore, you pass a minor fork in the trail and a yellow disk indicating a designated campsite to your right. Nestled among dense evergreen saplings, the site is close to the confluence of two streams. The site has a sheltered feel and is filled with the soft babbling sounds of the water nearby.\n\nIndian Pass Brook now flows on your right, and though it is nearby, you don't really see the brook until you approach the Wallface Lean-To, 2.7 miles. The trail passes within feet of the brook, and the lean-to is just to the left of the trail. This is perhaps an ideal spot to enjoy the brook, but if you plan to stay in the lean-to, then expect traffic. The trail is mostly flat, and you cross many seasonal feeder streams as you work your way northeast to the intersection of a seasonal stream and Indian Pass Brook. You cross and recross the stream in what is a muddy little delta extending about 0.1 mile. Past this mire, Indian Pass Brook continues to flow on your right. The grade steadily increases, and soon a sheer rock wall begins to rise on your right. At 3.8 miles a jumble of enormous boulders on the eastern shore invites exploration. This is fortunate, as the trail crosses over Indian Pass Brook at this point, but the markings for the crossing are not that clear, and it's easy to miss the exact crossover point.\n\nOn the other shore, the trail becomes more rugged and climbs steeply in sections. The moss-covered, giant boulders through which you are climbing form myriad crevices, caves, and clefts that make for interesting scenery and exploration. As you climb, and after passing a 40-foot-high boulder on your right, you will begin to glimpse through the canopy to your left the sheer rock walls of Wallface Mountain. The scene is impressive and promises a dramatic vista ahead at Indian Pass Outlook. At 4.1 miles you reach a series of short ladders that assist you up this steep section. The trail swings south briefly, then heads north again to the base of a much taller ladder at 4.3 miles. Once you are atop this ladder, it is a very short way to the fork that leads to the outlook on your left. A short ladder leads you a few dozen feet off the main trail to the Indian Pass Summit Rock outlook. From this rocky outcrop, you have an amazing view of the sheer cliffs of Wallface Mountain, as well as an expansive view down the valley to the south. Return the way you came for a total trip of 8.8 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFROM THE WEST From the intersection of NY 30 and NY 28N in Long Lake, head 18.9 miles east along NY 28N, and turn left onto Blue Ridge Road. At 0.3 mile Tahawus Road\/County Road 25 merges with Blue Ridge Road on the left. Continue 0.9 mile, 1.2 miles from NY 28N, and bear left onto Tahawus\/CR 25. After another 6.3 miles bear left onto Upper Works Road\/CR 25A. Continue north another 3.5 miles to the end of the road and the Upper Works parking area.\n\nFROM ALL OTHER POINTS From I-87 take Exit 29 toward Newcomb\/North Hudson. Head 17.5 miles west along Blue Ridge Road\/CR 84, and turn right onto Tahawus Road\/CR 25. At 6.3 miles bear left onto Upper Works Road\/CR 25A. Continue north another 3.5 miles to the end of the road and the Upper Works parking area.\n\n42\n\nAlgonquin Peak\n\nATOP ALGONQUIN PEAK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 10.969' W73\u00b0 57.746'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 8.0-mile out-and-back, 0.8-mile out-and-back side trip to Wright Peak\n\nHIKING TIME: 7\u20138 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Bald mountain(s), alpine ecosystems, panoramic views, waterfall\n\nELEVATION: 2,179' at trailhead, 5,115' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; $5 for Adirondack Mountain Club members, $10 per day for nonmembers. During summer and holiday weekends the lots fill quickly and are at capacity by early afternoon. When parking booth is closed, pay and register with the self-service box. Parking is free for guests staying at the Loj\/Wilderness Campground.\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: Changing rooms, bathrooms, showers, information center\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: Be aware that Algonquin Peak (and Wright Peak if you choose the optional side trip) is an alpine zone. You won't find this ecosystem anywhere in New York except atop the highest of the High Peaks. While this makes for a great experience, the vegetation is also rare, fragile, and endangered. Stepping or sitting on these plants will kill them and destroy the habitat. As such, avoid any vegetation in these zones, and only walk along designated trails and solid rock surfaces.\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAt 5,115 feet, Algonquin Peak is the second-highest peak in New York (Mount Marcy stands at 5,343 feet tall). Those starting or looking to complete their 46 High Peak challenge can easily add Wright Peak (side trip detailed on) and Iroquois Mountain to their list. Not only are the views atop Algonquin and Wright Peaks stunning, but the alpine ecosystem is unique to all but a few places in New York. The ascent is nearly 3,000 feet to Algonquin alone, so plan on taking considerably more time along this trail than the 8-mile trek would normally suggest.\n\nNote: If you want a little more adventure, add the return along Avalanche Pass extending the trip by nearly 4 miles and 2 hours.\n\nRoute Details\n\nParking at the Loj is extensive and could easily accommodate 100 (or more) cars in the various gravel parking lots. However, this is a major starting point for hikers and backpackers looking to explore the remote heart of the High Peaks wilderness, so the lot fills to capacity during the summer and holiday weekends. Many of the people exploring the region will be on extended overnight treks, and the lot provides access to a wide network of trails. But the trail network in the interior is so extensive that although you will pass by other hikers, it won't be as frequently as the number of cars seems to indicate.\n\nThe trailhead and register are found near a kiosk on the eastern edge of the parking area. The initial section of the trail, marked with blue disks, lies within the Adirondack Mountain Club's boundaries and has received extensive trail work\/maintenance to accommodate the heavy traffic that passes through the area. At roughly 0.3 mile reach a long boardwalk that traverses a wetland along MacIntyre Brook. About 0.4 mile farther, reach the intersection with the Fangorn Forest Trail and the Department of Environmental Conservation High Peaks Wilderness boundary, 0.7 mile. Bear left and continue following blue trail disks as the trail climbs gradually, with MacIntyre Brook flowing 20\u201330 feet below. At 1 mile reach the first major trail intersection. To the left, marked in blue, are the Marcy Dam lean-tos, Avalanche Lake, Lake Colden, and Mount Marcy; this is the return leg of the Avalanche Pass loop. Straight, marked in yellow, is Whales Tail, as well as Wright and Algonquin Peaks.\n\nContinue straight (south) as you begin the steadily increasing ascent to Algonquin Peak\u2014more than 2,800 feet over the next 3 miles. Just 0.5 mile farther, pass the intersection with the Whales Tail Trail on the left, just before crossing a seasonal brook that feeds MacIntyre Brook. There are several of these seasonal stream crossings along the initial portion of the ascent, with a notable one roughly 0.5 mile ahead, where a trail arrow indicates a crossing among several large boulders. The deciduous forest begins to give way to paper birches and firs as the climbing continues. Shortly after negotiating a very steep portion of bedrock that may require use of your hands, the sound of water beckons you on to what is the best spot to stop and take a break along the climb. Just before 2.6 miles\u2014more than halfway in distance but less than half of the ascent (at only 1,200 of the 2,800 feet to be climbed)\u2014is a stunning waterfall. The unnamed fall, which is the source of MacIntyre Brook, is roughly 30\u201340 feet high, with a modest flow and a shallow pool at its base.\n\nPast the waterfall, the trail continues its steep ascent where dense saplings enclose the trail. At roughly 2.9 miles reach a pass between Wright Peak to the east and a sheer vertical cliff to the west. At this juncture signs warn about being prepared for ice and snow, which can come as early as October and as late as May. Do not take this warning lightly, as long sections of trail are along exposed bedrock, which when covered in ice are dangerous or impassable without proper equipment (crampons, ice ax, warm clothing). Additionally, snow is considerably deeper than in the parking area where you started. Do not proceed during the winter if you are not prepared. Every year severe injuries and fatalities occur when people ignore these warnings.\n\nA little less than 0.5 mile more of scrambling and climbing, reach the intersection with the Wright Peak Trail on the left. The side trip, indicated with blue trail markers and described below, is highly recommended. But remember, more than 1,000 feet of climbing is required to reach Algonquin Peak from this point.\n\nSide Trip to Wright Peak\n\n(adds 0.8 mile and 600' of climbing)\n\nFor anyone wishing to work on their 46 High Peak bucket list, now is the time to bag one more: Wright Peak. The side trip is steep, but the view is worth it and hints at what to expect when summiting Algonquin farther on.\n\nAlmost immediately after starting the ascent, reach a wide section of bedrock that you will have to scramble up. In winter this slide may be a sheet of ice. Much of the trail is steep and traverses ledges, with short firs hugging tight to the trail until you reach the alpine zone. A sign indicates when you are entering this zone, just beneath a steep rock wall that you will have to climb. Once on top, the trees disappear, and you enter a stark and comparatively barren environment. Lichens, clumps of grass, and wind-stunted evergreens precariously cling to what little nutrients they can get along the wind-scraped peak. You still have a ways to climb, but with the peak in sight you will happily push on up the steep slope.\n\nTHE HEART OF THE HIGH PEAKS WILDERNESS\n\nWithout trees for trail markers, you will have to rely on painted spots along ledges, rock cairns, and various pebble-lined paths. Remember, you do not want to step on any vegetation, so be mindful of where you traverse. Once atop, you will find a stunning 360-degree panorama of the High Peaks, including your next stop: Algonquin Peak, looming 500 feet above to the south. Return the way you came, again being careful where you traverse.\n\nBack along the main trail continue south, follow yellow markers and continue the climb (more than 1,100 feet over the next roughly 0.6 mile) to Algonquin Peak. Within 0.25 mile, reach a very steep section of trail that ascends along an exposed portion of bedrock. To make your way up the sheer rock face, you will have to find foot- and handholds on small clefts and deformities in the rock. Complicating matters, water flows over the face and ice is likely when temperatures are below freezing. I found that the right side of the trail seemed to have more places for \"steps\" and handholds. After this protracted climb, the trail is more easily traversed, with large slabs of rock often forming steps along the climb.\n\nAbout 0.25 mile past the sheer climb, reach the beginning of the alpine zone. Unlike Wright Peak, there is significantly more climbing to be done above the alpine zone boundary, and the peak is never quite in sight to lure you onward. To navigate through the alpine zone, remember to walk only on the designated path or exposed rock. To find the path, look for paint on the rocks, rock cairns for the direction of travel, and pebble walls that separate the trail from the vegetative areas. There is still roughly 0.25 mile and more than 300 feet of elevation to go until the actual summit. As you climb to the alpine zone, your whole perspective changes; the trees are gone and nothing remains but rock and low-lying vegetation clinging to scraps of soil caught in the cleft of rocks or in the lee of boulders. Often wind whips over the summit, making it hard to hear, but the barren landscape is stunning. The peak is broad and spread out, with a dramatic panorama of the High Peaks Wilderness Area all around you. Only Mount Marcy, about 3.8 miles southeast, is higher, and on clear days the horizon seems endless. While you look about the summit and take in the view, once again be careful of the fragile ecosystem.\n\nIf it took you longer than expected to reach the summit or if weather or night threatens, then you should seriously consider returning the way you came. But if time, weather, and energy are on your side, then I recommend the return leg along Avalanche Pass. The route heads deeper into the High Peaks Wilderness and will take considerably more time and effort to complete. But after a bone-\u00adjarring descent, you traverse some areas that, combined with the trip to Algonquin, make for one of the most scenic routes you could take in the Adirondacks. Should you choose that route, the total trip length (without the side trip to Wright) would be 11.8 miles; otherwise, return the way you came for a trip length of 8.0 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 73 and NY 86 in Lake Placid, head 3.3 miles south on NY 73, and follow the directions below. From the intersection of NY 73 and NY 9N in downtown Keene, head 10.9 miles west on NY 73, and follow the directions below.\n\nTurn south onto Adirondack Loj Road. Continue 5.1 miles to the vehicle-entry booth, and the main parking area is on the left past the visitor center.\n\n43\n\nAvalanche Pass\n\nTHE SOUTHERN SLOPE OF ALGONQUIN PEAK\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: Loj parking area: N44\u00b0 10.969' W73\u00b0 57.746' Algonquin Peak: N44\u00b0 8.611' W73\u00b0 59.223'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 11.8-mile loop (includes the Algonquin Peak trail)\n\nHIKING TIME: 8.5\u20139.5 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Remote lake, dramatic cliffs, panoramic views, waterfalls\n\nELEVATION: 5,115' at Algonquin summit; 2,091' at lowest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; $5 for Adirondack Mountain Club members, $10 per day for nonmembers. During summer and holiday weekends the lots fill quickly and are at capacity by early afternoon. When parking booth is closed, pay and register with the self-service box. Parking is free for guests staying at the Loj\/Wilderness Campground.\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: Changing rooms, bathrooms, showers, information center\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCOMMENTS: This trail begins at Algonquin Peak, and mileage begins at 4 miles.\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThe initial descent from Algonquin Peak is bone jarring and punishing, 2,000 feet over 1.5 miles. Calling it a trail is a bit misleading; it's actually more like (and at times literally is) an active streambed. The good news is that the remainder of the trail, though rugged, is fairly level. The trail really stands out when you reach Avalanche Lake and head deeper into the pass. Steep cliffs and exposed mountain slides surround you as you hike literally suspended several feet above the lake. Combined with Algonquin Peak's stunning views and unique alpine zone, this trail is an amazing wilderness adventure but is recommended only for experienced hikers. Trail mileage begins with the 4-mile trek to reach Algonquin Peak.\n\nRoute Details\n\nFrom Algonquin Peak, look for the rock cairns that head down along the southern slope of the mountain. Just as when you climbed to the summit, be careful to descend only along the trail\/bedrock using rock cairns and pebble walls to help you navigate. A little over 0.3 mile and 400 feet along the descent, reach a fork in the trail that is encircled by shrub-sized evergreens. To the right\/straight is the unmarked path to Boundary and Iroquois Peaks, while to the left is the main trail, indicated by an arrow and yellow trail markers. Just after this intersection, reach a steep drop and the alpine zone sign on this side of the mountain. The trail is now very narrow and is closed in by thick, shrub-sized spruces that gradually give way to taller trees as you quickly descend along the steep trail.\n\nAt 4.75 miles reach a steep descent that leads to a stream that tumbles through a cleft in the rock. This stream accompanies you\u2014in fact much of the way it is the trail\u2014as you descend the remaining 1,100 feet toward Lake Colden. Shortly after intersecting the stream, the trail heads away briefly only to wind back to the stream and, after descending a dilapidated log ladder, intersect it again at a tiny waterfall with a shallow pool at its base. From here forward, the trail weaves back and forth and through the streambed, and finding the exact path while navigating the boulders and logs is tricky. To complicate things, there are a couple of trail reroutes along the descent, indicated by logs, branches, and rocks laid across the old trails. When in doubt, look for the yellow trail markers on the trees, and above all, be careful with your footing. Believe me, it is worth it.\n\nWhen I made the descent, my foot slipped and my leg got caught between two rocks, deeply cutting my shin. It looked worse than it was, but it required eight stitches when I finally hobbled out hours later. I did not see anyone until I reached the final trail segment near the Loj parking area. Had my leg not popped out when trapped between the two rocks, it could have easily broken, turning a painful inconvenience into an outright disaster. It was a stark reminder that when in the wilderness, you are on your own and often self-rescue is your only option. Also, you are only as prepared as what you bring with you; a first aid kit (see page 17 for recommended items), extra food, flashlight or headlamp, and warm clothes are essential in the event you are forced to spend a night in the woods.\n\nAt 1.3 miles along the descent, the trail and stream follow a broad and open ledge a short way before reentering the forest on the north side of the stream. About 0.5 mile past this open ledge, the trail passes a tall waterfall with a shallow pool on the right. This waterfall roughly marks the end of the descent, and you soon reach a major trail intersection at 6 miles. To the right and over a log bridge, marked in yellow, is the trail to Lake Colden Dam\/Outpost, as well as Cold Brook and Indian Pass Trails. Straight and marked in blue is the return leg of the loop to the Adirondack Loj via Avalanche Lake and Pass. Continue north through a marsh with several log-and-plank boardwalks and stunning views of the exposed slide on Mount Colden to the east. A third of a mile farther, 6.4 miles overall, reach another trail intersection and a trail register. To the right is Mount Colden via the northeast Mount Colden Trail, marked in yellow. Straight is the return to the Loj, now marked in yellow.\n\nContinue north toward Avalanche Lake and Pass. Along this section of the trail, the stream between Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden flows on the left, and you will have to navigate a few mucky areas along the 0.3-mile stretch to Avalanche Lake. About midway, pass a camping disk, and the gap between Mount Colden to the east and Avalanche Mountain to the west visibly narrows. When you reach the tip of Avalanche Lake, you see that it is just a sliver of dark water between two sheer cliffs. The trail follows the west edge of the lake, and as the sheer cliff and lakeshore draw ever closer, you may begin to wonder where there is room for a trail. A quarter mile farther, you see that the answer is nowhere. The trail, an elevated boardwalk, has been literally attached to the sheer rock cliff and is suspended half a dozen feet above the dark lake. The boards are in pretty good shape, but wear and tear and seasonal damage make it prudent to test your footing and not put all your weight on a single board. This is the first of two elevated walks, and in between is a maze of boulders that you have to weave through and climb over. Log bridges and ladders assist in some of this trek, but be mindful of the condition of such aids as they are in a constant cycle of deterioration and replacement. It's a stunning scene, with evidence of recent slides (avalanches) throughout.\n\nWALKWAY SUSPENDED ABOVE AVALANCHE LAKE\n\nAt 7.25 miles, the maze of boulders ends at the northern tip of Avalanche Lake. The trail continues north, heading deeper into the pass, first through a short muddy slog beside and through Avalanche Lake's feeder stream. Next is a narrow passage beside a steep cliff to the west, just before you reach the active avalanche area as indicated by the warning signs, 7.65 miles. Utterly clear of standing trees, the pass has an oddly unsteady feel underfoot because of the layers of mud and buried trees. After traversing to the western edge of the trail, you see how deep this fill is and why the ground has such a hollow feel. Slightly farther, you reach the end of the designated avalanche area, and the gradual descent to the Loj begins.\n\nBE CAREFUL ON THIS STEEP DESCENT OF ALGONQUIN PEAK.\n\nAt 8.4 miles reach the intersection with the Lake Arnold Trail, marked in blue on the right. Continue straight toward the Adirondack Loj, still marked in yellow. Shortly after the intersection, reach a bridge with handrails that crosses Marcy Brook; this brook will accompany you the whole way north to the interior campsites and lean-tos near Marcy Dam, a little more than 0.75 mile ahead. You will pass a couple of lean-tos along this trek, along with several designated camping areas, before you reach the intersection with the Van Hoevenberg Trail, on the right and marked in blue, 9.4 miles overall. Bear left and continue north past the trail register a short ways to another intersection, this time indicating the direction to the Adirondack Loj and path forward. Continue left past the remains of Marcy Dam toward the Loj, now following blue disks for the rest of the trail, and soon reach a bridge that crosses Marcy Brook a few hundred feet north of the dam. Once across, the trail swings briefly south to intersect where it used to cross Marcy Dam and then continues its northerly descent. The remaining 2.2 miles back to the Loj follow a highly traveled and well-maintained section. At 10.8 miles reintersect the trail to Algonquin with only 1 mile remaining back along the original route to the Loj and parking area for a total loop of 11.8 miles.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 73 and NY 86 in Lake Placid, head 3.3 miles south on NY 73, and follow the directions below. From the intersection of NY 73 and NY 9N in downtown Keene, head 10.9 miles west on NY 73, and follow the directions below.\n\nTurn south onto Adirondack Loj Road. Continue 5.1 miles to the vehicle-entry booth, and the main parking area is on the left past the visitor center.\n\n44\n\nLittle and Big Crow Mountains\n\nLOOKING OUT ON THE HIGH PEAKS FROM BIG CROW\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 15.696' W73\u00b0 44.010'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 3.3-mile loop\n\nHIKING TIME: 2\u20133 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Spectacular vistas\n\nELEVATION: 1,742' at trailhead, 2,800' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Hurricane Mountain Wilderness map: tinyurl.com\/hurricanemtnmap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; Hurricane Mountain Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/100895.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThis short trip is an excellent introductory hike for those who want to familiarize themselves with the beautiful vistas of the High Peaks without spending a whole day. Both experts and novices will appreciate the wealth of views atop the many ledges you encounter as you weave your way to the summit.\n\nRoute Details\n\nTo make the trail into a loop, you will have to walk 1.4 miles along O'Toole Road and Hurricane Road. You can hike the road section either at the end or at the beginning of the hike, but I recommend hiking the trail clockwise and including the roadside portion at the beginning. The counterclockwise direction includes a steeper ascent to Big Crow and requires you to end your hike walking uphill along the road rather than with a descent and flat stroll through the woods.\n\nThe trail register is located a few hundred yards northwest of the parking area. To reach the western trailhead, walk down O'Toole Road, and turn right onto Hurricane Road, 1.1 miles. Continue down Hurricane Road 0.2 mile, and look for a small orange ADK marker affixed to a wooden sign that points to the trail. This sign is difficult to see while driving but evident while on foot. The trail starts at a couple of log steps and winds around the left side of a private residence. This section of the trail is on private property, so be careful to stay on the marked portion of the trail.\n\nRed trail disks mark the way, and you quickly begin to climb through a stand of small saplings. Roughly 0.5 mile into the trail, 1.8 miles from the start, expansive views to the south and west begin to open up behind you. Exposed portions of bedrock begin to jut out, both making the terrain more rugged and forming natural steps as you climb. You will see yellow paint blazes on trees that may seem to guide you along the trail, but these are actually the boundary between private property and the Hurricane Mountain Wilderness.\n\nThe exposed ledges along the trail all offer wonderful views, but a particularly spectacular vista is available just past where you enter the public lands, 2 miles from the start. Take advantage of these lookouts, as the summit of Little Crow does not offer any views. Red disks and rock cairns help you navigate as you weave your way over exposed portions of bedrock and through windswept conifers. At 2.3 miles the peak of Little Crow Mountain (2,450') is off to the left of the main trail. The bald top of Little Crow is quite exposed, but it is also a broad peak; consequently, the encircling evergreens limit views typical of a bald summit.\n\nTo reach Big Crow, continue east along the exposed bedrock, and then quickly descend the short pass between the two peaks. Big Crow appears more rugged as you approach, but the climb to Little Crow is actually the tougher of the two. The oak saplings that fill the pass are a pleasant diversion from the encompassing evergreens that shroud the mountaintops. Indeed, as you climb Big Crow, the conifers become dense, and they so closely flank the trail that only the path ahead is visible. However, the dense foliage is brief, and a view north soon rewards your efforts. Whiteface Mountain, with its numerous ski slopes, is particularly prominent as you look north.\n\nThe trail turns south, and a lookout south and west quickly reveals the path you have taken. After a brief scramble up the exposed bedrock, you reach the beginning of the exposed spine that runs along the short ridge. A sweeping panorama of tall peaks extends from due east southward to due west as you traverse the ridge. The highest point on the trip (2,800') is at 2.8 miles and is simply atop a boulder where a sign reminds visitors that no camping or fires are allowed at the peak. Continue east along the ridge to where the descent of the open face is rather steep. After approximately 0.25 mile the steep section is past, and the rest of the hike through the spruce forest feels very sheltered compared with the exposed peaks. At 3.2 miles you cross a small brook, after which the trail is mostly level, and you quickly reach the trail register and return to the parking area approximately 0.25 mile ahead.\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the intersection of NY 9N and NY 73 in downtown Keene, head southeast on NY 73\/NY 9N, and turn left onto County Road 13\/Hurricane Road (1.7 miles north of the southern intersection of NY 73 and NY 9N, and 0.2 mile south of the northern intersection of NY 73 and NY 9N). Continue on CR 13\/Hurricane Road 2.3 miles, and turn left onto O'Toole Road. Follow O'Toole Road 1.1 miles to the parking area at the end.\n\n45\n\nPitchoff Mountain\n\nTHE PITCHOFF MOUNTAIN RIDGELINE\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: East trailhead: N44\u00b0 14.624' W73\u00b0 50.752' West trailhead: N44\u00b0 13.172' W73\u00b0 53.175'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 4.6-mile point-to-point\n\nHIKING TIME: 5\u20136 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Panoramic views, open ledges\n\nELEVATION: 1,850' at trailhead, 3,600' at highest point along the trail\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: Sentinel Range Wilderness map: tinyurl.com\/sentinelrangemap; National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; Sentinel Range Wilderness: www.dec.ny.gov\/lands\/101901.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nThis rocky ridge parallels NY 73 and provides wonderful views of the High Peaks wilderness to the south. This is an end-to-end hike and easiest to manage with two cars\u2014or park at one end and catch a ride to the other. There are several steep rock scrambles, so be prepared during wet and icy conditions.\n\nRoute Details\n\nThe two trailheads are 2.7 miles apart along NY 73. This is a major road with narrow shoulders, so it is advised that you either leave a vehicle at both ends or leave your car at one end and get a lift to the other. I would suggest getting a ride before your hike, rather than after, to avoid uncertainty and because the trail will likely take longer than is typical for the mileage. The west trailhead has more parking room, so it is best to leave your vehicle there and hike the trail from east to west. Directions below are given in that direction.\n\nThe east trailhead is little more than a worn path with a couple of steps that extend down to the road, but there are signs, and it is distinct. The trail register is at the beginning of the trail, and even though you will sign in and out at different registers, it is still important to sign in and out. The trail, marked with red disks and yellow blazes for the whole trip, turns west almost immediately and parallels the road roughly 0.3 mile under a canopy of birch and beech trees. The trail swings north, and you begin climbing among a jumble of cobbles and boulders alongside a rocky brook. The grade steadily increases and becomes a lot steeper 0.8 mile into the hike. At approximately 1 mile you have almost reached the ridge that you will traverse, and though many steep up-and-down sections are still ahead, the majority of the climbing is behind you. At 1.1 miles you pass through a wet area between two 20- to 30-foot-high rocky outcrops that flank the trail. After this small pass, the trail turns left, and you scramble up to the top of one of these outcrops.\n\nAt 1.2 miles you have reached the first of five minor peaks that make up Pitchoff Mountain. Ridgelines with multiple peaks do not have separate mountain names if the prominence of a peak does not exceed 980 feet or 7\u20138% relative prominence above the highest saddle or col between the peaks. In ridges such as this one, with slight elevation differences between peaks and cols, it's clear why the distinction between mountains and peaks is useful. The trail weaves its way up and down many times before you reach the actual summit, 1.5 miles ahead. The views south are exceptional, and many similar vantage points will accompany you as you traverse the spine. Yellow paint blazes mark the path along these bald peaks. If you are attempting this hike after a recent snowfall, finding your way can be time consuming. Snow falls as early as October and as late as spring in the High Peaks region. During the light snows of the fall and thaws during spring, when the snow is not deep enough for snowshoes, you need crampons or their equivalent to cross the bald peaks. The cycles of thawing and freezing on the exposed rocky ledges and peaks produce sheets of ice that are treacherous without added traction. Pack accordingly, even though these conditions may not be evident down at the road.\n\nICICLES ALONG THE TRAIL IN EARLY OCTOBER\n\nThe trail weaves up and down over boulders and zigzags through wind-stunted evergreens across the entire spine. Many times you will think that you have reached a peak or traversed a pass between peaks, only to find yet another climb or pass before you. This is particularly true for the 0.5 mile between the first and second peaks. The second peak, 1.8 miles overall, offers a wide panoramic view south but does not offer the 360-degree views found at the first peak. The trail descends and climbs mostly along the ridgeline to the third peak at 2.1 miles, where there are also views south.\n\nBetween the third and fourth summits, the trail meanders to the north side of the ridge, where the fir trees become thick, and then heads back to the south side. The fourth peak, 2.5 miles, is not the highest point of elevation but is the last peak with panoramic views. At 2.7 miles you pass some balancing boulders that mark the fifth and final peak as well as the beginning of the steep descent from the ridgeline. Dense conifers shroud the trail for most of the descent, but occasional breaks in the trails and open ledges offer some views.\n\nAt 3.2 miles you reach the only fork in the trail and a sign that indicates a view is off to the left. This lookout, approximately 0.1 mile along an unmarked path, is atop a sheer ledge with two balanced boulders that sit at its westernmost edge. Cascade Mountain and Upper and Lower Cascade Lakes are the prominent features of the view, and the lookout is certainly worth the short side trip.\n\nBack along the trail, the descent is much steeper, and the forest transitions back to hardwoods. The steep descent continues about 0.5 mile, during which you pass under the sheer rock wall that makes up the lookout to your left. The trail turns west, levels off, and parallels NY 73 and Upper Cascade Lake for the next 0.5 mile. At 4.3 miles, the trail swings south, and you descend for the next 0.3 mile until you reach the western trailhead and Upper Cascade Lake parking area.\n\nDirections\n\nParking is available at both the east and west ends of Cascade Lake along NY 73. Parking is limited in both areas, and there is little room on the roadside. The parking areas are 2.7 miles apart along NY 73.\n\nFrom the northern intersection of NY 73 and NY 9N in downtown Keene, head 3.9 miles west on NY 73 to the east parking area. Head 6.6 miles west on NY 73 to reach the west parking area.\n\nFrom the intersection of County Road 21 and NY 73, near the Olympic ski jump in Lake Placid, head 5.6 miles east to the west parking area or 8.3 miles east to the east parking area.\n\n46\n\nAmpersand Mountain\n\nON TOP OF AMPERSAND MOUNTAIN\n\n**SCENERY:**\n\n**TRAIL CONDITION:**\n\n**CHILDREN:**\n\n**DIFFICULTY:**\n\n**SOLITUDE:**\n\nGPS COORDINATES: N44\u00b0 15.095' W74\u00b0 14.374'\n\nDISTANCE & CONFIGURATION: 5.2-mile out-and-back\n\nHIKING TIME: 3\u20134 hours\n\nHIGHLIGHTS: Bald summit, panoramic views\n\nELEVATION: 1,550' at trailhead, 3,353' at highest point\n\nACCESS: Open 24\/7; no fees or permits required\n\nMAPS: National Geographic Adirondack Park, Lake Placid\/High Peaks (#742)\n\nFACILITIES: None\n\nWHEELCHAIR ACCESS: No\n\nCONTACTS: High Peaks Adirondack trail information: www.dec.ny.gov\/outdoor\/9198.html; emergency contact: 518-891-0235\n\nOverview\n\nAmpersand Mountain sits on the confluence of the flat north and High Peaks regions of the Adirondacks. An extremely popular hike, it offers a varied experience as you transition from a gentle walk through tall hemlocks to a steep ascent over boulder stairs. Passage through enormous, craggy boulders takes you to the bald summit, from which the lake sprawls out beneath you to the north and the High Peaks can be seen in the distance to the south.\n\nRoute Details\n\nWhen I approached on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it was clear that this trail is extremely popular. Dozens of cars lined NY 3 on both sides, and I could see that the small parking area was nowhere near adequate. While the lot also provides access to a short trail to Dutton Brook, the vast majority of hikers were climbing Ampersand Mountain. Indeed the trail register had been filled days before by the dozens of parties that hike the trail each day during the peak of summer. As with all popular trails, it is best to visit these in the off-season, during the week, or early if you have any desire for privacy.\n\nSTONE STEPS LEADING TO AMPERSAND MOUNTAIN\n\nWhy is the trail so popular? It is likely that the combination of the easy stroll at the beginning through towering old-growth forest, its proximity to a major road and tourist destinations, and the spectacular views all contribute to its appeal. Unfortunately, I reached the summit when a major thunderstorm had rolled in and visibility had dropped to several feet, so I cannot attest to the latter. The peak was awash in a sheet of flowing rain, and I was stuck in a cloud. Lightning flashed in all directions, and fierce winds threatened to blow others and me off the peak. Lingering in these conditions was unwise at best, so I did not get to see the views that people raved about, but according to veterans of this hike, the views are breathtaking and panoramic. It was a stark reminder that even though it is sunny and clear at the start of a hike, conditions can change quickly, and a little precaution and preparation are required on every hike and in every season.\n\nUpdate: Having revisited the trail, I can attest that the views atop Ampersand are spectacular. When I originally visited, visibility was limited to a few feet, so I was surprised on returning to find how broad and spread out the peak is. Even on a crowded Saturday\/\u00adholiday weekend, there was space for numerous groups to find spots to sit and enjoy the views while resting before their descent. There are several spots with 360-degree views, but on windy days it is likely you will want to shelter in one of the many dips\/crevices, of which there are several.\n\nThe trailhead is on the southern side of NY 3 across from the small parking area. The trail register is just inside the woods, and the wide and gravelly base attests to the heavy use and ongoing maintenance. In less than 0.3 mile, you cross Dutton Brook over a log bridge. Shortly after this crossing, you will definitely notice the towering hemlocks, which are some of the few remaining old-growth trees in the Adirondacks. This forest is considered the largest known sugar maple\u2013yellow birch\u2013hemlock forest in Adirondack Park. Red disks mark the trail, but it is so heavily trodden that, except for a few places near the summit where blowdown occurs, they are hardly necessary. At 0.8 mile, planks laid lengthwise form a boardwalk over a wet area. At 1 mile, you cross McKenna Brook over a log bridge.\n\nPast this crossing, the trail begins to climb, and you will rock-hop across streams and more mucky areas as the trail gradually becomes steep. The hemlocks that previously towered overhead give way to birches and maples, and the vast stonework employed to control erosion becomes evident. Long stretches of boulder stairs were constructed within the past decade to minimize the impact hikers had on the trail, once considered one of the most heavily eroded. Climbing only on the stone sections gives the forest a chance to regenerate some of its ground cover and, hopefully, forestalls further erosion. The last mile is basically a vertical climb, and you may need to use your hands.\n\nAs the forest transitions from hardwoods to stunted firs and evergreens, the stonework diminishes until it becomes nonexistent, and the erosion becomes severe. At this point, the various paths chosen to bypass washed-out areas or precipitous sections make finding the trail difficult and trail markers a necessity. Take your time throughout the final climb, and use caution over eroded and slippery surfaces.\n\nAround 2.3 miles, the trail levels off briefly just shy of the summit. You pass a few large boulders and eventually come to a passage between exposed faces of bedrock with a fissure opening up on your right. The trail then turns left and winds around to a rock face that you must scramble up and over. The roots of a tree will help you up, but after seeing the erosion caused by so many hikers, you can't help but wonder how much longer this tree will be around. Yellow arrows painted on the bald mountaintop point you in the direction of the easiest ways around the three knobs. Many of the bald peaks in the Adirondacks were created when Verplanck Colvin burned the tops of mountains during his 19th-century survey of the region. Erosion soon swept away the topsoil, leaving the mountains bald. Each knob offers its own merits and vantage points, and curious hikers will also find the remnants of a fire tower, as well as a plaque in memory of the Ampersand Hermit. The hermit, Walter Channing Rice, manned the fire tower from 1915 to 1923.\n\nLOG BRIDGE ALONG THE TRAIL\n\nDirections\n\nFrom the west From Tupper Lake, head east on NY 3\/NY 30. At 5.3 miles, bear right to stay on NY 3. After another 6.9 miles, the designated parking area is on your left. The parking area may be full, so take care when parking on the side of the road.\n\nFrom the east From the intersection of NY 3 and NY 86 in Saranac Lake, head 8.4 miles west on NY 3; the parking area is on the right.\n\nMARCY DAM (Trail 43, Avalanche Pass)\nAppendix A: Managing Agencies\n\nADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY\n\napa.state.ny.us\n\n518-891-4050\n\nNEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION\n\nwww.dec.ny.gov\n\nRegion 5 (Eastern Adirondacks): Essex, Hamilton, Warren, Fulton, Saratoga, and Washington Counties: 518-897-1200\n\nRegion 6 (Western Adirondacks): Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Lewis, Oneida, and Herkimer Counties: 518-785-2239\n\nForest Ranger Emergency Contact: 518-891-0235\nAppendix B: Gear Lists\n\nDay Hike Gear List\n\nTHE ESSENTIALS\n\nBackpack\n\nBoots\n\nExtra food\n\nFirst aid kit\n\nFlashlight and extra batteries\n\nPocketknife or multitool\n\nThis book\n\nTopographical map and compass\n\nWater bottles\n\nWater filter or purification tablets\n\nWaterproof matches and\/or lighter, as well as a fire starter\n\nWhistle\n\nADDITIONAL\n\nChange of clothes\n\nExtra socks\n\nInsect repellent\n\nPersonal medications\n\nPoncho or raingear\n\nUV sunblock and lip balm\n\nWarm hat\n\nOPTIONAL\n\nCamera with extra batteries and memory cards\n\nGaiters\n\nGarbage bag for packing out trash\n\nGPS unit\n\nRepair kit\n\nSmall towel\n\nSwimsuit\n\nSurvival kit\n\nToilet paper\n\nTrowel or small shovel for digging catholes\n\nSummer Backpacking Gear List\n\nBackpack\n\nBear bag or canister\n\nCleaning supplies (biodegradable detergent and container, sponge, and scouring pad)\n\nCollapsible bucket or water bag\n\nCollapsible pillow\n\nCooking pots and pans\n\nEating utensils (cup, bowl, plate, knife, fork, and spoon)\n\nFood (including extra for emergencies)\n\nGarbage bag for packing out trash\n\nRope and nylon cord (50 feet)\n\nShelter and conveyance\n\nSleeping bag and sleeping pad or mattress\n\nStove and fuel\n\nTent and rain fly\n\nTent stakes\n\nWater bottles\n\nWater filter or purification tablets\n\nWaterproof matches and\/or lighter, as well as a fire starter\n\nPERSONAL ITEMS\n\nBiodegradable hand soap\n\nFirst aid kit\n\nInsect repellent\n\nPersonal medications\n\nSmall towel\n\nToilet paper\n\nToothbrush and toothpaste\n\nTrowel or small shovel for digging catholes\n\nUV sunblock and lip balm\n\nGEAR\n\nCamera with extra batteries and memory cards\n\nCamp light or candle\n\nFlashlight and extra batteries\n\nGPS unit\n\nPocketknife or multitool\n\nRepair kit\n\nSewing kit\n\nStuff sacks\n\nSurvival kit\n\nThis book\n\nTopographical map and compass\n\nWhistle\n\nCLOTHING\n\nBoots\n\nCamp shoes\n\nExtra socks\n\nGaiters\n\nJacket or outerwear (layer clothing)\n\nLight shirt or T-shirt\n\nLong pants\n\nPlastic bag for laundry\n\nPoncho or raingear\n\nShorts\n\nSock liners\n\nSwimsuit\n\nWarm hat\n\nWarm shirt\nAppendix C: Hiking Clubs\n\nADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN CLUB\n\nIncludes many local chapters in New York and beyond\n\nadk.org\n\nADK46ERS\n\nNonprofit that focuses on the ultimate Adirondack bucket list\n\nadk46er.org\nAppendix D: Suggested Reading\n\nDunn, Russell. Adirondack Waterfall Guide: New York's Cool Cascades. Delmar, NY: Black Dome Press Corp., 2004. Out of print.\n\nKetchledge, Edwin H. Forests and Trees of the Adirondack High Peaks Region: A Hiker's Guide. Lake George, NY: Adirondack Mountain Club, 1996.\n\nStarmer, Tim. Five-Star Trails: Finger Lakes & Central New York. Birmingham, AL: Menasha Ridge Press, 2014.\n\nVan Diver, Bradford B. Roadside Geology of New York. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1985.\n\nStarmer, Aaron, and Cate Starmer and Tim Starmer. Best Tent Camping: New York State. Birmingham, AL: Menasha Ridge Press, 2013.\n\nAbout the Author\n\nTIM STARMER has always been an outdoors enthusiast and spent most of his childhood seeking out remote and wild areas whenever possible. During a brief hiatus from Brown University during 1997, he drove across the United States for six weeks, camping the entire way. Along the way he explored many of the West's national and state parks, including Canyonlands, Yellowstone, Arches, and Bryce Canyon\u2014he even braved pitching a tent among the mosquito swarms in Badlands National Park. At the trip's conclusion, he headed down to Australia, where he backpacked for a few months exploring the eastern outback, the Great Barrier Reef, and the caves of Tasmania, as well as traversing the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area along the Overland Track. Starmer owns and operates New Heritage Woodworking, a construction company that specializes in designing and building timber frames, and he can still be found exploring the wilds whenever possible.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# _Spartan Women_\n\n# SPARTAN WOMEN\n\nSARAH B. POMEROY\n\n2002\n\nOxford New York  \nAuckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai  \nDar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata  \nKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi  \nS\u00e3o Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto\n\nand an associated company in Berlin\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2002 by Sarah B. Pomeroy\n\nPublished by Oxford University Press Inc.\n\n198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016\n\nwww.oup.com\n\nOxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pomeroy, Sarah B.\n\nSpartan women \/ Sarah B. Pomeroy.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 0\u201219\u2012513066\u20129; 0\u201219\u2012513067\u20127 (pbk.)\n\n1. Women\u2014Greece\u2014Sparta (Extinct city)\n\n2. Sparta (Extinct city)\u2014Social conditions.\n\nI. Title\n\nHQ1134.P66 2002\n\n305.4\u203209389\u2014dc21 2001055961\n\nExcerpt from Aristotle, _Politics Books I and II_ , translated by Trevor Saunders.\n\nReprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.\nTO JACOB AND DINA\n\n## PREFACE\n\nThis book is the first full-length historical study of Spartan women to be published. I have not written in detail about Spartan women since the publication of _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves_ , although more recently I contributed to the scholarship on this subject in two jointly authored books. It was when I was writing a brief survey of the Spartan family and one of the anonymous referees remarked \"but there were no female Spartiates\"  that I first realized that there was much work to be done.\n\nMy recent work on Xenophon and Plutarch, two of the major sources on Spartan women, made me appreciate how little had been written about the ways in which the perspectives of these two authors, more than any others, have shaped our views of Spartan women. Because of my training as a papyrologist, I have often written about women in the Hellenistic period; writing about Plutarch convinced me to extend this study to Roman Greece. Thus this book covers some thousand years of history, but despite the timespan, it is short. Extant sources are few, although I have tried to exploit every ancient text and artifact that appeared relevant. The sources on various aspects of Spartan women's lives are unevenly distributed. There is far more information on education, reproduction, and religion than on other subjects. These emphases are reflected in the lengths of the various chapters. The longstanding lack of serious scholarship on the history of Spartan women has meant that there has been less impetus than is usual for a scholar working in classics and ancient history to take into account previous studies. Nevertheless, this book has been the most difficult one I have ever written. It must be confessed that we know little about Spartan women, but it is not so readily conceded that we do not actually know much about Spartan men either. Compared to what is known about Athens, there is little direct evidence about life in Sparta. It is difficult to construct a realistic picture of how women and men actually lived in such a place; there is, however, a great deal of evidence for what other Greeks thought about their lives. Much current scholarship on Sparta is devoted to the latter subject. It must be emphasized that often the primary sources do not distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive writing; and pictorial representations may also be idealistic or fantastic rather than realistic. Contemporary scholars, as well, differ in their assessment of what constitutes historical reality, and what was part of the \"Spartan mirage.\" Having stated these caveats here, I will not repeat them throughout the book. I must, however, confess that my tendency is to grant more credence to the primary sources than some contemporary hypercritical Spartanologists are wont to do, and to understand that they generally reflect an actual historical situation rather than a utopian fiction. Sophocles described the versatility and ingenuity of the human race. The Greek text permits a literal and gender-free translation. The chorus reflects:\n\nMany the wonders, but nothing more wonderful than a human being . . .\n\nHaving a clever inventive skill beyond hope\n\nA person proceeds sometimes to evil, sometimes to good.\n\n( _Antigone_ 332\u201333, 365\u201368)\n\nA survey of the sources may be found in an Appendix at the end of this book. The nineteenth century paintings that are reproduced in this book may serve to remind us that history is a conversation between the present and many pasts.\n\n### Chronological Conundrums\n\nThe traditional chronological framework for Greek history, which labels blocks of time \"archaic\" (ca. 750\u2013490),\"classical\" (490\u2013323), and \"Hellenistic\" (323\u201330), is based on political changes that are reflected in the visual arts. While this periodization is appropriate to most Greek poleis (especially Athens), it does not reflect some of the most significant events in Spartan history. Furthermore, the usual framework does not take into account events that affected women. In any case, it is irrelevant insofar as Sparta's contribution to the material arts was negligible after the archaic period.\n\nPerhaps most important for Spartan history were the political and social changes that occurred after the Second Messenian War. By the end of the seventh or in the early sixth century these changes created the distinctive Spartan way of life. Changes in the fifth and fourth century may have been significant, but these were not accompanied by sharp dislocations. A major turning point was the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.E.), when enemy troops invaded Spartan territory for the first time, soundly defeated the Spartans, and brought about the liberation of Messenia. Though individual Spartans were tempted to work as mercenaries, Sparta declined to participate in the campaigns of Alexander and thus was not so immediately affected by the changes that produced the Hellenistic world. Sparta's relative isolation was not ended until the reign of Agis IV,which began ca. 244 B.C.E., when Sparta went through a series of political upheavals culminating in defeat by the Roman general Flamininus in 195 B.C.E. and inclusion in the Roman province of Achaea.\n\nThis simple time line does not reveal how the Spartans themselves manipulated, created, and recreated their own history. There were two successful programs to revive the traditional Lycurgan constitution and the social, educational, and religious institutions alleged to have existed in earlier times, one in the Hellenistic period, the second in the Roman period. At the time of both revivals, the sources refer explicitly to actions taken in accordance with the ancient customs and laws. The impact of these revivals complicates the historian's task. For example, if the evidence for the authority of the priestess of Artemis Orthia is purely Roman, should we assume that she exercised exactly the same power in an earlier period? The Spartans believed (or at least wished others to believe) that she had. In the Roman period, they were known to be proud and pedantic about their heritage, and nostalgia would have encouraged them to accept or even promulgate myths as historical truth and exaggerate the virtues and distinctiveness of their past (see Appendix). Plutarch, one of our principle sources, is often not aware of the chronological problems, and in fact offers pieces of information about such important topics as marriage that are mutually contradictory unless the practices he refers to were not concurrent but occurred at different time periods. In his defense, in his works that deal with Sparta, he was writing biography and philosophy, not history. Although these problems will be discussed as they emerge, let me sketch them here. As a historian, I naturally try to use a chronological approach, but because of the ways in which the Spartans themselves revised their own history, I have found a straightforward chronological framework unworkable. For this reason, the chapter titles are topical: the first three, however, follow the Spartan woman through the life cycle. Furthermore, the discussions of the topics are, as much as possible, chronological. Motherhood is the thread that links all the chapters. The reader should note in addition that B.C.E. or C.E. have been added to a date when necessary to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise, all dates should be understood as \"Before Common Era.\" \"Spartan women\" applies only to women of the highest civic class, although I will discuss other women who lived in the territory controlled by Sparta and who interacted with the highest class.\n\nFollowing the precedent of classical authors, I will refer to the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus and the Lycurgan constitution without implying a belief that this shadowy figure ever existed, or that Spartan customs or laws were the result of a single creative act. In the same way I will refer to the _rhetra_ (\"legislation\") of Epitadeus without insisting that Epitadeus ever existed. Plutarch ( _Agis_ 5) reports that sometime after the Peloponnesian War a certain ephor named Epitadeus proposed a rhetra that would permit a person to give or bequeath his _kleros_ (\"plot of land\") and house to anyone he wished. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 15) does not name Epitadeus, but observes that in his day the Spartans no longer obeyed the laws of Lycurgus. Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1270a15\u201334) also does not mention Epitadeus. Whether or not Epitadeus ever existed, major economic changes associated with him occurred at the end of the fifth or in the early fourth century (see chap. 4). These changes began earlier, but the dramatic events after the Peloponnesian War precipitated the changes and made them perceptible. The changes are important because they increased women's potential to own immovable property. To establish the chronological framework, my book will attribute these changes to the rhetra of Epitadeus without lingering on the complexities of dating.\n\nAnother issue is whether the cult of Hera at Elis is directly relevant to Spartan women. We do not know if races in honor of Hera were restricted to local girls from Elis or were pan-Hellenic, like the competitions for men at neighboring Olympia. The latter seems more likely. Whatever the current political relationships in Greece, the games were usually held under conditions of a temporary peace, and statuettes of the victors show girls dressed in the semi-nude costume associated only with Spartans. Since only Spartan women are known to have seriously pursued physical education, they would probably have been the most numerous among the competitors. Convenience of travel to nearby Elis probably ensured a strong presence for Spartan women in any female agonistic activity at Olympia. This volume therefore includes a discussion of the athletic events associated with the cult of Hera at Elis (see chap. 1).\n\nI am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a fellowship and to the Fellows of St Hilda's College, Oxford, and to the American Academy at Rome for their frequent hospitality while I was doing research for this book. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to thank Thomas Figueira, Nigel Kennell, Jo Ann MacNamara, H. Alan Shapiro, and the Family History Reading Group for their comments on the manuscript. I am also grateful to Georgia Tsouvala for research assitance, to David van Taylor for computer advice, and once again to Angela Blackburn for gracious and tactful editorial help.\n\n* * *\n\n. See L. Zuckerman,\"Spartan Women, Liberated,\" _New York Times_ , Jan. 1, 2000, sec. F, pp. 1, 3.\n\n. New York,1975, republished with a new Preface 1995.\n\n. Elaine Fantham, Helene Peet Foley,Natalie Boymel Kampen, Sarah B. Pomeroy, and H. Alan Shapiro, _Women in the Classical World_ (New York, 1994), and Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanely M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, _Ancient Greece_ (New York, 1998).\n\n. _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997).\n\n. A Spartiate was a Spartan with citizen rights (see chap. 5). The feminine form of _Spartiates_ is _Spartiatis_ : see _LSJ_ s.v. Sparte. Lippold, _RE_ 3A (Stuttgart, 1929), s.v. Sparta (die Ethnika), 1280\u201392, esp. 1283, 1291\u201392, notes that the feminine _Lakedaimonia_ is very rare, _Spartiates_ is rare, and _Spartiatis_ is poetic.\n\n. _Xenophon. Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994).\n\n. _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ (New York, 1999).\n\n. E.g., _Women in Hellenistic Egypt_ (New York, 1984; pbk. Detroit, 1990).\n\n. See further F. Ollier, _Le mirage spartiate_ , vol. 1, _\u00c9tude sur l'id\u00e9alisation de Sparte dans l'antiq-uit\u00e9 grecque de l'origine jusqu'aux cyniques_ ; vol. 2, _\u00c9tude sur l'id\u00e9alisation de Sparte dans l'antiquit\u00e9 grecque du d\u00e9but de l'\u00e9cole cynique jusqu'\u00e0 la fin de la cit\u00e9_ (Paris, 1933\u201343, repr. 1973).\n\n. E.g., _SEG_ XI.626, lines 2\u20133, and see chap. 4, below.\n\n. Thus S. J. Hodkinson, s.v. Epitadeus, _OCD_ 3, describes him as fictitious, and in \"'Blind Ploutos'? Contemporary Images of the Role of Wealth in Classical Sparta,\" in _The Shadow of Sparta_. ed. A. Powell and S.J. Hodkinson (London, 1994), 183\u2013222, esp. 207, 214, he sees Epitadeus as part of the \"mirage.\"Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London, 2000) _,_ 90\u201394, reviews the scholarly debate on Epitadeus and change in property tenure. E. Sch\u00fctrumpf, \"The Rhetra of Epitadeus: A Platonist's Fiction,\" _GRBS_ 28 (1987), 441\u201357, argues that Plutarch's report is adapted from Plato _Rep._ 8.555D\u2013E. In contrast, J. Christien, \"La loi d'\u00c9pitadeus: Un aspect de l'histoire \u00e9conomique et sociale \u00e0 Sparte,\" _RD_ 52 (1974), 197\u2013221, and Evanghelos Karab\u00e9lias, \"L'\u00e9piclerat \u00e0 Sparte,\" _Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi_ (Milan, 1982), vol. 2, 469\u201380, 471\u201372, express no doubt about the existence of Epitadeus and the impact of his reform. On Plutarch, see the Appendix to this book.\n\n. But for the relationship between Sparta and Elis as a hindrance to Cynisca's entrance into the equestrian events at Olympia, see chap. 1.\n\n## CONTENTS\n\nILLUSTRATIONS\n\nABBREVIATIONS\n\n1 EDUCATION\n\n2 BECOMING A WIFE\n\n3 THE CREATION OF MOTHERS\n\n4 ELITE WOMEN\n\n5 THE LOWER CLASSES\n\n6 WOMEN AND RELIGION\n\nCONCLUSION: GENDER AND ETHNICITY\n\nAPPENDIX: SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF SPARTAN WOMEN\n\nWORKS CITED\n\nINDEX\n\n## ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n 1Girl from Prizren or Dodona\n\n 2Giovanni Demin, _La lotte delle Spartane_\n\n 3Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, _Les jeunes Spartiates s'exercent \u00e0 la lutte_\n\n 4Married woman\n\n 5Louis Jean Fran\u00e7ois Lagren\u00e9e the Elder, _Spartan Mother and Son_\n\n 6Cup depicting a symposium with women\n\n 7Nude pregnant female in labor\n\n 8Pyramid stele depicting Helen and Menelaus\n\n 9Papyrus text of Alcman, _Partheneion_ 3, fr. 3\n\n10Athlete as mirror handle 166\u2012\n\n11Musician as mirror handle\n\n## ABBREVIATIONS\n\nWith a few obvious exceptions, journal titles are abbreviated according to the form in _L'ann\u00e9e philologique_. Accepted abbreviations are used for standard works. Lists of such abbreviations may be found in reference books such as the _Oxford Classical Dictionary_ , 3d edn., and in the major Greek and Latin dictionaries.\n\nDawkins, _AO_|  R. M. Dawkins et al. _The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta_. Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Supplementary Papers, no. 5. London, 1929.  \n---|---  \n_LGPN_ 3A|  _A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names_. Vol. 3A. _The Peloponnese, Western Greece, and Magna Graecia_ , ed. Peter M. Fraser and Elaine Matthews. Oxford, 1997.  \nPoralla2| Paul Poralla, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great (X\u2013323 b.c.)_. 2d edn. Chicago, 1985.  \n_PMGF_|  M. Davies, _Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_. Vol. 1. Oxford, 1991.\n\n# _Spartan Women_\n##\n\n## EDUCATION\n\n### The History of Childhood\n\nIn the modern western world, schooling is mandatory and the curriculum prescribed by state authorities who verify its effectiveness by examinations of students, teachers, and textbooks. In antiquity, parents alone were usually responsible for their children's upbringing. At Athens there was a little outside supervision: a boy was scrutinized at successive stages of life by his father's tribe. In contrast, there was no outside surveillance of girls' upbringing, because a modest, well-brought-up young woman was hidden from the public eye. At home with her mother and other women in the household, a girl learned the skills that she would need to use as an adult. Wearing long dresses, and playing indoors with dolls and small animals, she learned to be nurturant and to perform household tasks.\n\nEvery well-governed state that comes into existence and evolves as the result of deliberate creative acts and legislation endorses the child-rearing practices and values it needs. The educational system is part of political organization, and each role in it, including parent, teacher, and pupil, is socially constructed. Only at Sparta did the state prescribe an educational program for both boys and girls beginning in childhood. Spartans themselves, of course, undertook most of the pedagogical tasks, but they also are known to have invited a few foreigners to teach the young. Poets were the most revered teachers in archaic Greece. There were no travelling women poets: evidently the Spartan authorities determined that education was valuable, and there was no reason to be concerned about any inappropriate liaisons between a male teacher such as Alcman and female as well as male pupils. Alcman's origin, variously said to be Lydian or slave, did not pose an insurmountable deterrent (see Appendix). The earliest datable evidence for the girls' official program is archaic and continues through the classical period. In the Hellenistic period, the traditional system for both boys and girls was discontinued. The boys' program ( _agoge_ ) was fully revived by Cleomenes III: whether the girls' program was also restored at this time is not indisputable, but there are some hints that they were included, perhaps voluntarily rather than under the mandate of the state. When the revolution of Cleomenes failed, the agoge continued until it was abolished by Philopoemen in 188, to be later restored in an archaizing form in the Roman period. At that time as well, state supervision of girls' education was revived through the authority of the _gynaikonomos_.\n\nIn archaic and classical Sparta, girls were raised to become the sort of mothers Sparta needed, just as boys were trained to become the kind of soldiers the state required. The boys' program was far more arduous than the girls'. Young boys left home to learn the survival techniques and skills they would need as hoplites. Their educational program was full time and competitive, and they were frequently examined by older boys and adult authorities appointed for this purpose (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 2.24.1\u20136, Plut. _Lyc._ 16, 18). The goal of the educational system devised for Spartan girls was to create mothers who would produce the best hoplites and mothers of hoplites. Because all the girls were expected to become the same kind of mothers, the educational system was uniform. This goal obviously did not require the full-time practice and scrutiny that was imposed upon the boys. Girls lived and ate at home with their mothers. Thus it would appear that they enjoyed some privacy and leisure denied to the boys (see below). We surmise that, compared to other Greek women, they had plenty of time to do whatever they wanted to do.\n\n### Literacy\n\nThe extent of literacy in Greece in general, and in Sparta in particular, has been much debated. It is generally agreed that literacy at Sparta was confined to a small elite, and lack of the ability to read and write did not hinder an ordinary citizen's ability to participate in government. Paul Cartledge reports that major epigraphical sources in Sparta give the names of approximately twelve women as compared with one hundred men. This sex ratio, however, is not direct evidence of levels of literacy for women and men respectively; rather, it is a reflection of the fact that men performed more deeds deemed worthy of commemoration and, at least until the end of the fifth century, generally had more funds at their disposal to pay for inscriptions. For example, athletic victories generated a substantial number of inscriptions, but no woman was victorious in horse racing until the fourth century (see below).\n\nThere is no reason, however, to assume that the sex ratio among literate Spartans was as skewed as it was elsewhere in the Greek world. In a democratic polis like Athens, there were strong incentives for men to learn how to read and and write; since women did not participate in government, there was little reason for them to become literate, though some did. In Sparta, in contrast, the education of boys was devoted to developing military skills, leaving little time for the liberal arts. Girls, however, spent time with their mothers and older women. Furthermore, since they were married at eighteen\u2014a substantially later age than their Athenian counterparts\u2014they had as many years as most girls do in modern western societies to devote to their education. They could well have learned reading and writing, as well as other aspects of _mousike_ (music, dancing, poetry) in such an all-female milieu. Of course, in the days when poets such as Alcman were engaged to teach choirs of young maidens, they learned from the poets. Though copies of the poems were probably preserved in state or private archives, the oral tradition was strong (see Appendix). Doubtless the girls committed most information to memory, and did not write it down, for surely they could not have sung and danced while dangling a papyrus roll. By repeating poems like those of Alcman at festivals, successive generations of Spartans learned both their content (including mythology, religion, courtship, and etiquette) and mousike. The repetition of this material tended to create children who thought and behaved as their parents did. Thus Spartan society remained conservative and conscious of its traditions.\n\nThe educational goals of the state and the girls' curriculum are reflected in lyrics written by Alcman for choirs of Spartan maidens:\n\nAlcman, _Partheneion_ 1 _PMGF_\n\nPolydeuces.\n\nAmong the dead I do not take account of Lycaethus [but] of Enarsophorus and Thebrus the fast runner . . . and the violent\n\n(5) . . . and wearing a helmet\n\n[Euteiches], and king Areius, and . . . outstanding of demigods\n\n. . . the leader\n\n. . . great, and Eurytus\n\n(10) . . . tumult\n\n. . . and the bravest\n\n. . . we shall pass over . . . . Destiny and Providence, of all [gods] . . . the oldest\n\n(15) . . . strength [rushing] without shoes.\n\nLet no man fly to heaven\n\n. . . [or] try to marry Aphrodite\n\n. . . . queen, or some\n\n. . . or a daughter of Porcus.\n\n(20) The Graces . . . the house of Zeus\n\n. . . with love in their eyes\n\ngod . . . to friends . . .\n\n(25) gave gifts . . . youth destroyed . . . vain . . .\n\n(30) went, one of them [killed] by an arrow . . . [another] by a marble millstone\n\n. . . in the house of Hades . . . .\n\n(35) They plotted evil deeds and suffered unforgettably. There is such a thing as vengeance from the gods, and blessed is the man who, being reasonable, weaves the web of the day without weeping.\n\n(40) And I sing the light of Agido: I see her like the sun which Agido is now calling to shine as our witness. But the renowned choir leader does not allow me to praise or blame her [i.e.,Agido] at all.\n\n(45) For she herself is conspicuous, as if one set among the herds a strong horse with thundering hooves, a champion from dreams in caves.\n\n(50) Don't you see? The mount is a Venetic: but the hair of my cousin Hagesichora blooms like pure gold;\n\n(55) and her silvery face\u2014why need I tell you clearly? There is Hagesichora herself; while the nearest rival in beauty to Agido will run as a Colaxian horse behind an Ibenian.\n\n(60) For the Pleiades rise up like the Dog Star to challenge us as we bear the cloak to Orthria through the ambrosial night.\n\n(65) There is no abundance of purple sufficient to protect us, nor our speckled serpent bracelet of solid gold, nor our Lydian cap, adornment for tender-eyed girls, nor Nanno's hair, (70) nor Areta who looks like a goddess, nor Thylacis and Cleesithera. Nor will you go to Ainesimbrota's and say \"I wish Astaphis were mine,\" and (75) \"I wish Philylla would look at me, and Demareta, and lovely Vianthemis\"\u2014no, it is Hagesichora who exhausts me with love.\n\nFor Hagesichora with the pretty ankles is not here beside us. (80) She waits with Agido and commends our feast to the gods. Gods, receive it! For the accomplishment and fulfillment are up to the gods.\n\n(85) Choir leader, I would say I myself am a girl who screeches in vain like an owl from a roof beam; but I desire to please Aotis especially, for she is the healer for us.\n\n(90) However, because of Hagesichora girls come to lovely peace. For it is necessary to obey the trace-horse and the driver.\n\n(95) Of course she is not a better singer than the Sirens, for they are goddesses, and instead of their eleven, we are only ten, and children who sing. (100) But we sound like a swan on the waters of Xanthos. And she with her thick blond hair . . . .\n\nAlcman, _Partheneion_ 3 _PMGF_\n\nOlympian Goddesses . . . about my heart . . . song and I . . . to hear the voice of . . . (5) of girls singing a beautiful song . . . . will scatter sweet sleep . . . from my eyelids and lead me to go to the contest where I will surely toss my blond hair\n\n(10) delicate feet . . . .\n\n(61) with limb-loosening desire, and more meltingly than sleep and death she gazes toward . . . nor is she sweet in vain. But Astymeloisa does not answer me (65) while she holds the wreath, some star falling through the gleaming sky, or a golden bough, or a soft feather (70) she crossed on long feet. The moist grace of Cinyras [i.e., perfume] sits on the maiden's hair.\n\n(73) Astumeloisa among a crowd, darling of the people . . . .\n\n(75) taking . . .\n\nI say . . . . If a silver . . . . I might see (80) if she would love me coming near, and take me by the soft hand, at once I would worship her.\n\nBut now a child, heavyhearted . . . to a child, the girl-child\n\n(85) grace\n\nAs we have mentioned, Sparta was the only polis where the training of girls was prescribed and supported by public authority. The spiritual and intellectual education of girls is interesting, especially since apparently boys did not receive an education superior to that of girls (in contrast to the situation at Athens). Therefore the cultural level of girls may well have been superior to that of boys, inasmuch as the latter had to devote so much attention to military training. The intensity of the training of both sexes is unparalleled in the rest of the Greek world. Competitiveness was as much a part of the cultural curriculum as of the physical program. Alcman was hired to teach maidens to perform in choruses that stressed competition among its members both as individuals and as participants in groups of rival choruses, and his poems refer to ranking and contests.\n\nIn the early classical period, some women could read. An anecdote about the precocious Gorgo (born in 506 B.C.E.), daughter and wife of kings, suggests that she knew how to read. When Demaratus, who was in exile, sent a secret message to Sparta by writing it on a wooden tablet and covering it with wax, Gorgo told the recipients to scrape the wax off and read the message (Herod. 7.239). While it is not reported that Gorgo herself read the message when it was uncovered, she realized that there might be writing on such a tablet. Other stories about her poise and precocity also indicate that she probably could read. She will have acquired her skill not necessarily through formal tuition, but while in her indulgent father's presence, listening quietly or more likely (judging from what we are told about her assertiveness and self-confidence) piping up persistently to ask questions about the texts that poets, diplomats, bureaucrats, and other literate people consulted. Anecdotes about Spartan mothers sending letters to their sons urging them to be brave also suggest that literacy was not unknown among women. Though the source of the anecdotes is late and they can not be dated or verified, considering the fact that mothers were separated from their sons who were on military service for long periods of time, the idea that they communicated by letters is not unthinkable.\n\nDedications by women to female divinities that bear the name of the dedicator begin in the late seventh century. This date is consistent with the spread and use of the alphabet in the Greek world. Inscriptions, however, that include dedications do not constitute incontrovertible evidence of literacy inasmuch as they were likely to have been written by craftsmen, rather than by the dedicators themselves. Nevertheless, that inscriptions commemorating the deeds of individual women are found at sanctuaries frequented by women suggests that some women could read them (see below on the Heraea). Such inscriptions are consistent with the picture given by other sources and allow us to conclude that some women, at any rate, were literate.\n\nDoubtless there was change over time in the rate of women's literacy and in its relationship to the literacy of men. After the Peloponnesian War, when Sparta was no longer isolated, Spartan women were probably as literate as aristocratic women elsewhere in the Greek world. For example, _Anonymus Iamblichi_ , a work written some time after the Peloponnesian War in a literary Doric, reports that the Spartans thought it was fine for their children not to learn mousike and letters. He may, however, be referring to boys only. In any case, by the middle of the fourth century, Plato describes women's curriculum as consisting of gymnastics and mousike and comments that this program leaves plenty of time for luxury, expense, and unstructured activity ( _Laws_ 806A, cf. _Rep._ 5.452A). He also states that in Crete and Sparta not only men, but also women, take pride in education and goes on to praise their skills in philosophical discussion ( _Prot_.342D: _paideusis_ ). This talent is an aspect of the women's ability to speak. Spartan women were encouraged and trained to speak in public, praising the brave, reviling cowards and bachelors (Plut. _Lyc._ 14.3\u20136). Aristotle thought it was natural for women to be silent ( _Pol_. 1260a28\u201331), and almost five hundred years later Plutarch wrote: \"A wife should speak only to her husband or through her husband.\" In Athens, respectable women were encouraged not to speak. In Xenophon's _Oeconomicus_ (7.10), a husband describes his young wife as having been brought up \"under careful supervision so that she might see and hear and speak as little as possible.\" Her husband is unusual in believing that as an essential part of her education to be his partner and to supervise the household, he must first teach her how to speak (7.10).\n\n### Some Learned Women\n\nOf course literacy is related to verbal ability, and in Greece, even among literate circles, poetry was often either sung or read aloud. According to hazy traditions, there were two female poets in Sparta. Both of them apparently worked in the archaic period, when Sappho and lesser-known women poets flourished in other parts of the Greek world. None of the work of the Spartan women poets is extant. Megalostrata is mentioned by Alcman. He describes her as \"a golden-haired maiden enjoying the gift of the Muses.\" Several Muses were involved, for in this period poets not only wrote words, but also composed musical accompaniment, and in some cases choreography. Athenaeus (13.600f) reports that Megalostrata attracted lovers because of her conversation, and that Alcman was madly in love her. Though she is not specifically identified as Spartan, she is called a \"maiden,\" and as we have seen, Alcman spent much time in Sparta creating poetry for unmarried girls. Furthermore, like Helen, she is blonde, and her name is suitable for a Spartan, for it means \"large army.\" That she had a personal flirtation with Alcman is questionable. In Greek biographical tradition, written hundreds of years after the death of the subjects, it was common to hypothesize erotic links between creative women and men, rather than grant them an independent existence or a purely intellectual relationship with men.\n\nThere was also a tradition about Cleitagora, a woman poet whose name was used to identify a _skolion_ (drinking song). The Cleitagora is mentioned in Aristophanes ( _Lys_. 1237, _Wasps_ 1246), and Cratinus (254 Kassel-Austin). The _Lysistrata_ passage suggests that she was Spartan, whereas the _Wasps_ offers the possibility that she was Thracian: the scholiast to each passage draws the obvious, and mutually opposing, conclusion. The former inference, however, is more likely to be correct for several reasons: first, in the context of the _Lysistrata_ where the leading female characters are an Athenian and a Spartan visitor, it is more appropriate to sing a song by a Spartan woman. Hence the ambassador in _Lysistrata_ says it not right to sing the song called the \"Telamon,\" but rather the \"Cleitagora.\" Furthermore, of all Greek women, Spartans alone drank wine not only at festivals, but also as part of their daily fare. Therefore it is natural to attribute a drinking song to a Spartan woman who probably composed it for a woman's festival.\n\nThe archaic period also produced at least one Spartan female philosopher. Chilonis, daughter of Chilon, one of the Seven Sages, was a follower of Pythagoras. Iamblichus ( _VP_ 267) named seventeen or eighteen women among the 235 disciples of Pythagoras; nearly one-third of the women cited were Spartans. In contrast, only three of the 218 men were Spartans. Some of the pseudepigrapha attributed to women were in the Doric dialect, and these originated from the group of Pythagoreans around Tarentum, a Spartan colony. In addition to Chilonis, Iamblichus mentions Nistheadousa  and Cleaichma, a sister of the Spartan Autocharidas.  Timycha, wife of Myllias of Croton, is singled out for her courage in resisting Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. Dionysius (r. 396\u201379) had her tortured when she was six months pregnant. Rather than reveal the secrets of the Pythagoreans, she bit her tongue off. Cratesiclea as well was a Pythagorean who was married to Cleanor, a fellow Pythagorean. Their dates are not known. Unlike Chilonis, who was said to be a contemporary of Pythagoras, Cratesiclea and Cleanor may have been neo-Pythagoreans. It was natural for members of the same family, especially a married couple, to become Pythagoreans, for the philosopher ordained rules for everyday life including dietary prohibitions and the proper seasons for sexual intercourse. The idea that prescribed commandments and structure might govern even the minutiae of life in an entire community doubtless was familiar to Spartans. Moreover, Sparta enjoyed cultural ties with Samos, Pythagoras's native land.\n\nThe interest in philosophy continued into the Hellenistic period. As we have mentioned, one of the Pythagorean women may have been a neo-Pythagorean. Stoicism also had some effect upon Spartan women, though this philosophy was directed toward men. Cleomenes III invited Sphaerus, a disciple of Cleanthes, to give lectures to the youths and ephebes. When the Spartan revolutions failed, Cleomenes and his family sought aid, followed by asylum in Egypt (see chap. 4). Upon embarking as a hostage for her son's behavior, his mother Cratesicleia set an example of courageous behavior:\"Let no one see us crying or doing anything unworthy of Sparta. For this is up to us alone. Our fortunes will be whatever the deity may bestow.\" She was not at all afraid of death. Self-sacrifice, belief in a single all-powerful divinity, and courage in the face of death are all characteristics of Stoics.\n\n### Mousike\n\nMusical performance was an essential feature of ancient religion, and Spartans were taught to sing, dance, and play musical instruments. Athenaeus (14.632f\u2013633a) observes that the art of music was practiced more intensely in Sparta than elsewhere, for it was a pleasant relief from the self-control and austerity of everyday life. Votive figurines depict women playing various wind, string, and percussion instruments (see chap. 6). In Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1 (97, 99), young girls display critical judgment about their own singing abilities: though they do not sing as well as the Sirens, they sing sweetly indeed. Most of the descriptions we have about women's practice of mousike concerns their dancing. Even Aristophanes, though he could not ever have been a witness, refers to the maidens dancing on the banks of the Eurotas ( _Lys._ 1307\u201310). The hyporcheme, in which the chorus sings as it dances, was performed by Spartan men and women. Athenaeus (14.630e) links the hyporcheme to the comic and vulgar dance called the kordax _,_ and comments that both are funny. Spartan women also were famous for performing another undignified dance called the _bibasis_ (Pollux 4.102,Aristoph. _Lys._ 82). This dance required physical prowess and coordination, for the dancer had to jump and thump her buttocks with her heels in competition for prizes. A bronze figurine that was once thought to represent a girl runner may represent a girl dancing vigorously (fig. 1).\n\nFig. 1. Girl from Prizren or Dodona.\n\nShe is dressed as a runner. That she glances back, however, rather than keeping her gaze in the direction of her feet, also suggests that she is dancing. London, British Museum 208. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.\n\n### Physical Education\n\nThere is more evidence, both textual and archaeological, for athletics than for any other aspect of Spartan women's lives. Furthermore, there is more evidence for the athletic activities of Spartan women alone than for the athletics of all the women in the rest of the Greek world combined. Clearly these activities caught the attention of writers and lead us to conclude that Spartan women's intense involvement in such activities was probably unique in the Greek world. Moreover, although there are relatively few high-quality works of art pertaining to the lives of Spartan women in other spheres, an impressive proportion are relevant to their athletic pursuits. Some of these artifacts are extant; others are known through descriptions by Pausanias and others.\n\nMany of the athletic activities were part of religious festivals that were held in honor of female divinities. It is difficult to separate athletics from religion: however, we will concentrate on the former in the present chapter and the latter in chapter 6.\n\nXenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 1.4) states with approval that Lycurgus instituted physical training for women no less than for men, including competitions in racing and trials of strength. Euripides ( _Andr_. 595\u2013601) specifically alludes to racing and wrestling. Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 14.2) gives a more explicit account of the physical curriculum, mentioning running, wrestling, discus throwing, and hurling the javelin. Skill in these activities is particularly useful for a soldier. The women's curriculum was a selective and less arduous version of the men's, but similar to it. As the girls in Theocritus announce: \"we all run the same racecourse and rub ourselves with oil like men along the bathing places of the Eurotas.\"  The silvery face mentioned in Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1 (55), may be the glistening effect of the oil in addition to beads of sweat resulting from vigorous exercise. Since boys'and girls' activities were similar, the question of whether they were educated together arises. In Plato's _Republic_ 5, male and female guardians are trained for the same jobs in the government and the military: therefore they are educated together. In proposing co-ed education, Plato's idea is more radical than the Spartan reality of his time. Although sources agree that there was no shyness because of their nudity, it is not clear whether boys and girls used the same exercise ground and racecourse ( _dromos_ ).  Xenophon and Plato discuss the education of boys and girls in separate sections and the _agelai_ (\"herds\") are always described as single sex. Given the relative strength and swiftness of men and women, co-ed competitions and trials of strength in most cases would not have been as efficient in training future hoplites as single-sex exercises. The following two nineteenth-century paintings set in the Platanistas respectively depict, first, the girls exercising separately (fig. 2), and second, provoking the boys to involve them in co-ed wrestling (fig. 3).\n\nFig. 2. Giovanni Demin, _La lotte delle Spartane_\n\nFresco, 1836. Villa Patt, Sedico. Photo, Zanfron.\n\nFig. 3. Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, _Les jeunes Spartiates_ (\"Young Spartans Exercising\").\n\n1860. London, National Gallery. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of\n\nIn figure 2, girls wrestle before a crowd of elders.Members of the Council of Elders (Gerousia) stand alongside and serve as judges. Lycurgus, seated at top center, crowns a victorious girl. To his right at his feet sits a bearded old man recording the names of the victors on a tablet. Taygetus looms behind. The structure in the center is probably either the shrine of Alcon  or the sanctuary of Poseidon (cf. Paus. 3.14.8). The simple architecture of the monuments reflects Spartan austerity and restraint. Though the Spartan men do not leer at the girls, the modern viewer may find it difficult to distinguish between athletic and erotic nudity, and quite possibly the artist did not intend to make such a distinction. Demin may have been influenced by Roman and late Greek traditions suggesting that while exercising Spartan girls were sexually provocative.\n\nIn figure 3, note that the third figure from the left caresses the breast of the second girl from the left and kisses her. There is no ancient authority for the girls' costume: to the modern viewer it resembles the apron-like skirts worn by some Native Americans. In the group behind Lycurgus stands among the mothers. Degas himself said that the rock in the background is Taygetus, from which newborns who did not pass official scrutiny were thrown.He had studied Greek and Latin and many years after completing the picture he stated that the source was Plutarch. This reliance on Plutarch is doubtless a major factor in Degas's avoidance of the potentially more licentious interpretations of Demin's depiction.\n\nSpartan women were not trained for actual combat; if they had engaged in co-ed athletics, they would have been more prepared. Plato ( _Laws_ 806A) and Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1269b) complain that despite their physical education, they were no better than other Greek women when it came to defending their country. When the Thebans invaded Sparta under Epaminondas in 369 B.C.E., the women were terrified and panicked because their country had never before suffered invasion. It is necessary to point out that at that moment Spartan men were no better than other Greeks, for they had lost a battle. A century later, anticipating an attack by Pyrrhus, Archidamia, grandmother of Agis IV, rallied the other women to oppose the men's scheme to send them to safety in Crete. They declared they had no wish to continue living if Sparta were destroyed. They performed heavy manual labor in behalf of Sparta, assisting the men in digging a trench in a single night as a defense against the elephants of Pyrrhus.  Finally, they told the few soldiers who were present to go to sleep and finished the trench themselves. The next day they cheered the army on. Chilonis, wife of king Cleonymus, held a rope around her neck so she would not be taken alive (see chap. 4).\n\nOne may speculate that Spartan women would have been better at defending themselves if need be, for Plutarch ( _Mor._ 227d12) states that a goal of their physical education was to make them able to defend themselves, their children, and their country. At any rate, just as there is little evidence for illicit adultery at Sparta, there is little for the rape of individuals. During the bitterly fought Second Messenian War,however, Aristomenes and his troops succeeded in carrying off some maidens who were dancing in a secluded place. During the night the guards attempted to rape the maidens, but Aristomenes slew the most aggressive men, saved the girls, and released them for a large ransom. Spartan women were reputed to drag bachelors around the altar and to hit them to make them enter marriage at the appropriate time. Although the source of this gossip is a writer who tends to exaggerate, the implication is that the women were very strong, in fact powerful enough to drag around a Spartan man in his prime, not an easy job even in a ritual when the man was not resisting; and perhaps the women worked in teams.\n\nWhen athletic activities were not part of ritual for women, they were purely sports. Some of the skills were useful for hunters. Xenophon ( _Cyn._ 13.18) reports that some women enjoyed hunting. Although the women he names were the mythical Atalanta and Procris, it is possible that Spartan women engaged in this sport as well (see below). They will not have had to go far, for the region of Mount Taygetus was rich in wild game (Paus. 3.20.4\u20135). Doubtless, like Spartan youths, they could have outraced and encircled a hare. As we have mentioned, they were taught to throw a javelin. In that case we speculate they will have increased their consumption of protein, for meat does not otherwise appear to have been a significant part of the female diet. In any case, Spartan women were not anemic, and of course exercise does whet the appetite. A poet of middle comedy refers to a certain Helen who devoured a prodigious quantity of food. Helen's name suggests that she was Spartan, or at least wanted to seem to be, and her food consumption equaled that of male athletes.\n\nThe education of Spartans apparently affected the social construction of their religion. Plutarch exaggerates when he states that all Spartan divinities carried weapons. Nevertheless, at Sparta many important divinities, including Athena of the Bronze House,Aphrodite Morpho, and Aphrodite Areia, were portrayed as as warriors.Artemis Orthia was shown wearing a helmet and holding bow and spear. In contrast, in Athens, only one major goddess, Athena, was often shown fully armed. Despite the anthropomorphism of Greek divinities, it would be naive to postulate that goddesses were invariably a direct reflection of their female worshippers.  For example, Athena's helmet, shield, and spear had no implications for Athenian women, and other important gods and goddesses at Athens were not shown armed. On the other hand, the Spartan evidence, with its intense focus on martial prowess, does seem to have implications for women.\n\n### _Horsemanship_\n\nHorseback riding and chariot racing were not part of a traditional Greek physical curriculum for most boys, and certainly not for girls. Throughout Greece, however, wealthy gentlemen were expected to be accomplished horsemen and to be able to serve in the cavalry.\n\nSparta was known for breeding and racing horses. Riding horses requires skill rather than brute strength. Of course, little is known about women's education in archaic and classical poleis other than Athens and Sparta, but there can be no doubt that Sparta's excellence in equestrian affairs had repercussions for Spartan women. Women as well as men were actively involved with horses, riding, driving horse-drawn vehicles, and engaging in competitive equestrian events. Archaeological and textual evidence from the archaic period testify to the long history of this involvement. Fragmentary terracotta figurines of Orthia riding astride and side-saddle were found at the sanctuary. More votives of horses than of all other animals combined were also found. Figurines depicting Helen on horseback similar to those found at the sanctuary of Orthia were discovered at the Menelaion.  Bronze votives at both sanctuaries depict female figures identified either as mortals or as Artemis and Helen riding side-saddle. The habits of divinities are not always emulated by human beings, but, as the ambivalence in the identity of the figures makes clear, there does appear to be a direct connection between goddesses and women as riders.\n\nIn Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1, the girls compare themselves to horses that are ridden. They comment that the Colaxian was inferior to the Venetic and Ibenian.  Because of the educational function of poetry, this remark suggests that the girls had specialized knowledge about the different strains of horses. The Colaxian was a sturdy pony, the Veneti used more for chariots than for riding, and the Ibenian perhaps Celtic or Ionian. They also understood chariot racing and refer to the trace-horse and the driver (line 90). At the Hyacinthia, Spartan girls drove expensively decorated light carts, and had an opportunity to display their equestrian skills before the entire community. Some raced in chariots drawn by a yoke of horses. For some processions, the girls rode in carriages shaped like griffins or goat-stags. These Spartan girls apparently had much more fun than Nausicaa described in the _Odyssey_ (6.37\u201338, 57\u201358, etc.), who had to beg permission from her father to drive a team of two mules while riding in a cart loaded with other women and sacks of dirty laundry.\n\nNot only could Spartan women drive horses, but they also knew how to ride them. Agesilaus II used to like to play \"pony on a stick\" with his young children, Archidamus, Eupolia, and Prolyta (Plut. _Ages._ 25.6, _Sayings of Spartans_ 213.70). This report indicates that girls played at riding astride, and that the hobby horse on a stick was not considered a \"boys' toy.\" In 220\/219, at the end of the reign of Cleomenes III, the heroic wife of Panteus fled to the coast on a galloping horse. Thence she embarked to join her husband who was in exile with Cleomenes in Alexandria (Plut. _Cleom._ 38). Like male landowners, Spartan women could drive or ride out to survey their property as men did. Driving horses or riding them endowed Spartan women with an autonomy that was unique for women in the Greek world.\n\nAt Athens, in contrast, sumptuary laws and measures intended to curtail women's visibility in public proscribed women's opportunities to ride in carriages, and there is no evidence that they ever rode horses. Women are rarely portrayed in art riding in carriages except in marriage processions. Sometimes, of course, it was necessary to travel for a funeral or a festival. According to traditional laws ascribed to Solon, they were not to travel at night except in a wagon with a torch shining in front (Plut. _Sol._ 21.4) At Rome, where much more wealth was available, the Lex Oppia, enacted as a sumptuary measure in 216 B.C.E., also forbade women from riding in chariots except for religious purposes.\n\nThat a Spartan was the first female star in Greek athletics not surprising. Cynisca was a daughter of the Eurypontid king Archelaus II and sister of two kings, Agis II and Agesilaus. Her name, Cynisca, is unusual and may be a nickname for an especially tomboyish woman. Her paternal grandfather, Zeuxidemus, was also nicknamed Cyniscus (Herod.6.71). The meaning \"little hound\" perhaps alludes to an interest in hunting. The name of her mother and of her niece Eupolia (\"well horsed\"), her sister's name Proauga (\"flash of lightning\"), and her niece's Prolyta (\"she who is let loose in the forefront\") allude to equestrian interests in the female line. Cynisca is the first woman whose horses were victorious at Olympia. She must have been close to fifty years old at the time. The Eleans had banned the Spartans from Olympia in 420 (Thuc. 5.49\u201350). After the Peloponnesian War, Sparta attacked Elis, and Agis was able to offer sacrifices at Olympia in 397 (Xen. _Hell._ 3.2.21\u201331). Cynisca entered her horses at the earliest possible moment and won her victories in two successive Olympiads, in 396 and 392. No wonder Pausanias (3.8.2) calls her ambitious. Cynisca must have been champing at the bit herself for several years, hoping she would have an opportunity to race her horses at Olympia before she died.\n\nCynisca's _quadriga_ (four-horse chariot) was evidence of great wealth like that of some of her contemporaries who were victors, including tyrants in Sicily. Likewise Cynisca's commemorative monuments were examples of conspicuous consumption equal to those of men. Like wealthy men who owned racehorses, Cynisca did not drive them herself but employed a jockey. Indeed, she would not even have been present at the victorious event inasmuch as women were not permitted to attend the games. Her image, however, stood in the sanctuary. Apelleas, son of Callicles, of Megara, created a sculpture of her chariot, charioteer, and horses in bronze, and a statue of Cynisca herself.He also made bronzes of her horses that were smaller than lifesize (Paus. 5.12.5). These were erected at Olympia. They were the first monuments dedicated by a woman to commemorate victories at pan-Hellenic competitions. The choice of Apelleas suggests that Cynisca had done some research to find a sculptor from an allied city who specialized in images of women. Apelleas was fond of depicting women praying. Thus it is quite possible that Cynisca was portrayed expressing gratitude to the gods. The author of the epigram inscribed on the base of her statue is unknown. The poem is metrically competent; straightforward in the \"Laconic\" style; and of course written in the Doric dialect.\n\nCynisca herself is represented as speaking:\n\nMy ancestors and brothers were kings of Sparta.\n\nI, Cynisca, victorious with a chariot of swift-footed horses,\n\nerected this statue. I declare that I am the only woman\n\nin all of Greece to have won this crown.\n\nThis epigram was only the second ever composed to commemorate a deed of the Spartan royalty (Paus. 3.8.2). The first one was written by Simonides and was inscribed at Delphi in honor of Pausanias, victor over the Persians at Plataea. Obviously Cynisca was thought of in very exalted company. She had won the most prestigious horserace twice at the most prestigious pan-Hellenic atheletic festival. Cynisca's commemorative sculptures at Elis stood between that of Troilus of Elis  and those of male Lacedemonians. Pausanias (6.2.1) includes Cynisca in his observation that after the Persian war, the Lacedaemonians were the keenest breeders of horses. No husband or children are recorded for Cynisca.  Xenophon and Plutarch, however, draw attention to her relationship with her brother the king, who had encouraged her to enter a chariot at Olympia in order to demonstrate that such victories were the result of wealth and expenditure, not of virtue ( _andragathia_ , \"manly virtue\"). Whether Agesilaus was actually inspired by mean-spiritedeness and sibling rivalry, or by the lofty motives Xenophon and Plutarch ascribe to him, the anecdote suggests that he thought his sister's horses had a good chance to win. Like some male owners of victorious racehorses,Cynisca was not only extremely wealthy, but she was also an expert in equestrian matters. According to Pausanias (3.8.2), she had an ambition to be victorious at Olympia, and was the first woman to breed horses. With the increase in private wealth, much of it in the hands of women, and with their keen interest in athletics and knowledge of horses, it was natural that Spartan women would own racehorses. Cynisca was a member of the first group of extremely wealthy women who begin to become evident after the Peloponnesian War (see chap. 4).\n\nA hero\u00f6n was erected to Cynisca near the Platanistas where the athletic contests of young Spartans were staged. In Greece it was not uncommon to treat athletes as heroes, but Cynisca was the first woman to be elevated to this status. Her shrine was in the vicinity of the shrines of mythical heroes including the sons of Hippoco\u00f6n. The hero\u00f6n would have been built after her death and would have served as an inspiration to other women.\n\nCynisca's example was soon followed by other women, especially Spartans; the author Pausanias (8.1) sees their victories as a trend. Among them was the Spartan Euryleonis, who was victorious at Olympia with a two-horse chariot in 368. A statue of Euryleonis stood with those of other luminaries such as the general Pausanias in the vicinity of the Bronze House (Paus. 3.8.1, 3.17.6). In fact the Spartans Cynisca and Euryleonis were the first women whose chariots were victorious at Olympia. Approximately a century later they were followed by royal women and women connected with the courts of Alexander's successors (see below).\n\n### _Competitions_\n\nCompetitive racing and trials of strength for women, no less than for men, were part of the physical education system instituted by Lycurgus (Xen. _Lac. Pol_. 1.3\u20134, cf. Arist. _Pol._ 1269b). Some of these contests were doubtless organized in a routine manner; but others took place as part of religious festivals. We are better informed about the latter.\n\nRunning races were the only athletic events for women that took place at festivals. There were races in honor of Helen, Dionysus, Hera, and in honor of local deities called Driodones.  Theocritus reports in his _Epithalamium to Helen_ (18.22\u201325) that 240 maidens rubbed their nude bodies with oil as men did and raced along the Eurotas. That the girls were said to be as old as Helen when she married Menelaus indicates that the races were associated with puberty. As Theocritus reports the event, there was a tacit beauty competition as well, with Helen winning the prize (see Conclusion). The women's race at the Heraea in Elis was the most prestigious, the equivalent for women of the Olympic competitions held for men:\n\nEvery fourth year the Sixteen Women weave a robe for Hera, and the same women also hold games called the Heraea. The games consist of a race between virgins. The virgins are not all of the same age; but the youngest run first, the next in age run next, and the eldest virgins run last of all. They run thus: their hair hangs down, they wear a shirt that reaches to a little above the knee, the right shoulder is bare to the breast. The course assigned to them for the contest is the Olympic stadium; but the course is shortened by about a sixth of the stadium. The winners receive crowns of olive and a share of the cow which is sacrificed to Hera; moreover, they are allowed to dedicate statues of themselves with their names engraved on them.\n\nRather than actual portraits, the statues were doubtless images of girls running with the name of the honorand inscribed. It is obvious that the victorious women, or their families, sought fame and immortality no less than victorious men, and were willing to pay the cost of a dedication.\n\n### _Athletic Nudity_\n\nThe Greek word _gymnos_ means \"nude\" or \"lightly dressed.\" Nudity at Sparta may be explained in terms of religion, initiatory rites, erotic stimulation, and the requirements of athletic prowess. Though these strands are intertwined, for heuristic purposes we will separate them, and treat nudity as a costume for sports here. (For other implications, see chap. 2 and Conclusion.)\n\nNot only did Spartan women wear a _peplos_ (tunic) that revealed their thighs, but they regularly exercised completely nude. Mature women and pregnant women exercised. Even older women exercised nude. As male athletes had discovered, light clothing or none at all is best for racing. Even nowadays (or at least before the adoption of lycra bodysuits), racers wear as little clothing as possible. Thucydides (1.6) credits the Spartans with being the first to exercise unclothed.\n\nThe girls who raced at the Heraea lowered the right shoulder of the peplos and revealed their right breast. This costume was peculiar to this festival. No ancient source specifies the ethnic identity of the girls who competed at Elis. They may have been girls from the neighborhood, or at least originally so. It seems more likely, however, that the games became pan-Hellenic, though on a smaller scale than the men's events at Olympia. In view of the tendency at Athens, for example, to seclude and protect young girls and to keep their names out of the public eye, it is unlikely that Athenian maidens would have been brought to race at Elis. At Athens (and probably elsewhere in Greece), girls were devalued, and the expenses involved in travelling were considerable. Therefore, if the Heraea were pan-Hellenic, only girls who lived fairly close by would have par-ticipated. Considering the likelihood that attention was not paid to women's athletics anywhere but Sparta, and given the historical evidence for Spartan domination of Elis in the archaic period, it is likely that the games were established along Spartan principles and that the majority of competitors and victors were Spartan. Many of the sculptures at the temple of Hera were the work of Lacedaemonian artists (Paus. 5.17.2). Finally, bronze figurines depict girl runners in short peploi baring the right breast. These figurines were manufactured in Sparta (see Appendix). As we have mentioned, the bare-breasted costume was worn only by girls who raced at the Heraea. Though some prepubescent Athenians raced nude at least once in their lives at the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, only Spartan girls regularly wore short dresses and exercised nude. Moreover, historical sources assign the earliest foundation of racing for girls anywhere in Greece to Lycurgus. For these reasons, it is generally assumed that, at least when the political relationship between Sparta and Elis was favorable, the girls who raced at the Heraea were mostly Spartans.\n\nNudity for women indicates that their athletic prowess was understood to be a high priority: it certainly attracted a great deal of attention, both artistic and prurient. Ibycus and later writers described the women as \"thigh-flashers\" (see above). In the _Andromache_ (595\u2013602), written in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, Euripides mentions the bare thighs and co-ed racing and wrestling. _Anonymus Iamblichi_ reports that Spartan girls strip for exercise. Plato apparently knew of the Spartan practice, for it is generally assumed that nude exercise for women in the _Republic_ (457A) is based on the Spartan reality.\n\nPlato refers to women who are natural athletes ( _Rep_. 456A). He also suggests that the bodies of old women are laughable ( _Rep._ 457B), and, indeed, retreats from nudity for adult women in the _Laws_ (833D). In the _Republic_ (452B), all women exercise naked, though the older ones are described as wrinkled and not good-looking. In _Laws_ (833C), Plato prescribes nude racing only for prepubertal girls, and racing clothed for adolescents until marriage at eighteen to twenty years of age. Plato's distinction may be reflected in the artistic portrayals of Spartan girl runners, though a modern viewer may misinterpret clues to the age of subjects in ancient art. Bronze mirrors and statuettes portraying girls completely nude seem to modeled on a prepubertal, slim-hipped girl. Those wearing the chiton show an adolescent with fully developed breasts. The older group may be dressed because they have already reached menarche and need to wear an undergarment to absorb menstrual blood.\n\nUpon marriage, girls graduated from the state-controlled educational system. Some of them, at least, still managed to stay in good physical shape. Non-Spartan authors report that adult women were physically fit. Lampito, a married woman, is in excellent condition and can touch her buttocks with her feet while jumping in the air (Aristoph. _Lys._ 82). Spartan women needed to be able to assume this position while dancing in certain religious rituals. As we have just observed, in his _Republic_ Plato states that even mature women will exercise in the nude: this ordinance may reflect some reality at Sparta. In any case, as we have seen, some mature women continued to be interested in horses and probably rode or drove to their country estates.\n\n### Education in Hellenistic and Roman Sparta\n\nWas there an agoge for girls, and if so, was it parallel to or imitative of the boys' agoge? These questions are further complicated by historiographic issues surrounding the boys' agoge. According to revisionist history, the agoge as described in great detail by Plutarch was largely a Hellenistic invention that was revived in the Roman period. Therefore, although Plutarch's description has enjoyed greater popularity and influence, Xenophon's report should be understood to be a more accurate account of the educational system of the classical period. In any case, ancient authors as well as modern scholars agree that some sort of institutionalized educational system for girls existed whenever such a system existed for boys.\n\nIn the Hellenistic period the fortunes of Sparta declined (see chap. 4). Owning good racing teams was expensive. Nevertheless, the Panathenaic victor lists for 170 B.C.E. record the victory of a Spartan woman with a quadriga.  She is one of nineteen non-Athenian citizens, including seven women, whose names appear on victor lists for this period (170, 166, 162 B.C.E.). Her name, Olympio, is either prophetic of her deed or a nickname alluding to an Olympic victory not otherwise attested.\n\nIn the Roman period, because Sparta was a destination for tourists, the characteristics that made Sparta distinctive were emphasized. The athleticism of women was exaggerated. Foreigners were allowed to see what they had never before been able to witness: Spartan women engaged in athletics. There were other professional women athletes in the Roman world. Therefore, in order to attract an audience, the Spartans needed not only to be good athletes, but also to create a unique image. History and tradition were mined for publicity. Spartan athletics were authentic. The reports of Plutarch (see above) and Propertius (3.14) indicate that the curriculum for girls was firmly established and well articulated in Roman Sparta. Propertius mentions nude co-ed wrestling; ball playing; hoop rolling; the pancratium (wrestling with no holds barred); discus throwing; hunting; chariot driving; and wearing armor. Vergil ( _Aen._ 1.314\u201324) also describes Spartan huntresses wearing short dresses, armed with bows and arrows, pursuing a wild boar. Ovid ( _Her._ 16.151\u201352) writes of a nude Helen wrestling in the palaestra. Doubtless, like other Greeks, they continued to anoint themselves with oil. One Spartan woman in the first century B.C.E. is reported to have doused herself with so much butter that the odor made a Galatian princess ill (Plut. _Mor._ 1109b). The Spartan, in turn, was nauseated by the smell of the other woman's perfume, perhaps because she maintained the traditional Spartan ban on wearing perfume.\n\nAthletic competitions for respectable women were held under state supervision. A fragmentary inscription of the second century C.E. indicates that the magistrates ( _biduoi_ ) in charge of ephebic competitions also supervised twelve \"female followers of Dionysus.\" These Dionysiades were virgins; eleven of them ran a foot race at a festival of Dionysus. Another inscription from a statue honors a woman racer who won a victory. These games were founded under either Tiberius or Claudius.\n\nWrestling for women in Sparta had a long pedigree. Furthermore, since nudity often results from wrestling and other athletic endeavors, the performances of female wrestling were doubtless piquant (see fig. 3). In the days of Nero, a Spartan woman engaged in a wrestling match at Rome with a Roman senator, M. Palfurius Sura. Athenaeus (13.602e) reports that Spartans displayed their girls to their guests unclothed. Athenaeus may well be exaggerating: the Greek tendency to understand the world in polarized categories may have prompted Athenaeus to interpret some nudity for specific acceptable purposes (as Plutarch understood it) into gratuitous indecent display. On the other hand, if this report is true, the practice may be understood as a shocking spectacle, in keeping with the tastes of the Roman world.\n\n### Social Construction of Sexual Behavior\n\nPlutarch ( _Lyc._ 18.4) reports that erotic ties between older and younger women were common. In Alcman, _Parthenion_ 1.73, the girls mention visiting Aenesimbrota, who is probably a purveyor of love magic. She would provide drugs, spells, and magical devices to attract the object of desire. Hagnon of Tarsus, an Academic philosopher of the second century B.C.E., states that before marriage it was customary for Spartans to associate with virgin girls as with _paidika_ (young boyfriends).\n\n### Weaving\n\nAccording to Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol_. 1.1), Lycurgus wisely decided that the labor of slave women ( _doulai_ ) sufficed to weave the clothing that the Spartans required. Nevertheless, doulai were not the only women in Sparta who knew how to weave. To make the point about the difference between Spartans and other Greek women, Xenophon and Plato ( _Laws_ 806A) exaggerate the Spartans' liberation from weaving. Furthermore, weaving served as a \"catch-all\" term for the domestic work usually performed by Greek women. In fact, Spartan women could weave and supervise their slaves' work, but they were not encouraged to weave endlessly, nor did their reputation depend upon it. One of the _Sayings_ attributed to Spartan women underlines this ethnic distinction:\n\nWhen an Ionian woman was proud of something she had woven (which was very valuable), a Spartan woman showed off her four well-behaved sons and said these should be the work of a noble and honorable woman, and she should swell with pride and boast of them. (Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women_ 241.9)\n\nAlthough servile women did the routine weaving, freeborn women wove for ritual purposes. Paraphernalia for weaving and hundreds of plaques depicting textiles were discovered at the shrine of Artemis Orthia.  These offerings date from the archaic to the Hellenistic period, but most are probably sixth to fifth century. Literary testimony conplements the archaeological finds. Ten young girls in a choir for whom Alcman wrote a _Partheneion_ (1.61) sing about bringing a cloak to Artemis Orthia. Presumably, like the Arrephoroi who began the weaving for the peplos of Athena at Athens, they had participated in making the cloak. Pausanias (3.16.2) reports that every year women wove a chiton for Apollo of Amyclae in a room designated as the chitona.\n\nThe _xoanon_ (wooden image) of Artemis Orthia wore a _polos_ (head-dress representing the celestial sphere) and a woven dress reaching to the feet. The figure must have been small and light, for the priestess held it during the whipping ceremony (Paus. 34.16.10). Therefore annual or quadrennial weaving of garments for the divinities could not have been a great burden to Spartan women. Furthermore, weaving garments need not have entailed the obligation to prepare the wool and the performance of messy, tedious tasks including washing, beating, combing, carding, dyeing, and spinning. Rather, like Helen who spun with her golden distaff (one suspects not very energetically), Spartan women were not required to expend much labor in producing clothing for their cult images. At least ten girls are named in Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1, and they wove only one cloak. Clothing the xoanon of Artemis was like dressing a large doll.\n\nIn contrast,Athenian women not only wove for the _oikos_ (family,household, estate) _,_ but also were responsible for weaving a peplos for Athena annually. The wooden image was probably less than lifesize, and the cloth depicted on the Panathenaic frieze around 2.0\u20132.5\u00d71.8\u20132.3 meters. Every four years, however, they had much more work. The peplos woven by Athenian women for the greater Panathenaea was an elaborate tapestry, so large that it was fixed as a sail on the Panathenaic ship. This peplos was probably about 4\u20138 meters square, and all who attended the festival could admire or criticize the result.\n\nSince Spartan clothing was less elaborate than Athenian, the women who wove in Sparta had less to do. Young boys wore a chiton or went nude: they were allocated only one cloak to wear throughout the year, and did not sleep on mattresses, but on straw which they gathered themselves (Plut. _Lyc_.16.6\u20137). Adult men wore a short red cloak and were buried with only such a cloak and a chaplet of olive leaves. Since the cloaks constituted a kind of uniform, they may have been distributed by the state. Women's peploi were short and scanty: for racing they wore the _chiton exomis_ (tunic with one sleeve) which barely reached the knee (Paus. 5.16.3). Unlike Athenian women, they did not normally wear many layers of clothing. They probably wore whatever the weather required (see chap. , fig. 4,Vix crater, and Conclusion). Such dress did not command attention; but their skimpy attire did. When the women were preparing to dig a trench against the attack of Pyrrhus, some wore outer dresses ( _himatia_ ) over their tunics, and some wore only their tunics ( _monochitones_ , Plut. _Pyrrh._ 27.3). Dionysius, the clever tyrant of Syracuse, assumed that expensive Sicilian chitons for Lysander's daughters would constitute an irresistible bribe. At first Lysander refused to accept them, but later on, when a Sicilian ambassador showed him two dresses and asked him to choose one for a daughter, Lysander took both, for he had more than one daughter (Plut. _Lys._ 2.5). Doubtless the increase in visible private property that took place after the Peloponnesian War also affected women's wardrobes.\n\nThe brief chiton exomis worn by Spartan women caused as much consternation to other Greeks as the miniskirt. Artemis, when she was portrayed as a huntress, and the Amazons were the only other females known to the Greeks who wore such short skirts, and they were visible only in art, not in real life. Because Spartan women were in fine physical condition, their skimpy clothing must have been flattering. In contrast, respectable Athenian women exercised only by doing housework, mostly indoors or in the courtyard of their house. The visual arts portray Athenian women as heavily covered in many layers of cloth, with skirts reaching to the ankles. Even little girls wore long dresses. In the sumptuary laws attributed to Solon, it was deemed necessary to specify limits to the amount of clothing Athenian women might include in their dowries, or wear at funerals, or use to wrap the dead.\n\nWeaving was the only activity of women that most Greeks recognized as productive. In prosperous households, more fabrics than could ever be used by the household were woven. These were stored up, to be given as gifts or part of dowries, or, if times were hard, to be sold or traded at the marketplace. At Sparta, neither women nor men engaged in activities that produced objects for use or sale. In fact, such work was prohibited.\n\nNot until the Hellenistic period were the names of the Athenian women who had woven the peplos for Athena announced. In contrast, like Greek men who had always sought fame, Spartan women had a consciousness of themselves that is conveyed to the observer. Their pride shines forth in Alcman's poetry, in Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , and in the dedications of victors' images at the sanctuary of Hera at Elis and of Zeus at Olympia. As girls and women, Spartans left their mark on the historical record in pan-Hellenic contexts.\n\n* * *\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 141\u201342 and passim.\n\n. Terpander, Stesichorus, and other poets worked in archaic Sparta: Arist. fr. 551 Gigon, Plut. _Mor._ 1134b,Athen. 14.635e, etc.\n\n. Nevertheless, Alcman confesses his interest in women in _PMGF_ 34, 59a, b, and see below on Megalostrata, who was not said to have been his pupil.\n\n. See further Nigel Kennell,\"The Elite Women of Sparta,\" paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, December 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 84. In this paper, Kennell is less willing to accept the evidence for a girls' agoge in the Roman period than he was in _The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 46.\n\n. Though no ancient source states that every girl participated in the system, the universality of the goal implies it. See further Jean Ducat, \"Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 57\u201358.\n\n. See William V. Harris, _Ancient Literacy_ (Cambridge, 1989).\n\n. See further Paul Cartledge, \"Literacy in the Spartan Oligarchy,\" _JHS_ 98 (1978), 25\u201337, esp. 33\u201337.\n\n. From the sixth to the fourth century: Cartledge,\"Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?\" _CQ_ 31 (1981), 84\u2013105, esp. 93 n. 54.\n\n. Thus F. D.Harvey,\"Literacy in the Athenian Democracy,\" _REG_ 79 (1966), 585\u2013635, esp. 623.\n\n. At Athens, respectable women who were literate learned their letters at home: Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon. Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), 270, 283. For learning in an all-female milieu, cf. the young women in the circles of Sappho and other women poets in archaic Lesbos. The parallel is not exact, however, for several reasons, including the fact that Spartan girls were required to devote a good portion of their time to gymnastics.\n\n. There is evidence for male leaders of female choirs at Aegina, but the age of the females is not clear: Herod. 5.83.3.\n\n. Trans. Sarah B. Pomeroy. For further comments on these poems, and a photograph of a portion of one of the papyrus texts, see Appendix.\n\n. See _LSJ_ s.v. kubernao 2 for associations with chariots and horses, rather than the common interpretation of piloting a ship.\n\n. _PMGF_ TA 2.34\u201335, _PMGF_ 1.58, 59, and passim, _PMGF_ 3.8.\n\n. See chap. 3 nn. 25, 34, and chap. 4.\n\n. Cf. Agesilaus for another Spartan king who enjoyed the company of his young children, two daughters and a son: Plut. _Ages._ 25.6, _Sayings of Spartans_ , 213.70.\n\n. Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 241a3, d10, 11. On this source see Appendix. Cf. the letters of Olympias to Alexander: Plut. _Alex._ 39.4\u20135.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, \" _Technikai kai Mousikai_ : The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period,\" _AJAH_ 2 (1977), 51\u201368, and _Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra_ (with a new foreword and addenda, Detroit, 1989), 59\u201372.\n\n. Diels-Kranz6, vol. 2, p. 408, 2.10, and see Kathleen Freeman, _The Pre-Socratic Philosophers_ (Oxford, 1946), 418\u201319. For a translation, see Rosamond Kent Sprague, _The Older Sophists_ (Columbia, S.C., 1972),\"Dissoi Logoi,\" 282.\n\n. On the ambiguity of _paides_ , which can mean \"children,\" \"boys,\" or \"slaves,\" see below, Appendix n. 77 _._\n\n. _Advice to the Bride and Groom_ , 32: see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ (New York, 1999), ad loc.\n\n. _PMGF_ 59, Poralla2 510.\n\n. On traditions linking women philosophers to the men in their circle see Pomeroy, \" _Technikai kai Mousikai_ ,\" 58.\n\n. See further Denys Page, _PMG_ 912; Jeffrey Henderson, _Aristophanes: Lysistrata_ , ed. with introduction and commentary (Oxford, 1987), ad loc.; and Douglas M. MacDowell, _Aristophanes: Wasps_ , ed. with introduction and commentary (Oxford, 1971), ad loc.\n\n. According to the Scholiast to _Lys._ 1237 Cleitagora was mentioned in Aristophanes, _Danaids_ (= fr. 271 Kassel-Austin). According to Hesychius, s.v. Kleitagora (k 2913 Latte), she was from Lesbos.\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol_. 1.3, and below, chap. 6 nn. 3, 19, 21\u201322.\n\n. I.e., Cheilonis: Iambl. _VP_ 267, Poralla2 no. 760. For her father, who was ephor in 556, see Poralla2 no. 230. See further Conrad M. Stibbe, _Das andere Sparta_ (Mainz, 1996), 211.\n\n. See further Holger Thesleff, _An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period_ (\u00c5bo, 1961), esp. 77\u201378, 99, 103\u20135, 114\u201316.\n\n. Manuscripts vary. Nistheadousa is listed with a question mark in Diels-Kranz 58, \"Pythagoreische Schule: A. Katalog des Iamblichos,\" but not cited in Poralla2 or in _LGPN_ 3A. On these women, see further Gilles M\u00e9nage, _Historia mulierum philosophorum_ (1690\u201392), trans. B. H. Zedler as _The History of Women Philosophers_ (Lanham,Md., 1984), chap. 11.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.vv. dates Cleaichma to the sixth century, but Autocharidas to the fifth century.\n\n. Iambl. _VP_ 267.31, see also Porphyry, _Pythag._ 61, Poralla2 no. 702, and _LGPN_ 3A s.v.\n\n. Iambl. _VP_ 267, Poralla2 nos. 450, 420. On neo-Pythagorean women, see further Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt_ , 61\u201365.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom._ 2, _FGrH_ III.585, and see further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 65\u201366.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom._ 22.6\u20137, 38.4. This vivid passage may not only record a real event, but may also reflect the Stoic leanings of Plutarch's source, Phylarchus: see chap. 4 n. 48, and Appendix.\n\n. Athen. 14.631c, citing Pindar fr. 112 Snell.\n\n. S. Constantinidou, \"Spartan Cult Dances,\" _Phoenix_ 52 (1998), 15\u201330, esp. 24. For details of manufacture and interpretations, see Appendix, below.\n\n. Giampiera Arrigoni, \"Donne e sport nel mondo greco: Religione e societ\u00e0,\" in _Le donne in Grecia_ , ed. Giampiera Arrigoni (Bari, 1985), 55\u2013201, devotes pp. 65\u2013101 (of a total 73 of text [the remainder consists of illustrations and special exegeses]) and nn. 29\u2013185 (of a total 259) to Sparta and uses Sparta as a touchstone throughout the article.\n\n. B. B. Shefton, \"Three Laconian Vase Painters,\" _ABSA_ 49 (1954), 299\u2013310, esp. 307, no. 17, for nymphs or girls swimming. Alcman also wrote a work titled \"The Female Swimmers\" ( _Kolumbosai_ : _PMGF_ TB 1, fr. 158).\n\n. _Idyll_ 18.22\u201325. Theocritus, of course, is not an unassailable witness to practices in the classical period, but his report is consistent with those from earlier, more trustworthy sources.\n\n. There is no evidence for the Platanistas (\"the grove of plane trees\") before the Hellenistic period, when two teams of youths staged a mock battle.\n\n. Contra Cartledge, \"Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?\" 91. T. Scanlon, \"Virgineum Gymnasium: Spartan Females and Early Greek Athletics,\" in _The Archaeology of the Olympics_ , ed. W. Raschke (Madison,Wis., 1988), 185\u2013216, esp. 190, also argues that education was co-ed, but the evidence he cites is tendentious (Eur. _Andr._ 99\u2013100) and Roman (Ovid, _Her._ 16. 149\u201352,Prop. 3.14),when sensationalism may have prompted or intensified participation in co-ed contact sports so that women's wrestling of the archaic and classical period became the pancration in the Roman period. Philostratus, _Imag._ 2.6.3, specifies the pancration as the pancration of men ( _andron_ ). For _agele_ (i.e., _agela_ \"herd\") used of girls, see n. 110 below.\n\n. For a detailed description, see Giovanni Paludetti, _Giovanni de Min_ (Udine, 1959), 290, 307. 310\u201311, 320,App. 1, and fig. 31.\n\n. A son of Hippoco\u00f6n, older brother of Tyndareus, whose other sons are mentioned at the opening of the extant fragment of Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1.\n\n. Carol Salus, \"Degas' Young Spartans Exercising,\" _Art Bulletin_ 67 (1985), 501\u20136, argues that the subject of the painting is courtship, and that the figure touching the girl's breast is male (504). However, Degas may be depicting the well-known homosexual relationship between females.\n\n. Martin Davies, _The French School_ (London, 1957), 70, and see further M. H. Sykes, \"Two Degas Historical Paintings: _Les jeunes spartiates s'exercent \u00e0 la lutte_ and _Les malheurs de la ville d'Orl\u00e9ans_ \" (Master's thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1964).\n\n. Phoebe Pool, \"The History Pictures of Edgar Degas and Their Background,\" _Apollo_ 80 (1964), 306\u201311, esp. 308.\n\n. Nicolas Richer, _Les \u00e9phores: \u00c9tudes sur l'histoire et sur l'image de Sparte (viiie\u2013iiie si\u00e8cle avant J\u00e9sus-Christ)_ (Paris, 1998), esp. 83\u201384, sees a connection between the Partheniai (\"children of unmarried women\") who were sent to settle Tarentum and the Tresantes (\"tremblers,\"\"cowards\"), for both are feminized. See further chap. 2 n. 45 below.\n\n. Xen. _Hell_. 6.5.27\u20138; Plut. _Ages._ 21.4\u20135;Arist. _Pol._ 1269b37\u20139.\n\n. 273\u2013272 b.c.e.: Plut. _Pyrr._ 27.2\u20135, 29.6. Cf. Polyaen. 8.49 and 70 for the military assistance of the women of Cyrene. Jacoby _FGrH_ 81, Komm. F 48, suggests that a similar passage of Pompeius Trogus in Justin is based on Phylarchus. See further David Schaps, \"The Women of Greece in\n\nWartime,\" _CPh_ 77 (982), 193\u2013213, and Maria Luisa Napolitano, \"Le donne spartane e la guerra: Problemi di tradizione,\" _AION (archeol.)_ 9 (Naples, 1987), 127\u201344.\n\n. Jerome para. 308 Migne relates several anecdotes about the rape of Spartan virgins in conditions of war. See also Orosius 1.21 and Justin 3.4.1\u20135.\n\n. Paus. 4.16.9\u201310, and see chap. 6 n. 11.\n\n. Clearchus of Soli (fl. ca. 250 b.c.e.) fr. 73 Wehrli = Athen. 13.555c. New York City firefighters, both male and female, are trained to be able to carry adults of both sexes.\n\n. See chap. 3 on liquid and dry food rations. Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 15.3 refers to men eating meat at the _syssition_ (mess group). Spartiates did raise animals on their estates (Plut. _Alcib. I_ 122d).\n\n. Athen. 10.414d quoting Heraclitus comicus (also known as Heraclides) in \"The Host,\" Kassel-Austin _PCG_ 5.560.\n\n. _Sayings of Spartans_ 232d5, _Lac_. 239a (28).\n\n. Paus. 3.17.6, 3.15.10; _Greek Anthology_ , Planudian Appendix 173\u201376, etc., and see further J. G. Frazer, _Pausanias's Description of Greece_ , vol. 3 (London, 1913), 338.\n\n. _OCD_ 3 s.v. Aphrodite considers the possibility that the armed Aphrodite was connected with women's education, but prefers to interpret the armor as alluding to Aphrodite considered to be the polar opposite of Ares. Robert Parker,\"Spartan Religion,\" in _Classical Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla. 1989), 142\u201372, esp. 146, suggests that the portrayals of divinities with armor were retained at Sparta from earlier primitive cult images. See further Fritz Graf, \"Women, War, and Warlike Divinities,\" _ZPE_ 55 (1984), 245\u201359, and chap. 6 n. 72 below.\n\n. On the armed Aphrodite: Julianus (sixth century c.e., _Anth. Pal._ 9.447), and Graf,\"Women, War, and Warlike Divinities,\" 250\u201351.\n\n. For Plutarch's version see above. Arist. _Pol._ 1337b24\u201325 lists reading, writing,gymnastics, the musical arts, and possibly painting. In Plato, _Laws_ (804E), riding is prescribed for women.\n\n. Xenophon, _On Horsemanship, Cavalry Commander,_ and see further, Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus_ , 2, 219, 226, 231, 243.\n\n. The owner of the horse ridden by Julie Krone, the first woman to win a Triple Crown, said of her: \"She's got great finesse, beautiful hands on a horse, and good communication. You don't have to bully a horse\u2014just talk to him.\" Joe Drape,\"Krone Adds Another First to Her Accomplishments,\" _New York Times_ ,Aug. 8, 2000, sec. D, pp. 1, 5, esp. 5.\n\n. Dawkins, _AO_ , 146, all dates. Some riders on figurines dated 700\u2013600must have had to ride side-saddle: Dawkins, _AO_ , 150.\n\n. Dawkins, _AO,_ 157.\n\n. A. J. B. Wace, M. S. Thompson, J. P. Droop, \"The Menelaion,\" _ABSA_ 15 (1908), 108\u201357, esp. 124, all dates, and H. W. Catling,\"Excavations at the Menelaion, Sparta,1973\u201376,\" _AR_ (1976\u201377),24\u201342, esp. 38, and fig. 42.\n\n. Mary Voyatzis, \"Votive Riders Seated Side-Saddle at Early Greek Sanctuaries,\" _ABSA_ 87 (1992), 259\u201379, esp. 272, 274, for fourteen figures from the Orthia sanctuary, one seventh cent., the others sixth, and five from the Menelaion, all sixth cent.\n\n. _Parthenion_ 1, 47\u201359; see also Aristoph. _Lys._ 1307. Theoc. _Id._ 18.30 compares Helen to a Thessalian horse, and see chap. 6 n. 47.\n\n. Scholion B, fr. 6, col. i (P.Oxy. 2389).\n\n. J.K. Anderson, _Ancient Greek Horsemanship_ (Berkeley, 1961), 36\u201337.\n\n. Perhaps mules: Athenaeus' text is unclear. See further Kaibel (ed.),Athen. 1.317.\n\n. Athen. 4.139f,Xen. _Ages_. 8.7, Plut. _Ages_. 19.5\u20136.\n\n. For public models, note that Hellenistic queens were publicly honored by equestrian statues: see E. Fantham et al., _Women in the Classical World_ (New York, 1994), 220, 222. At Rome, Cloelia was portrayed mounted on a horse, though her heroic deed involved swimming: Liv. 2.13.11.\n\n. Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.5 for Spartan men out on their country estates.\n\n. The sole exception is a woman who was dressed up to impersonate Athena and placed in a chariot. She may, however, have had a driver: Herod. 1.60.\n\n. Liv. 34.1\u20138;Tac. _Ann._ 3.34,Val.Max.9.1.3,Oros.4.20.14,Zonaras 9.17.1, and see further SarahB. Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity_ (New York, 1995), 178.\n\n. According to Arist. _HA_ 608a25, female Laconian hounds are more clever than the males.\n\n. Poralla2, no. 310.\n\n. According to Moretti, _IAG_ , pp. 41, 43, Cynisca was born sometime before 427, probably around 440.\n\n. For a dedication of a small votive by Cynisca to Helen at the Menelaion, see A. M. Woodward,\"The Inscriptions,\" _ABSA_ 15 (1908), 40\u2013106, esp. 86\u201387, no. 90 = _IG_ V.1.23.\n\n. Pausanias (5.6.7; 6.20.9) states that _parthenoi_ (virgins, unmarried women) could view the games, but that married women were excluded. This provision seems extremely unlikely in view of the need to chaperone young girls. Matthew P. J. Dillon,\"Did _Parthenoi_ Attend the Olympic Games? Girls and Women Competing, Spectating, and Carrying Out Cult Roles at Greek Religious Festivals,\" _Hermes_ 128 (2000), 457\u201380, esp. 461\u201362, suggests that fathers accompanied their girls. Pausanias may be thinking about the parthenoi who were present not as spectators, but because they participated in the races at Elis. The only exceptions (not mentioned by Pausanias) were the priestess of Demeter and a female envoy from Ephesus: see L. Robert, \"Les femmes th\u00e9ores \u00e0 \u00c9ph\u00e8se,\" _CRAI_ (1974), 176\u201381 = _OMS_ 5.669\u201374 _._ Of course it is possible that even at her advanced age Cynisca was technically a parthenos _._ Perhaps she had been widowed at a young age. In any case, no husband nor children are recorded for her, and her brother's attempts to manipulate her (see below) suggest that she did not have a husband. Her single-minded devotion to racing may have not left any time for wifely duties.\n\n. Paus. 6.1.6: see further Bianchi-Bandinelli, _EAA_ 1.460\u201361.\n\n. His name may have been Apelles. Bianchi-Bandinelli, _EAA_ 1.460\u201361, Pliny _HN_ 34.86. The manuscript variant _adornantes_ (\"adorning themselves\") would probably make sense as well in the case of Cynisca, who seems to have been vain and by no means modest. On the commemorative monuments, see J. G. Frazer, _Pausanias's Description of Greece_ (London, 1913), vols. 3, 4, ad loc.\n\n. Paus. 6.1.6 = _Anth. Pal._ 13.16 = _IG_ V.1.1564a = _I. Olympia,_ no.160 = Moretti, _IAG_ , no. 17, and Moretti, _I. Olympia_ , nos. 373, 381.\n\n. Named for Troilus, famous for his horses, called by Homer _hippiocharmes_ ( _Il._ 24.257:\"fight-ing from a chariot\").\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.v., and see n. 77 above.\n\n. Xen. _Ages._ 9.6, sim. _arete_ in Plut. _Ages._ 20.1, and in _Sayings of Spartans_ ,Ages. 49.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 93\u201394. Like Cynisca, Bilistiche received divine honors, but this worship was part of the Hellenistic trend to divinize members of the royal families and some of their intimate associates.\n\n. Moretti, _IAG_ , p. 44, suggests that the sculptures by Apelles were also erected after Cynisca's death, and commissioned either by her family or by the state.\n\n. Moretti, _I. Olympia,_ nos. 396, 418.\n\n. Bilistiche, mistress of Ptolemy II, who was said to be from Argos, Macedonia, or Phoenicia, was the next woman whose victories are recorded: see further Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt_ , 53\u201355. Her victories were probably in 268 and 264:Moretti, _IAG_ ,p. 42. Berenice II was the next woman after Bilistiche whose horses were victorious. Berenice originally came from Cyrene. Her interest in equestrianship is additional testimony to cultural links between Cyrene and Sparta. For the horses of Cyrene see, e.g., Pindar, _Pyth_. 4.2. According to Strabo (17.3.21 [837]), Callimachus praised the horses of Cyrene. For an epigram attributed to Posidippus comparing Berenice to Cynisca see _P. Mil. Vogl._ VIII.309, xiii 31\u201334.\n\n. Schol. Theoc. 18. 22\u20135, 39\u201340: see A. S. F. Gow, _Theocritus_ , vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1952), 354, 358.\n\n. See below. There was also a race called _en Drionas_ about which little is known: see Hesych. s.v. E2823 (Latte).\n\n. Hesych. s.vv.Driodones, en Drionas.\n\n. See further T. Scanlon,\"The Footrace of the _Heraia_ at Olympia,\" _AncW_ 9 (1984), 77\u201390.\n\n. On the connection between Spartan maidens and the races for Hera, see Preface, and Appendix,\"Mirrors and Bronze Statuettes.\"\n\n. I.e., 160 meters. David G. Romano, \"The Ancient Stadium: Athletics and _Arete_ ,\" _AncW_ 7 (1983), 9\u201315, esp. 14, suggests that the length of the girls' race was correlated with the measurement of the stylobate of Hera's temple at Olympia, while the length of the boys' race was correlated with the stylobate of the temple of Zeus. According to Herod. 2.149, the length of the stadion was 6 plethra or 600 feet (168.6 m.). According to Romano's (p. 14) formula, the girls' stadion race would be ca. 128 meters.\n\n. Paus. 5.16.3: see Frazer, _Pausanias's Description of Greece_ , vol. 3, 593.\n\n. The girl depicted in fig. 1, above, may be running as part of a dance, for she glances behind her. On the other hand, she may be looking to see if any competitor is catching up.\n\n. For a survey of nudity in antiquity, see Larissa Bonfante,\"Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art,\" _AJA_ 93 (1989), 558\u201368.\n\n. Ibycus, fr. 339 _PMGF_ ; Eur. _Andr._ 595\u2013601, cf. _Hec._ 932\u201336; Soph. fr. 872 Lloyd-Jones, Aelius Dionysius (2d cent. c.e., 4.35 [140] Erbse), for girls wearing one himation only,without belt or chiton; similarly Moeris, a lexicographer (2d cent. c.e., d27).\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol_. 1.4; Plut. _Lyc_. 14.4\u201315.1; Nic. Dam. _FGrH_ 103 F 90, cf. Anacreon fr. 99 (Page-Campbell).\n\n. Aristoph. _Lys._ 78\u201384,Critias fr. 32 (Diels-Kranz 2.1969).\n\n. See further N. Serwint, \"The Female Athletic Costume at the _Heraia_ and Prenuptial Initiation Rites,\" _AJA_ 97 (1993), 403\u201322. Beth Cohen, \"Divesting the Female Breast of Clothes in Classical Sculpture,\" in _Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology_ , ed. A.O. Koloski-Ostrow and C. L. Lyons (London, 1997), 84 n. 15, questions Serwint's fifth-cent. dating of the Vatican girl runner, otherwise considered a classicizing work of the Roman period.\n\n. See further Scanlon,\"The Footrace of the _Heraia_ at Olympia,\" 83, and Preface, above.\n\n. Serwint,\"The Female Athletic Costume at the _Heraia_ and Prenuptial Initiation Rites,\" 419, suggests that the change occurred ca. 580 when the festival was restructured.\n\n. Diels-Kranz 2.90.9, and see Freeman, _The Pre-Socratic Philosophers_ , 418\u201319.\n\n. See further Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, _Studies in Girls' Transitions: Aspects of the_ Arkteia _and Age Representation in Attic Iconogography_ (Athens, 1988).\n\n. For a loincloth, see chap. 6 n. 59. My interpretation assumes that menstruation was not regarded as pollution restricting eligibility to compete at a religious ritual confined to females.\n\n. See further chap. 6 n. 16.\n\n. Nigel M. Kennell, _The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 98, 147, and passim.\n\n. Pindar fr. 112 Snell: \"Lakaina . . . parthenon\" quoted by Athenaeus 14.631c, see n. 41 above; Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 1.4; Plut. _Lyc._ 14.2; Nic. Dam. _FGrH_ 90 F 103; etc. See most recently Ellen Millender, \"Exercise, Nudity and Spartan Female Sexual License: A Reconsideration\" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 82), in agreement with Kennell, _The Gymnasium of Virtue_ , 46, about an educational system for girls organized by the state. However, in \"The Elite Women of Sparta\" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 82), Kennell is less sanguine about the existence of a formal agoge for women in the Roman period. Jean Ducat,\"Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodgkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 43\u201366, esp. 64 n. 31, argues that girls' _agelai_ did not exist, but in \"La femme de Sparte et la cit\u00e9,\" _Kt\u00e8ma_ 23 (1998), 385\u2013406, esp. 387, he notes that there was a system of initiation and education for girls, though it was not so structured as the boys' agoge. See also A. Brelich, _Paides e Parthenoi_ , vol. 1 (Rome, 1969), 157\u201359.\n\n. Stephen V. Tracy and C. Habicht, \"New and Old Panathenaic Victor Lists,\" _Hesperia_ 60 (1991), 187\u2013236, esp. 205, 213, 214.\n\n. See P. A. Cartledge and A. J. S. Spawforth, _Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of two Cities_ (London, 1989), 205\u20136.\n\n. _SEG_ XI (1954), no. 610, 1\u20134, and Paus. 3.11.2.\n\n. Hesych. s.v. Dionysiades,D1888 (Latte); Paus. 3.13.7 speaks of eleven (not twelve) runners. Kennell, _Gymnasium of Virtue_ , 46\u201347, considers these events a legacy from an earlier girls' agoge _._\n\n. _SEG_ XI.830. Her name is indecipherable, but the editor suggests that she is Panthalida, daughter of Agis, attested in _IG_ V.1.588, 2\u20133.\n\n. Schol. Juvenal 4.53:Moretti, _IAG_ , p. 168 for the date.\n\n. See further M. L. West,\"Alcmanica,\" _CQ_ 15 (1965), 188\u2013202, esp. 199\u2013200.\n\n. In Athen. 13.602d\u2013e: see further C. Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Gr\u00e8ce archa\u00efque_ , vol. 1 (Rome, 1977), 434, and Jan Bremmer,\"An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Paederasty,\" _Arethusa_ 13 (1980), 279\u201398, esp. 292\u201393. K. Dover, _Greek Homosexuality_ (London, 1978), 188, interprets the passage as anal penetration of girls by boys, and states that \"the original sexual meaning of 'lakonize'will have been 'have anal intercourse,' irrespective of the sex of the person penetrated.\"\n\n. Miniature weaving implements: Dawkins, _AO_ , pl. 185, nos. 14, 15, 17, 23, 24; usable implements: Dawkins, _AO_ , 242, pl. 174, no. 2; plaques: Dawkins, _AO_ , pl. 181, 27, 28; pl. 185, nos. 12, 21, 22; pl. 186, nos. 20, 21.\n\n. On these votives, see most recently Lin Foxhall, \"The Women of Artemis Orthia, Sparta\" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 83).\n\n. Similarly, every four years sixteen women from Elis wove a peplos for the xoanon of Hera and organized the Heraion games: Paus. 5.16.2, 6.24.10. The weaving of Hera's peplos may have begun only ca. 575 simultaneously with the introduction of the Sixteen Women at the Heraia: Paus. 1.16.5, John Magruder Mansfield,\"The Robe of Athena and the Panathenaic _Peplos_ ,\"(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1985), 470.\n\n. Whether this practice was begun in the archaic period is doubtful, for statues of Apollo traditionally were nude. See further Irene Bald Romano, \"Early Greek Cult Images\" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980), 103,who doubts that a garment appropriate for a 30 cubit column-shaped statue of Apollo was woven annually. On clothing for statues, see Frazer, _Pausanias's Description of Greece_ , vol. 2, 574\u201375, and see now Irene Bald Romano, \"Early Greek Cult Images and\n\nCult Practices,\" in _Early Greek Cult Practice: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 26\u201329 June, 1986_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg, N. Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist (Stockholm, 1988), 127\u201334.\n\n. An ivory plaque with an image of the cult figure displays incised textile patterns. For the plaque: Dawkins, _AO_ , 208, and pl. 96, no. 2. For the weaving: Romano,\"Early Greek Cult Images,\" 123, contra P. Ziehen,\"Sparta,\" _RE_ 18.3 (1949), col. 1466.\n\n. The cult statue of Hera was probably seven feet tall, or less: Romano, \"Early Greek Cult Images,\" 441. Pausanias (5.17.1) refers to it as an _agalma_ (image).\n\n. Homer, _Od._ 4.131\u201335. Theoc. (18.33\u201334) describes Helen as an accomplished spinner and weaver.\n\n. Mansfield,\"The Robe of Athena,\" 6, 23 n. 14.\n\n. Mansfield, \"The Robe of Athena,\" 58, 89 n. 26.\n\n. Mansfield, \"The Robe of Athena,\" 58.\n\n. Aristoph. _Lys_. 1138\u201341, Xen. _Lac. Pol_. 11.3, Plut. _Lyc._ 27.2\u20134, _Mor._ 238d,Ael. _VH_ 6.6.\n\n. Plut. _Sol._ 20.8, 21.4\u20135, and see further Pomeroy, _Families,_ 101.\n\n. On women and weaving see further Pomeroy, _Xenophon: Oeconomicus_ , 60\u201364, 270, 274, 284, 297, 307.\n\n##\n\n## BECOMING A WIFE\n\nAnd I was thinking that Sparta among cities of few citizens proved to be the most powerful and famous, and I wondered in what way this had come about. When, however, I thought about the Spartans' way of life, I no longer wondered. I admired Lycurgus, their lawgiver, whose laws they were fortunate in obeying, and I think him extremely wise. He did not imitate other cities, but thinking the opposite of most, he made his country outstandingly fortunate.\n\nNow, to begin at the beginning, I will discuss the breeding of children. In other states the girls who are destined to become mothers and are brought up in the approved manner live on the most modest amount of food, with the smallest possible allowance of delicacies. They are either totally deprived of wine, or drink it mixed with water. The rest of the Greeks think it right that their girls keep silent and work wool, like sedentary craftsmen. How, then, ought we expect that women brought up in such a way will bear a sturdy child?\n\nBut Lycurgus thought that slave women were able to supply clothing, and he believed motherhood was most important for freeborn women. Therefore first he ordered the female sex to exercise no less than the male; moreover, he created competitions in racing and trials of strength for women as for men, believing that healthier children will be born if both parents are strong.\n\n(Xenophon, _Lac. Pol._ 1.1\u20134)\n\n### Eugenics: Nature in Alliance with Nurture\n\nIn highlighting women in the following discussion of marriage and reproduction, we are not engaging in affirmative action or compensatory scholarship. Rather, we are following the best ancient precedent: the intention of the revered founder of the Spartan way of life. Xenophon points out that Lycurgus devoted a great deal of attention to motherhood and marital intercourse. He also observes that Spartans were the only Greek girls who were generously fed, draws attention to the physical training for females that was unique in Greece, and supplies as the motivation the belief that strong parents produce stronger children. (According to Aristotle and other medical writers, acquired characteristics, as well as those with which a person was born, were widely thought to be inherited.) Xenophon's account of the raising of girls makes it clear that the \"Lycurgan\" system\u2014insofar as it was concerned with health and eugenics\u2014was not merely a Hellenistic or Plutarchean invention.\n\nGirls and boys exercised nude. Not only nude youths but young women as well may have participated in the Gymnopaidia (\"Festival of Nude Youths\"). Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 15.1) writes that confirmed bachelors were dishonored: they were excluded from viewing the young women and men exercising in the nude ( _tais gymnopaidiais_ ) _._ 2 Perhaps the bachelors preferred nonproductive sexual liaisons with boys to the exclusion of reproductive sex with females and this prohibition of viewing, which meant that they were barred from attending a major festival, was the state's punishment. In any case, while engaged in these activities, nubile Spartans had an opportunity to view the bodies of potential spouses. Although Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 4.4) argues that women's nudity was not intentionally erotic, it would have been difficult to prevent some viewers from becoming stimulated. Sometimes, women did parade nude in order to whet the appetite of unmarried men for marriage. Doubtless they attracted other women as well (see chap. 1).\n\n### _Infanticide_\n\nPatriarchy exercises authority over men as well as women, and in Sparta apparently even more over men. Males, from the moment of birth, were examined, tested, and evaluated according to eugenic standards by older men:\n\nThe father did not decide whether to raise a baby; rather he took it and carried it to some place called Lesche where the elders of the tribes sat and examined the infant, and if it was well built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill born and misshapen, they sent it to the so-called \"Apothetae,\" a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taygetus, thinking that any baby which was not naturally created at the very beginning to be healthy and strong was of no good either to itself or the state. Therefore the women used to bathe their newborn babies not with water but with wine, thus making a sort of test of their constitutions. For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the unmixed wine and lose their senses, while the healthy ones are rather hardened by it, and given a strong constitution. (Plut. _Lyc_. 16.1\u20132)\n\nPlutarch is our only source for the practice of systematic male infanticide. As we have seen, in the sentence immediately following his statement on infanticide he describes the allocation of a _kleros_ (lot of land) to every infant. The Greek words Plutarch uses for infant ( _to gennethen, to paidarion, ta brephe)_ are neuter; even the pronoun _aut\u00f4i_ can be understood as neuter or masculine. On the basis of this passage alone, it could be deduced that newborn girls were subjected to exposure and infanticide and were given kleroi. However, other passages in Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 8.4) and Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 9.5) make it clear that girls were supported by the kleroi of their male kinsmen (see below). Pierre Roussel  sees a connection between infanticide and allocation of a kleros and argues that the state was involved with infanticide exclusively in connection with males. Considering their concern over the decline in size of the population, it is likely that the magistrates understood that the number of Spartiates was directly related to the number of child-bearers (not inseminators) and therefore did not cull female infants.\n\nMale infanticide was wasteful only of the mother's nine-month investment. By eliminating unpromising male infants, the community was not obliged to pay the costs of rearing a boy who would not, as Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 16.1\u20132) puts it, be of use to himself or to the state. The decision ostensibly satisfied eugenic considerations. The infant who failed the initial inspection was eliminated before he could produce children who were likely to inherit his undesirable characteristics.\n\nA question that is often raised is whether at Sparta girls as well as boys,were vulnerable to infanticide. Nowadays few scholars doubt that girls were regularly exposed in Athens. The need to furnish a dowry at, or even before, puberty, and the general devaluation of women, were probably among the reasons why a father might choose not to raise a daughter. Was Sparta the antithesis of Athens? Did Sparta expose all boys who did not appear to have the potential for becoming excellent soldiers, but raise all girls\u2014except, one would suspect, those with obvious and debilitating physical abnormalities?\n\nWe may deduce from Plutarch's description that at birth girls were simply handed over to the women. This conclusion is _ex silentio_ ; on the other hand, it can be argued that Plutarch was unusually scrupulous among Greek authors in remembering to mention women where it was appropriate. It seems that girls were not subjected to official scrutiny as were Spartan boys, nor, apparently, did fathers make a determination about rearing or exposing them, as they did in Athens. The women would test the babies for epilepsy or sickliness by seeing if a bath in undiluted wine would throw them into convulsions. Plutarch does not state whether the immersion ordeal was part of the official evaluation process, nor does he indicate the fate of the infants, presumably both male and female, who failed the wine-immersion test. He does not tell us whether the women took any action in the case of infants who had failed the test, but if they did not, then what was the point? If the decision to expose apparent weaklings was up to the women, they would have exercised a power usually reserved for men in the Greco-Roman world.\n\nThere probably was change over time, with private citizens taking upon themselves the right to judge the male infant's viability that had previously been a monopoly of the community. Such changes were correlated with the right to dower and to alienate and bequeath property. The individual father's decision may have followed the verdict of the tribal elders, or the former supplanted the latter totally. At any rate, there is no indication of systematic female infanticide or neglect of girls at Sparta, nor is there any indirect evidence, such as skewed sex ratios. It seems likely that because in Sparta there was no money and women could own land, they could more easily be given a dowry. At Athens, where women could not own land, a father would have to furnish cash or movables, and this obligation might well be a deterrent to rearing girls.\n\nEugenic principles, such as existed in that era, underlie much of Spartan demographic engineering. The Spartans were celebrated for breeding fine hounds and racehorses, so it is not surprising to see them transfer these notions to human beings. By eliminating weak male infants, they tried to give natural evolution a boost, and through the subsequent rigorous training of boys, they assured the survival of the fittest and future reproduction by them. A mistake might be made, and a man might prove to be a coward. Such tremblers were most likely to be younger men facing their first real conflict, rather than hardened veterans. Anecdotes about Spartan mothers show that they are concerned lest their sons prove to be cowards (see chap. 3). In any case, cowards did not reproduce, for they were socially ostracized, and neither they nor their sisters (presumably young and not married) could find spouses (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 9.5). Eugenic motivations may also be detected in the choices made in wife-sharing or husband-doubling arrangements (see below). Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 15.7) agrees with Xenophon that a man could ask a husband if he might plant his seed in a wife who had already produced children, but he also attributes the initiative to the husband. For example an elderly man with a young wife might offer her a handsome, noble young man, and then adopt the children born of this union (Plut. _Lyc_. 15.12). Daniel Ogden has speculated that Spartans believed that in the process of wife-lending, male sperm could mingle and produce offspring who were thought to have descended from two male parents. Though the male contribution to the embryo was usually thought to dominate, it is also necessary to pay sufficient attention to the female contribution. The rejection of cowards' sisters and of some wives in favor of married women who were _euteknos_ (\"blessed with good children\") and _gennaia_ (\"well born\") reveals a belief that the mother was more than merely a fertile field for the father's seed, and that each woman continued to make her own particular contribution to the offspring. Indeed, in Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ (e.g., 240e, 241d), the mothers take all the credit for the way their sons turn out. Of course this is an exaggeration that results from the author's effort to prove that Sparta was very different in this respect from other Greek cities where mothers had little to do with the rearing of sons after the age of seven. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 6.2) reports that at Sparta fathers were involved in their children's upbringing. Nevertheless, Plutarch's view on the strong influence of mothers is corroborated by other sources (see chap. 3).\n\n### _Husband-Doubling,Wife-Sharing_\n\nSarah Blaffer Hrdy has questioned the assumption of anthropologists that women prefer monogamy when raising the human infant, who is helpless for a long period, while men prefer polygamy in order to increase the possibility of creating offspring and perpetuating their own genetic legacy. Hrdy argues persuasively that polyandry can be beneficial to mothers, for it increases the number of possible fathers who will help with the care of infants and thus perpetuate the mother's genetic legacy. The presence of more than one father who believes that a child may be his own is a kind of assurance of help for mother and infant. Multiple fathers increase the possibility of survival and wellbeing of offspring. The shared mother thus forges alliances between half siblings, more so than the father whose role both the primary sources and secondary scholarship has acknowledged. The concept of \"partible paternity\" which Ogden proposed in terms of benefits to the husband and the male lover or _genitor_ (i.e., biological father) needs to be reexamined from the perspective of benefits to mother and child. Partible paternity was certainly useful in a society like Sparta, where male mortality and the absence rate of men from the home were relatively high and women were seldom at physical or economic risk. That Spartiates reproduce was certainly a goal of the community. That they treat all children as though they were their own was also an explicit goal (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 2.10, Plut. _Lyc._ 17.1). That two men treat a child as though it belonged to each of them was certainly a step in this direction.\n\nIn most patriarchal and patrilineal states in antiquity, husbands enjoyed exclusive access to the reproductive potential of wives, using legal remedies or even violence to exclude intruders. At Sparta, the authoritarian patriarchy impinged upon the husband's monopoly of sexual access to his wife. Not only were the Spartan man's rights as a husband less than those of husbands elsewhere in Greece, but his rights as a father were less. As we have mentioned above, the state also usurped the father's right to determine whether his son was to be reared.\n\nPrimary sources generally view reproduction from the father's perspective. In a typical nineteenth-century attempt to interpret the development of marriage and society in prehistory, Engels painted a picture of the introduction of strict sexual restraints on women coinciding with the development of private property and the father's wish to know for certain that he was both _pater_ (i.e., legally father and husband of the child's mother) and genitor of his heir. Engels ranked the \"pairing marriage\" that he found at Sparta as more archaic than marriage in Homeric times, but he believed that Spartan marriage customs allowed greater freedom to women.\n\nDarwin, who wrote at about the same time as Engels, at least was largely correct in his views, but there is no doubt that he was influenced by Victorian assumptions about male and female sexuality. Darwin asserted that \"the female is less eager (to copulate) than the male . . .and may often be seen endeavoring for a long time to escape from the male.\" Scholars of Greek demography and society have long been influenced by Darwinian theories about the promiscuous human male and the coy female whose behaviors were considered advantageous for human evolution. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 1.9) spelled out some but not all the benefits of having, in effect, two husbands when he wrote: \"for the wives want to get possession of two oikoi, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons.\" Plutarch's report mentions the benefits to the husband of impregnation of his wife by a vigorous lover, but the modern feminist scholar can extend the concept to the wife. Surely she, too, benefited both genetically and perceptibly from producing strong children. Her investment in nine months of pregnancy would not be wasted by a decision of male elders to toss the offspring off Taygetus. If she was an heiress, she would sooner fulfill her obligation to produce an heir for her father. Because Greek gynecologists were uncertain about the period of gestation, it would be easy to attribute paternity to more than one father.\n\n### Marriage\n\nSpartans were reputed to have chosen their spouses by several systems, some similar to those practiced in other poleis, others unique. The former were based on the oikos system and the goal was the perpetuation and prosperity of the individual family; the latter evolved from the communal ideal of equality and the goal was the production of children for the good of the state. In the former system, personal inclinations and ambitions determined the choice of a spouse; in the latter system the state provided incentives for marriage. Women were active players in both systems.\n\nXenophon's description shows that in his day the two systems overlapped. Although there was an oikos system in place, the welfare of society was fostered by means of what is commonly referred to by scholars as 'wife-sharing' for reproductive purposes. Although it is not always obvious that Xenophon is reporting an entirely logical system, it is apparent from his language that the wife is an active participant in the arrangement whereby she produces children for a partner in addition to her husband. This practice should therefore be called \"husband-doubling\" or \"male-partner duplication\" or \"nonexclusive monogamy,\" or, at any rate, some term that does not suggest passivity on the wife's part:\n\nHe [Lycurgus] saw, too, that during the time immediately following marriage, it was usual elsewhere for husbands to have unlimited intercourse with wives. He decreed the opposite of this: for he ruled that the husband should be embarrassed to be seen visiting his wife or leaving her. Thus the desire for intercourse was more fervent in both of them, and if there should be a child, it would be more sturdy than if they were satiated with one another. In addition to this, he took away from men the right to take a wife whenever they wanted to, and ordered that they marry in their prime, believing that this too was conducive to the production of fine children. If, however, it happened that an old man had a young wife\u2014seeing that men of that age guard their wives\u2014he thought the opposite. He required the elderly husband to bring in some man whose body and spirit he admired, in order to beget children. On the other hand, in case a man did not want to have intercourse with his wife but wanted children of whom he could be proud, he made it legal for him to choose a woman who was the mother of a fine family and well born, and if he persuaded her husband, he produced children with her. Many such arrangements developed. For the wives want to get possession of two oikoi, and the husbands want to get brothers for their sons who will share their lineage and power, but claim no part of the property. Thus in regard to the breeding of children he thought the opposite to those of other states. And anyone who wishes to may see whether it turned out that the men in Sparta are distinctive in their size and strength. (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 1.5\u201310)\n\nPlutarch also describes marriage customs appropriate for a utopian society in which reproduction is the primary goal of marriage and the economic aspects of the private oikos are deemphasized in favor of the common good. Though he reiterates much of Xenophon's report on husband-doubling, in Xenophon the child born of extramarital intercourse would have no claim on the estate of the biological mother's husband. It appears that the Spartans were not concerned with the legal issue of illegitimate birth: rather, arrangements between consenting males, with the practical consent of the woman involved, were valid in assigning paternity. Children belonged to the oikos of the father and therefore the biological mother would have no legal claim on the newborn, except after adoption. Plutarch introduces the new idea that the biological mother and her husband might adopt the child born from extramarital intercourse, and then, of course, the child would inherit from them:\n\nThere were also these incentives to marry. I mean the processions of girls, and the nudity, and the competitions in view of the young men, who were attracted by a compulsion not of an intellectual type, but (as Plato says) a sexual one. In addition he [Lycurgus] decreed that those who did not marry would lose a civic right, for they were excluded from the spectacle of the Gymno-paidiai [\"Nude Youth\"] . . . .\n\nThey used to marry by capture, not when the women were small or immature, but when they were in their prime and fully ripe for it. The so-called \"bridesmaid\" took the captured girl. She shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom, who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always, having dined with his mess group, then would slip in, untie her belt, lift her, and carry her to the bed. After spending only a short time with her, he would depart discreetly so as to sleep wherever he usually did with the other young men. And he continued to do this thereafter. While spending the days with his contemporaries, and going to sleep with them, he would cautiously visit his bride in secret, embarrassed and fearful in case someone in the house might notice him. His bride at the same time was scheming and helping to plan how they might meet each other unobserved at a suitable time. They did this not just for a short period, but for long enough that some might even have children before they saw their own wives in the day. Such intercourse was not only an exercise in self-control and moderation, but also meant that partners were fertile physically, always fresh for love, and ready for intercourse rather than being satiated and impotent from unlimited sexual activity. Moreover, some lingering spark of desire and affection always remained in both.\n\nAfter making marriage as modest and orderly as this, he showed equal concern for removing empty womanish jealousy. Banning from marriage every kind of outrageous and disorderly behavior, he made it honorable for worthy men to share children and their begetting, and derided people who think that there can be no combination or sharing of such things, and who resort to murders and wars. Thus if an older man with a young wife should take a liking to one of the handsome and virtuous young men and approve of him, he might well introduce him to her so that he might fill her with noble sperm and then adopt the child for themselves. On the other hand, a respectable man who admired someone else's wife noted for her lovely children and her self-control might persuade the husband that he have intercourse with her\u2014thereby planting in fruitful soil, and producing fine children who would be linked to fine ancestors by blood and kinship. (Plut. _Lyc_. 15.1, 3\u20137)\n\nSome of the bizarre customs Plutarch mentions, such as the cutting of the bride's hair and the secret marriage, could not have existed simultaneously, certainly not where women regularly spent much time out of doors. Nor are they mentioned by Xenophon. We can only speculate that they were created over time like other reforms attributed to Lycurgus, were enforced by the ongoing fear of _oliganthropia_ (sparse population) after the Second Messenian War (see below) or even later, and relaxed when the Spartans realized that they were able to win the Peloponnesian War despite their small population. Another possibility is that these customs were revived or invented in the Hellenistic period either in connection with the reforms of Agis IV and Cleomenes III or under the influence of some other utopian philosophical program.\n\nThe \"capture\" of the bride was a ritual enactment of a prearranged betrothal. The bridesmaid was ready and waiting with the bride's costume. The bride herself, full grown, would have been able to put up a good struggle if she truly objected and the groom was really raping her. An abduction rather than a joyous spectacular wedding ceremony may serve to ward off the jealous evil eye. The shaving of the head and dressing of the bride as a man (Plut. _Lyc._ 15.8) may have been part of a rite of passage that signalled her entrance into a new life. As a maiden she wore her hair long and uncovered, as a wife she wore it short, and covered by a veil (see fig. 4). In some sense, she was transformed into a youth in the agoge. Since participation in the agoge was a prerequisite to becoming a full-fledged citizen, the transvestism may have been symbolic of the bride's inclusion in the citizen body. It may also have been an attempt to ward off the evil eye or the supernatural spirits who were deemed to be jealous of the bride's fortune. The bride's costume may have also helped to ease the husband's transition to procreative sex from the homosexual intercourse to which he was accustomed.\n\nFig. 4. Married woman.\n\nMature woman with head and shoulders covered by a mantle. Rim of the Vix crater. Bronze volute crater from a tomb at Vix. Total height 1.64 m. Ch\u00e2tillon-sur-Seine. Ca. 530. See Appendix n. 102, and most recently C.M. Stibbe, _Das andere Sparta_ (Mainz, 1996), fig. 8 and pp. 137, 152, for a date of 570\u2013560.\n\nWe may ask if there were any analogous comforts for the bride who had been accustomed to female caresses. At Athens, vases depicting weddings often show Erotes (\"Cupids\"), an attempt to enlist the services of the supernatural in making the bride receptive to the bridegroom. The Athenian bride, however, was much more in need of help than the Spartan. The Athenian was not quite fifteen: she married a stranger nearly twice her age, moved to a new house, and rarely saw her friends and relatives again. The Spartan, in contrast, married a young man close in age. The couple had seen each other nude at festivals and during exercise since childhood. Because the marriage was secret until the bride became pregnant, she did not change domicile for a while (see below). Since the bride and groom were around eighteen and the groom was obliged to live with his army group until the age of thirty, the wife would not have been obliged to adapt to her husband's personality; she raised the children and managed the household for the most part by herself. These responsibilities made it necessary that the bride be mature, not an adolescent like the Athenian bride. Furthermore, the Spartan bride's principal source of companionship and sentimental attachments would continue to be other women. In cases where the bridegroom was older than normal, the scenario would be quite different, for the husband would no longer be sleeping with his army group.\n\nYet, even in such households the husband probably did not completely dominate the wife. If he was impotent or infertile, he nevertheless was obliged to participate in the social goal of reproduction as well as to consider wife's desires. Xenophon implies that her wishes and ambitions were consulted in cases where she was to be inseminated by a younger man to whom she was not married. Marriage between an older man and a younger woman could be the consequence of the epiklerate.  Though Spartan law is not so well understood as Athenian, some form of the epiklerate may have existed, for it appears that when a daughter was the sole survivor and heiress in a family, she was under some obligation to marry a close kinsman of her father, though he might have been elderly. In such cases, nevertheless, the pressure to produce an heir was intense.\n\n### Sexuality\n\nThere is no reason to assume that the sexuality of Spartan women was repressed or indeed less assertive than that of the men, or, of course, to assume the contrary. If we rely on the judgment of Teiresias, who had been both male and female, women's capacity to enjoy sex was nine times greater than men's. Xenophon and Plutarch speak of desire for intercourse on the part of both spouses, though within the limits of modesty. Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 15.1 ) also refers to flirtatious behavior when the girls parade nude before the bachelors, trying to interest them in marriage. Perhaps this competition for men continued after marriage. Xenophon at first reports the incitement for wife-lending or husband-doubling from the male perspective: \"a man could choose a woman who was already mother of a fine family and of high birth.\" Since the goal of the liaison was only reproduction, it made sense for the potential genitor to choose a mature woman who had already proven her ability to reproduce, rather than a young virgin. Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 15.7) agrees with Xenophon, and draws attention to the age and impotence of the husband and the attractiveness and nobility of the lover. Though no ancient source mentions that any woman actively chose her surrogate husband, we suggest that a lively young wife would be able to exert influence on a feeble old husband. Why should a modern scholar assume that women were passive in these arrangements? And why did the attractive man in question choose one woman rather than another? It is not improbable that she solicited his attention. One revered example of a Spartan woman who chose a man younger than her husband is of course Helen. Spartans, because of their respect for tradition, took their mythical exempla seriously, and Helen must have been a major figure in a Spartan woman's thoughts even before marriage (see chap. 6).\n\nIn cases where the husband was old, the young man who was allowed to have intercourse with the wife was physically and morally attractive. Though eugenic goals were primary, we need not assume that the wife's experience with her surrogate husband was unpleasant.\n\n### _The Economics of Marriage_\n\nXenophon depicts the Spartans as careful, if not calculating, in their selection of spouses and family planning. Herodotus (6.57, 71) refers to fathers betrothing daughters and giving them in marriage. Contradicting Herodotus is the report of Hermippus (late third century B.C.E.) that cohorts of nubile men and women found spouses by groping randomly in a dark room, and that the women were without dowries. Likewise, the enactment of the marriage as an abduction suggests a lack of dowry, but does not definitely preclude one. This method of spouse selection reflected the ideal of equality among potential partners. It was a casualty of the manifest advent of private property. The men who were engaged to marry Lysander's daughters attempted to break their engagements when they discovered that Lysander was poor. They were fined for marrying badly, for their primary goal was to marry wealthy, rather than virtuous, women. Xenophon does not mention the random selection of spouses, but he does describe husband-doubling, a practice that was unique in the Greek world and doubtless contributed to the racy reputation of Spartan women. This breach of sexual exclusivity was introduced after the rhetra of Epitadeus, which permitted a man to give his house and kleros to whomever he wished while he was alive, or to bequeath them in his will. By the classical period (if not earlier), in addition to the land designated for distribution as kleroi, some was held as private property. It is clear that with more property openly in private hands Spartan men and women had increased incentives to develop heirship strategies. They may have limited the number of their offspring to increase the patrimony and social mobility of their heirs. Wives and husbands evidently shared the same views about family planning and attempted to further the special interests of the oikos within the context of an authoritarian patriarchy.\n\n### _Sex Ratio and Polyandry_\n\nXenophon ( _Lac. Pol_. 1.8), Polybius,  Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 15.12\u201313), and Nicolaus of Damascus ( _FGrH_ 90 F 103Z) refer to polyandry at Sparta. This practice is not necessarily indicative of a paucity of women, which, in turn, could be a symptom of female infanticide. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol_. 1.8) mentions the case of the married man who has no desire to _synoikein_ with his own wife, but prefers to produce offspring by a married woman who has already proven her procreative gifts. Some scholars understand _synoikein_ as \"marry\" rather than in its common sense of \"cohabit,\" \"live with,\" or \"have intercourse with.\" The two interpretations, of course, overlap: it is a question of emphasis and the writer's usage. Xenophon uses _lambano_ of a man who takes a wife, and _synoikein_ for \"having intercourse with.\" Furthermore, as we will see, there were other childless women in addition to those whose husbands rejected them (see below). In another variation on this theme, Polybius states that several brothers would share one wife. Fraternal polyandry was also a form of family limitation, for one shared wife could not have produced as many children for the brothers as individual wives might have. When each of these matrimonial experiments began and how long they lasted is unclear. Xenophon's description of husband-doubling postdates the rhetra attributed to Epitadeus, the victory in the Peloponnesian War, and perhaps the disaster at Leuctra\u2014undoubtedly a period in Spartan history of such turbulence as to stimulate radical social change (see Appendix).\n\n### Infanticide and Sex Ratio\n\nThe answer to the question whether Spartans practiced female infanticide is not the same for all time periods. There is little data and few dates. Certainly by the Hellenistic period, when the Spartan ideal was thoroughly contaminated by alien arrangements and the \"Lycurgan\" economic system was embattled, and there is plenty of evidence for infanticide in the Greek world, beleaguered and impoverished fathers may have decided to do away with female as well as male infants. The reports of fraternal polyandry in Polybius (12.6b.8), and of husband-doubling in Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 15.7, see also Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 1.5\u20139) and Nicolaus of Damascus ( _FGrH_ 90 F 103), may actually indicate a scarcity of marriageable women at that time. On the other hand, if these arrangements were also found in the archaic period, that would suggest the simultaneous practice of female infanticide even then. In the light of the changing demographic picture at Sparta, it is interesting that Polybius (12.6b. 8) refers to polyandry as an \"ancestral\" custom: however, the Spartans instituted many novel social practices in the fourth century and Hellenistic period, for which they gained credence by referring to them as \"ancestral\" (see Preface). Furthermore, Polybius was not favorably disposed to Sparta and not averse to attributing customs to the Spartans that his readers would consider barbarous. Some elite families in Hellenistic and Roman Sparta raised as many as three daughters, and in some cases daughters outnumber sons.Women are well represented in these stemmata, owing in part to the fact that these families often resorted to claiming descent through matrilineal succession from Bronze Age heroes and heroines, including Helen and the Dioscuri.\n\nWe may speculate that if female infanticide were not common, polyandry would have left some women unmarried. There was, however, so much movement out of the Spartiate class downward that the resultant sex ratio becomes unfathomable. We may also speculate about the possibility of intermarriage between full-blooded Spartan women and members of the various subordinate classes in Laconia, though there is little evidence for such arrangements, with one exception. A story about the founding of Tarentum is worth discussing, though its veracity has been questioned for many reasons. During the archaic period, when the army was in the field for many years and it was uncertain whether the men would ever return safely, the Ephors (\"Overseers,\" elected magistrates) directed that the women have intercourse with helots in order to produce a new crop of children who could replace the men in case they never came home. When the army did return to Sparta, the children born of miscegenation were sent off to found the colony that became known as Tarentum. This episode\u2014if it actually occurred\u2014was exceptional, and clearly an emergency measure. Furthermore, that Greek women would be forced to have intercourse with their social inferiors, who were simultaneously at war with their polis, is difficult to believe, though the eugenics program perhaps was not yet in place. If these liaisons ever occurred, it is no suprise that the Spartans sent the offspring off to a colony. It is also reported that after many Spartans died in the war with the Messenians, they made some helots go to bed with the widows of the dead men so that their lack of manpower would not be apparent. They made these helots citizens. In general, hypogamy was not an option for elite Greek women, and there is nothing in the education of Spartan women that prepared them for such a possibility. Polybius' (12.6.5) version of the official insemination program is more credible: the Lacedaemonians sent back to their country men in their prime of life for the purpose of begetting children.\n\nLimiting our discussion to the upper class, unmarried or childless Spartan women include those in the following five categories: the sisters of cowards, whom no man will marry; the wives Xenophon mentions, whose husbands prefer to reproduce by other men's wives; those to whom the state forbids marriage; those like Lysander's daughters, whose lack of wealth does not make them attractive partners, particularly in a period of economic instability for men; and those to whom Cicero refers as refusing to bear children (see chap. 3). It must have taken a great deal of determination and self-will to belong to the latter group in a state that so cherished motherhood.\n\n* * *\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 96\u201399.\n\n. On the ambiguity of this word, see Appendix n. 77.\n\n. See further David Leitao,\"The Exclusion of _Agamoi_ from the _Gymnopaidiai_ and the Politics of Viewing in Sparta\" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 29, 1997; Abstract published in _American Philological Association 129th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 171). Contra Michael Pettersson, _Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai, and the Karneia_ (Stockholm, 1992), 76. See Preface, above.\n\n. Compare a male reaction to the first sculpture of the nude Aphrodite at Cnidus: according to Pliny, _HN_ 36.20, a man embraced the statue and ejaculated on it.\n\n. Plut. _Lyc._ 15.1. Athen. 13.566e exaggerates the erotic or leering aspect when he reports that Spartans strip virgins before strangers.\n\n. On Hodkinson's criticism of this passage, see chap. 4 nn. 61\u201362 and Appendix n. 90.\n\n. \"L'exposition des enfants \u00e0 Sparte,\" _REA_ 45 (1943), 5\u201317, in agreement with G. Glotz, \"L'exposition des enfants,\" _\u00c9tudes sociales et juridiques sur l'antiquit\u00e9 grecque_ (Paris, 1906), 187\u2013227, esp. 188, 192, 217\u201319,who mentioned only sons.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity_ (New York, 1995), 69\u201370, 164\u201365, 227, etc., and _Families_ , 118, 120\u201321, etc. Mark Golden, in \"Demography and The Exposure of Girls at Athens,\" _Phoenix_ 35 (1981), 316\u201331, argues that the female infanticide rate was as high as 20 percent.\n\n. Cf. Conclusion, below, on \"ugly\"daughters. Daniel Ogden,\"Crooked Speech: The Genesis of the Spartan Rhetra,\" _JHS_ 14 (1994), 85\u2013102, esp. 91\u201398, follows M. Delcourt, _St\u00e9rilit\u00e9s myst\u00e9rieuses et naissances mal\u00e9fiques dans l'antiquit\u00e9 classique_ (Li\u00e8ge, 1938), in stressing the exposure of infants with marks of divine disfavor such as clubfeet.\n\n. Roussel,\"L'exposition des enfants \u00e0 Sparte,\" 17, alludes to such changes, though he is unable to determine exactly when they occurred.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 55.\n\n. Daniel Ogden, _Greek Bastardy_ (Oxford, 1996) _,_ 230, 234\u201335. Cf. Plut. _Cat.Min_. 25 on Cato's sharing his wife Marcia with Hortensius for the purpose of bearing children. The arrangement was a result of the profound friendship between the two men.\n\n. \"The Optimal Number of Fathers: Evolution, Demography, and History in the Shaping of Female Mate Preferences,\" _Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences_ 907 (2000), 75\u201396.\n\n. See S. Beckerman, R. Lizarralde, et al., \"The Bari Partible Paternity Project: Preliminary Results,\" _Current Anthropology_ 39, 1 (1998), 164\u201367, esp. 166, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, _Mother Nature_ (New York, 1999), 246\u201349.\n\n. F. Engels, _The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State_ (1884),with introd. by Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York, 1972), 125\u201328.\n\n. See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, \"Raising Darwin's Consciousness,\" _Human Nature_ 8.1 (1997), 1\u201349, esp. 6\u20139.\n\n. _The Descent of Man_ (London, 1871, repr. Princeton, 1974), 273.\n\n. See, e.g., Paul Cartledge, \"Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?\" _CQ_ 31 (1981), 84\u2013105, esp. 105: \"the modern feminist is unlikely to be over-impressed by the way in which Spartan women . . . were 'seized' and 'had' as wives in the domicile of their husbands, who could 'lend' them for extramarital procreation; finally, and perhaps least of all, by the overriding emphasis placed on their childbearing potential and maternal roles by men who monopolized the political direction of a peculiarly masculine society.\" On Cartledge's place in the historiography of Spartan women, see Appendix, below.\n\n. See, on Timaea, chap. 4, and Ann Ellis Hanson,\"The Eight-Months'Child and the Etiquette of Birth,\" _Bulletin of the HistoryofMedicine_ 61 (1987), 589\u2013602, esp. 589\u201392, 596.\n\n. Pomeroy, _Families,_ 48\u201350, 54\u201356, 59\u201362.\n\n. Thus Bella Zweig, \"The Only Women Who Give Birth to Men: A Gynocentric, Cross-Cultural View of Women in Ancient Sparta,\" in _Woman's Power, Man's Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King_ , ed. Mary DeForest (Wauconda, Il., 1993), 32\u201353. Cartledge,\"Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?\" 103, 105, and Cynthia B. Patterson, _The Family in Greek History_ (Cambridge,Mass., 1998), 73, 77\u201378, take cognizance only of the first part of Xenophon's report on husband-doubling (to 1.8), thus suppressing the second part stating that the women want to control two oikoi. Both emphasize \"lending\" the wife, rather than husband-doubling. In this way, the wrong impression is given that Spartan women are merely passed around between men to be used as baby-making devices.\n\n. For this translation, see n. 38 below.\n\n. J. Christien Tregaro, \"Les b\u00e2tards spartiates,\" in _M\u00e9langes Pierre L\u00e9v\u00eaque_ , ed. M.-M. Mactoux and E. Geny (Paris, 1993), 33\u201340, esp. 36, argues that the Xenophon passage means that the child born of the union of a lover (\"amant,\" i.e., genitor) and another man's wife would be a member of the lover's family but have no claim on the lover's property, because such a child was illegitimate. Since Tregaro (35\u201336) also argues that the lover was a bachelor, it is difficult to understand the lover's motivation in such a scenario. The passage is ambiguous. The common interpretation, however, that Xenophon is referring to the husband's motivation (i.e., getting allies for his children free of charge), seems more sensible. On the domicile of the married woman who has produced children for more than one oikos, see chap. 3.\n\n. _Rep._ 458D.\n\n. See further Judith Evans- Grubbs,\"Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine ( _CTh_ ix.24.1) and Its Social Context,\" _JRS_ 79 (1989), 59\u201383, esp. 62\u201363.\n\n. Heracl. Lembus, _Excerpta Politiarum_ , 373.13 (Dilts); Lucian, _Fug._ 27; cf. Xenophon of Ephesus 5.1.7 (Dalmeyda). Plutarch's explanation is that unmarried girls need to find husbands; the married women need to keep the men who have them ( _Sayings of Spartans_ , 232c2). Pliny _HN_ 8.164 states that the libido of mares is extinguished once the mane is cut. Horace _Od._ 2.11.24 writes of a woman with hair tied back in a twist in the Laconian style. This style was simple and appropriate for women who spent time outdoors. Propertius 3.14.28 associates unscented hair with Spartan women. See further R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, _A Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book II_ (Oxford, 1978, pbk. 1991), 178\u201379. I am grateful to Nicholas Horsfall for this reference. For elaborate hair-cutting\n\nprotocols marking ages and marital status, see Ellen N. Davis,\"Youth and Age in the Thera Frescoes,\" _AJA_ 90 (1986), 399\u2013406.\n\n. See further Ephraim David, \"Dress in Spartan Society,\" _AncW_ 19 (1989), 3\u201313, esp. 7, and \"Sparta's Social Hair,\" _Eranos_ 90 (1992), 11\u201321, esp. 17.\n\n. See further G. Devereux, \"Greek Pseudo-Homosexuality and the 'Greek Miracle',\" _Symb. Oslo._ 42 (1968), 69\u201392, esp. 83\u201384. On the potential for extramarital intercourse with lower-class women, see chap. 5.\n\n. For the Athenian marriage at best, see Xen. _Oec_. 7\u201310 and Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Political Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), ad loc.\n\n. Thus E. Karab\u00e9lias, \"L'\u00e9picl\u00e9rat \u00e0 Sparte,\" _Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi_ , vol. 2 (Milan, 1982), 469\u201380, esp. 479.\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 1.5, Plut. _Lyc._ 15.1.4\u20135; see also Plut. _Advice to the Bride and Groom,_ 18.\n\n. Of course, the nubile men and women were not equally endowed with good looks. On Lysander's bad luck in this selection process, see: Athen. 13.555b\u2013c citing Hermippus = _FGrH_ IV.3 1026 F 6 = F. Wehrli, _Die Schule des Aristoteles_ , suppl. 1 (Basel, 1974), fr. 87. J.-F. Bommelaer, _Lysandre de Sparte: Histoire et Traditions_ (Athens, 1981), 58, finds the anecdote suspect for chronological reasons, unless Lysander married twice. See also chap. 3 n. 18 and Conclusion.\n\n. Plut. _Lys._ 30.5. On the traditions concerning Lysander's daughters,see Bommelaer, _Lysandre de Sparte_ , 57\u201358.\n\n. Cf. Plut. _Agis_ 5.2\u20135. On the rhetra, see Preface n. 11 and chap. 4 nn. 61\u201362.\n\n. See further Ephraim David, \"The Influx of Money into Sparta at the End of the Fifth Century b.c.,\" _Scripta Israelica_ 5 (1979\/80), 30\u201345, and chap. 4.\n\n. Thus Thomas J. Figueira,\"Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta,\" _TAPA_ 116 (1986), 165\u2013213, esp. 195.\n\n. Polyb. 12.6b.8. F.W. Walbank, _A Historical Commentary on Polybius_ , vol. 2 (Oxford, 1967), 340 ad loc., suggests that fraternal polyandry was an adaptation to the absence of men.\n\n. Pace Ogden, _Greek Bastardy,_ 239, and Tregaro,\"Les b\u00e2tards spartiates,\" 35\u201336,who take _synoikein_ as \"marry\" rather than as \"live with\" or \"have intercourse with.\" For the latter meaning, see E. C. Marchant, _Xenophon_ , vol. 7, _ScriptaMinora_ (Cambridge,Mass., 1968), 139; F. Ollier, _Le mirage spar-tiate_ (Paris, 1933\u201343), vol. 1, 379, and _X\u00e9nophon: La r\u00e9publique des Lac\u00e9d\u00e9moniens_ (Lyons, 1934), commentary, 34.8; W. den Boer, _Laconian Studies_ (Amsterdam, 1954), 223; and Liana Bogino, \"Note sul matrimonio a Sparta,\" _Sileno_ 17 (1991), 221\u201333, esp. 229. F. W. Sturtz, _Lexicon Xenophonteum_ (1801\u20134, repr. Hildesheim, 1964), vol. 4, 190, s.v. synoikein, gives as a primary translation, \"Consuetudinem habere, coire.\" Only secondarily, citing other scholars, Sturtz gives, \"Dicitur autem non de sola tori, sed de tota consuetudine, de matrimonio in universum,\" thus allowing for the possibility that the\n\ngenitor may have been a man who declined to cohabit, not only with a wife, but with any woman at all (except obviously, in the context being discussed, for the encounter necessary for insemination).\n\n. Sarah B. Pomeroy,\"Infanticide in Hellenistic Greece,\" in _Images of Women in Antiquity_ , ed. A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (London, 1983), 207\u201322.\n\n. Michael Flower, \"The Invention of Tradition in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta\" (paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Sept. 7, 2000), suggests that \"husband-doubling\" was introduced at a time when Spartiates were concerned about their falling population. He suggests that this may have happened towards the end of the fifth century.\n\n. See Appendix. For polyandry and multiple sexual partners among barbarian women, see Herod. 1.216; 4.172, 176, 180; 5.6.\n\n. A. J. S. Spawforth _,_ \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus: Some Prosopographical Notes,\" _ABSA_ 80 (1985), 191\u2013258, esp. 234, 238, for the descendants of Tib. Claudius Eudamus and Claudia Damostheneia. Androtelia had at least four daughters: _SEG_ IX.677c (add. et corr.), 2d\u20131st cent. B.C.E.\n\n. Spawforth,\"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,\" 195\u201396, 219, 221.\n\n. Polyb. 12.6b5, Strabo 6.3.3 (279\u201380), etc. The probable source of this anecdote was Ephorus. Irad Malkin, _Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean_ (Cambridge, 1994), esp. 139\u201342, understands it as aetiological, derived from the fact that the colonists were called \"Partheniai.\"\n\n. Ogden, _Greek Bastardy_ , 242, admits the possibility of procreative unions between Spartan women and helot men, though not in the context of the foundation of Tarentum. But this is highly unlikely for eugenic reasons among others. Acting on the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, helots were bred for docility. A liaison between a Spartan woman and a male helot would not have produced the ideal Spartan; but see chap. 5.\n\n. Athen. 6.271c quoting Theopompus _Hist._ 32 = _FGrH_ 115 F 171.\n\n. Plut. _Am. narr._ 775d gives one undatable example of the daughters of Alcippus and Damocrita. Their father's enemies had a vote passed forbidding the daughters from marrying. The damning nature of this vote shows that central to the values of marriage and motherhood was the capacity to create alliances between males. The family of Alcippus and Damocrita was prevented from acquiring sons-in-law who would be allies, and, like the families of cowards, it was doomed to extinction.\n\n##\n\n## THE CREATION OF MOTHERS\n\nSpartans were the only Greek mothers who were famous in antiquity qua mothers, and who served as paradigms in later periods of history. Xenophon and Plutarch are our main authorities for the exaltation of motherhood. As well-traveled, cosmopolitan reporters, they declare that nowhere else in the Greek world did the state lavish such attention on women.\n\nThe oikos is usually described as a unit for reproduction and production. At Athens, the wives of citizens were distinguished from other women as \"mothers of legitimate children and faithful housekeepers\" (Ps.-Demos. 59.122). Because before the fourth century the economy at Sparta more than elsewhere in the Greek world depended upon the labor of those who were not free, not citizens, and not household residents, the \"production\" aspect of the oikos was minimal. Textual and archaeological evidence indicates that before the Roman period, Spartan houses were insubstantial: they need not have been used for long-term storage, since helots were required to supply agricultural products annually. Therefore housekeeping was not a time-consuming job for women, though, as we have demonstrated (see chap. 1), not only did they supervise domestics, but they also could weave and took pride in their skills. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that their textiles were exchanged or sold, or that the women were obliged to weave in order to provide clothing for their families. Wives were, above all, mothers. For these reasons, in this chapter we treat the Spartan family principally as a locus for reproduction and confine our examination of the economy of the oikos to inheritance and dowry and to the relationship of reproduction to economic concerns.\n\nAs a result of the emphasis on reproduction, girls were raised to become the type of mothers Sparta needed (see chap. 1). A mother had to be healthy, properly educated, and well versed in Spartan values. In the absence of fathers during children's formative years, women, including mothers, older sisters, and nurses, were the principal, if not the sole, influence in the creation of Spartan citizens. Sparta recognized the services of mothers by permitting only women who had died in childbirth (like men who had died in battle) to be commemorated by grave markers. Religion, especially the cults of Apollo and of Artemis (with whom Eileithyia was associated), provided a spiritual foundation for politically approved family values (see chap. 6).\n\n### _Creating Childbearers_\n\nThe mistress of the house supervised the conversion of raw food into edibles. The relationship between mother and daughter was strong. Since the father dined with his syssition _,_ the mother would have been in charge of food distribution in the home. I suspect that mothers were responsible for seeing to it that girls were well fed, though of course, like other Greek women in comfortable circumstance, they did not prepare the food themselves. This nourishment was so superior to what other Greek girls received that Xenophon comments on it. Spartan girls may, in fact, have been given more food than their male counterparts, for the boys were deliberately given inadequate rations which they needed to supplement themselves. The Spartan diet was distinctive and evoked comment from diverse sources. Food was supplied in the form of a family wage allotted to male citizens from their kleroi. According to Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 8.4), each kleros was sufficient to provide a rent of seventy _medimni_ (bushels) of barley for a man, and twelve for his wife, along with proportionate quantities of fresh produce. Every Spartan was required to contribute one medimnus each month to his syssition (mess group). If we suppose that the husband consumed his twelve medimni at the syssition while the wife had the same amount at home, the basic diet of men and women was the same. Because Plutarch does not specify the amount of perishables, we do not have sufficient data to enable us to calculate the complete Spartan diet, but if it is true that a wife received twelve medimni of barley, a Spartan woman would have had, as a minimum, more than one and a half _choinixes_ daily (approximately 0.839 kg, or one and a half times an Athenian man's daily grain ration), an adequate diet of staples even for an athletic, or pregnant, or nursing woman This amount of grain yielded approximately 3,416 calories daily. A very active adult female twenty to thirty-nine years old requires 2,434 calories.\n\nPlutarch is our only source for the specific details of the food allotment. His report refers to a stable kleros system, which, however, was not in operation throughout Spartan history as private property increased in importance (see chap. 4 and Appendix). Nevertheless, Plutarch provides evidence for a generous dietary standard, and is consistent with what we know from Xenophon and others. In Aristophanes' _Lysistrata_ , Spartan women conform to the ethnic stereotype and are notably robust: Lampito complains that the other women are judging how plump she is just as they would assess an animal to be sacrificed. Fifty-eight medimni a year would have generously fed at least five or six children of various ages, or fewer children and some domestics. Furthermore, in addition to the minimum supplied by the kleros (when the system was functioning), property holders would have had access to additional grain, wine, olives, and animal and plant food grown on their private estates. Unmarried women would be supported by their male relatives and their private resources (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 9.5). We note in passing that the man who was newly elected to the Gerousia (Council of Elders) was given a second portion by his syssition. He was to give this as a gift to one of his female relatives (Plut. _Lyc._ 26). The relationship between such a man and woman imitated the relationship of king and subject. Spartan kings were regularly given a double portion so that they could bind various subjects to them by offering the extra food to them (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 15.4). In short, Spartiate women were never underfed. To be sure, some people lost status in the late fifth century through the loss of property, but so long as the kleros supported these dues, they could supply the wife of the kleros holder.\n\nThe subject of diet leads us to consider whether Spartan girls reached puberty later than their Athenian counterparts. If so, late marriage could have been an adaptation to delayed menarche, which has been observed in young female gymnasts preparing for the Olympics nowadays. Spartan women, however, are unlikely to have exercised as vigorously as their modern counterparts, inasmuch as athletic standards and rewards for women are higher now than they have ever been. Moreover, ideas of beauty were different. To the modern eye, the figures of the girls depicted in Laconian bronzes appear slim and athletic, but not pathologically emaciated. One doubts whether Spartans were told that \"no woman is ever thin enough.\" In fact, a robust or sturdy body might have been seen as better for childbearing.\n\n### _Fertility_\n\nHomosexuality and nonreproductive forms of heterosexual copulation also reduced fertility. Homosexual ties among Spartans were common. Although Aristophanes depicts Spartan husbands as just as sex-starved in wartime as the rest of the Greeks and cowed by their wives' refusal to have intercourse, he also makes some jokes about the Spartan males' homosexual activities and predilection for anal intercourse. According to Xenophon ( _Lac_. _Pol_. 2.13) and Plutarch ( _Inst_. _Lac_. 7), the erotic relationships between men were purely spiritual. Elsewhere, Plutarch ( _Lyc_. 18) emphasizes the spritual aspect, but does not specifically rule out the physical relationship. Xenophon and Plutarch also praised Lycurgus' directives limiting the frequency with which the newlyweds engaged in intercourse. Bridegrooms were permitted only limited visits to their brides. Inasmuch as the Greeks were utterly ignorant about the days in the menstrual cycle when women were fertile, late marriage and infrequent intercourse in the early years of marriage must have reduced by at least one or two the total number of children borne by each woman. On the other hand, the secret marriage, which only pregnancy made public, produced more positive results, for presumably it allowed an infertile couple to find other partners with whom they may have been able to reproduce.\n\nThe state formally supported child production through rewards to fathers. A man with three sons was not obliged to serve garrison duty, and a man with five was exempt from liturgies (financial obligations to the state or citizen body). These goals, however, were unrealistic. The demographic likelihood of any man having four, let alone five, sons is slim, except in families with eight to ten children, or by sheer luck. There is no indication that the state rewarded fathers of girls, nor were there tangible rewards for the mothers who would endure the pregnancies. The Spartan incentive invites comparison with Augustus's _iustrium liberorum_ (\"law of three children\"), which granted social and legal rewards to many men and women, for it did not specify the sex of the children and rewarded both mothers and fathers.\n\nThe pronatalist aims of the state were at variance with the economic ambitions of individual families. Like other Greeks, Spartans practiced diverging devolution, but the Spartans alone adopted unusual practices in their attempt to counter the decrease in the economic status that large families would naturally experience when the paternal estate was divided. Diverging devolution works only in a capitalistic economy with ever-expanding resources. Sparta's economy, agriculturally based, had a limited capability to expand.\n\n### The Oikos and the Family Economy\n\nThe script for the secret marriage, in which the bridegroom stealthily visits the bride and the marriage is not made public until she is pregnant, indicates that the bride did not have to endure the trauma of losing her virginity and moving to a new home simultaneously. We do not have conclusive evidence about the couple's domicile during all stages of the marriage. It seems likely that after a while, perhaps after the birth of a child, the bride left her parent's house to live with her husband. We do not know if the marriage was neolocal. Since the couple married when the bride was in her late teens and the groom slightly older, there was a strong possibility that their parents would still be living. Xenophon does not indicate the domicile of a wife who took a male partner in addition to her husband so that she could control two oikoi (see chap. 2). Perhaps she used both residences so as to be better able to manage them. How the kleros system affected the pattern is difficult to envisage. Heiresses (brotherless women), of whom there were many, may have remained in their ancestral homes. Women in a matrilocal situation certainly enjoy more domestic power. In any case, the possibility of a change of domicile is not as important as it was in a polis like Athens in view of the fact that Sparta was a \"closed\" society without distant cleruchies (land allotments in a foreign country) or numerous colonies. As we have noted above, marriage was highly endogamous and although the territory of Sparta was extensive, a bride did not run the same risk as her Athenian counterpart of being separated from her family by a long sea voyage. Furthermore, Plutarch's report ( _Lyc_. 18) on the pederastic relationships between respectable adult women and unmarried girls refers to a multigenerational female social milieu in which, we may assume, family members would continue to mingle.\n\n### _Affective Relationships: Daughters and Fathers_\n\nThe fact that there were many heiresses in Sparta indicates that many families had no surviving sons. Because of the scarcity of male heirs, and perhaps owing to parents' personal inclinations, adoptions were rare. Even in families with children of both sexes, the father probably enjoyed a close relationship with his daughter, in fact closer than he had with his son, since the latter was living out of the house by the age of seven, in many cases while the father was still living with his army group. Children born to an older father, of course, would have had a better opportunity to develop a relationship with him. Examples of the close relationship between father and daughter include Gorgo and Cleomenes I, Prolyta and Agesilaus II, and Chilonis and Leonidas. Gorgo and Chilonis became assertive women whose activities are recorded in the historical sources. As a little girl of eight or nine, Gorgo was present when an ambassador from the Greek cities in Ionia came to persuade Cleomenes to support their rebellion against Persia. When he offered Cleomenes a huge bribe, Gorgo advised her father not to stray from the path of virtue (Herod. 5.51).He followed her advice. Even if the veracity of this anecdote can not be tested, the general idea that a father encouraged his clever young daughter to give her opinion on serious matters rings true enough for readers who have enjoyed such dialogues. Cynisca became an Olympic victor (see chap. 1). Chilonis left her husband in order to show support for her father, who had taken asylum, but then, as the political situation changed, she pleaded with her father in behalf of her husband.\n\nUnfortunately, owing to the problems scholars confront in reconstructing the history of ancient women, much of what we suppose about the relationships of Spartan daughters and their parents is based on assumptions. In contrast, there is textual evidence for the relationships with sons.\n\n### _Mothers and Sons: Ideology of Motherhood_\n\nIn order to inculcate her offspring with patriotism, the mother had to have the correct attitude herself. Spartan women were renowned for enthusiastically sacrificing their sons for the welfare of the state. Instead of lamenting at the death of their sons, they took pride in the bravery that had led to that fate. Perhaps the delay in bonding with a son, caused by the necessity to await the verdict of the elders as to whether the infant was fit to be reared, created a psychological distance between a mother and her male offspring. In Athens, women mourned the dead, lavished grave goods upon them, and visited funerary monuments; but in Sparta, grave goods and mourning were controlled, restricted in some circumstances and mandated in others. For example, when a king died, one man and one woman from each family were obliged to lament.When the Spartans conquered Messenia, they forced the freeborn women to mourn over men who were not related or connected to them (Aelian, _VH_ 6.1).\n\nModern psychology and sociobiology has taught us not to consider any particular version of human maternal behavior as \"natural\"; motherhood is socially as well as biologically constructed. Spartan women did not travel, and the family lives of _perioikoi_ (free, but noncitizens) and helots were inappropriate for citizens. The only alternative model for the rearing of sons that was available to Spartan mothers was that for the rearing of daughters, and the latter would not have produced fine specimens of Spartan manhood. Thus, doubtless, Spartan mothers did rear their sons according to the customs and expectations of their state and society.\n\nAt least at some time, not only did women sanction the official ideology of motherhood, but several, in fact, were architects of it. The first example is Theano, mother of the traitor Pausanias. When her son had sought asylum in a building that was part of the sanctuary of Athena of the Bronze House, and the Ephors were in a quandary, Theano did not plead for his life. Instead, she placed a brick at the door of the temple and left. Following her example, the Ephors then blocked up the doors, leaving Pausanias inside. Aelian reports ( _VH_ 12.21) that Spartan mothers lamented in private if a son's corpse bore the majority of wounds on the back. That these anecdotes are not mere exaggeration and correspond to some historical reality is confirmed by the behavior of the Spartans after their defeat at Leuctra. The women were ordered not to mourn, but to suffer in silence. The next day, kinsfolk of those who had been killed in the battle wore happy faces, while the kinsfolk of the soldiers who had survived were sad (Xen. _Hell._ 6.4.16, Plut. _Ages._ 29.4\u20137).\n\nQuotations in Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ also indicate that women promoted the ideal of Spartan motherhood. These aphorisms were attributed to famous women who lived in the classical and Hellenistic period, including Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes and wife of Leonidas; Argileonis, mother of Brasidas; Gyrtias, mother of Acrotatus (who died at Megalopolis in 265 B.C.E.); and to undatable or anonymous women as well. Spartans were the only Greek women whose statements were deemed worthy of quotation. I doubt that what we have here is propaganda actually written by men but ascribed to women in order to make the statements more dramatic and persuasive. The quotations were probably collected not only because of their wit and pithiness, but because they revealed familial attitudes that non-Spartans deemed amazing and noteworthy. For example:\n\nBecause Damatria heard that her son was a coward and not worthy of her, she killed him when he arrived. This is the epigram about her:\n\nHis mother killed Damatrius who broke the laws,\n\nShe a Spartan lady, he a Spartan youth. ( _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 240.f2)\n\nAnother Spartan woman killed her son, who had deserted his post because he was unworthy of Sparta. She declared: \"He was not my offspring . . . for I did not bear one unworthy of Sparta.\" ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.1)\n\nAnother, hearing that her son had fallen at his post, said: \"Let the cowards be mourned. I, however, bury you without a tear, my son and Sparta's.\"( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.2)\n\nAnother, hearing that her son had been saved and had fled from the enemy, wrote to him:\"A bad rumor about you is circulating. Either absolve yourself at once, or cease to exist.\" ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.3)\n\nAnother, when her sons had run away from a battle and come to her, said: \"Wretched runaway slaves, where have you come to? Or do you plan to steal back in here whence you emerged?\"And she pulled up her clothes and exposed herself to them. ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.4)\n\nA woman, when she saw her son approaching, asked:\"How does our country fare?\"And when he said:\"All are dead,\" she picked up a tile, threw it at him, and killed him, saying:\"Then did they send you to bring us the bad news?\"( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ 241.5)\n\nThese exemplary mothers would not tolerate a son's act of cowardice. Such behavior tainted with dishonor not only the soldier but his female relatives as well. In the case of Damatria and Damatrius, the son's name echoed his mother's. Perhaps owing in part to the belief that acquired characteristics could be inherited, his sisters (note that his brothers are not mentioned), like the coward himself, could not find anyone willing to marry them, and his mother (note, not his father) might take his life for it. In view of the Spartan equation of womanhood with marriage and motherhood, the sisters received a harsh sentence. There was a strong likelihood that the family would become extinct. That mothers were reputed to enjoy the patriarchal power of Roman fathers and could kill their adult offspring who had disgraced them by their lack of patriotism is unprecedented in the ancient world. It is striking that both Greek and Roman traditions assert that the Spartan mother could pass judgment on an adult son unilaterally and behave so violently against her own offspring.\n\nSome mothers appear to have actively sought their son's martyrdom, as we see again in Plutarch:\n\nAs a woman was burying her son, a shabby old woman came up to her and said, \"You poor woman, what a misfortune!\"\"No,by the two goddesses, what a good fortune,\" she replied, \"because I bore him so that he might die for Sparta, and that is what has happened for me.\" ( _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 241.8)\n\nAnother woman handed her son his shield and exhorted him:\"Son, either with this or on this.\" ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.16)\n\nSince Spartan women could manage their own property and lived close to their kinsmen and friends in a relatively well-protected territory, widowhood and the loss of a son were probably not such frightening and dreary prospects as the comparable situations were at Athens. Defeat by the helots or by a foreign power and the ensuing rape, slavery, or even death were more terrifying.\n\nMost of the _Sayings of Spartan Women_ concerning mothers and sons (or in the case of Gyrtias, a grandson) focus on the son's bravery; in fifteen quotations he shows himself worthy, in nine unworthy, and in one saying (242.19) one son is brave, another a coward. There are other themes as well. One saying draws attention to the pride of a mother of many sons as a well-known feature of Spartan ethnicity:\n\nWhen an Ionian woman was boasting about one of the tapestries she had woven (which was indeed of great value), a Spartan woman showed off her four most dutiful sons and said they were the kind of thing a noble and good woman ought to produce and she should boast of them and take pride in them. ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.9)\n\nAnother saying emphasizes motherhood as the podium from which Spartan women dominated men:\n\nWhen a woman from Attica asked \"Why is it that you Spartans are the only women who can rule men?\" Gorgo replied,\"Because we are the only ones who give birth to men.\" ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 240.5)\n\nAs the last two quotations discussed above suggest, motherhood could be a fulfilling experience for women, especially, a modern woman imagines, where\n\nFig. 5. Louis Jean Fran\u00e7ois Lagren\u00e9e the Elder, _Spartan Mother and Son_.\n\nMother bids farewell to son in classicizing portrayal titled \"Rapporte ce bouclier ou que ce bouclier te rapporte\" (\"Bring back your shield or let this shield bring you back\"). 1771. Elizabeth Rawson, _The Spartan Tradition in European Thought_ (Oxford, 1969), 265, points out that Spartan subjects first appear in French art in this period. Stourhead, Hoare Collection, National Trust. Photo, Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.\n\nnurses are available and the mother has no domestic chores. Women's pro-creative role can contribute to their feelings of self-esteem as well as to a position of prestige not only in the family, but within the state. Some states in more recent times have sought to include women in this way, thus linking private with public. As an example, I will discuss not Nazi Germany, but the United States of America.\n\n### _Excursus 1. Spartan Motherhood: Precedent and Proof_\n\nIn the young American Republic, motherhood was designed as a political role for women: their assignment was to produce public-minded children. Republican motherhood functioned in several ways like Spartan motherhood and can serve as a heuristic model for the latter. Here, private and the public spheres intersect. Women were encouraged to display patriotism by sacrificing the men whom they loved. They were proud of their role in shaping a new generation of citizens. Women's history was marshaled into service to promote this view. According to Julia Sargent Murray, who lived from 1751 to 1820 and wrote essays on a variety of subjects including women's education:\n\nThe character of the Spartan women is marked with uncommon firmness. At the shrine of patriotism they immolated nature. Undaunted bravery and unimpeached honor was, in their estimation, far beyond affection. The name of Citizen possessed, for them, greater charms than that of Mother; and so highly did they prize the warrior's meed, that they are said to have shed tears of joy over the bleeding bodies of their wounded sons.\n\nThree-quarters of a century later, the Confederate States of America displayed their conservatism by retaining not only slavery but also some features of Republican motherhood. During the American Civil War, inspired by patriotic propaganda, some southern women behaved in ways similar to those Plutarch attributes to Spartans. Women would leave bonnets and hoopskirts at the homes of young men who had not enlisted, with a letter commanding them to volunteer or be stigmatized as unmanly. They exhorted the troops to come home only if they wore laurel crowns of victory or were carried on shields of honor. A mother wrote in the _Winchester Virginian_ : \"I am ready to offer you up in defense of your country's rights and honor and I now offer you, a beardless boy of 17 summers,\u2014not with grief, but thanking God that I have a son to offer.\"\n\nUpper-class southerners were familiar with Greek and Roman history. It would be ironic if they were influenced by ancient propaganda that had failed to sway the women toward whom it was originally directed. At any rate, these examples from the more recent past persuade me that there is no universal maternal instinct which inspires mothers to save their son's life without hesitation. Some\u2014even many\u2014Spartan women might have harbored sentiments similar to those of women in southern American states and conformed to the ideal of motherhood prevalent at the time, especially since the consequences of defeat were horrendous. Of course, not all American women in the early Republic, or all Confederate women, embraced this particular patriotic ideology enthusiastically. Some women were more reluctant to sacrifice their menfolk on behalf of slavery or \"states' rights.\"\n\n### Family Planning\n\nThe United States is a nation that derives \"its just power from the consent of the governed.\" The \"socialization\" at Sparta was surely more effective. There is no comparable evidence for Spartan women rejecting the ideal until quite late (see below).\n\nAs a return on the investment in feeding and educating girls, the state expected them to produce children when they were mature. Yet, as Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1269b\u20131270a) suggested, the authoritarian system placed more constraints on men than on women. There is no evidence that unmarried or infertile women (except the sisters of cowards) suffered any social pressure or disabilities similar to those experienced by bachelors and childless men. The state did offer some rewards to mothers: prolific mothers of strong male citizens enjoyed prestige in life, and the names of women who had died in childbirth were recorded on tombstones.\n\n### _Neither Production nor Reproduction_\n\nApud Lacaenas virgines,\n\nQuibus magis palaestra, Eurota, sol, pulvis, labor\n\nMilitiae studio est quam fertilitas barbara.\n\nSpartan maidens care more for wrestling, the [river] Eurotas, the sun, dust, and military exercise than for barbarous fertility. (Cicero, _Tusc_. 2.36)\n\nAs Cicero reports, women did reject the burden of continuous child production that was the long-range goal of their physical education. Contraception is discussed in the Greek medical tradition dating from the classical period, but Spartans are the only respectable Greek women we know of who are specifically reported to have exercised control over their fertility. This report reflects the autonomy of Spartan women acting not in secret, as might be necessary for an individual, but assertively as a group whose behavior attracted notice. That they were not married until they were mature gave them an advantage over the more passive child brides in Athens.\n\nFeminist historians have argued that the number of children a woman bears has a greater effect on the quality of her life than almost any other ongoing condition (that is, excluding such dramatic events as war and natural disaster). Like married women nowadays who remain childless out of choice, Spartan women were thought to be motivated by selfish desires. In the history of the premodern world, refusal to bear children has usually been considered unpatriotic. Before the advent of modern medicine, abundant fertility was fundamental to the survival of the community. That after only one year of war and before the devastation of the plague Pericles urged Athenian women to bear more children underlines this necessity. In order to alleviate the continuing and ominous population decline, Spartiate men produced children by helot women (see chap. 5). These mixed-blood children, called _mothakes_ ,were given some modified form of citizenship. We may speculate that the two practices were related: when the citizen women noticed their childbearing was no longer absolutely essential for the welfare of the state, and motherhood was consequently downgraded, they could well have decided it was not worth the trouble to bear many children. Cicero's phrase,\"fertilitas barbara,\" indicates that bearing children was considered unsophisticated. He was probably evaluating Spartan women by the standard of upper-class Roman women, and his judgment here was shrewd. Both Spartans and Romans enjoyed wealth, high status, and access to contraceptive methods (through formal medical care or word of mouth) which, though primitive, were not ineffective. The Hippocratics do not mention Sparta, but they do not write about Athens either, and we know from other sources that there were physicians in Athens. At Sparta they would have been important for military reasons. Archagathus, who in 219 B.C.E. was the first Greek physician to go to Rome, came from Laconia (Pliny, _HN_ 29.12). Plutarch ( _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 242.26) mentions a Spartan girl who brought on an abortion in secret. A fourth-century inscription from the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus reports that a Spartan mother came to find a cure for her daughter's case of dropsy. She slept at the shrine, saw a vision, and when she returned home she discovered that her daughter had seen the same vision and was cured. Since women in Sparta were neither secluded nor silenced, as some women were elsewhere in Greece, and since Spartans spent much of their time in the company of women, it would be only reasonable to assume that they had at least the same knowledge of contraception as other Greek women.\n\nWith the exception of Cicero, ancient and modern authorities have offered social and economic, rather than biological, theories to explain the population decline at Sparta. Among all the theories advanced about the reasons for the decline, we must give serious consideration to Cicero's (the most obvious one): women's control over reproduction.\n\nSince the source of the verse Cicero quotes is not known,we can only speculate about the reason for Cicero's remark, and whether it is relevant to women throughout Spartan history, or only to the Hellenistic period. Earlier, they probably bore children ungrudgingly, and gladly contributed their sons to the military, as tradition preserved, for example in Plutarch, _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , asserts. Cicero may record disillusionment with the Spartan female ideal in the Hellenistic period, when women had become aware of other ways of life.\n\nThe drastic reduction in the amount of territory controlled by Sparta after the liberation ofMessenia in 369 B.C.E. inspires some Malthusian speculations. Since the Spartan economy was based on agriculture, they will not have wanted to reproduce at the same rate as before the defeat at Leuctra, because if they did so after the loss of such a major resource they would reduce the economic status of individuals. Though their population did not fall immediately after Leuctra, despite the casualties, once the realities of the new limited territory had set in, Spartans may have adopted more strict family limitation policies.\n\nMore consistent with Plutarch's account of women's cooperation in child production is Xenophon's observation that women agreed to take part in husband-doubling or wife-sharing arrangements, not as passive agents, but because of their own ambitions to dominate two oikoi and to improve the economic status of their children. These novel arrangements may have encouraged women to bear more children than they would have done in conventional monogamous families, since they could distribute them in two oikoi. In any case, if we suppose that Xenophon's comment that wives willingly participated in these arrangements contradicts Cicero's report that the women refused to bear children, we must reject one of these reports, or hypothesize that some women participated while others refused, or posit change over time, or speculate that Xenophon and Cicero had different purposes in drawing attention to these issues.\n\nThroughout Spartan history there must have been some women who did not reproduce. Among any group of women or of couples, some will be infertile for all or some portion of their adult lives. There is the case of Anaxandridas,who resorted to bigamy rather than adultery or divorce, because his first wife had not produced an heir. After he married a second wife, the first wife bore children. Among nonroyals, as we have mentioned, the secret marriage described by Plutarch, in which the bridegroom makes stealthy visits to the bride, or divorce and remarriage would allow them to sample partners with whom they could have fertile unions. In addition, some women who may have been fertile were in marital situations that would not allow them to bear children because their husbands rejected them. Others remained spinsters. For example, the sisters of cowards could not find bridegrooms. Daughters of wealthy men were more in demand than daughters of the poor. The fianc\u00e9s of Lysander's daughters broke their engagements when they discovered that their prospective father-in-law was poor (Plut. _Lys._ 30.5).\n\n### _Womanpower and Oliganthropia_\n\nAnalyses of the population decline at Sparta make repeated references to \"manpower\" and to the numbers of males of all ages at various dates, but, with minor exceptions, they ignore women's reproductive failures or successes and their numbers relative to the number of males.Yet there is no dearth of information. Surprisingly, the ancient sources give more direct data and commentary on reproduction and demography for Sparta than for other Greek communities.\n\nOur knowledge of reproduction depends chiefly on Xenophon, Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, and Plutarch. In the first sentence of the _Spartan Constitution_ , Xenophon mentions _oliganthropia_ (sparse citizen population), and in the next paragraph he discusses _teknopoiia_ (child production), highlighting the role of women in this process (see chap. 1). This emphasis on women seems eminently sensible from a modern viewpoint, but considering the alternative theories of reproduction that were current in Xenophon's day\u2014theories that minimized women's contribution to the embryo\u2014Xenophon shows unusual insight.\n\nAristotle refers to women when he states that half of Spartan society was ungoverned. He sees a connection between women's ownership of two-thirds of the land and oliganthropia. _Anthropoi_ may refer to either men or women, or both, and Aristotle could have used _oligandria_ or a similar term if he had wanted to specify males. Yet the context indicates that Aristotle, more than Xenophon, considers oliganthropia as a lack of male citizens ( _Pol._ 1270a33\u201334). With the exception of Ludwig Ziehen, scholars generally follow Aristotle in this interpretation. Studies of the decline in Spartan manpower naturally draw attention to losses inflicted by a devastating earthquake around 464: Ziehen speculated about the number of women lost in this calamity.He argues that more women than men were killed because they were indoors, and points out that only five houses were reported to have withstood the earthquake. No ancient source, however, reports that the earthquake was more catastrophic for women than for men. Ziehen is not convincing for several reasons: Spartan women were often out of doors and may not have suffered when the roofs of their houses caved in, and, secondly, from what we can deduce about Spartan architecture, their domestic quarters were so flimsy that a robust adult could have survived a collapse.\n\n### Demographic Speculations\n\nThe sources report the number of male citizens present at various battles as well as the number of male citizens in general at various points in the classical and Hellenistic periods, but, in general, numerical data from antiquity is unreliable. We have no information either on the absolute number of female Spartans or on the number relative to the number of males.We may, however, speculate that, as a consequence of selective male infanticide and the death of men in battle, women outnumbered men fairly frequently, and that the sex ratio was further skewed by male emigration after the Peloponnesian War. Moreover, since Spartans lived a more healthy life than other Greek women, ate well, exercised out of doors, did not become pregnant before their bodies were ready for childbearing, and, at least by the Hellenistic period if not earlier, limited the number of children they bore, they probably lived longer than other Greek women and had a better life expectancy than Spartan men. While it is true that relatively few grave markers have been found in Sparta because only men who died in war and women who died in childbirth were awarded this distinction, men who died might be buried at the battlefield, as were the heroes who died at Thermopylae. In contrast, all the women whose deaths were the result of childbirth would have been commemorated at Sparta. Though it is an argument _ex silentio_ , it is worth pointing out that few such inscriptions have been discovered.Xenophobia, lack of foreign trade and of an overseas empire, and not living in crowded urban spaces (as their Athenian counterparts did) will, in general, have had a beneficial effect on Spartan health. The men, however, traveled to foreign soil and were exposed to disease. These factors must have contributed to the large number of heiresses, or brotherless orphans, noted by Aristotle. There would have been a substantial number of widows, as well. A consequence of the unbalanced sex ratio was that not all adult women could be married simultaneously. Nevertheless, these excess women were not forced to become child producers. Moreover, because a Spartan woman shared in the paternal inheritance, she was not a burden to her family if she remained unwed. Since her portion of the patrimony would revert to her family of origin when she died, an unmarried daughter or sister would have been a financial, if not a social, asset. Perhaps Cicero included unmarried women when he stated that the women did not want to bear children.\n\nThirty years ago, without resorting to statistics and cliometrics, W. K. Lacey wrote in the style of Jane Austen:\n\nOne feature which seems common to all societies is that rich men want to marry their daughters (especially only daughters) to the sons of rich men, and the Spartans seem to have been no exception. A shortage of eligible men leads to a competition for husbands. . . . Rich women, moreover, do not commonly bear large families, especially when, as in Sparta, they are independent and not subordinated to their husbands.\n\nLacey, however, fails to draw the conclusion that a shortage of eligible men would leave some Spartan women husbandless, and hence childless.\n\n### Oikos and Polis\n\nPrivate and public spheres were interlocking. The mother constituted a bridge between private and public. The state determined the character of the family; the reverse was true, as well. For example, women were expected to scold and humiliate cowards and bachelors. They had to be informed about public events to know which men deserved this treatment.\n\nAristotle saw that the polis was constituted of oikoi, but he did not distinguish the different sorts of oikoi that must exist for the creation of different sorts of poleis. According to Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1252b10\u201312), the essential elements in the oikos were father, mother, child, and slave. Because the father alone of the members possessed a fully functioning deliberative faculty, he was the authority figure in all three relationships. Though appropriate to Athens, and doubtless to most other places in the Greek world, this model does not fit Sparta neatly throughout its history. In husband-doubling arrangements, the role of mother was distinct from the role of wife, and the role of father was distinct from the role of husband. According to the _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , the women dominated their sons in certain settings, and according to Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1269b12\u20131270a6), they even ruled their husbands. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 1.9) reports that they managed the oikos, sometimes even more than one. Furthermore the major portion of the productive,or \"slave,\"element of the Aristotelian formula was owned by the state, not by the individual oikos, and, for the most part, lived some distance from it (see chap. 5). All these differences between Spartan oikoi and those that at Athens contributed to creating a polis that was different from the Athenian polis.\n\nThere were also many elements of similarity between both poleis. Reproduction was universally the goal of marriage. At Athens, the marriage formula was explicit: the bride was given to the groom for the sowing of legitimate children. Yet we do not know of any Spartan politician who ever, like Pericles, directed mothers who had just lost adult sons in war to produce more children. Nor do we hear of any situation parallel to that at Athens during the second half of the Peloponnesian War, where a married man who already had children was encouraged to sire additional children by another citizen woman. In one of the examples that is cited of Socrates and Myrto, a dowerless daughter of Aristides, such a liaison could only have produced financial and personal misery for all concerned. As we have mentioned, in facing the population decline, the Spartans chose to reproduce by helot women rather than press unwed female Spartans into service.\n\n### Change over Time\n\nThe degree and quality of the differences between the Spartan family and others in the Greek world changed over time. Scholarly interpretation has shifted as well. Previous generations of scholars, relying on Plutarch's report and influenced by the mirage, have emphasized differences. In the 1990s, Xenophon's testimony gained authority.\n\nMany features of the Spartan family\u2014especially as described by Plutarch\u2014either were in existence only in the archaic period, or were part of the mirage. This family owed its origin not principally to biology, but to human legislation. In this fictive family, the men were like \"brothers\" with equal economic resources. They disciplined younger males and were in turn respected by them as fathers. Relationships between older and younger men were governed by the same incest taboos as if they really had been blood relatives (Plut. _Lyc_. 6.2, 8.4, 15.2; Xen. _Lac_. _Pol_. 2.10,13). This is also the community in which state officials exercised the prerogatives of fathers elsewhere in Greece, deciding which infants to rear and how to educate them (Xen. _Lac_. _Pol_. 2.2, 10).Women were excluded from managing the economic resources of the state and participating in the administrative processes of this public family, but that was true of all women (with the exception of some Hellenistic queens) in antiquity. Interestingly enough, just after Plutarch's lifetime, Roman Sparta honored some elite women by granting them titles that certified inclusion in the civic family. These titles included \"daughter of the city\" and \"mother of the Boule and the people.\"\n\nSimone de Beauvoir envisioned the life of Spartan women as utopian:\n\nSince the oppression of woman has its cause in the will to perpetuate the family and to keep the patrimony intact, woman escapes complete dependency to the degree in which she escapes from the family. If a society that forbids private property also rejects the family, the lot of women in it is found to be considerably ameliorated. In Sparta the communal regime was in force, and it was the only Greek city in which woman was treated almost on an equality with man. The girls were raised like the boys. The wife was not confined in her husband's domicile: indeed, he was allowed to visit her only furtively, by night; and his wife was so little his property that on eugenic grounds another man could demand union with her. The very idea of adultery disappeared when the patrimony disappeared. All children belonged in common to the city as a whole, and women were no longer jealously enslaved to one master; or, inversely, one may say that the citizen, possessing neither private wealth nor specific ancestry, was no longer in possession of woman. Women underwent the servitude of maternity as did men the servitude of war; but beyond the fulfilling of this civic duty, no restraint was put on their freedom.\n\nNowadays feminist theory has encouraged historians to shift from a narrow focus on the androgynous educational system to an appreciation of Spartan motherhood and to criticism of societies based on Communist or totalitarian programs. Perhaps in reaction to earlier views, the current scholarly consensus is more nuanced and less influenced by information emanating from the mirage.\n\nBy the end of the fifth century, if not earlier, the Spartans did not even pay lip service to the all-male public family. The freedom to give kleros and house to anyone, or bequeath them by testament, signaled state acceptance of the private family and its fluctuating economy at the expense of the public family of men of equal status (Plut. _Agis_ 5.1, and see chap. 4).\n\nAt Sparta, the patriarchal state was gradually supplanted by the nuclear family, which, however, was not dominated by men to the same extent as at Athens. In the fourth century, if not slightly earlier, the family at Sparta (like the family elsewhere in the Greek world) had its own economic base and reproductive agenda. It is clear that with more property openly in private hands, more Spartans, including women, had increased incentives to develop inheritance strategies and to regulate their fertility.\n\nIn their discussions of reproduction, Xenophon,Cicero, and to some extent Aristotle emphasize women's influence and volition. Xenophon's report on wife-lending or husband-doubling indicates that both parents concurred in limiting the size of the family so as not to reduce the share of the inheritance that would eventually be distributed to their heirs. As wives and mothers, women were active players in making arrangements beneficial to their families and to themselves.\n\n* * *\n\n. On the oikos and family, see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), passim, and _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), passim. I presented this material first in \"The Spartan Family\" (paper delivered at the University of Cambridge, Oct. 13, 1998), and much of the discussion of reproduction in \"Spartan Wives and their Strategies\" (paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Sept. 7, 2000).\n\n. See most recently Valerie French,\"The Spartan Family and the Spartan Decline,\" in _Polis and Polemos: Essays on Politics, War, and History in Ancient Greece in Honor of Donald Kagan_ , ed. C. D. Hamilton and P. Krentz (Claremont, Calif., 1997), 241\u201374.\n\n. Plut. _Lyc_. 27.2, _Mor_. 238d, Paus. 3.12.8, 3.14.1, 3.16.6, 6.1.9. The reference to childbirth depends upon Latte's emendation of Plut. _Lyc_. 27.2. See W. K. Pritchett, _The Greek State at War_ , vol. 4 (Berkeley, 1985), 244 n. 430, and most recently M. Toher,\"On the _Eidolon_ of a Spartan King,\" _RhM_ n.s. 142 (1999), 113\u201327, esp. 122\u201326. W. den Boer, _Laconian Studies_ (Amsterdam, 1954), 299\u2013300, favors a Greek text that means: \"except a man fallen in war or a woman if they were _hieroi_ [priests or priestesses].\" N. Richer,\"Aspects des funerailles \u00e0 Sparte,\" _Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz_ , 5 (1994), 51\u201396, revives the criticism raised by C. Le Roy, \"Lakonika,\" _BCH_ 85 (1961), 228\u201332, esp. 231 n. 4, of Latte's emendation as \"violente,\" and argues that only priests who had died in battle and women who were members of the hieroi (i.e., priestesses) were awarded epitaphs. This argument is unconvincing, however, in view of the inscriptions commemorating women who died _en lecho_ ( _IG_ V.1.713, 714; from Geronthrai _IG_ V.1128; from Hippola _IG_ V.1277), and the total lack of such inscriptions commemorating priestesses. See D. H. Kelly, \"Thucydides and Herodotus on the Pitanate _Lochos_ ,\" _GRBS_ 22 (1980), 31\u201338, esp. 33\u201334, for a convincing rejection of this awkward Greek. Richer does not refer to Kelly's arguments. Margherita Guarducci, _Epigrafia greca_ , vol. 2 (Rome, 1967\u201368), 173 n. 1, considers the women's epitaphs pre-Hellenistic. See further Mario Manfredini and Luigi Piccirilli, _Plutarco: Le vite di Licurgo e di Numa_ , 2d edn.(Milan, 1990), 94 (app. crit.) and 276\u201377.\n\n. See further Barton Lee Kunstler,\"Women and the Development of the Spartan Polis\" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1983), 459.\n\n. _Lac. Pol._ 1.4, and see chap. 1. Arist. _HA_ 608b declares that the female eats less. Note that in Persepolis as part of a pronatalistic policy nursing women received extra rations: see R. T. Hallock, _The Persepolis Fortification Tablets_ (Chicago, 1969), 344\u201353;Maria Brosius, _Women in Ancient Persia, 559\u2013331 B.C._ (Oxford, 1996), 171\u201378; and Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity_ (New York, 1995), 85.\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 2.6, 7.8, describes the effort to keep boys and men slender, doubtless due to the warrior image. See also Plut. _Lyc._ 17.4.\n\n. R. W. V. Catling, \"The Archaic and Classical Pottery,\" in _Continuity and Change in a Greek Rural Landscape: The Laconia Survey_ , vol. 2, _Archaeological Data_ , by W. G. Cavanagh, J. Crouwel, R.W. V. Catling, and G. Shipley ( _ABSA_ suppl. vol. 27) (London, 1996), 33\u201389, esp. 77, suggests that the peculiar shapes of Laconian pots reflect a diet different from that of most Greeks.\n\n. Lin Foxhall and H. A. Forbes, \" _Sitometreia_ : The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in Classical Antiquity,\" _Chiron_ 12 (1982), 41\u201390, esp. 59.\n\n. Foxhall and Forbes,\" _Sitometreia_ ,\" 49.\n\n. _Lys_. 80\u201384, and see further Conclusion.\n\n. See further Thomas J. Figueira,\"Mess Contributions and Subsistence at Sparta,\" _TAPA_ 114 (1984), 87\u2013109, esp. 98\u2013100.\n\n. Natalie Anger,\"Chemical Tied to Fat Control Could Help Trigger Puberty,\" _New York Times_ , Jan. 7, 1997, sec. C, pp. 1, 3, reports studies demonstrating that fat is necessary for reproductive maturity and athletic women with little body fat experience late puberty.\n\n. We observe that Athenian vases depict brides as plump: see John H. Oakley and Rebecca H. Sinos, _The Wedding in Ancient Athens_ (Madison,Wis., 1993), passim. In the Eleusinian votive relief depicting Demeter, Triptolemus, and Kore, the mother is thinner than her daughter (Athens, National Museum, no. 126 and New York,Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 14.130.9 A\u2013K [Rogers Fund, 1914],Roman copy).\n\n. See P. Cartledge, \"The Politics of Spartan Pederasty,\" _PCPS_ n.s. 27 (1981), 17\u201336, and F. D. Harvey, \"Laconica: Aristophanes and the Spartans,\" in _The Shadow of Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (London, 1994), 35\u201358, esp. 41\u201342.\n\n. _Lys_. 78\u201385.\n\n. _Lys_. 1105, 1148, 1162, 1173\u201374.\n\n. Xen, _Lac_. _Pol_. 1.5, Plut. _Lyc._ 15.5.\n\n. Aelian, _VH_ 6.6, also states that the father of five sons could marry his daughters without dowry (see on dowries chap. 4). Perhaps such daughters had found their future husbands in the \"lottery\" in the dark room, and the men were obliged to marry them, or the state awarded dowries to them. See further chap. 2 n. 33.\n\n. Among the Roman upper classes, childbearing became so unpopular that Augustus decided to offer incentives to those who became parents and penalize those who remained childless: see further Suzanne Dixon, _The Roman Mother_ (Norman, Okla., 1988), 71\u2013103.\n\n. Arist. _Pol_. 1270b1\u20134, and see further Thomas Figueira,\"Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta,\" _TAPA_ 116 (1968), 182 n. 43.\n\n. S. Perentidis,\"R\u00e9flexions sur la polyandrie \u00e0 Sparte dans l'Antiquit\u00e9,\" _RHD_ 75 (1997), 7\u201331, esp. 22\u201325, for sensible speculations about the domicile of the Spartan couple.\n\n. The ages may be inferred from Plutarch's allusion ( _Lyc._ 15.3) to the bride's maturity and from Plato, _Rep._ 5.452, 5.460E, who states that females should become parents for the first time at twenty and males at thirty.\n\n. Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra_ (New York, 1984), 17; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, _Mother Nature_ (New York, 1999), 248, 252.\n\n. Thus Kunstler, \"Family Dynamics and Female Power in Ancient Sparta,\" in _Rescuing Creusa_ , ed. M. Skinner, _Helios_ 13.2 (Lubbock, Tex., 1986), 31\u201348, esp. 458\u201359, and see chap. 1.\n\n. Herod. 5.50\u201353, Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 240d.\n\n. See chap. 1 n. 16.\n\n. Plut. _Agis_ 11.5, 17\u201318.1, _Cleom._ 18, _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 1, and see chap. 4.\n\n. Herod. 6.58, and see further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 50\u201351, and chap. 5 below.\n\n. Nepos, _Paus_. 5.3,Diodorus 11.45.6, Polyaenus 8.51. Poralla2, 16\u201317, no. 55, calls her Alcathoa. Theano may have been her \"professional\" name, for it was often used by priestesses: see Blaise Nagy, \"The Naming of Athenian Girls: A Case in Point,\" _CJ_ 74 (1979), 60\u201364, and Pomeroy, _Families,_ 157. Thucydides does not tell the tale of Theano and Pausanias. Omitting women's personal involvement is typical of Thucydides. We need not conclude that the story was a Hellenistic invention. Nepos, Diodorus, and Polyaenus may have read it in some other classical source less fastidious than Thucydides.\n\n. Perhaps catering to the Roman taste for blood, mothers and fathers witnessed the flogging of the boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia, encouraging them to endure the pain.\n\n. See Appendix. Though there are very few datable women, we do observe the obvious absence of any in Aristotle's period\u2014the time of _anesis_ (\"licence,\" _Pol._ 1269b\u20131270a).\n\n. Cf. Tac. _Germ_. 8 for the presence of the warrior's family on the battlefield as a goad to courage.\n\n. _Sayings of Spartan Women._ 240.f2, 241.1, 3, 5, 12; cf. 241.11.\n\n. Sim. Plut. _Lyc._ 14.8. Annalisa Paradiso, \"Gorgo, la Spartana,\" in _Grecia al femminile_ , ed. Nicole Loraux (Bari, 1993), 107\u201322, emphasizes motherhood as the chief feature through which Spartan women gained power.\n\n. Bella Zweig, \"The Only Women Who Give Birth to Men: A Gynocentric, Cross-Cultural View of Women in Ancient Sparta,\" in _Women's Power, Man's Game_ , ed. Mary DeForest (Wauconda, Ill., 1993), 32\u201353, has drawn attention to the positive aspects of motherhood at Sparta.\n\n. _The Gleaner_ (1798, repr. Schenectady, N.Y., 1992), 706.\n\n. Page Gilpin Faust, _Mothers of Invention_ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996), 14\u201315, 17.\n\n. Faust, _Mothers of Invention,_ 15\u201316.\n\n. On the biological and social aspects of the maternal \"instinct\"in primates, see Hrdy, _Mother Nature_.\n\n. The concepts of \"late marriage\" and \"bad marriage\" seem to apply only to men. See Stobaeus 22,\"On Marriage,\" 1.16, and Pollux 3.40, 48 (Bethe).\n\n. See n. 3.\n\n. For modern parallels, see Elaine Tyler May, _Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness_ (New York, 1995), esp. 71, 196\u201399.\n\n. Thuc. 2.44.3, and see further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 39.\n\n. Hippocrates, _On Generation_ , 5.1, states that a woman's volition controls whether or not she conceives.\n\n. _IG_ IV.2.121\u201322 = E. J. Edelstein and L. Edelstein, _Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies_ , vol. 1 (Baltimore,Md., 1945), 423, stele II, para. 21. The cure by proxy was unusual.\n\n. A sanctuary of Zeus Messapeus at Tsakona, 4 km north of Sparta, has recently been identified. The finds, including numerous nonidentical archaic ithyphallic terracotta votives and a smaller number of figurines of women, some of whom are pregnant, a larger number with legs spread to expose genitalia, suggest that the divinity was worshipped in connection with the Spartan concern for human fertility. The shrine was active until the early Hellenistic period with some resumption of interest in the 3d\u20134th cent. C.E. See H. W. Catling,\"Excavations at the Menelaion, 1985,\" _Lak. Spoud._ 8 (1986), 205\u201316, esp. 211\u201312 and fig. 13; Catling,\"A Sanctuary of Zeus Messapeus: Excavations at Aphyssou, Tsakona, 1989,\" _ABSA_ 85 (1990), 15\u201335, esp. 21, 34;Catling, \"The Work of the British School at Athens at Sparta and in Laconia,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 27.M. Overbeek,\"The Small Finds,\" in _Continuity and Change in a Rural Landscape: The Laconia Survey_ ,vol. 2, _Archaeological Data_ ,by W.G.Cavanagh et al., _ABSA_ suppl. vol. 27 (London, 1996), 183\u201398, esp. 190, mentions 15 female figurines: the most complete ones have arms and legs akimbo and genitals exposed, with no indication of breasts, suggesting a lack of emphasis on nurtu-rance. See Catling, in a postscript on Tsakona in David Blackman, \"Archaeology in Greece, 1999\u20132000: Lakonia,\" _AR_ 46 (2000), 38\u201343, esp. 43,\n\n. Thus the Bud\u00e9, ad loc. M. Pohlenz, _Ciceronis tusculanorum disputationum: Libri V_ (Stuttgart, 1957), 158, conjectures that the source is Accius, _Meleager._\n\n. For socioeconomic theories of reproduction, see, e.g., R. M. McInnis, \"Childbearing and Land Availability: Some Evidence from Individual Household Data,\" in _Population Patterns in the Past_ , ed. R. D. Lee (New York, 1977), 201\u201327.\n\n. G. Shipley, \"The Extent of Spartan Territory in the Late Classical and Hellenistic Periods,\" _ABSA_ 95 (2000), 367\u201390, esp. 385,points out that although Sparta lost most of Messenia after Leuctra, the southern part with its settlements and ports were retained.\n\n. Herod. 5.39\u201341.\n\n. _Lyc_. 15.3, sim. Athen. 13.555c, citing Hermippus (fl. late 3d cent.).\n\n. Xen. _Lac_. _Pol_. 9.5.\n\n. The material in this section was presented in Sarah B. Pomeroy, \"Spartan Womanpower,\" paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 81.\n\n. The late David Asheri, in a personal communication.\n\n. Plut. _Cim._ 16.4\u20135: _neaniskoi_ (youths) survived, but the ephebes (approximately eighteen to twenty years old) died when a gymnasium was destroyed.\n\n. See L. Ziehen, \"Das spartanische Bev\u00f6lkerungsproblem,\" _Hermes_ 68 (1933), 218\u201337, esp. 232\u201335, 237. Stephen Hodkinson, \"Inheritance, Marriage and Demography: Perspectives upon the Success and Decline of Classical Sparta,\" in _Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success_ , ed. Anton Powell (Norman, Okla., 1989), 79\u2013121, esp. 103, follows Ziehen.\n\n. Polyaen 1.41.3; Ael. _VH_ 6.7.2;Diod. 11.63.\n\n. Note the 240 adolescent girls in Theocritus, _Idyll,_ 18.25.\n\n. See n. 3.\n\n. _The Family in Classical Greece_ (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 205. S. J. Hodkinson, \"Inheritance, Marriage, and Demography,\" uses cliometrics and a utilitarian view of women to come to the same conclusion. He also (106\u20139) speculates about the detrimental effects of incest on the Spartan population, but withdraws this hypothesis in Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London, 2000), 444 n. 23.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves,_ 66\u201367.\n\n. See Appendix n. 25.\n\n. Perhaps the references to other girls as \"cousins\" in Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1.52, are fictitious.\n\n. A. J. S. Spawforth, \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus: Some Prosopographical Notes,\" _ABSA_ 80 (1985), 241, and see chap. 6 below.\n\n. _The Second Sex_ (New York, 1952), 82.\n\n##\n\n## ELITE WOMEN\n\n### Royal Women\n\nMore specific information is available about royal women than about any other group. It is clear, however, that a historian must not generalize from information about the female kin of kings to women of lesser social status. For example, because of concern about the legitimacy of the succession, only royal women are named in tales of adultery, but the ancient sources often do not distinguish between royal and upper-class women. Many Spartiates had Heraclid blood. Aristotle writes about wealthy women, but only Plutarch gives details about particular wealthy women and they are all members of the royal houses (see below). Furthermore, the Spartiates were an elite, an aristocracy, and women of the upper classes tend to imitate the most elite among them.\n\n### _Marriage_\n\nSocial and economic endogamy was characteristic of royal marriage. This pattern of selection of spouses was also common elsewhere in the Greek world, with uncle-niece and first-cousin marriage being common patterns. Endogamy is a relative concept. Since the Spartan population was small and xenophobic, it could be characterized as endogamous in general. There were never more than 10,000 _homoioi_ (men of equal status or similars) or, consequently, more than 500 elite. Marriages among the wealthy accelerated the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer families, despite the presence of countervailing forces. The problem of finding a suitable spouse was intensified in the case of the kings: the small pool of eligible brides included members of the royal families and daughters or widows of wealthy or influential men, or in the case of Ariston, who at first had two barren wives, the extremely beautiful wife of a friend (Herod. 6.61 and Conclusion). Like Ariston, Demaratus married a woman who was claimed by another man. He carried off Percalus, the fianc\u00e9e of Leotychidas II, who was his enemy, kinsman, and future successor, and married her himself (Herod. 6.65.2). Examples of royal endogamy are plentiful. The first wife of King Anaxandridas was the daughter of his sister (Herod. 5.39). Leonidas married his step-niece Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes I (Herod. 7.205.1). King Archidamus V married the daughter of his cousin Hippomedon (Polyb. 4.35.13). Lampito, daughter of Leotychidas II,married his grandson, Archidamus II (Herod. 6.71.2). Sometimes a king chose to marry a daughter of a wealthy or influential man. An heiress from a royal family was certainly desirable. The elderly Cleomenes married Chilonis, a young Eurypontid heiress. Agiatis, who inherited the great wealth of her father Gylippus, was married first to Agis IV and, when widowed, to Cleomenes III (Plut. _Cleom_. 1.2). Eugenics also influenced spouse selection. The Ephors fined Archidamus for marrying a short wife, for she would bear short kings (Plut. _Ages_. 2 ).\n\n### _The Succession_\n\nOne of the earliest female members of the royal house about whom a story is told is Argeia, a Theban who was married to king Aristodemus, probably in the mid-tenth century B.C.E. After she bore twin sons, her husband died. She would not disclose which son was the elder because she wanted both to rule as equals. Nevertheless, she revealed that Eurysthenes was older than Procles by bathing and feeding him first. Of course, any story about the tenth century must be treated with caution. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that in those early days or even when the story was first told, a mother, even a queen, looked after her babies herself, or at least was on hand to supervise servants who did the actual work.\n\n### _Adultery and Bigamy_\n\nIn the _Life of Lycurgus_ (15.10, sim. _Mor._ 228b20), Plutarch passes on the proverbial notion that adultery was unknown at Sparta, but in other texts he tells of extramarital liaisons, mostly in the form of anecdotes about individual royal women.\n\nSuch adulterous affairs are recorded because of concern over the legitimacy of the heir. Like Spartan men, the women, evidently, were thought to be capable of duplicity concerning affairs of state. Ephors watched the first wife of Anaxandridas give birth, since she had not been able to conceive until he took a second wife (Herod. 5 .41). They suspected that she would sneak in a suppositious child, but she confounded them by giving birth to male triplets. Timaea, wife of Agis II, was accused of having had a secret affair with Alcibiades and of conceiving Leotychidas by him. Herodotus (5.40) comments that bigamy was \"not Spartan.\" The Agiad Anaxandridas, however, resorted to bigamy rather than adultery because he had not produced any children with his first wife, and did not want to divorce her since he was fond of her. The Eurypontid Ariston practiced bigamy, if not trigamy (Herod. 6.61\u201363). His third wife, whom, as we have noted, he took away from a friend, bore a son in less than nine months (Paus. 3.7.7). The legitimacy of this son, Demaratus, and his right to rule were questioned (Herod. 6.65\u201369).Demaratus himself confronted his mother and accused her of having had an affair with a stablehand (Herod. 6.68). (We have already observed [chap. 1] that Spartan women were interested in horses.) His mother replied that either Ariston or the legendary hero Astrobacus, whose shrine was in the courtyard, had engendered him. Of course, royal families are subject to greater constraints than commoners because of the need to have an heir, and one who was a blood heir for the kingship to be justified.\n\nChilonis, a Eurypontid who was the wife of Cleonymus, was involved in an adulterous liaison with Acrotatus, son of Areus I, by 272 when her elderly husband had left to persuade Pyrrhus to attack Sparta (Plut. _Pyrr_.26.15\u201329.12 ). It was said that everyone in Sparta knew how she felt about her husband, but she was not ostracized, probably because her husband was utterly despicable, while her lover defended Sparta against Pyrrhus. Plutarch portrays her as a heroine who threatened suicide if Cleonymus and Pyrrhus were victorious. That her equally heroic granddaughter was named after her indicates that Chilonis did not suffer _damnatio memoriae_.\n\nWe know of no penalty for adultery, nothing to compare with the Athenian laws requiring the husband to divorce a wife who had been raped or seduced, and prohibiting the adulterous woman from wearing jewelry and attending religious ceremonies. Perhaps the task of proving adultery at Sparta was so daunting that it was practically unpunishable. At Sparta, the only consequence of adultery apparently was an aspersion that political opponents of a potential king might cast upon his legitimacy.\n\n### _Authority_\n\nThe wives and daughters of Spartan kings could not be styled \"queens\" and \"princesses,\"for they had no special role to play in society or religion.\"Queen,\"at least as a title used by non-Spartans of one woman, emerged only in the late Hellenistic period. Some of the royal women at Sparta did, however, wield a great deal of authority because of their influence on the kings. There was a long tradition of the involvement of women in politics, beginning with the child Gorgo, who advised her father the king about how he should treat a foreign ambassador (Herod. 5.51, 7.239). Her advice shows that she understood well the Spartan policy of avoidance of strangers ( _xenelasia_ ). Women's influence was most apparent in Hellenistic dynastic politics as it was in much of the Greek world at that time. The women were often widows and older than the men they swayed. In the middle of the third century, when Agis IV promulgated his reforms, Agesistrata  was in her late fifties and Archidamia in her early eighties (see below). It is rare in Greek history to find a grandmother and mother both not only alive, but active, at such advanced ages.Cratesicleia remarried when old to give her son a stepfather as an ally (Plut. _Cleom._ 22.4). Agiatis was older than Cleomenes III when she converted him to the revolutionary program of her former husband Agis IV. Xenopeithia was the mother of Lysanoridas, who was a commander at Thebes. His father is not named; therefore we deduce that she was a widow, and important enough for her son's political enemies to want to murder her and her sister Chryse.  Cynisca was around sixty years old when she defied her brother, who was then king (see chap. 1).\n\n### Wealth\n\nThe wealth of Spartan women was fabled before reliable evidence for it appears in historical times. In Homer, Helen spins with a golden distaff, brings a hoard of valuable clothing to Troy, and obtains even more when there ( _Od_. 4.131\u201335, _Il._ 6.289\u201392). The young girls in Alcman's oeuvre allude to valuable jewelry and objects, including purple garments, golden mitres and bracelets, perfume, silver, ivory, and racehorses. Euripides ( _Andr._ 147\u201353) refers to the golden ornaments Helen wore in her hair, her embroidered dresses, and her wedding presents.\n\nArchaeological evidence confirms the poets' reports. Gold and silver jewelry, mostly dating from the seventh century, was dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.  The pieces include fibulae, pendants, and beads (see further chap. 6).\n\nSometime after the Second Messenian War, when an austere discipline was imposed, the use of gold and silver was forbidden. We do not know what happened to women's valuable possessions when precious metals were outlawed and houses were searched to make certain that none were hidden within (Xen. _Lac_. _Pol_. 7.6, 14.3 ). Perhaps they were dedicated to the gods. Thereafter, women were not permitted to wear ornaments or gold. Until the Hellenistic period, Sparta did not have coined money, or, consequently, a cash economy. When King Polydorus died and the Spartans purchased his house from his widow, they payed with oxen (eighth century B.C.E.: Paus. 12.3). Of course this purchase predated the invention of coinage, but even though foreign coins became available, such awkward transactions must have continued at Sparta long after other Greeks were using coins (see chap. 5 n. 9).\n\n### _Land Tenure_\n\nLand was the most valuable commodity in the ancient world, and the land of Laconia was among the most fertile in Greece. The ownership of land connotes permanence. In Athens and some other Greek states, women were not permitted to own land or to manage substantial amounts of wealth. These limitations draw attention to the impermanence of Athenian women in the family and state and their lack of access to the most valuable economic resources. The dowries of Athenian women consisted of movables and money. They were like metics (resident aliens), who also could own only movables and money. The type of\n\nproperty women could hold was due not only to their low status, but also to the possibility that they might marry out of the polis. Moreover, Athenian women did not manage their own property; rather, the dowry passed from a woman's father to her husband. Unlike Spartan women, however, Athenians could produce wealth. The Athenian oikos was a locus of production as well as reproduction. Respectable citizen women contributed directly to the economic prosperity of the oikos by weaving and shrewd management. Poor or lower-class women made money, often by working outside the home, and slave women contributed to their owner's economic prosperity by working as domestics or in manufacture or in service industries such as prostitution. Against this background, Spartan women (like Spartan men) can be viewed not as versatile producers, but essentially as owners, managers, and consumers of wealth based on land (see chap. 3).\n\nThe system of land tenure at Sparta is poorly understood. Moreover, it changed drastically over time. Our knowledge of the laws governing the ownership of property at Sparta is uncertain, and in any case the laws may not reflect the actual historical situation at all times (Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 14.1, and see Appendix). In the following discussion, I will sketch a likely scenario and will concentrate in particular on the role women played in the evolving economy.\n\nThere were two systems of land tenure in Sparta, one private, the other public. The story just above about the house of the widow of Polydorus indicates that women owned property in Sparta from earliest times, and they continued to do so. The story also indicates that her property was private property.\n\nMuch of the land in Sparta was owned by the state. The participation of both men and women in this publicly owned land system changed over time. In archaic Greece, it was common for the founder of a colony to measure the territory and distribute it in equal shares to the male colonists. The Spartans, in effect, colonized their neighbors in Messenia and Laconia, though they themselves did not settle in the conquered territory and continued to live in the Spartan polis. The state distributed parcels of land to be used only for a man's lifetime.\n\nAccording to Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 8), Lycurgus distributed 9,000 lots (kleroi) of state-owned land in equal shares. The conquered people became helots and worked the land (see chap. 5). They owed a certain amount of produce to the Spartiate to whom the kleros had been assigned at birth (see chap. 3). Spartan women were not assigned kleroi, but received the benefits of the system through male relatives. The system was unstable for one obvious reason: the population fluctuated. By the time of Demaratus, there were 8,000 Spartans (Herod. 7.234).\n\nAfter the Spartan victory in the Peloponnesian War, the Lycurgan system regulating public property was abolished. Thenceforth, a man could give his kleros and his house to anyone he wished, or bequeath them by testament. Furthermore, at the end of the Peloponnesian War a large amount of gold and silver entered Sparta.Greed, which had been a vice attributed to Spartan men, was now seen in women as well. Expensive imported dresses were desired. Xenophon reports that wives agreed to produce children for men in addition to their husbands so that they might control two oikoi.  These changes decisively undermined the ideal of economic equality, and eventually led to the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a minority and the creation of an impoverished majority who no longer met the property requirements necessary to enjoy full citizenship.\n\nA parenthetical comparison with the evolution of the kleros system in Ptolemaic Egypt (which is better documented than the Spartan system) is illuminating. Ptolemy I established the kleros system by distributing parcels of agricultural land in the Fayum to entice veterans of Alexander's campaigns to settle in Egypt. Tenure of a kleros was tied to military service in behalf of the Ptolemies and to the payment of certain taxes. The holder of the kleros could lease it out, but not sell it. The king could revoke the grant, and he repossessed the kleros upon the death of the beneficiary, giving it to another potential soldier.A _stathmos_ (billet or dwelling place) was included in the grant. In the second half of the third century, as the strong central government declined and natives entered the military, cleruchs (holders of kleroi) regularly bequeathed billets to wives, sons, and daughters, and the kleroi became hereditary in the male line. Eventually, in the first century B.C.E., a brotherless girl inherited her father's kleros. Despite obvious differences, in both Sparta and Ptolemaic Egypt the kleros system aimed at creating a hereditary army which would always be ready and willing to go out and fight, inasmuch as sustenance from the land was constantly available for the soldier's family and for himself. In both places, the interests of the private family triumphed over the goals of the central government. The documentary papyri record the gradual evolution of the house and the land from public to private tenure, and the change from the inheritance of land exclusively by male kin to inheritance by both sexes. It is also apparent that, doubtless for practical reasons, women could inherit dwelling places before they were able to inherit kleroi. At Sparta, there are no comparable records documenting change over time; consequently it is not possible to determine whether the decree attributed to Epitadeus accomplished or acknowledged the transformation by one radical piece of legislation.\n\nThe aims of the state were at variance with the economic ambitions of individual families. Like other Greeks, Spartans practiced diverging devolution, but the Spartans alone attempted to counter the decline in economic status that large families would experience when the paternal estate was divided. Diverging devolution works well only in a capitalistic economy with ever-expanding resources. In a city like Athens, expansion was the result not only of intensification of agriculture, but also of trade, colonization, banking, manufacturing, and services. Sparta's economy, however, was based on agriculture, and property consisted of a finite amount of land and a servile population not augmented by purchase.\n\nThe liberation of part ofMessenia in 369 seriously undermined the Spartan economy as well. The Messenian helots and the income from the land they tilled were lost to the Spartans. Perhaps it was to some extent due to economic pressures that Spartans began to experiment with various unique methods of family planning (see chap. 3).\n\nAristotle criticized the Spartan system of land tenure, which permitted women to own land, manage their own property, and exercise authority in the family:\n\nAgain, the licence in the matter of their women is detrimental both to the chosen aim of the constitution and to the happiness of the state. For just as man and wife are part of a household, so clearly we should regard a state also as divided into two roughly equal bodies of people, one of men, one of women. So, in all constitutions in which the position of women is unsatisfactory, one half of the state must be regarded as unregulated by law. And that is just what has happened there. For the lawgiver, wishing the whole state to be hardy, makes his wish evident as far as the men are concerned, but has been wholly negligent in the case of the women. For being under no constraint whatever they live unconstrainedly, and in luxury.\n\nAn inevitable result under such a constitution is that esteem is given to wealth, particularly if they do in fact come to be female-dominated; and this is a common state of affairs in military and warlike races, though not among the Celts and any others who have openly accorded esteem to male homosexuality. Indeed, it seems that the first person to relate the myth did not lack some rational basis when he coupled Ares with Aphrodite; for all such people seem in thrall to sexual relations, either with males or with females. That is why this state of affairs prevailed among the Laconians, and in the days of their supremacy a great deal was managed by women. And yet what difference is there between women ruling and rulers ruled by women? The result is the same. Over-boldness is not useful for any routine business, but only, if at all, for war. Yet even to those purposes the Laconians'women were very harmful. This they demonstrated at the time of the invasion by the Thebans: they were not at all useful, as in other states, but caused more confusion than the enemy.\n\nSo it seems that from the earliest times licence in the matter of their women occurred among the Laconians, reasonably enough. For there were long periods when the men were absent from their own land because of the campaigns, when they were fighting the war against the Argives, or again the one against the Arcadians and Messenians. When they gained their leisure, they put themselves into the hands of their legislator in a state of preparedness brought about by the military life, which embraces many parts of virtue. People say that Lycurgus endeavoured to bring the women under the control of his laws, but that when they resisted he backed off. These then are the causes of what took place, and clearly, therefore, of this mistake as well. But the subject of our inquiry is not whom we ought to excuse and whom not, but what is correct and what is not.\n\nThe poorness of the arrangements concerning women seems, as was said earlier, not only to create a sort of unseemliness in the constitution in itself on its own, but also to contribute something to the greed for money; for after the points just made one could assail practice in respect of the uneven levels of property. For some of them have come to possess far too much, others very little indeed; and that is precisely why the land has fallen into the hands of a small number. This matter has been badly arranged through the laws too. For while he made it (and rightly made it) ignoble to buy and sell land already possessed, he left it open to anyone, if they wished, to give it away or bequeath it\u2014and yet the same result follows inevitably, both in this case and in the other. Moreover, something like two-fifths of all the land is possessed by women, both because of the many heiresses that appear, and because of the giving of large dowries. Now it would have been better if it had been arranged that there should be no dowry, or a small or even a moderate one. But as it is one may give an heiress in marriage to any person one wishes; and if a man dies intestate, the person he leaves as heir gives her to whom he likes. As a result, although the land was sufficient to support 1,500 cavalry and 30,000 heavy infantry, their number was not even 1,000. The sheer facts have shown that the provisions of this system served them badly; the state withstood not a single blow, but collapsed owing to the shortage of men.\n\n### _Luxury_\n\nAs we have seen, by Aristotle's time, women owned nearly two-fifths of the land of Laconia. Because the Spartan economy was based entirely upon agriculture, women controlled a significant portion of the means of production. The wealthiest women in mainland Greece were Spartans. They advertised their wealth flamboyantly by winning victories in horseraces at Olympia. One woman is named in a fragmentary inscription listing Spartans who had made monetary donations for the rebuilding of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Philostratis is cited for giving three obols in 360. Only one man gave as little as she, and most gave at least twice that amount.As time went on, Macedonian queens and royal women (like Amastris) on the fringes of the Greek world rivaled and surpassed Spartan women in wealth, for, like the Romans, the former had access to many sources of revenue in their various empires, while the Spartans were limited to incomes derived from a polis economy based on agriculture.\n\nSpartan society as a whole had become stratified, with the majority of male Spartiates so impoverished that they could not meet the requirements of membership in a syssition. They were no longer homoioi, but known as \"inferiors\" (Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.6). Moralists claimed that wealth, rather than the old Spartan virtues, had become the principle criterion for high social status. In any event, this social change gave women an opportunity to be members of the elite on the same terms as men. Some were even able to enrich themselves illegally, as men did. Theopompus reports that during the Third Social War (356\u2013346), Archidamus III took some of the money at Delphi and that the Phocians bribed his wife Deinicha so that she would persuade her husband to support them (Paus. 3.10.3).\n\nDespite their vaunted austerity, Spartans apparently were tempted to keep some items of luxury in private at home. Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol_. 7.6) reports that houses were inspected to ascertain whether anyone was hiding any gold or silver. This practice may have become more common in Xenophon's day, because that was the time when large amounts of precious metals were entering Sparta. Doubtless Aristotle associated women with greed and luxury, for these were features of private life. A parallel from Roman history is of interest. In 195 B.C.E., during the debate over the repeal of the Oppian Law at Rome, a speaker argues that women should be granted the opportunity to display their wealth by wearing gold and purple and riding in carriages, for they had few other avenues by which to satisfy their ambitions. The single item of conspicuous consumption that Spartan women were permitted was racehorses. It is no accident that a Spartan was the first woman whose horses were victorious at pan-Hellenic games, for such triumphs provided women with an approved avenue for the display of their wealth. Entering such a competition was expensive, for the owner was obliged to pay for horses, trainers, charioteer, chariot, and\u2014if victorious\u2014a victory monument.\n\n### _Dowry_\n\nLycurgus had outlawed dowries, but by the end of the fifth century, if not earlier, women had them. Perhaps the tradition that Spartan women did not have dowries was revived or invented in the Hellenistic period under the influence of Agis IV and Cleomenes III or some other utopian program (see below). In the Greek world various lawgivers, philosophers, and moralists disapproved of dowries, or believed they should be regulated. In Plato's _Republic_ there is neither marriage nor private property, and therefore there are no dowries, and in _Laws_ (742C), dowries are specifically outlawed. Justin ( _Epit_. 3.3.8) states that girls marry without a dowry so that they will not be chosen for their wealth.\n\nIn an ideal Sparta, just as all the men are homoioi who enjoy equal status, so are all the girls equally endowed. It is reasonable to suppose that in a Sparta lacking precious metals, slaves, or other movable wealth, there would be little, except land and horses, to constitute a substantial and useful dowry. A theory about dowry supports the view that there was a time when dowries did not exist in Sparta. Dowries are found principally in parts of the Mediterranean where men cultivate land with a plow and own the instruments and beasts needed for production. In such societies, women's work is undervalued: a woman is viewed as a burden to her husband, and her father must contribute a dowry for her support. This analysis is appropriate to a society like that of Athens, where women were barred from access to most economic resources and the means of production, and men performed agricultural labor. In Sparta, in contrast, women were not economic liabilities, for the kleros system ensured their basic sustenance.\n\nCertainly by the end of the fifth century, if not earlier, along with the decline in the kleros system and the accumulation of precious metals and other valuable items in private hands, dowries were a conspicuous part of the economic regime and doubtless contributed to the impoverishment of some families and the accumulation of wealth by others. Aristotle ( _Pol._ 1270a25\u201326) mentions dowries as a means by which women came to possess wealth. Lack of a dowry in Sparta, as elsewhere in Greece, threatened to make a girl an unwilling spinster. The fianc\u00e9s of Lysander's daughters attempted to break their engagements when they discovered that their brides-to-be were poor (Plut. _Lys._ 30.5). Without giving any historical background by which the event may be dated, Plutarch ( _Am. narr._ 775d) tells of a woman's attempted act of savage revenge on other women when her daughters could no longer have dowries after her husband's property was seized by his political enemies. Aelian ( _VH_ 6.6) reports that a man who had five sons could give his daughters in marriage without a dowry. This exception implies that such a father would be so highly honored that a man might marry his daughter just for the sake of becoming a son-in-law of such a man, but that in ordinary circumstances a dowry was necessary.\n\n### _Heiresses_\n\nIn terms of Greek law, an \"heiress\" was a fatherless, brotherless woman. The heiress at Athens was called _epikleros_ ; in Gortyn, she was known as _patroiokos_ ; in Sparta, as _patrouchos_. In the absence of a male descendent, such a woman could be the means by which her father's lineage was perpetuated. She also might transmit her father's property to her son (who thus became his grandfather's heir), or inherit it herself. In some cases there was no property, but the filial obligation to perpetuate the lineage remained. At Athens, the filial obligation was always foremost; at Sparta, the meager sources suggest that the emphasis in the role of the heiress changed over time, with concerns about her property eclipsing those of her father's lineage.\n\nThe principal primary sources that help to define the position of the heiress at Sparta include Herodotus,Aristotle, and analogies with the Code of Gortyn. At Gortyn, the heiress ( _patroiokos_ ) was permitted to keep part of her patrimony and marry outside her father's lineage. According to Herodotus (6.57.4), the kings originally exercised the right to give an heiress ( _patrouchos_ ) in marriage if she had not already been betrothed by her father. If her legal situation was similar to that in Gortyn, the heiress at Sparta was never subject to an inflexible rule that she marry her father's closest male next of kin. She may, however, have been under some moral and religious obligation to see that her father's lineage not be extinguished. There was some concern for the continuity of oikoi at Sparta: for his suicide mission at Thermopylae, Leonidas selected men who had children (Herod. 7.205.2, 5.41.3). Furthermore, we may speculate that the prestige of the kings made it virtually impossible for the Spartan heiress to reject the bridegroom chosen for her.\n\nThe power of the state over the heiress and her property decreased as the power of the private family increased, for Aristotle's testimony differs markedly from that of Herodotus. Therefore the change probably occurred at the same time as the other changes increasing the individual's rights over private property that are associated with the reforms attributed to Epitadeus. According to Aristotle, however, the _kleronomos_ (heir apparent: _Pol._ 1270a28) had the power to give the heiress ( _epikleros_ ) as well as the property to whomever he pleased. The \"heir apparent\" was doubtless the nearest male kin of the heiress's father: he was the man who exercised authority over the heiress and her property.\n\nThe inheritance regime for Spartan males was the same as for Athenians, but the system was more favorable for Spartan women than for their Athenian counterparts, who did not inherit at all, and who were given dowries that were perhaps one-sixth of what their brothers received. In contrast, the Spartan woman's share of the patrimony was half as much as her brother's. Girls who were fatherless and brotherless were better off at Sparta than at Athens, for the Spartans got to control their property, while the Athenians were simply conduits of the patrimony to their sons. Moreover, the brotherless, fatherless Athenian woman was required to marry her father's closest kinsman, usually her uncle or cousin, even if both were married at the time the woman's father died. On the other hand, in cases where the heiress was not wealthy, the inexorable obligation of the male next of kin to marry her themselves or to find her a husband assured her marriage at Athens, but could compromise her Spartan counterpart. The daughters of Lysander, who were brotherless, nearly lost their bridegrooms when the men learned that their finace\u00e9s were poor. It is not certain, however, whether they were engaged to kinsmen.\n\nAristotle reports that at Sparta, heiresses were numerous (see above). This plethora of heiresses was exaggerated inasmuch as Sparta was always plagued by oliganthropia (sparse male citizen population). Aristotle and later writers drew attention to the connection between oliganthropia and women's ownership of property (see chap. 3). In addition, women of the property-owning classes may have outnumbered men at Sparta, as they did at Rome during and after the Second Punic War. Fearing that men would no longer fulfill the criteria necessary for their census classes and that the number of men eligible for military and governmental service would be diminished, the Romans passed legislation aimed at preventing women from owning great wealth. As is apparent in the western world nowadays, women's survival and longevity is a significant factor in property ownership.\n\n### _Change Over Time_\n\nAt the end of the fifth century, private property triumphed at the expense of public property. The reforms attributed to Epitadeus that allowed women to inherit kleroi, the influx of precious metals, the use of dowries, and the laws affecting heiresses permitted women to possess a large portion of the total wealth of Sparta. The period of the Peloponnesian War was a watershed in the history of Athenian women as well. After the Spartans occupied Decelea and war was waged throughout the year rather than just in the summer, as had previously been customary, Athenian women had to assume more responsibility and exercise greater economic power. Like Spartans, in the absence of men Athenian women managed their affairs. Defeat cost the Athenians their empire and produced an immediate, though temporary, decline in the city's economy. Some thirty years after the Peloponnesian War, Athens had returned to its traditional way of life: in contrast, the Spartan defeat at Leuctra and the loss of the rich agricultural land of Messenia dealt a lethal blow to the Spartan economy. A generation later, Sparta pointedly refused to support the campaigns of Alexander: consequently, Spartans missed the opportunity to share in plundering the wealth of Persia. By the third century, the economy was characterized by many mortgages and by large estates in the hands of a few. These few included royal women, who were among the wealthiest people in Sparta (see below). Only 700 old Spartan families remained, and of these only about 100 possessed land and kleros (Plut. _Agis_ 5.4). Female members of these fortunate 100 families benefited from the concentration of wealth. A brotherless woman could inherit all her father's land, as did Agiatis, who inherited from the extremely wealthy Gylippus (Plut. _Cleom_. 1.2).With such assets, she was claimed as wife by two kings, Agis IV and Cleomenes III.\n\n### Women and the Reforms of Agis and Cleomenes\n\nIn 244 B.C.E., when he was not quite twenty, Agis IV became the Eurypontid king of Sparta. He had been raised by his mother Agesistrata and his grandmother Archidamia. The Agiad king,Leonidas (ca. 316\u2013235), was older, had lived with the Seleucids in great luxury, was married to a daughter of one of them, and had two children by that wife.Agis, in contrast, recreated himself as a Spartan of the old austere tradition, wearing the short cloak, for example, and following the laws attributed to Lycurgus. He proposed a program of reform, principally designed to increase the number of full-fledged citizens and restore Sparta to its former prestige. Redistribution of the wealth was essential to reinstate the 600 landless citizens as homoioi. Agis donated 600 talents and his own huge estate for redistribution (Plut. _Agis_ 9). Women controlled most of the wealth in Sparta: therefore their support was essential for the success of the reforms. Agis was able to convince his mother and grandmother, who were not only the two wealthiest women, but who were the wealthiest of all Spartans, to contribute their property. They were both widows, and doubtless doted on the charismatic young king, but other wealthy women did not support his program. According to Plutarch ( _Agis_ 7), they were corrupted by their desire for luxury and were reluctant to give up the prestige and influence derived from their wealth. We also observe that the women exercised full control over their own property.\n\nLeonidas led the opposition to Agis' program, and after much strife was deposed and replaced by Cleombrotus, his son-in-law, who supported the reforms (Plut. _Agis_ 11.3\u20134). At this juncture,Leonidas'daughter Chilonis took her father's side and joined him in the temple of Athena of the Bronze House, where he had sought asylum. The favor she showed the dissolute old man was the best recommendation he had. He was eventually recalled. Chilonis was able to convince her father to spare her husband Cleombrotus, but Agis was summarily murdered in 241. Agesistrata and Archidamia were killed as well. One of the ephors had a particular reason for wanting to eliminate Agesistrata: he had borrowed some expensive cups and clothing from her and did not want to return them (Plut. _Agis_ 18.4). Leonidas saw to it that Agiatis, the extremely wealthy widow of Agis IV, was given in marriage to his son Cleomenes III, though he was too young for marriage. Her young son by Agis was not heard from again. Pausanias (2.9.1) asserts that Cleomenes poisoned him, but this charge is difficult to accept, unless Agiatis was an unusually forgiving and stoical woman. She had at least one son by Cleomenes (Plut. _Cleom._ 22.8).\n\nRoyal women in the Hellenistic period were influential in politics as powers behind the throne. As we have seen, Agiatis was married first to Agis IV, and when widowed she was married to Cleomenes III. In Plutarch's descriptions, both marriages were paradigmatically harmonious and loving, typical of the ideals of the Hellenistic period. Agiatis was able to instill in her second husband the revolutionary ideas of her first (Plut. _Cleom_. 1.2). Cleomenes also was influenced by his studies with Sphaerus, a Stoic who came to Sparta to lecture (Plut. C _leom._ 2.2, 11.2). In 235, when Cleomenes became the sole king of Sparta, he attempted to revive Agis' program. His mother, Cratesicleia, who was extremely wealthy, supported his efforts and, in fact, remarried so that her husband Megistonous would use his influence on her son's behalf. Plutarch indicates that it was her own independent choice both to remarry and to select her new husband. Megistonous and his supporters contributed their property for redistribution (Plut. _Cleom_. 10\u201311.1). Abolition of debt and redistribution of land followed. The agoge and syssitia were revived. Sparta was restored to its former military eminence for a time, but with Macedonian forces threatening him, Cleomenes turned to Ptolemy III Euergetes for assistance. Megistonous had been killed in battle, and Agiatis had died around 224. Ptolemy promised to help, but only if Cleomenes sent Cratesicleia and his children to Egypt as hostages.\n\nEventually Cleomenes was defeated by an alliance of Macedonians and Achaeans and fled with three thousand soldiers to Egypt, where the degenerate Ptolemy IV, Philopator, was now ruler. Philopator ordered that Cleomenes be imprisoned. and the Spartan women and children in Alexandria be killed. At first Cratesicleia panicked, but in the end they died stoically and bravely. Plutarch ( _Cleom._ 39.1) commented: \"Sparta played out these events with the deeds of women rivaling those of men.\"\n\n### The Last Reformers: Apega and Nabis and Chaeron\n\nNabis reigned as sole king of Sparta from 207 to 192. He may have been a member of the Eurypontid dynasty, though he executed all members of the royal houses. His wife Apega is probably identical with Apia, daughter of Aristippus of Argos who, like Nabis, ruled as a tyrant. By marrying one of their daughters to Apia's brother, Pythagoras of Argos, and by trying to arrange marriages for their adult sons with the daughters of Philip V ofMacedon in 197, they mimicked the political endogamy of tyrants in the archaic period. Polybius disliked both Nabis and Apega and portrays them in an unfavorable light. He indicates that Apega wielded a great deal of power, furthering her husband's ambitions and gratifying her greed. Like a Hellenistic queen, an Arsino\u00eb or Cleopatra, she received men at court alongside her husband. She evidently wanted to be wealthy like her royal predecessors, and Nabis sent her to her native Argos to procure money. Her viciousness exceeded her husband's. A woman, she knew how to humiliate women, and also how to dishonor men by humiliating the women in their family. She subjected the Argive women to suffering and violence and stole nearly all their gold jewelry and valuable clothing (Polyb. 13.7). Inspired by his wife, Nabis invented a female robot as evil and deceptive as Pandora:\n\nHe also had made for himself a machine, if one should call such a thing a machine. It was the image of a woman, dressed in expensive clothing, in appearance a well-executed likeness of the wife of Nabis. Whenever he sent for any of the citizens, wishing to exact money, he would begin by speaking gently. . . . If any refused and said they would not pay the sum, he said something like,\"Perhaps I am not able to persuade you; however, I think this Apega will.\" This was the name of Nabis' wife. He said this, and soon the image I have described was present. When the man shook her hand, rising from his chair, he made the woman stand and embraced her with his hands and drew her little by little to his chest. Under her dress she had arms and hands and breasts covered with iron nails. Whenever Nabis placed his hands on his wife's back and by means of certain devices drew the man towards her and drove him against her breasts very slowly; he forced the man who was being crushed to say anything. In this way he destroyed quite a few of those who refused to pay him. (Polyb. 13.7)\n\nNabis was a reformer, like Cleomenes. His program included the redistribution of land, but unlike the reigns of Agis and Cleomenes, in Nabis' time the donations were not voluntary. His program, like that of the reformer kings, included abolition of debts and the restoration of the Lycurgan constitution (Livy 34.31.16\u201318). In 195, he executed eighty of the _principes iuventutis_ (Livy 34.27.8). He also exiled the wealthiest and most prominent Spartiates who were his enemies, and gave their property as well as their wives and daughters (Livy 34.35.7 _liberos coniuges_ ) in marriage to newly freed helots.We are not told if the helots were bachelors or what happened to their former wives, or how many women were involved. Doubtless the men were enthusiastic about marrying the wives of their former masters, at the very least because they would enjoy their estates. Previously when helots were freed, they had not usually been made citizens, but Nabis conferred citizenship on them in large numbers (Livy 38.34.6). Polybius (16.13.1) refers to the men as _douloi_ (slaves) and Livy (34.27.9) once uses the word _ilotae_ (helots), but elsewhere (34.21.11) refers to _servi_ (slaves) _._ It seems more likely that the members of the lower class who married the wives and daughters of the Spartan exiles were helots and mercenaries rather than slaves. The early Ptolemies had already demonstrated that mercenaries could be recruited as citizens by the offer of an oikos,  and Nabis certainly was interested in increasing the number of soldiers at Sparta. Furthermore, at least judging by the swashbuckling adventurers depicted in New Comedy, mercenaries often captivated the hearts of women. In any case, to force upper-class Greek women to marry purchased slaves, who were possibly foreign born, and to confer Spartan citizenship on such people, would have been unthinkable. Marriage to a Spartan wife or daughter instantly supplied a helot with an oikos sufficient to maintain a citizen soldier. According to a treaty of 194 B.C.E. between Nabis and the Romans, the wives and daughters of the men exiled by Nabis were permitted to join their original husbands. The treaty stated explicitly that the women would not be forced to join their previous husbands. We are not told whether any of them chose to do so. Plutarch's use of the verb _metoikizo_ ( _Phil._ 16.4), with its connotations of transferring an oikos, to describe Philopoemen's eviction of the slaves and mercenaries whom tyrants had made Spartan citizens implies that they left with their Spartan wives and families. Furthermore, we may speculate that, considering the social hierarchies in force in antiquity, the older women wanted to continue to control and enjoy younger husbands who were clearly their social inferiors, and not exchange them for the original husbands, who were doubtless irate and displeased with what had transpired in their absence. The older women may also have stayed to support their daughters, who knew no other husbands. Moreover, the women wanted to keep their land, and were afraid that the children they had borne to the helots would suffer the same fate as those supposedly born to their ancestors during the Second Messenian War. It was said that when the Spartan husbands returned after the war they exiled these half-breed children to Italy, where they allegedly founded the colony of Tarentum (see chap. 2). In any case, in 188 after Nabis had been killed under Philopoemon, the Achaean commander who had restored Sparta as a member of the Achaean League, the exiles returned to Sparta and those who had been made citizens by \"tyrants\" were exiled to Achaea (Plut. _Phil._ 16.4, Livy 38.34). We are not told what happened to the women. We may speculate that their original husbands were willing to take them back, if for no other reason than the fact that they possessed substantial amounts of property.\n\nNabis was killed in 192 by Aetolians, who were his putative allies. The Romans reluctantly settled affairs in Sparta for a time. The last radical leader of Sparta was Chaeron, who had been exiled from Sparta and had served as an envoy to Rome in 182\u2013181. He seized the property of the sisters, wives, mothers, and children of men who had been exiled (by rulers from Cleomenes through Nabis), and distributed it at random to his most needy supporters (Polyb.24.7.3). Finally, the Spartans invited Aristaenus, the commander of the Achaean League, to put an end to Chaeron's tyranny, and returned the property to those from whom it had been seized.\n\n### Autonomy and Social Power\n\nIndividual women like Gorgo, Agiatis, Cratesicleia, and perhaps Deinicha exercised a significant influence on male members of their own family and on society at large. Moreover, women in groups were encouraged to uphold Spartan ideals by activities such as publicly praising brave men and reviling cowards and bachelors. No other Greek women are reported to have been involved in elections to the extent that Spartans were. When a member of the Gerousia was elected, he was followed by throngs of young men who praised him and many women who sang of his excellence and congratulated him on his good fortune in life. His syssition awarded an extra portion of food to the victor. After dinner, his female relatives congregated at the doors of the mess-hall. Thereupon, in public, a second selection took place, but the competitors were female. The victor summoned the woman whom he held in the highest esteem and gave her the food, saying that he had received it as an indication of his excellence and he gave it to her in the same way. The rest of the women congratulated her and escorted her home (Plut. _Lyc_. 26.3\u20134).\n\nSuch reports do not indicate that women were fully active citizens in the sense that men were, that they could defend their polis, vote, or hold governmental office, for overt political power was not exercised by women anywhere in the Greek world before the advent of Hellenistic queens. But, as Aristotle remarked in his discussion of Sparta, in warlike societies men are dominated by their wives. Even if he is exaggerating, he did perceive that women had a voice in managing affairs at Sparta. Some scholars in the second half of the twentieth century have gone even further than Aristotle in detecting the power and influence of Spartan women. Stephen Hodkinson paints the grandest picture of Spartan women in a plutocratic society. Hodkinson argues that the kleros system governing public lands that Plutarch describes was solely an invention of the Hellenistic period. Consequently, no category of land was ever restricted to ownership only by males. If Hodkinson were correct, the situation described by Aristotle would have had roots as early as the archaic period when women would have possessed and managed vast amounts of property. The evidence from women's history, however, indicates that he is not correct, but rather that an additional source of great wealth was available to women at the end of the fifth century. Indeed, Hodkinson draws the bulk of his evidence for women's wealth from fourth-century evidence. Victories in pan-Hellenic chariot races were evidence of vast wealth. All twelve Olympic victories won by Spartans from 548 to 420 were won by men. In contrast, half of the six victories from 396 to 368 were won by women. The sudden appearance of female victors in chariot races at Olympia beginning in 396, the new craving for expensive imported dresses, and even Agesilaus' scoffing remark about Cynisca seem suitable to the conspicuous consumption characteristic of the nouvelles riches.\n\nG. E. M. de Ste Croix contrasts \"the inferior position of women at Athens\" with \"the powerful position of women in the Spartan system of property ownership.\" James Redfield points out that women were active in the system of marriage exchange and in motivating men to increase the economic status of the oikos.  According to Barton Kunstler, women made major decisions concerning the disposition of household and communal wealth, discussing financial matters with helots and perioikoi.\n\nWomen's influence, however, was not restricted to the private sphere. Maria H. Dettenhofer argues that wives managed the kleroi, and were therefore responsible for their husbands' social status. She claims that women wielded political influence through their economic power. As we have seen above, Plutarch's description ( _Agis_ 7) of women's participation in the reforms of Agis gives a clear picture of the direct relationship between wealth and public power. For elite women at Sparta at that time, wealth was probably the only secure basis of influence and autonomy. In each of the sagas of reform, royal women were directly involved because they were property owners and controlled their own wealth. Agesistrata,Archidamia, and Cratesicleia espoused the political beliefs of the men in their family, and like the men, paid for their involvement with their lives. That they were executed is testimony to their power.\n\n* * *\n\n. Plut. _Roman Questions_ , 108, and see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores,Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity_ (New York, 1995), 64.\n\n. Herod. 6.52, 4.147; Paus. 3.1.5\u20139. See Deborah Gera, _Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus de Mulieribus_ (Leiden, 1997), no. 5 and pp. 121\u201325.\n\n. Plut. _Lys_. 22.3\u20134, _Alcib_. 23.7\u20138, _Ages_. 3.1\u20132, and see further P. A. Cartledge, _Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta_ (London, 1987), 115, and chap. 3, above.\n\n. Herod. 5.39\u201341. On the familial strife that ensued, see C. Dewald, \"Women and Culture in Herodotus'Histories,\"in _Reflections of Women in Antiquity_ , ed. H. Foley (New York, 1981), 91\u2013125, esp. 108\u20139.\n\n. See further Alfred S. Bradford, \" _Gynaikokratoumenoi_ : Did Spartan Women Rule Spartan Men?\" _AncW_ 14 (1986), 13\u201318, esp. 14.\n\n. An honorary inscription at Delphi ( _SIG_ 3 430) identifies Areus as the son of King Acrotatus and Queen Chilonis. If this inscription refers to Areus I and to his mother Chilonis, the date is 267 b.c.e., though the parents of Areus I had not been king and queen. If the inscription refers to Areus II, posthumous child of Chilonis and Acrotatus, the date is 262\u2013254. See R. Flaceli\u00e8re, _Les aitoliens \u00e0 Delphes_ (Paris, 1937), 84 n. 2, 457\u201358; Linda J. Piper, _Spartan Twilight_ (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1986), 22; Bradford, \" _Gynaikokratoumenoi_ : Did Spartan Women Rule Spartan Men?\" 14; _LGPN_ 3A s.v. Areus 4 (ca. 330\u2013265), 6 (ca. 262\u2013254) for the posthumous child, and s.v.Chilonis 3.1, daughter of Leotychidas (i.e., Latuchidas) and 4 daughter of Leonidas and Cratesclea, and see chap. 3 n. 27. See also on Apega, below, although a tyrant's wife is technically not a queen, despite behaving like one. On the title of \"queen\" in general see Elizabeth Carney, \"'What's in a Name?' The Emergence of a Title for Royal Women in the Hellenistic Period,\" in _Women's History and Ancient History_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeory (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 154\u201372.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.v. Agesistrata dates her ca. 295\u2013241.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.v. Archidamia dates her ca. c. 310\u2013241, and see below.\n\n. For Nicippia, a wealthy great-grandmother who is also probably a widow, see _SEG_ XI.677, 1st cent. c.e., and see further chap. 6 nn. 54, 80.\n\n. Her sister Chryse was probably close to her in age. See Conclusion n. 2.\n\n. _Parth_. 1.64, 66\u201367; 3, fr. 3.71, 77; 162 fr. 2.c 3,5S elephantin, conj. D.A. Campbell, _Greek Lyric_ , vol. 2 (Cambridge,Mass., 1988), 498 line 5, and see chap. 1 n. 123 for ivory plaques, and Appendix for ivory artifacts possibly portraying Helen.\n\n. J. P. Droop,\"The Bronzes,\" in Dawkins, _AO_ , 196\u2013202, esp. 200, refers to \"several silver specimens and two of gold with silver bulbs joined by a chain.\" See also R. M. Dawkins, \"Artemis Orthia: Some Additions and a Correction,\" _JHS_ 50 (1930), 298\u201399 and pl. XI.1, for another bronze fibula. Of course, there is no way to ascertain whether these items were worn by or dedicated by women. Men could have purchased them and given them immediately as gifts to the goddess, but (at least judging from inscribed dedications to Artemis elsewhere in Greece) women seem more likely to have done so.\n\n. Heraclides Lembus, _Excerpta Politiarum_ , 373.13 (Dilts).\n\n. See further David Schaps, _The Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece_ (Edinburgh, 1979), 6\u20137.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves_ , 63, 72\u201373, and _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), passim.\n\n. See further David Asheri, \"Laws of Inheritance, Distribution of Land, and Political Constitutions in Ancient Greece,\" _Historia_ 12 (1963), 1\u201321, esp. 5\u20136, 12\u201315, 18\u201320, and for recent interpretations see S. Hodkinson, \"Inheritance, Marriage, and Demography: Perspectives upon the Success and Decline of Classical Sparta,\" in _Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success_ , ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1989); Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London, 2000); and Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 51\u201354, and Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. The views Hodkinson expresses in _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ on women and the development of Spartan society have not changed fundamentally since the publication of his earlier articles on this subject, although, like Cartledge, he is now more firmly convinced that the economic system Plutarch attributed to Lycurgus and to archaic Sparta was really an invention of Hellenistic reformers. See Appendix n. 90, below.\n\n. According to Diod. Sic. 10.34.8, the Spartans did not receive wealth from their fathers, but inherited zeal to die in behalf of freedom and glory.\n\n. See further David Asheri, \"Sulla legge di Epitadeo,\" Athenaeum n.s. 39 (1961), fasc. i\u2013ii, 45\u201368.\n\n. Plut. _Agis_ 5.1,Ps.-Pl. _Alcib_. 122E\u2013123B, and see further Ephraim David,\"The Influx of Money into Sparta at the End of the Fifth Century B.C.,\" _Scripta Classica Israelica_ 5 (1979\u201380), 30\u201345, and S. Hodkinson, \"Warfare,Wealth, and the Crisis of Spartiate Society,\" in _War and Society in the Greek World_ , ed. J. Rich and G. Shipley (London, 1993), 146\u201376.\n\n. Plut. _Lys_. 2.7\u20138, _Mor_. 141d (26), 190e (1), 229a (1), and see further Ephraim David,\"Dress in Spartan Society,\" _AncW_ 19 (1989), 3\u201313, esp. 12.\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol_. 1.7\u20139, cf. Polyb. 12.6b.8, Plut. _Lyc_. 15.12\u201313, _Comp. Lyc. et Num_. 3.1\u20132, _Mor_. 242b(23), and see chap. 3.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra_ (New York, 1984), 151, and C. Pr\u00e9aux, _L'\u00e9conomie royale des Lagides_ (Brussels, 1939), 463\u201380.\n\n. See further J.Modrzejewski,\"R\u00e9gime foncier et status social dans l'\u00c9gypte ptol\u00e9ma\u00efque,\"in _Terre et paysans d\u00e9pendents dans les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s antiques_ (Paris, 1979), 163\u201388, esp. 172, and see now _P. Petrie_ 2, pp. 37\u201339.\n\n. Around 60 b.c.e. Auletes recognized the right to dispose of the kleros by testament: _BGU_ VI.1285.\n\n. _P. Berol_. Inv. no. 16 223 (Heracleopolis) = _SB_ VIII.9790.\n\n. Also note the suggestion of Thomas J. Figueira, \"Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta,\" _TAPA_ 116 (1968), 186, that in order to stem the decline in population after the earthquake, the _arkhaia moira_ (Arist. fr. 611.12, Plut. _Mor_. 218e) was intended to prevent the alienation of the original kleros.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus_ , 46\u201350.\n\n. Arist. _Pol_. 1269b12\u20131270a34, trans. T. J. Saunders, _Aristotle, Politics: Books I and II_ (Oxford, 1995), 42\u201343.\n\n. Gifts to the Naopoioi: _CID_ II.4.1.55\u20136, table 3, and see further Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ , 174\u201375, 439.\n\n. Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt_ , 14\u201316.\n\n. Plutarch ( _Agis_ 4) also associates women with luxury, for he writes that \"even though he had been brought up by women,\"Agis IV was not self-indulgent. In the _Andromache_ , Euripides portrays Hermione as having a large dowry when she marries Neoptolemus, who is less affluent.\n\n. Livy 34.7 and n. 41 below.\n\n. For an egregious example, see chap. 1 on Cynisca.\n\n. Plut. _Mor_. 227f15, cf. _Lyc_. 15, _Lys_. 30.5\u20136; Ael. _VH_ 6.6; Athen.13.555b\u2013c citing Hermippus = _FGrH_ IV.3 1026 F 6 = F. Wehrli, _Die Schule des Aristoteles_ , suppl. 1 (Basel, 1974), fr. 87; Justin _Epit_. 3.3.8.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus_ , 60.\n\n. See further Schaps, _The Economic Rights ofWomen in Ancient Greece_ , 43\u201345.\n\n. _Lex Gort_. = _Inscr. Creticae_ , VIII.8\u201312.\n\n. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ , 95\u201398, argues against the majority of scholars\u2014including most recently E. Karab\u00e9lias, \"L'epiclerat \u00e0 Sparte,\" in _Studi in onore di Arnaldo Biscardi_ , vol. 2 (Milan, 1982), 469\u201380; E. David, \"Aristotle and Sparta,\" _Anc. Soc_. 13\u201314 (1982\u201383), 67\u2013103, esp. 88\u201389; and Anne-Marie V\u00e9rilhac and Claude Vial, _Le mariage grec du VIe si\u00e8cle av. J.-C. \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque d'Auguste_ , _BCH_ suppl. 32 (Paris, 1998), 111\u201312\u2014that there never was a change in the rules governing heiresses in Sparta.\n\n. See further Schaps, _Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece_ , 77\u201379.\n\n. See chap. 2 n. 33.\n\n. See above on the Lex Oppia, and see further Pomeroy, _Goddesses,Whores, Wives, and Slaves_ , 162\u201363, 178, and Jane Gardner, _Women in Roman Law and Society_ (London, 1986), 171\u201377.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves_ , 71\u201373, 119.\n\n. Plut. _Agis_ 4. See further Claude Moss\u00e9, \"Women in the Spartan Revolutions,\" in _Women's History and Ancient History_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), 138\u201353, and A. Powell, \"Spartan Women Assertive in Politics? Plutarch's _Lives of Agis and Kleomenes_ ,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 393\u2013419. Powell (esp. 414\u201315) argues that the support of women was crucial to the reforms and that some of the stories about heroic women were shaped by contemporary political factions in ways designed to influence women's opinion.\n\n. Plut. _Agis_ 10. A. S. Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C., to the Sack of Sparta by Alaric, A.D. 296_ (Munich, 1977), 261, states only that he married the daughter of a Syrian ruler and had children. Probably her father was Seleucus Nicator: H. Bengtson, _Die Strategie in der hellenistischen Zeit_ , M\u00fcnchener Beitr\u00e4ge zur Papyrus-forschung und antike Rechtsgeschichte 32, 3 vols.(Munich, 1964\u201367), vol. 2, 46.\n\n. See chap. 3 n. 27.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ (New York, 1999), passim.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom_. 37, Polyb. 5.37\u201339, and see further F. W.Walbank, _A Historical Commentary on Polybius_ , 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957\u201379), vol. 1, 568\u201369.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom_. 38, and see chap. 1. Graham Shipley, _The Greek World After Alexander, 323\u201330 B.C._ (London, 2000), 440, comments that Plutarch's use of vivid details indicates that \"this may be a real episode, described for Plutarch by his sources.\"\n\n. See further Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians_ , 39.\n\n. Livy 32.38.3, 34.25.5.\n\n. Though Walbank, _A Historical Commentary on Polybius_ , vol. 2, 420\u201321, and P. A. Cartledge and A. J. S. Spawforth, _Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities_ (London,1989), 72, disbelieve the story, the existence of other robots and automatic devices in the Hellenistic period helps to lend credence to this one. For example, at the front of his parade, Demetrius of Phalerum had a mechanical snail that spit saliva (Polyb. 12.13.11).\n\n. Livy 34.31.11,14, 38.34.6, Plut. _Philop_. 16.4. Polyb. 13.6.3 states they were married \"to the most prominent of the rest and the mercenaries.\"\n\n. Andr\u00e9 Aymard, _Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Achaienne (198\u2013189 avant J.-C.)_ (Bordeaux, 1938), 35, followed by J.-G. Texier, _Nabis_ (Paris, 1975), 57, 75, argues that marriages with Spartan wives and daughters were profitable inasmuch as women controlled two-fifths of the wealth. The figures given by Aristotle for women landowners need not have been true for the time of Nabis, especially after the redistributions under Agis and Cleomenes, but it is likely that Spartan women in Nabis' time were still wealthy.\n\n. See further J.-G. Texier, \"Nabis and the Helots,\" _DHA_ 1 (1979), 189\u2013205. John Briscoe, _A Commentary on Livy, Books XXXIV\u2013XXXVII_ (Oxford, 1991), 92\u201393, makes the reasonable suggestion that Livy will not have understood the precise status distinctions between helots and slaves.\n\n. See Pomeroy, _Women in Hellenistic Egypt_ , 100\u2013103.\n\n. Livy 34.35.7, see also Plut. _Philop_. 16.3. Aymard, _Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Achaienne_ , 241 n. 50, argues that the Latin texts makes it abundantly clear that some of Spartan women willingly stayed with their new husbands. Linda Piper, \"Spartan Helots in the Hellenistic Age,\" _Anc. Soc_. 15\u201317 (1984\u201386), 75\u201388, esp. 87 n. 77, states (without citing any evidence) that none of the women chose to join her original husband.\n\n. See the laconic remark of B. Shimron, _Late Sparta_ (Buffalo, N.Y., 1972), 121, that the forced marriages enjoyed \"at least partial success.\"\n\n. Thus Aymard, _Les premiers rapports de Rome et de la Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration Achaienne_ , 241\u201342, who stresses the lucrative aspect of marriage to Spartan women.\n\n. In the same way, the kings were given a double portion of food so that they could offer it as gifts of honor.\n\n. For a different view see Jean Ducat, \"La femme de Sparte et la cit\u00e9,\" Kt\u00e8ma 23 (1998), 385\u2013406, esp. 393, who criticizes Hodkinson's interpretation of female inheritance and property rights and postulates the existence of kyrioi for women at Sparta, because they are mentioned in the Lawcode of Gortyn. Using the same evidence, J. Christien,\"La loi d'Epitadeus:Un aspect de l'histoire \u00e9conomique et sociale \u00e0 Sparte,\" _RD_ 52 (1974), 197\u2013221, esp. 211, maintains that Spartan women enjoyed free disposition of their property.\n\n. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ , 99\u2013103. On Plutarch and Hodkinson, see further Preface n. 11, and Appendix n. 90.\n\n. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ , 308, table 12.\n\n \"Some Observations on the Property Rights of Athenian Women,\" _CR_ n.s.20 (1970), 274\u201378, esp. 277.\n\n. \"The Women of Sparta,\" _CJ_ 73 (1977\u201378), 146\u201361, esp. 158\u201360.\n\n. \"Women and the Development of the Spartan Polis: A Study of Sex Roles in Classical Antiquity\" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1983), 427.\n\n. \"Die Frauen von Sparta,\" _Klio_ 75 (1993), 61\u201375, esp. 71\u201375.\n\n##\n\n## THE LOWER CLASSES\n\nLower-class inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia far outnumbered their Spartan rulers, but we know very little about them aside from their relationship to the Spartans. For Greek history in general, far more is known about the upper class. Furthermore, even among the upper class, there is less evidence for women than for men. Like women elsewhere in Greece, and like upper-class Spartan women, their status and reputation probably depended largely both upon the property they possessed and upon the men with whom they were associated. For example, as we have seen in the upper class, the mothers of brave men were respected and the mothers and sisters of cowards were dishonored and shunned like the cowards themselves (see chap. 3). Unfortunately, neither ancient sources nor modern studies have made gender a defining category in discussions of the lower classes at Sparta. Hence this chapter is the shortest in the book.\n\n### Helots\n\nMore is known about helots than about any other non-Spartiates. Helots were Greeks living in Laconia and Messenia whom the Spartans had reduced to servitude early in the archaic period. They performed the work that slaves (and free people) performed in the rest of the Greek world. Moreover, because Spartans, unlike free people in the rest of the Greek world, were not trained to farm or engage in manual labor, helots were more essential to the Spartan economy than slaves were elsewhere.\n\nHelots belonged to the state and could not be sold away from Sparta.Unlike the families of slaves, whose liaisons had no legal status and who did not own their children, the families of helots were much less likely to be broken up by sale or testament, or by the caprice of an individual owner. They lived in family groups in houses designated for them.More than one helot family was assigned to a _kleros_ (country estate: Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.5).They farmed in Laconia and Messenia and were required to send a fixed portion of produce to the Spartan man to whom their kleros had been allocated. Helotage was fundamental to the kleros system, but because the entire system of land tenure at Sparta is not well understood and changed over time (see chap. 4), the details of helotry are not clear. It is reasonable to assume, however, that since Spartan women were landowners, they supervised the work of helots on their property, riding or driving out to visit them as men did (Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.5).\n\nHelots also supplied domestic labor for Spartan homes. Xenophon's comment on domestic weaving (see chap. 1) and Plutarch's report on Timaea, wife of Agis II, indicate that female helots were included in this obligation. Plutarch ( _Ages._ 3.1 = Duris _FGrH_ 76 F 69) represents Timaea not only conversing with her female helots, but also trusting them enough to tell them that the child she was bearing had been fathered by Alcibiades, not by her husband. Since Agis was unsure about the child's paternity, Timaea must have been having intercourse with both her husband and her lover in the same period of time. Because it is impossible to keep secrets from domestics, the helots must have known that she was having intercourse with both. Inasmuch as Timaea was the only person who actually knew who the child's father was, she was probably using contraception during intercourse with her husband.\n\nBy the fourth century, with the rise of private property in Sparta, helots were thought (at least by some non-Spartan commentators) to belong to individuals and in some respects to be the equivalent of slaves. Thus Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 6.3) speaks of Spartans lending helots to other Spartans who needed them. At this time, there were probably slaves of non-helot origin in Sparta as well (see below).\n\n### Free Noncitizens\n\nThere were several other categories of non-Spartiates living in Sparta. These included the _perioikoi_ (dwellers about) who were free, but not citizens. They seem to have lived in poleis and had some sorts of civic organizations like other freeborn people in the Greek world beyond Sparta. Though some worked as farmers, the perioikoi as a whole shouldered a disproportionate share of craft and commercial endeavors, since Spartan men were trained to work only in the military and government, though, as we have mentioned, they did supervise their country estates. Perioikic men worked as craftsmen and merchants and did the jobs that male Spartans were not permitted to do. Perioikic men also served in the army, some holding positions of command. Presumably most perioikic women lived like other Greek women (but not like upper-class Spartan women), raising children, managing their households, and performing domestic labor in their own homes. Some probably worked in service jobs like baby nursing and prostitution (see below).\n\nThere were other free people at Sparta distributed in a number of categories that exceeded anything we know about social distinctions in any other Greek polis. This mass of people included helots who had been freed for performing good service ( _neodamodeis_ ); mixed-blood members of the lower class who had been through the agoge and were elevated above the class they had been born into ( _mothakes_ ); bastards born of helot mothers and Spartan fathers ( _nothoi_ : Xen. _Hell._ 5.3.9); and, at the top of these inferior ranks, those who had been born into citizen status but had been demoted for non-payment of the dues owed to their syssition ( _hypomeiones_ ).  The men in all these categories were free and (with the exception of the _neodamodeis_ ) had been educated in the agoge, so they were able to undertake military service and thus compensate for the ever-dwindling supply of Spartiate men. Because they were Greeks and not foreign born, it was doubtless easier to grant them some social mobility. Thus, for example, helots might be given their freedom by the state in return for military service. We do not know if their wives were simultaneously liberated at all such occasions, but Thucydides (1.103.3) notes that after the helot rebellion in the 460s, rebels were free to leave Spartan territory, taking their wives and children. Helots could own private property and could purchase their freedom when the state offered them an opportunity.\n\nEspecially at times when the state needed funds, helots were encouraged to purchase their freedom at a set price, but we do not know if they had to pay for their wives as well, and whether the price was the same. Slaves in the rest of the Greek world also had opportunities to purchase their freedom, but they were not regarded as equals: the prices varied and had to be negotiated for each individual man, woman, or child.\n\n### Working Women\n\n### _Prostitutes_\n\nBecause precious metals and useful money did not circulate in archaic and classical Sparta, and because Lycurgus had imposed a strict moral regime, there was no prostitution (Plut. _Lyc._ 9.3).Non-Spartiates,however,were not subject to such a stringent discipline. Spartan women were forbidden to wear gold and cosmetics, but hetairai could adorn themselves. Before the end of the fifth century, patrons might surreptitiously use foreign money, but when large amounts of gold and silver began to be available to private citizens, prostitutes became more accessible. A few were notorious and wealthy. In 397, the ephors and some members of the Gerousia gave orders to Cinadon, who was suspected of fomenting a conspiracy, that he was to go to Aulon, a perioikic community in northwest Messenia on the border between Messenia and Elis, and bring back a particular woman reputed to be the most beautiful, for she had been corrupting Spartans of all ages who came there (Xen. _Hell_. 3.3.8). The Hellenistic geographer Polemon (fl. ca. 190) reports that he saw the bronze sculptures dedicated by the hetaira Cottina.\n\nAfter the death of his wife, Cleomenes took a freeborn woman of Megalopolis as his concubine ( _paidiske_ : Plut. _Cleom._ 39.2) She may have borne him a child, for he had one son by Agiatis (Plut. _Cleom._ 22.8), but more than one of his children accompanied his mother to Egypt and died there.\n\n### _Nurses_\n\nSpartan nurses were highly praised. Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 16.3), who was especially interested in the rearing and education of children, points out that Spartan nurses did not apply swaddling bands. They were famous for raising children to be happy, not discontented or finicky about their food or afraid of the dark or of being left alone. The devotion of a nurse who carried her ugly charge daily two miles uphill to the Menelaion so that Helen would make her beautiful is noteworthy (see Conclusion). For these reasons, foreigners sometimes acquired Spartan nurses for their own children. Plutarch uses _oneomai_ (purchase), which indicates that the nurses could not have been helots, since helots were not sold to foreigners. Their status is not clear: the spotty evidence suggests that they were drawn from helots as well as from other groups of non-Spartiate women. In his comedy _Helots_ ,Eupolis mentions a special festival in which Spartan nurses participated. He might have heard about such an occasion from a Spartan nurse living in Athens. Plutarch notes that non-Spartans purchased Spartan nurses because of their care and skill, and goes on to report that Amycla, who nursed ( _tittheusasan_ ) Alcibiades, was said to be a Spartan ( _Lyc_.16.5, see also Plut. _Alcib._ 1.2). The participle refers to wet-nursing. An Athenian inscription of the fourth century commemorates Malicha of Cytheria, nurse ( _titthe_ ) of the children of Diogeitus, an extremely righteous woman who came from the Peloponnesus.\n\n### Religion\n\nHelots and other members of the lower classes shared the same religion with their masters. Shrines for the various gods have been found throughout Laconia and Messenia, presumably, for the most part, created for the use of the local inhabitants. Archaeologists have verified the existence of many religious sites described by Pausanias and others. Some women dedicated altars. The humble nature of their offerings indicates that they were not wealthy. A few religious occasions were directly connected with social status. Children's nurses participated in the festival called Tithenidia in honor of Artemis. They brought boy babies to a temple for Artemis Corythalia by a river (see chap. 6). The nurses enjoyed a varied and sumptuous feast. In addition to the regular celebration of \"The Cleaver\" ( _kopis_ ), which included the sacrifice of goats, and eating cakes, cheese, sausage, figs, and beans, they also sacrificed suckling pigs and bread, and celebrated by dancing and wearing masks.\n\nOn the second day of the Hyacinthia, citizens offered dinner to everyone they knew, including helots. Dining together was a rite of inclusion expressing the solidarity of the entire population. Hierarchies were also temporarily dissolved, not only in dining, but also in the Spartan ceremonies of mourning for the king. When a king or other dignitary died, helots and their wives were obliged to mourn, and the women to wear black or suffer the death penalty Though the mourning was imposed, and may be the Spartans' equivalent of the paid professional mourners found in Athens, it may also show that the helots were conceived of as members of the large fictitious Lacedaimonian family.\n\n### Doulai\n\nThe development of private property raises the question of the status of the _doulai_ (slave women) whom Xenophon mentions in the _Spartan Constitution_ ( _Lac. Pol._ 1.4).Xenophon reports that Lycurgus thought that doulai were capable enough of producing clothing so that freeborn women could devote their energies to motherhood. In the archaic period, these doulai were doubtless helots; by the fourth century, they may also have been slaves whom Spartans purchased with their newly acquired wealth and who catered to their taste for luxury goods and conspicuous consumption. Helots belonged to the state, whereas slaves constituted part of the private property of the oikoi. Xenophon uses the word _heilotes_ in other contexts, but he does not carefully distinguish between the two statuses when describing the women to whom the weaving was delegated in his time. Elsewhere in the _Spartan Constitution_ ( _Lac. Pol_. 6.3),Xenophon speaks of private property as including hounds, horses, chariots, and _oiketai_ (household slaves) _._ He died long after the battle of Leuctra and may have continued to work on the _Spartan Constitution_ until after the emancipation of the Messenian helots. After the loss of part of Messenia, when the need for purchased slaves would have increased and there was money to buy them, there is a strong possibility that many of the women who worked in the Spartan household were slaves, though Laconian helots continued to be available. Accordingly, both statuses are possible in the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, at least until the helots were liberated in the time of Augustus.\n\n### Reproduction\n\nHelots seem to have had no problem with reproduction, though there were constant forces depleting their number: Spartiates could kill them individually and en masse with impunity, and Athens offered asylum to those who rebelled. At any rate, they continually outnumbered their masters. Although there are no census figures for the helot population, there is some basis on which to compare the number of helots to Spartiates in three successive centuries. Among those who served at the battle of Plataea, helots outnumbered Spartans by at least seven to one (Herod. 9.28\u201329). Early in the fourth century, approximately 80 Spartiates and 4,000 others milled about in the Spartan agora (Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.5). In other words, the Spartans were outnumbered 50 to 1.The helot population at this time has been estimated at 170,000\u2013224,000, including women. Around 240 B.C.E., some Spartans considered the helots too numerous (Plut. _Cleom._ 18.3).\n\nAs we have mentioned, helots lived on farms with their families, though we know little about them. In any case, there was no need to have single-sex dormitories with a bolt on the women's door, as Xenophon describes for the slaves in the _Oeconomicus_ (9.5), to prevent the males from gaining access to the females. Unlike slaves, whose numbers could be increased by purchase or conquest, helots themselves were the only source of the helot population and of other segments of the lower classes as well. It was essential for the Spartan economy that helots reproduce. Both men and women helots had a strong incentive to have as many children as possible, although they were constrained by their limited access to arable land. Since the men were constantly vulnerable to murder by the _cryptoi_ (secret hunters [of helots]), and to being killed when they served in the Spartan army, for them there was strength in numbers. David Hume astutely observed that helots were the only ancient servile group to reproduce, and argues that this success was the result of their living apart and being public slaves rather than the property of individuals.\n\nHelots were subjected to what amounted to a kind of eugenics, or better, dysgenics, which the Spartans probably learned from breeding animals, and also understood in terms of the Greek belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The crypteia was instructed to kill the strongest men (Thuc. 4.80.3\u20134) so that those who were more servile and might be more easily domesticated would survive to reproduce. Nevertheless, helots served in the military. The wives and children they left behind doubtless were hostages for their good behavior.\n\nHelots not only did work that was normally done by citizens in other Greek states, but they also were forced to become parents of half-Spartan children. Women were regularly used for this purpose: men perhaps only once. The Spartans exploited the reproductive capacity of helots to produce mixed-breed offspring who filled the lower niches of Spartan manpower. The story about the founding of Tarentum by children born of Spartiate women and helots is relevant here. More credible is the evidence for the inclusion of mothakes in Spartan manpower. The definition of _mothakes_ is controversial, but they seem to have been children of Spartan fathers and helot mothers who were not reckoned as Spartiates but were free. Apparently, practical considerations outweighed theoretical eugenics in these arrangements. Xenophon ( _Hell._ 5.3.9) reports that the bastards ( _nothoi_ ) of Spartan men had experienced the benefits of the state and were fine-looking. This remark lends credence to the view that the helots and Spartans were not originally ethnically distinct, but that their statuses evolved as a result of political and economic developments. In any case, wealthy Spartan men reared mothakes alongside their legitimate sons, and they passed through the agoge together. The mothakes seem to have been given some modified form of citizenship if they completed the agoge.  Indeed, the generals Lysander and Gylippus were said to have been mothakes. The Lawcode of Gortyn, Crete, offers some examples of free children born of intercourse between serfs and free men and women. Therefore it is appropriate to ask whether Spartan women had liaisons with lower-class men, although, considering the sex ratio in the Hellenistic period and Greek reluctance to submit women to hypergamy, it is unlikely that Spartiate women were given in marriage to lower-class men (aside from the incident concerning the founding of Tarentum and the outrages perpetrated by Nabis see [chap. 4]). Lower-class female infants may have been subject to infanticide, since the deliberate production of babies of mixed parentage served primarily to create more soldiers to fill the Spartan ranks. Otherwise such women probably bore additional generations of children of mixed parentage _._ 32 In any case, the use of helot women for the production of mothakes must have increased the rebelliousness of helot men, especially if the liaisons were the result of individual choice and longlasting, rather than brief encounters (like those in Spartiate husband-doubling) encouraged by the state.\n\nThere is no evidence for slave breeding in other parts of the Greek world. Hesiod ( _WD_ 602\u20133) advised the novice farmer to get a slave woman without a baby to nurse. Xenophon ( _Oec._ 9.5\u20136) allows slaves to reproduce only as a reward for good behavior. Slave reproduction compromised productivity. Pregnancy and childbirth jeopardized the slave's health or even her life, and the baby might not survive anyway. The Spartans were unique and innovative in exploiting the reproductive potential of servile women.\n\nIn sum, the Spartans, who were notorious for their innocence of business matters, had devised a reproductive calculus as early as the constitution attributed to Lycurgus. Even if several of the practices reviewed above and in chapter 3 were temporary, or not widespread, or invented in the Hellenistic period and attributed to Lycurgus, or part of the mirage, it is clear that Sparta served as a kind of laboratory for demographic ideas or actual experiments in which the state and private individuals made investments in order to reap dividends in the form of human capital.\n\n* * *\n\n. Nino Luraghi,\"Helotic Slavery Reconsidered\" (paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Sept. 8, 2000), argues that they could be sold or lent within Sparta.\n\n. Diod. Sic. 12.67.4; Strab. 8.5.4 (365); Xen. _Hell._ 3.3.5.\n\n. The amount apparently varied through the centuries from one-half, according to Tyrtaeus 5 (quoted by Paus. 4.14.4\u20135), to the fixed amount described by Plutarch (see chap. 3 n. 8).\n\n. E.g.,Xen. _Hell._ 5.4.28 (attendants of Agesilaus); Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 7.5; Herod. 6.63 (attendants of King Ariston); Polyb. 4.81.7, 5.29.9 (attendants of King Lycurgus); and the mothakes who were raised in Spartan homes (see below).\n\n. For nurses, see below.\n\n. See further P. A. Cartledge, _Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300\u2013326 B.C._ (London, 1979), 182\u201385.\n\n. For additional categories including _trophimoi_ and offspring of foreigners, and discussion of the definition of each status, see J. Ducat, _Les hilotes_ , _BCH_ suppl. 20 (Athens, 1990), 166\u201368. The definitions remain controversial; e.g., S. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London 2000), 198, 355\u201356, considers mothakes as sons of poor or demoted citizens.\n\n. According to Plut. _Cleom._ 23.1\u20135, to fill his war chest in 223 Cleomenes raised 500 talents by selling freedom to about 6,000 helots, charging five Attic minas per man.\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 5.8; Plut. _Lyc._ 1.4.4;Athen. 15.686\u201367; Clement of Alex., _Paid._ 2.10.105.\n\n. On foreign coinage: Plut. _Lys._ 17.1\u20134,Ephorus _FGrH_ 70 F 193, and see further G. L. Cawkwell, \"The Decline of Sparta,\" _CQ_ 33 (1983), 385\u2013400, esp. 395\u201396.\n\n. Athen. 574c\u2013d and see chap. 6 n. 70.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom._ 38.3. See further G. Marasco, _Commento alle biografie Plutarchee di Agide e di Cleomene_ , 2 vols. (Rome, 1981), vol. 2, 589, and chap. 4, above.\n\n. On the status of Spartan nurses, see most recently Valerie French,\"The Spartan Family and the Spartan Decline,\" in _Polis and Polemos_ , ed. C. Hamilton and P. Krentz (Claremont, Calif., 1997), 241\u201373, esp. 260\u201361, where French suggests that though most Spartan nurses were slaves or helots, they may also have been freeborn women of lower status ( _hypomeiones_ ) _._\n\n. See chap. 6 n. 15.\n\n. _IG_ II3.3111. For the date: Kaibel, _Epigr.Graec._ , p. 17, no. 47.\n\n. On the continuity of religion in Messenia even after liberation from Spartan rule, see Thomas J. Figueira, \"The Evolution of the Messenian Identity,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 211\u201344, esp. 229.\n\n. M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, _Catalogue of the Sparta Museum_ (Oxford, 1906), p. 21; p. 63, no. 427; p. 69, no. 528; pp. 70\u201371, no. 546; p. 74, no. 618.\n\n. Athen. 4.139a\u2013b, citing Polemon (Preller, pp. 136\u201340, para. 56); Hesych. s.v. koruthalistriai 3689 and s.v. kurittoi 4684 (Latte); and see further M. Pettersson, _Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai, and the Karneia_ (Stockholm, 1992), 14\u201317.\n\n. Polycrates (before 1st cent. b.c.e.) = _FGrH_ 588 3B F 1 = Athen. 4.139f, who mentions _douloi_ (slaves) not helots; but this was an old custom and probably included helots. In Plut. _Am. narr._ 775d\u2013e, Spartan women dine with _oikeioi_ (see chap. 6).\n\n. See further Pettersson, _Cults of Apollo_ , 18 _._\n\n. Tyrtaeus fr. 5;Herod.6.58.2 (perioikoi and helots). See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 51.\n\n. F. W. Sturz, _Lexicon Xenophonteum_ , 4 vols. (1801, repr. Hildesheim, 1964), vol. 2, s.v.\n\n. Chap. 14,which is critical of Sparta and seems to undermine much of the treatise, may have been written after Leuctra.\n\n. Ducat does not discuss _Lac. Pol._ 1.4, but in _Les hilotes_ , 21 n. 9 and 46, he argues that Xenophon uses _douloi_ and _oiketai_ indiscriminately of slaves and helots.\n\n. P. A.Cartledge, _Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta_ (London, 1994), 174, and personal communication Oct. 16, 1999.\n\n. See further M. Whitby, \"Two Shadows: Images of Spartans and Helots,\" in _The Shadow of Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (London, 1994), 87\u2013125, esp. 110.\n\n. \"Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations\" (1742), in _Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary_ (Oxford, 1963), 381\u2013451, esp. 393.\n\n. See chap. 2 n. 44.\n\n. Phylarchus, _FGrH_ 81 F 43 = Athen. 6.271e\u2013f.\n\n. R. F. Willetts, _The Law Code of Gortyn_ , _Kadmos_ supp. 1 (Berlin, 1967), p. 15 and cols. VI.55\u2013VII.2.\n\n. Thus C. J. Tregaro,\"Les b\u00e2tards spartiates,\" in _M\u00e9langes Pierre L\u00e9v\u00eaque_ , ed. M.-M.Mactoux and E. Geny (Paris, 1993), esp. 37\u201338.\n\n. Thus D. Ogden, _Greek Bastardy_ (Oxford, 1996), 223.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon_ , _Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), 297\u2013300.\n\n##\n\n## WOMEN AND RELIGION\n\nThis chapter is devoted to the religious experiences of Spartan women. It is not an attempt to cover every aspect of each cult or divinity mentioned, nor to report all the textual and archaeological evidence unless a connection with women's activities can be detected. The evidence is often obscure and fragmentary. In many cases, the sole source of information is a single brief definition in a Byzantine dictionary. Furthermore, the reader must be cautioned that the great majority of votives and small objects that have been excavated\u2014disproportionately those that would illuminate women's history\u2014have not yet received proper scholarly attention (see Appendix). Since the ancient sources are often specific about the ages of the female participants in the cults and whether they are virgins, in this chapter we will also draw as much attention as possible to age groupings or marital status. Athletics, including nude athletics, were often connected with religion; these activities have been discussed in chapter 1.\n\nGreeks everywhere worshipped the same gods and generally in the same ways, but the emphases varied from place to place. Thus in Athens, domestic cults were important and women were particularly involved in mourning the dead. Owing to the the Spartan emphasis on the public sphere, private cults are unknown. In contrast, Spartan cults for women reflected the society's emphasis on female beauty, health, and, most of all, fertility. Furthermore, the shrine of a historical woman, Cynisca, who had been heroized for her equestrian victories, was centrally located in Sparta (see chap. 1). As elsewhere in Greece, there were some cultic activities exclusively for women, others exclusively for men, and some for both. For example, at Sparta women were prominent in the cults of Dionysus, Eileithyia (goddess of childbirth), and Helen (a local heroine), were excluded from a festival of Ares (Paus. 5.22.7), but participated along with men in the Hyacinthia.As part of their religious experience, women sang, danced, raced, feasted, dedicated votive offerings, drove chariots in processions, and wove clothing for cult images of the gods. In comparison with the cultic activities of their counterparts in Athens, the activities of Spartan women included substantially more opportunities for racing and far less weaving. Since Spartans were always allowed to drink wine, their festivals were probably quite jolly. For example, the festival celebrated in Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1, included a sumptuous banquet. The modern reader is free to imagine the behavior of a group of adolescent girls who know each other intimately at an all-night festival. At such banquets women drank unmixed wine as usual, and ate cakes that were fashioned in the shape of breasts. Influenced by Alcman's choral lyrics for maidens, scholars have drawn attention to the communal aspects of religious experience at Sparta that was restricted to women. Even when the rituals were enacted by women only, however, they were considered an essential part of the religious life of all citizens. Sundry votive offerings by individual women are evidence of a variety of personal relationships with divinities, as well.\n\n### Artemis Orthia\n\nArtemis was worshipped throughout Greece as a divinity who brought fertility to human beings and animals and protected mothers and children. According to myth, her cult was imported from the East. Pausanias (3.16.7,9) states that the archaic image of the goddess he saw at Sparta was the original that Iphigenia and Orestes had brought from Taurus in the Chersonese. At Sparta, Artemis was associated with Orthia, who, like Artemis, was a nature goddess concerned with both plant and animal life. She was probably the focus of the festival commemorated in Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1,where she is referred to as \"Orthria,\"(line 61) and Aotis (goddess of the dawn, line 87). The actual connotations of the word \"Orthia\" (straightness or uprightness) have puzzled interpreters from antiquity to the present. Pausanias (3.16.11) offers a practical explanation for the title \"Orthia\": the statue itself stood upright because it was placed in a thicket of willows that supported it. Other interpretations are also possible. The goddess raises children up or she directs them to safety. Or she sets them on a straight path through the cycles of their lives; thus she presides over various rites of passage as boys and girls reach puberty and adulthood. The centrality of the cult of Artemis reflects Sparta's interest and investment in nurturing and educating the young. These concerns are echoed at Sparta in the cult of Artemis Corythalia at the festival of the Tithenidia (see chap. 5). The sanctuary of Orthia was situated on flat ground alongside the Eurotas, conveniently located near the children's exercise grounds. When Theseus as an old man raped Helen, who was just a young girl, he found her dancing at the sanctuary (Plut. _Thes._ 31.2,Hyginus _Fab._ 79).\n\nAs Alcman indicates, maidens sang and danced as part of the cult. Sometimes men participated along with the girls. Their choirmasters might be male poets such as Alcman. Lead figurines dated to the seventh and sixth century found at the Orthia sanctuary depict women and men playing flutes and lyres, and one shows a woman playing cymbals. Castor and Pollux were reputed to have taught the Spartans a special dance that the maidens performed annually at Caryae near the northeast border of Spartan territory in historical times in honor of Artemis, whose image stood there out of doors. The girls must have danced in a secluded place without men present. At one performance early in the eighth century, at a time when both Messenians and Lacedaemonians shared the sanctuary, Messenian men supposedly raped the Spartan girls. At another performance during the Second Messenian War,Aristomenes ofMessenia seized the daughters of wealthy, noble fathers and carried them off to a village in Messenia awaiting ransom. If the story is true and not only meant to stimulate outrage against the perpetrators, the lack of effective male protectors at this particular performance may be attributable to the war which demanded their full attention: Aristomenes and his force probably had expected to find the girls alone. As these stories and that of Helen and Theseus related just above demonstrate, girls dancing out of doors in secluded places were vulnerable to rape. These stories may also be interpreted in the context of myths about abduction, as a metaphor for marriage, where the girl is plucked from a protected group and from a circumscribed, choreographed existence and must begin to fend for herself as a bride and an adult. The theme is reiterated in the story surrounding the rape and marriage of the Leucippides (see below).\n\nThe site of the most famous cult of Artemis Limnatis (\"of the lake\") was on the border of Messenia and Laconia. An epigram commemorates the dedication Timareta made to the goddess before marriage. Despite the brevity of the poem, it is clear that Artemis is a goddess who presides over the important rite of passage from girlhood to marriage, and that appropriately enough she is wor-shipped in a liminal area, safe on the Laconian side, dangerous on the Messenian:\n\nTimareta, before marriage, dedicated cymbals, her lovely ball, the snood that held her hair,\n\nher maiden-dolls, she a maiden, to the maiden Goddess of the Lake, as is suitable,\n\nand the dolls' clothes too, to Artemis.\n\nDaughter of Leto, holding a hand over the child Timareta\n\nKeep her pure.\n\nGirls and women also performed lewd dances in honor of Artemis, celebrating her as a fertility goddess. These dances, which are known only through brief citations in late lexicographers, included the _kallabides_ or _kallabidia._ The _kyrittoi_ wore masks and phalli at the festival of Artemis Corythalia and at the Tithenidia.  The _baryllika_ was a comic or indecent dance in honor of Artemis and Apollo. According to Pollux (4.104), it was danced by women; according to Hesychius, it was performed by men who put on ugly female masks and sung hymns. Perhaps both men and women cross-dressed and danced. The orgiastic nature of the Orthia cult at Sparta may be somewhat surprising to those familiar with the austere Artemis of Athenian myth. A vase from the Orthia sanctuary, dated 580 to 575, shows a _komos_ (revel) or orgiastic dancing in progress. The vase is fragmentary and the restoration of the figures uncertain. It does, however, appear to show men and women dancing and having intercourse in the presence of a hairy, ithyphallic, satyr-like figure.\n\nA Laconian vase also of the archaic period depicts women and men together at a symposium (fig. 6). Because the woman reclines with the man and doubtless drinks wine as he does, some viewers, perhaps because they are more familiar with the iconography of Athenian vase painting, may deduce that she is a hetaira.  Lycurgus, however, was reputed to have prohibited Spartiate women from practicing prostitution, and this prohibition may well have been in effect in the sixth century (Plut. _Lyc._ 9.3, and see chap. 5). Furthermore, the chorus of girls in Alcman, _Parthenion_ 1 (67\u201368), mention that they wear Lydian mitres, and Spartan girls and women regularly drank wine. This vase does not depict a secular banquet: rather, the winged daemon, the altar on the right, and the fruit and vegetation suggest that the cup was used at a festival of a fertility divinity. The divinity was most probably Artemis Orthia, or perhaps Apollo Hyacinthius.\n\nFig. 6. Symposium with women.\n\nFragments of a cup depicting a symposium with women on the ground playing flutes and men reclining on couches on the ground. The right-hand fragment showing trees and building base signifies that the location is out of doors. The winged daemon (perhaps Eros) hovering above the woman indicates that the scene is sacred rather than secular. The woman wears a Lydian mitre on her head. Border of pomegranates above. Arcesilas Painter, ca. 565. Fragments Samos (from the Heraion) K 1203, K 1541, K 2402, and Berlin Charlottenburg, Staatliche Museum Inv. Nos. 478x, 460x. Photo, Deutsches Arch\u00e4ologisches Institut, Athens. Drawings courtesy of Maria Pipili.\n\n### _Artemis Orthia in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods_\n\nArtemis and her priestess were also involved in cultic activities for youths. The priestess controlled the intensity of the ritual whipping of youths which is attested for the Roman period. In fact, Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 18.1) asserts that he saw many youths die because of this flagellation:\n\nThe priestess, holding the xoanon, stands by [the ephebes]. It is usually light because it is very small; but if those who administer the whipping ever decrease the whipping because of the beauty or high status of the ephebe, then the xoanon becomes heavy for the woman and no longer easy to carry. She blames those who administer the whipping and says she is being weighed down because of them. (Paus. 3.16.10\u201311)\n\nIt was rare for a Greek woman functioning regularly in a religious capacity and independently of male authority to exercise as much control over men as did the priestess of Artemis Orthia.  Like the Pythia, she transmitted superhuman directives.\n\nDedications to Orthia continue from the archaic period through the third century C.E. Among those from the Hellenistic period worthy of note is a set of black-glazed bowls inscribed from Chilonis to Orthia.  Chilonis is a common name, but this Chilonis may have been royal.\n\n### Eileithyia\n\nThe cult of Orthia served as the model for cults of lesser goddesses including those of Eileithyia and Helen. Like Orthia, Eileithyia was a goddess of fertility. Her special realm was childbirth. Her cult was closely connected to cults of Artemis, and their sanctuaries located near each other in both the area of the Dromus where Spartan youths raced and on the banks of the Eurotas (Paus. 3.17.1, 3.14.6). The exact sites of Eileithyia's sanctuaries have not been determined, but her name was discovered inside Orthia's sanctuary inscribed on the head of a bronze pin, on rooftiles,  and on an unusual large six-sided votive gaming die. The die, dated seventh or sixth century, is of bronze, with six faces and lion heads at the ends. The faces are inscribed with one to six concentric circles, marking the values for the game. The dedication, which is distributed among the faces, is: \"to Artemis Orthia of Eileithyia.\" This elegant piece seems to the modern observer the perfect objective correlative for the fortunes of childbirth, for it evokes such questions as: How will the mother fare? Will the child be a girl or a boy? Who is really the father?\n\nFig. 7. Nude, kneeling, pregnant female in labor.\n\nPerhaps Eileithyia or Hera or Helen, or a mortal woman who is helped by the presence of the goddess. She is flanked by two small male figures. The figure on the right was probably playing a double flute. Marble group found at Magoula near Sparta. Height 48 cm. Sparta Museum 364 = M. N. Tod and A. J.B.Wace, _A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum_ (Oxford, 1906), 171\u201372, no. 364, figs. 50\u201351 = M. Pipili, _Laconian Iconography of the Sixth Century B.C._ , Oxord University Committee for Archaeology Monograph, no. 12 (Oxford 1987), cat. no. 156, pp. 58\u201360, fig. 86. Photo, Deutsches Arch\u00e4ologisches Institut, Athens.\n\nCrude terracotta statuettes of Eileithyia dating to the eigth or seventh century were discovered in the first year of the excavation at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. One shows a stocky woman holding an infant, the other shows a pair of birth spirits supporting a mother and child. In addition to the inscribed die mentioned above, spindle whorls and pins of the seventh to sixth century (typical dedications by Greek women), and other offerings to Eileithyia, were found in the Orthia sanctuary.\n\n### Hera\n\nAlthough the ancient sources discuss women's racing at Sparta predominantly as an athletic activity, they do consider a few races in the context of religion (see chap. 1). Modern scholars have interpreted the latter type as initiatory rites for girls preceding marriage, and argue that races in honor of Hera, Helen, and the Leucippides, and choruses of Physcoa and Hippodamia constituted a premarital ritual.What the association is between racing and marriage and why the ritual should take the form of seeming to run away from marriage is not immediately obvious to the modern observer, unless it was an ordeal or a qualifying test. In any case, the college of sixteen women at Elis that was in charge of the races at the Heraea also arranged choruses of women in honor of Hippodamia and Physcoa.  These choruses may have been restricted to maidens, and thus have also constituted a prematrimonial rite. That the choruses were two in number suggests that they competed against one another. Racing, of course, was competitive, too. At the Heraea, running was a cult activity limited to _parthenoi._ Girls wore the short peplos exposing one breast only to race at the Heraea. This costume seems to be a version of the exomis, a tunic worn regularly by men (see chap. 1). Transvestism may constitute part of an initiation rite preceding marriage, and on her wedding night the Spartan bride was dressed as a man.\n\n### Helen\n\nThe Menelaion, the principal shrine of Helen, Menelaus, and Helen's brothers Castor and Pollux, was at Therapne on a mountain top where they were all said to be buried (Paus. 3.19.9, Pind. _Nem._ 10.56, _Pyth._ 11.62\u201363). There were also additional shrines for Helen and her brothers around Sparta, and Phylono\u00eb, another daughter of Tyndareus, also had a cult. The urban sanctuary of Helen was located near the Platanistas and quite close to Alcman's tomb (Paus. 3.15.2\u20133). Although the principal shrine is usually called \"the Menelaion,\" Herodotus (6.61) referred to it as Helen's temple. Moreover, the archaeological finds testify to a cult of Helen who is not subordinate to a husband: sometimes she is worshipped along with her brothers, at other times she seems independent of men. Offerings were made to Helen and Menelaus alone, and each may have had an altar. The Menelaion is the most important hero shrine in Greece, and probably the earliest, for it was founded ca. 700. The datable offerings specifically inscribed to Helen precede those to Menelaus. These were a bronze aryballos (perfume vase) dated to ca. 675\u2013650 and a bronze harpax (hook) dated to ca. 575\u2013550. Around three hundred terracotta figurines were found, including some depicting human figures on horseback; most of these show female figures riding astride or side-saddle. In enjoying both independence from men and partnership with them, Helen as a religious figure reflects the lives of mortal Spartan women.\n\nThe cults of Helen and Artemis Orthia were similar in many ways. Both were concerned with nature and fertility. Helen's name means \"reed\" or \"shoot.\" Helen and Artemis in her guise of Orthia were local divinities. Outside Sparta, Artemis was worshipped in various manifestations, but Helen was considered a mythological or literary figure as well as divine. The finds from the Menelaion are a microcosm of the Orthia material. These two major shrines were close enough to be visited in a single day. The shrine dedicated to Helen alone at the Platanistas was in close proximity to the Orthia sanctuary and the exercise grounds of girls and boys.Music and dancing was part of the cult of Helen, as it was part of the cult of Artemis. As we have mentioned above, Helen was dancing in the Orthia sanctuary when Theseus and Perithoos abducted her. Some of the anecdotes told about the divine Helen suggest that she was especially concerned with the welfare of marriageable girls, for example, endowing ugly ones with beauty (see Conclusion). Theocritus' _Epithalamium for Helen_ depicts her as a paradigmatic figure for the most important rite of passage of a woman: Helen was the first of a large group of Spartan maidens to become a bride. At the springtime festival of the Heleneia, maidens anointed a plane tree with olive oil. Theocritus (18.1\u20134, 43\u201346) gives the aetiology of this practice:\n\nOnce in Sparta at the house of yellow-haired Menelaus\n\nMaidens wearing hyacinth blossoms in their hair\n\nOrganized a choral dance in front of the freshly-painted bridal chamber.\n\nThey were twelve girls, the foremost in the city, a large crowd of Spartan girls.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\n\"For you first [Helen],we will weave a wreath of the lotus growing close to the ground,\n\nAnd place it on a shady plane tree.\n\nAnd first we will pour liquid oil from a silver flask\n\nAnd let it drip beneath the shady plane tree.\n\nAnd on its bark shall be inscribed in Dorian so that a passerby may read\n\n'Revere me. I am Helen's tree.'\"\n\n(a)\n\nFig. 8. Helen and Menelaus.\n\nSparta, 1, from Magoula (?). Stone pyramid stele with relief, ca. 600\u2013570. Man hugs veiled woman with left arm. She raises her right arm, probably to embrace him. In her left hand and probably in his right, they hold a wreath, symbolizing love. Their eyes meet in an intimate gaze.\n\n(b)\n\nOn the reverse a man, who here is considerably taller than the woman and whose hair has grown longer (after ten years of bivouacking in Troy), threatens her with his sword. Though the reliefs are not inscribed, they probably both depict Helen and Menelaus. Sparta Museum, 1 = Tod and Wace, _Catalogue_ , 132\u201333, no. 1, figs. 26\u201327 = Pipili, _Laconian Iconography_ , cat. no. 87, pp. 30\u201331, fig. 45 = L. B. Ghali-Kahil, _Les enl\u00e8vements et le retour d'H\u00e9l\u00e8ne dans les textes et les documents figur\u00e9s_ (Paris, 1955), 71, no. 24, pl. 42.1 = _LIMC_ s.v. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, p. 539, no. 230. Photos, Deutsches Arch\u00e4ologisches Institut, Athens.\n\nThere is evidence for the cult of Helen and the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) in Hellenistic Sparta. Rules for members of a society who sacrificed and held communal feasts in their honor are extant. Mention of a _gynaikonomos_ (regulator of women) in the inscription indicates that women certainly were included in the festivities. Such communal co-ed feasts were common in the Greek world in the Hellenistic period, but they were not entirely new at Sparta. As we have mentioned, there were co-ed symposia in honor of Orthia in the archaic period (see fig. 6).\n\n### Dionysus\n\nHilaeira and Phoebe (\"bright\" and \"shining\"), daughters of Leucippus (\"white horse\"), fled from the Spartan heroes Castor and Pollux, but were captured and married their pursuers. Their rape and marriage were therefore a mythical archetype for the Spartan wedding ritual in which the husband seized the bride. Their cult, unlike that of Helen, was confined to Sparta, where a shrine to their sister Arsino\u00eb was also located (Paus. 3.12.8). The namesakes of the mythical brides, the Leucippides, were priestesses who were responsible for weaving a garment for the cult image and who also organized a race for Dionysus. As is appropriate for virgins and for those involved in racing, the priestesses were also called _poloi_ (fillies). Eleven Dionysiades (daughters of Dionysus), probably unmarried girls, ran in the race. The race was held near the place where the suitors of Penelope were said to have begun the race which was part of their prenuptial contest. Also close by was a sanctuary of Hera Hypercheiria (\"whose hand is\n\nabove\"), a goddess of marriage, and the image of Aphrodite Hera to which mothers of brides sacrificed (see below).\n\nWomen were conspicuous in the Spartan worship of Dionysus. Vergil describes Mount Taygetus \"virginibus bacchata lacaenis\"(\"celebrated in Bacchic revels by Laconian virgins\": _Georgics_ 2.487\u201388). Near Taygetus was a temple of Dionysus with images both outside and inside the building. Only women could view the image within and perform the secret sacrifical rites. Similar rules of exclusivity applied to young women: the rites of Dionysus of the Hill (Colonatas) could be performed only by virgins. Interestingly enough, however, near the temple of Dionysus there was a brothel named for a notorious courtesan, Cottina. This business was probably established in the Hellenistic period (Athen. XIII.574c\u2013d, Strabo 8.363, and see chap. 5).\n\n### Demeter\n\nDemeter was a goddess of agriculture and of women's life cycle. The Spartan Eleusinion was discovered at Kalyvia tes Sochas just south of the city. The site has not been fully excavated, but it apparently was quite large and included areas for sitting and feasting. Finds from the fourth century B.C.E.\u2014a period of increasing visible wealth\u2014are noteworthy. All the archaeological evidence and the inscriptions concern women, though inscriptions from the Roman period indicate that the majority of statues erected in honor of women were dedicated and paid for by men, or groups of family members including men (see below). Nevertheless, women acting alone alone paid for some. Thus, for example, the mother of Pomponia Callistonice dedicated a statue in honor of her daughter, who served as hereditary priestess of Artemis Orthia and other divinities. Nicippia, honored her great granddaughter Agesippia with a statue. There are at least thirty inscriptions from the Roman period, the majority from the second and third centuries C.E.Women were numerous among cult officials, but their activities were subject to male approval. Beginning in the third century B.C.E., dedications by women who were worshippers or who held sacred office in the cult were inscribed on parts of the building. Later, their kinsmen or the state dedicated statues of them. The Roman emphasis on increasing fertility among the upper class stimulated interest in the cult of Ceres. Portraits of imperial women on coins with the paraphernalia of the goddess probably encouraged Spartan involvement in the cult of Demeter. Like Rome, Sparta was concerned about the fertility of the upper class. One relief that was dedicated by a priestess in the Roman period depicts paraphernalia used by women in the cults for themselves or for the cult image. These include toilet items such as cosmetic boxes, sandals, a mortar and pestle, a spatula, a strigil, an unguentarium, a pin with a pick (?), a sponge, a snood, a mirror, a comb, a spindle and distaff, bowls, and, most unusually, a loincloth (resembling a very skimpy bikini bottom) that was worn only by menstruating women.\n\n### Apollo\n\nWomen played an important role at the Hyacinthia, the great communal festival of Sparta. They wove Apollo's chiton (Xen. _Hell._ 4.5.11; Paus. 3.16.2). This garment was probably presented during the festival. In the Roman period, at least two women were the leaders of the Hyacinthia. Presumably they presided over the contests that were held at the festival. Two women are also known to have officiated at the contests in honor of the Dioscuri.  Presiding over festivals in which men competed is a noteworthy honor granted to elite women in the Roman period.\n\nThe Hyacinthia was celebrated at Amyclae, a numinous site from which the Eurotas, the ancient city of Sparta, and many of its shrines are visible. The celebration lasted for three days and included a period of mourning followed by the singing of songs to the gods. Boys sang and performed on citharas and flutes and rode on horseback. In the procession in view of the whole city, some girls rode in elaborately decorated wicker carts, others in chariots ran races. Their chariots, fashioned like goats and stags, may have been connected to an attribute of Artemis, goddess of wild animals (see chap. 1). The festival included feasting and women's nocturnal dancing and choral singing.\n\n### Athena\n\nWe may be certain that Spartan women did not fail to pay due homage to other divinities in the Greek pantheon, even those who, though important\u2014at least judging from the paucity of anecdotes, and of published votives and inscriptions\u2014were not their top favorites. Athena Poliouchos was the protector of the polis (Paus. 3.17.2). Athena was also titled Chalkioikos (\"of the Bronze House\"), for her sanctuary that was on the acropolis. A statue of the Olympic victor Euryleonis stood near the temple (Paus. 3.17.6). The original temple and altar, begun probably in the eighth century, have now been obscured by monumental Roman and Byzantine buildings. A few stories and votives attest to women's concerns. When the traitor Pausanias sought asylum in the temple of Athena, and the ephors were in a quandary, Theano, his mother, did not plead for her son's life. Instead, she placed a brick at the door of the temple and left (ca.470; see chap. 3).\n\nFour of ten bronze bells inscribed with the donor's name were dedicated by women to Athena. For example, in the late fifth or early fourth century, a certain Eirana dedicated a bell. It is interesting that the woman's name means \"peace\" and that she made her offering at a critical time in Spartan military history. In addition, over forty bells made of bronze and eighty made of terracotta without inscriptions have also been found associated with Athena's sanctuary on the acropolis. Though bronze bells are usually used for military purposes, these bells may have been used for musical performances for the cult, and in that case women may have been among the dedicants. Euonyma dedicated a more traditional gift for a woman: a bronze mirror. Polemon, a geographer of the second century B.C.E., reports that beyond the statue of Athena of the Bronze House, he saw an offering given by the hetaira Cottina consisting of a small image of herself or perhaps of the goddess and a small bronze cow.\n\n### Aphrodite\n\nAt Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped in several guises of relevance to women. Mothers of brides sacrificed to Aphrodite Hera, an unusual hybrid. Another complex version of Aphrodite was a warrior. The archaic temple of the Armed Aphrodite who was called \"Morpho\"drew attention to her double nature: it was the only two-storey temple known to Pausanias (3.15.10). It housed a statue of the goddess veiled, with chains on her feet. Pausanias explains that Tyndareus had put chains on the statue to demonstrate that wives were faithful to their husbands. Lactantius' interpretation of the origin of the Armed Aphrodite, in contrast, is based on a view of Spartan women as more feisty. When the Spartan army was away during one of the wars against the Messenians, some of the Messenians invaded Sparta. The women donned armor and managed to defeat the invaders.Meanwhile, some Spartan soldiers returned, and seeing people in armor, deduced that they were the enemy, and attacked the Spartan women. The women undressed, the Spartan men recognized them, and an orgy ensued. For this reason the Spartans built a temple and dedicated a statue of the Armed Aphrodite (Enoplios or Hoplismene). This story in some ways echoes the tale Herodotus relates (4.146) about the Spartan wives of the Minyae, who were descendants of the Argonauts. When the women's fathers imprisoned their husbands, intending to kill them, the wives entered the prison and exchanged their clothing with their husbands. Thus dressed as women, the husbands escaped. The sanctuary of the Armed Aphrodite was grouped with others that were particularly meaningful for women. Pausanias (3.16.1\u20133) next describes the sanctuary of the Leucippides, Hilaeira and Phoebe, daughters of Leucippus whose pursuit and rape, as we have suggested above, were mythical analogues of the Spartan marriage ceremony. The egg of Leda from which Helen was born hung from the roof of their sanctuary. Then Pausanias mentions the chamber where women wove a chiton for Apollo at Amyclae. Nearby was the house of Tyndareus, whose marriage to Leda was a husband-doubling or wife-sharing arrangement, with Zeus as the uninvited impregnator.\n\n### Roman Period\n\n### _Priestesses_\n\nAs a result of the prohibition on commemorating women except those who had died in childbirth, and the general paucity of data about women, there is little information about Spartan priestesses until the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. Because there are more inscriptions about specific priestesses and festivals for the Roman period, this epigraphic data should not lead us to overexaggerate its importance in its own time. The material is, however, of great value to the historian; for example, providing some evidence that naming patterns for Spartan women show a tendency to alternate names with granddaughters named for their grandmothers just as they had been in classical Athens. Interest in horses is reflected in names of Roman Sparta, as it had been in the classical period: thus Nicippia is the great-grandmother of Archippia.  The emperor Augustus had led the way by reviving the woman-oriented cults of the early and middle Republic at Rome, and Hadrian and the Pax Romana had created an atmosphere in which Greek cities like Sparta could revive and reenact their past. The relative abundance of epigraphic evidence at Sparta, however, is not only indicative of the increased interest in reviving old religions, but is also a reflection of the increase in inscriptions and commemoration in the late Hellenistic world (see Appendix). Furthermore, Xenophon, one of our major sources on Spartan women in the classical period, does not report on their religious activities, In contrast, Plutarch (who was himself a priest at Delphi) does endeavor to include such information. Inscriptions, however, are the best source for women's cults in Roman Greece. Once again, the intrepid historian must consider whether archaizing tendencies, good research on the part of Plutarch and other officials, and tradition will have caused previously existing cults and practices to be revived as far as possible in a fair semblance of their original form in the radically new political context. Some of the religious powers that had been exercised by the king in the days of the monarchy were distributed among high-ranking commoners, both male and female. Because we do not know whether royal women had played any special role in religion, for example analogous to the role of the wife of the king archon in Athens, we do not know whether the powers exercised by Spartan women in the post-monarchical period derived ultimately from women. Thus, that women in the Roman period served as officials in the Hyacinthia may indicate that Sparta was hard up to find citizens wishing to take on such responsibilities and opened the position to women in order to double their pool of candidates, or it may indicate that, inasmuch as the entire city participated in the Hyancinthia, women had held such positions in earlier periods, but merely happened not to be mentioned in any historical record. Those who are more skeptical must nevertheless admit that at least some elements of the earlier cult activities were revived\u2014though sometimes in an exaggerated form designed to attract the interest of tourists and to swell the hearts of Greeks with pride in their past. Certainly the archaeological finds at the Eleusinion demonstrate that women's religious activities honoring Demeter in the fourth century B.C.E. were similar to those in the Roman period. Therefore the later evidence may be used with caution to shed some light on earlier practices.\n\nFeasting was a traditional part of Greek festivals. Practices varied and changed over time. Some feasts were held for the entire community. A painting on a cup by a Spartan artist depicts men and women at a symposium together perhaps at such an occasion (see fig. 6, above). In cults that were restricted to women, priestesses presided and women often were in charge of organizing the activities.\n\nThere was a resurgence of women-oriented cults in Roman Greece in the second century C.E. Some of these cults had existed in the past, others were created in the Roman period. In Sparta, civic-minded women of high status served as _thoinarmostria_ (mistress of the banquet) _,_ often simultaneously holding other sacred offices and titles such as \"Hestia Poleos\" (Hestia of the City). These women probably filled a post analogous to that of the Vestals at Rome and were responsible for seeing that the fire in the city's official hearth burned eternally. This hearth was in the very center of the agora, the public space frequented by Spartan men. The woman who served as Hestia of the City may have been present sometimes when the Boule (Assembly) was convened, for one such woman is attested in an inscription from the mid-second century listing members. _IG_ V.i.602 records the dedication of a statue around the third century C.E. in honor of Pomponia Callistonice, who was not only a hereditary priestess of Artemis Orthia but also priestess of other divinities including those sharing the precinct of Orthia, the Fates, Armed Aphrodite, Asclepius Schoinatas, Artemis Patriotis, the Dioscuri, and the contest of the most august Dioscuri. Her statue may have stood at the sanctuary of Orthia.  Since the population of Sparta was small, it must have been difficult to find many women with the funds, leisure, and interest necessary to fill all the priestesshoods, and thus an eligible woman like Pomponia Callistonice served in many capacities. In at least one case, a foreign-born woman filled the post of _hypostatria_ (dresser of the cult image) at the Eleusinion.\n\nAs in earlier periods, many of the religious posts were hereditary, or at least dominated by members of the same families. Because the elite families were highly endogamous, the hereditary priesthoods devolved on fewer and fewer people who were kinsmen. Endogamy also simultaneously accelerated a concentration of wealth that made the expenses associated with the posts tolerable. Thus father and daughter, sister and brother, and cousins are attested in priesthoods that are related such as those of the Dioscuri and Helen. Sons and daughters of the sacerdotal officials also served religious functions. The priesthoods were transmitted through both the male and female lines.\n\nIn the Roman period, titles such as \"Mother of the Demos and the Boule,\" \"Daughter of the City,\" and \"Hestia of the City\" were awarded to some women of the highest elite status, with some women bearing two or three of these titles. Such official acts incorporated these women into the public family that was otherwise exclusively male. These edicts may be compared with public decrees and grants of citizenship honoring outstanding female benefactors in other cities in Hellenistic and Roman Greece and with the the designation of Julia Domna and other empresses as \"Mater Senatus\" (Mother of the Senate) and \"Mater Castrorum\" (Mother of Military Camps). The honor was not gratuitous. In return for these adoptions the city expected to be treated with the respect due a member of the family, including a willingness to offer financial support.\n\nMost of the honorary inscriptions of the Roman period honor priestesses and other women not only for their piety and specific religious activities, but they also praise them for conventional female virtues including modesty ( _sophrosyne_ ), dignity ( _semnotes_ ), piety ( _eusebeia_ ), and orderliness ( _kosmiotes_ ). Such virtues were likely to be attributed to people of lesser status including youths and boys, rather than to adult men. A dedication of the first century B.C.E. in honor of Alcibia, daughter of Tisamenus, praises her virtue ( _arete_ ), the good works of her ancestors, and her irreproachable sixty-year marriage ( _IG_ V.i.578.2). _IG_ V.i.599, third century, records the dedication by the polis of a statue in honor of Aurelia Heraclea, daughter of Marcus Aurelius Teisamenus, at the Orthia sanctuary. The inscription does not state why the statue was erected, but it does praise her dignity, love of philosophy, nobility, good sense, modesty, and possession of every virtue. The identity of a woman being commemorated was probably defined by the donor who gained prestige from the reflected glory of the honorand. One woman donor, however, praised herself extravagantly in a dedication honoring her father. In a brief inscription of ten lines, Charision managed to refer to herself as first among Spartan maidens, and a new Penelope, thus combining the praise associated with virgins with that due to the most chaste and loyal wife. In this hyperbole, one senses the old competitive spirit of Spartan maidens displayed in the new arena of personal virtue in the later period when Spartan women no longer boasted of the gods' favor by commemorating their athletic victories. _Sophrosyne_ (chastity, self-restraint) was the virtue most often ascribed to women throughout antiquity and it is the most common on the inscriptions, including those from the Roman period honoring Spartan women. The city heroized some women solely because of their sophrosyne.  One would not immediately think of it in connection with Spartan women of an earlier period. In fact, Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 3.4) reports that Spartan boys surpassed girls in modesty. The inscriptions from the Roman period add some new notions: generosity ( _IG_ V.i.595.3\u20134); love of wisdom ( _IG_ V.i.598.2, 4); love of husband (or philanthropy: IG V.i.600.6\u20137, 601.10, 605.4); and reverence toward the city and the Boule ( _IG_ V.i.589.14, 608.8\u20139).\n\nReferences to gynaikonomoi in inscriptions concerning religion indicate state surveillance of women's activities. Indeed, one imagines that some participants might have over-indulged in feasting, drinking, singing, and dancing in the guise of religious activity. Furthermore, in some cults priestesses exercised authority over men, and it is unlikely that women would be granted such power without masculine surveillance. Gynaikonomoi in other poleis not only supervised women, but imposed sumptuary restrictions. Presumably they refrained from censuring women such as Xenaria who spent lavishly in behalf of other citizens (see above). The earliest reference to a gynaikonomos in a Spartan source is ca. 110 C.E., but there is no reason to believe that the man mentioned is the first to hold that office. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that in archaic and classical Sparta, older women had supervised girls: in the Roman period, Spartan practices more closely approximated those of other Greek cities.\n\n### _The Visit of Julia Balbilla, the Pious_\n\nFemale members of the royal family of Commagene and their descendants were present in Sparta beginning with the reign of Vespasian. When King Antiochus IV was deposed by the Romans and confined in Sparta with his wife and daughters, one of the daughters married a member of one of the leading families (Joseph. _BJ_ 7.234). C. Iulius Eurycles Herculanus L. Vibullius Pius was born of this union. The king and the rest of the family then were permitted to move to Rome. Julia Balbilla was a granddaughter of Antiochus IV, born to the king's son C. Antiochus Epiphanes. She was named for her maternal grandfather Ti. Claudius Balbillus, who had served as prefect of Egypt in 55\u201359 C.E. He was a learned man from whom she may have acquired her intellectual interests and special knowledge of Egyptian religion. As an old woman, Balbilla came to Sparta to attend personally to the construction of a heroon honoring her cousin Herculanus. Presumably she was his heir. Though this edifice is no longer extant, it is the most impressive funerary monument known to have stood in Roman Sparta. She evidently invested her time well in making certain that it was properly built.\n\nBalbilla wrote elegiac poetry in the archaic Aeolic dialect that Sappho had used almost a thousand years before. When she accompanied Hadrian and Sabina on a trip to Egypt in 130, like some other wealthy travellers she probably paid the native priests in the neighborhood to have her words inscribed on the Colossus of Memnon, where her poetry is still visible. Her poetry refers to Egyptian deities, and was complimentary of the imperial couple as well as of herself, whom she identifies as the descendant of Balbillus the wise, granddaughter of King Antiochus, Balbilla the pious. Piety, as we have seen, was a clich\u00e9 in honorary inscriptions for elite women in Roman Sparta. Doubtless as they became older and closer to death they became more pious and their interest in leaving monuments that would survive after death increased. Piety was also a much-vaunted virtue attributed to Hellenistic kings. Balbilla's claim to piety may have deliberately alluded to her royal descent. If this hypothesis is true, then the epigraphic claims of elite Spartan women to piety are even more grandiose than is immediately apparent. The majority of extant inscriptions in their honor were dedicated after Balbilla's visit and may reflect her influence.\n\nA woman of tremendous wealth, Balbilla not only paid for the heroon and the inscription, but it has been suggested that she was responsible for the monument of her brother Philopappus in Athens from whom she may have inherited as well.No husband or child is known for Balbilla. Her independence may have been largely a result of her unmarried state, either throughout life or at least when she was older, as a divorc\u00e9e or widow.\n\nOne may speculate about the effect on elite women exercised by an illustrious woman of Greco-Macedonian ancestry who was a member of the sophisticated international set at Rome and an intimate friend of Hadrian and Sabina. Balbilla embodied a glamorous mixture of dilettantism, piety, antiquarian learning, and self-importance. Her presence, that of her aunt, and the visits of other women tourists cannot but have caused a stir in the small quiet city of Sparta. If Balbilla's relationship with Sabina was modelled on Hadrian's with Antinous, she may have also lent some support to lesbian relationships\u2014which were a tradition at Sparta in any case.When she departed, she left a conspicuous monument so that the Spartans would not forget either her or her cousin.\n\nAs had been true throughout Athenian history, in Hellenistic Sparta religion offered the only acceptable milieu in which respectable women could play a public role. A female official who was expert at divination would influence political decisions. As we have seen, the priestess of Artemis Orthia policed erotic relationshps between men and youths. The reknown probably attracted women to religious activities. A survey of the history of upper-class women in the west will reveal that many women whom etiquette prohibited from working as men did outside the home worked without wages as volunteers in religious contexts that allowed them to exercise some authority and social and economic independence. The expenditure of funds for charitable and civic purposes was praiseworthy. Nevertheless, repeated references in inscriptions honoring women for domestic virtues such as modesty and love of husband, and alluding to their fertility as advertised by naming their descendants, seem to seek to compensate for or undermine the playing of such public roles. As microcosmic historical documents, the inscriptions indicate that in the imperial period some Spartan women were integrated into the Roman world and had accepted its values, but they continued to cherish their peculiarly Spartan traditions and were encouraged to do so. A modern reader can sense the pride that inspires these inscriptions and continue to wonder whether Sparta's women were the same as or different from other Greek women.\n\n* * *\n\n. D. Musti and M. Torelli, _Pausania: Guida della Grecia_ ,vol. 3, _La Laconia_ (Milan, 1997),249, see a direct connection between the connotations of the cult of Helen as divine, rather than merely heroic, and Spartan society where \"la donna occupa una posizione di primo piano per la conservazione delle strutture socio-economiche.\"\n\n. Line 81: _Thosteria. LSJ_ s.v.: _thosterion_ refers to _euoxeterion_ \"a sumptuous feast\" or \"a banquet.\"\n\n. Sosibius _FGrH_ 595 F 6 in his work \"On Alcman,\" bk. 3 = Athen. 14.646a.\n\n. E.g., Claude Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Gr\u00e8ce archa\u00efque_ (Rome, 1977).\n\n. If Eva Stehle, _Performance in Ancient Greece_ (Princeton, 1997), 30\u201341, 74, and passim, is correct, the girls will have performed before the entire Spartan community.\n\n. _Parthenion_ 1.61, and see O. H\u00f6fer, \"Orthia and Orthosia,\" in _Ausf\u00fchrlicher Lexikon der griechischen und r\u00f6mischen Mythologie_ , ed. W. H. Roscher, 6 vols. (1884\u20131937), vol.3.1, 1210\u201313, H. J. Rose,\"The Cult of Artemis Orthia,\" in Dawkins, _AO_ , 399\u2013407, esp. 403.\n\n. See further S. Constantinidou, \"Spartan Cult Dances,\" _Phoenix_ 52 (1998), 15\u201330, and Musti and Torelli, _Pausania: Guida della Grecia_ , vol. 3, _La Laconia_ , 227.\n\n. Lead, 7th cent. to ca. 560: see W. G. Cavanagh and R. R. Laxton, \"Lead Figurines from the Menelaion and Seriation,\" _ABSA_ 79 (1984), 34\u201336; other materials: Dawkins, _AO,_ 262, 269, 276, pls. 180.19 (a lyre), 183, 189, 191, 195\u201396.\n\n. Lucian, _De salt._ 10; Paus. 3.10.7; Pollux 4.104; Statius, _Theb._ 4.225;Diomede, bk. III, p. 486 (H. Keil, _Gramm. Lat._ 1). Clearchus gave Tissaphernes a ring showing the maidens dancing at Caryae (Plut. _Artax._ 18 _)._\n\n. Paus. 4.4.2, and see Poralla2, pp. 117\u201318, no. 690 s.v. Teleklos. A king may have been present in his capacity as priest. We need not deduce from his presence that men generally attended this festival.\n\n. Paus. 4.16.9\u201310, and see chap. 1.\n\n. See further Deborah D. Boedeker, _Aphrodite's Entrance into Greek Epic_ (Leiden, 1974), 47\u201349, and Susan Guettel Cole,\"Landscapes of Artemis,\" _CW_ 93 (2000), 471\u201381, esp. 472.\n\n. See further Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, \"Erotic Pursuits: Images and Meanings,\" _JHS_ 107 (1987), 131\u201345, esp. 144\u201345, and Steven H. Lonsdale, _Ritual Play in Greek Religion_ (Baltimore,Md., 1993), 229\u201330. W. Burkert, _Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual_ , Sather Classical Lectures, 47 (Berkeley, 1979), 74, sees the rape of virgins as part of a mythological pattern justifying revenge and the defeat of the army of the rapists.\n\n. _Anth. Pal._ 6.280 Anonymous = A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, _The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams,_ 2 vols _._ (Cambridge, 1965), vol. 1, 208, no. 41.\n\n. Hesych. s.v. lombai states that women who begin the sacrifices to Artemis wear phalli _._ See further M. P. Nilsson, _Griechische Feste von religi\u00f6ser Bedeutung_ (Leipzig _,_ 1906), 184, 187. For other lewd dances performed by Spartan women, see chap. 1.\n\n. S.v. Brudalicha 1343 (Latte): see R. C. Bosanquet, \"The Cult of Orthia as Illustrated by the Finds,\" _ABSA_ 12 (1905\u20136), 331\u201343, esp. 338\u201343, for the masks; G. Dickens, \"Terracotta Masks,\" in Dawkins, _AO_ , 163\u201386, esp. 179\u201380, and pls. 47\u201349; and see now Jane Burr Carter, \"The Masks of Ortheia,\" _AJA_ 91 (1987), 355\u201383, esp. 356.\n\n. Thus Margaret C. Miller,\"Reexamining Transvestism in Archaic and Classical Athens,\" _AJA_ 103 (1999), 223\u201353, esp. 242, following A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, _Dithyramb,Tragedy, and Comedy,_ 2d edn. revised by T. B. L. Webster (Oxford, 1927), 164\u201365,who suggests that the women wore phalli.\n\n. Sparta Museum from Orthia sanctuary, manner of Naucratis Painter. C. M. Stibbe, _Lakonische Vasenmaler des sechtsen Jahrhunderts v. Chr._ (Amsterdam, 1972), no. 64 = Maria Pipili, _Laconian Iconography of the Sixth Century B.C_., Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph,no. 12 (Oxford, 1987),no. 179 = E. A. Lane,\"Lakonian Vase-Painting,\" _ABSA_ 34 (1933\u201334), 99\u2013189, esp. pls. 39a and 40.\n\n. According to Lane,\"Lakonian Vase-Painting,\"160, there are four women and two men. Lane points out that since allusions to wine are absent, the vase was connected to the worship of Artemis, not Dionysus.\n\n. Stibbe, _Lakonische Vasenmaler des sechtsen Jahrhunderts v. Chr.,_ no. 191, pl. 58 = Pipili, _Laconian Iconography,_ no. 196. My interpretation follows Pipili, _Laconian Iconography_ , 71\u201374. Uta Kron,\"Kultmahle im Heraeon von Samos archaischer Zeit,\" in _Early Greek Cult Practice: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens 26\u201329 June, 1986_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg,N. Marinatos, and G. C.Nordquist (Stockholm, 1988), 136\u201348, draws attention to the cultic nature of the scene, arguing that it depicts a meal in the sanctuary of Hera at Samos.\n\n. Thus, e.g.,Kron,\"Kultmahle im Heraeon von Samos archaischer Zeit,\" 141.\n\n. See further Pipili, _Laconian Iconography_ , 71\u201375.\n\n. On the xoanon see above and chap. 1, and Irene Bald Romano, \"Early Greek Cult Images,\" Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980), 115\u201327.\n\n. A. Spawforth,\"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" in _Philolakon: Lakonian Studies in Honour of Hector Catling_. ed. Jan Motyka Sanders (London, 1992), 227\u201338, esp. 232, notes that she is the only sacerdotal official in Roman Greece to be named in a Greek text.\n\n. J. Hondius and A. Woodward, \"Laconia: Inscriptions: Votive Inscriptions from Sparta,\" _ABSA_ 24 (1919\u201321), 88\u2013117, esp. 110\u201312, nos. 61\u201365, fig. 2, and 116 = _IG_ V.i.1573. She may have been: (1) daughter of Leotychidas and wife of Cleonymus; or (2) daughter of Leonidas II, granddaughter of Cleonymus and Cratesiclea (see chap. 4 n. 6); or yet another woman: A. S. Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C., to the sack of Sparta by Alaric, A.D. 296_ (Munich, 1977), 452\u201353.\n\n. See further I. Kilian,\"Weihungen an Eileithyia und Artemis Orthia,\" _ZPE_ 31 (1978), 219\u201322, esp. 221.\n\n. Dawkins, _AO_ , tiles 31, figs. D and E, 51, 143, and see also 402.\n\n. Dawkins, _AO_ ,bronze dies: pp. 201\u20132 and 370,no. 169.23 inscribed to Orthia, end of 7th cent.; no. 169.24 a larger but similar die inscribed to Eileithyia, 7th or 6th cent. = Sparta Museum inv. 2147.\n\n. Pace J. Hondius and A. Woodward,\"Laconia, Inscriptions,\" 103,who do not understand the appropriateness of offering dice to Eileithyia.\n\n. J. Farrell, \"Excavations at Sparta, 1908: Archaic Terracottas from the Sanctuary of Orthia,\" _ABSA_ 14 (1908), 48\u201373, esp. 53, fig. 2.1; R. M.Dawkins _,_ \"Excavations at Sparta, 1909,\" _ABSA_ 15 (1909), 1\u201322, esp. 21; R. M. Dawkins, \"Excavations at Sparta, 1910. Artemis Orthia: The History of the Sanctuary,\" _ABSA_ 16 (1910), 18\u201353, esp. 52, fig. 18, 53; and see H. J. Rose,\"The Cult of Artemis Orthia,\" in Dawkins, _AO_ , 399\u2013407, esp. 402. For associations between Eileithyia and Artemis, see Semeli Pingiatoglou, _Eileithyia_ (W\u00fcrzburg, 1981), 54\u201355, 59, 99.\n\n. For associations between Eileithyia and Helen see M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, _Catalogue of the Sparta Museum_ (Oxford, 1906), 116\u201318. For connections between Eileithyia at Sparta and in the Greek east, see Jos\u00e9 D\u00f6rig, \"Eleuth\u00eda,\" in _Sculpture from Arcadia and Laconia_ , ed. Olga Palagia and William Coulson (Oxford, 1993), 145\u201351. R. Olmos, s.v. Eileithuia in _Lexicon Iconographicum_ , vol. 3.1 (Zurich, 1986), 685\u201399, esp. 695, argues that some sculptures of fertility goddesses (including Sparta Museum 364) have been incorrectly identified as Eileithyia.\n\n. E.g. Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles,_ vol. 1, 213\u201314, and passim, and see Appendix n. 17; Thomas Scanlon,\"The Footrace of the Heraia at Olympia,\" _AncW_ 9 (1984), 85; and most recently N. Serwint,\"The Female Athletic Costume at the _Heraia_ and Prenuptial Initiation Rites,\" _AJA_ 97 (1993), 403\u201322.\n\n. Paus. 5.16.6, Plut. _Mor_. 251e\u2013f, and see further, Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles_ , vol. 1, 212, 326,who interprets the choruses for Hippodamia, who married Pelops, in connection with the married woman.\n\n. Jan Bremmer,\"Greek Maenadism Reconsidered,\" _ZPE_ 55 (1984), 267\u201386, esp. 283.\n\n. See chap. 2. Serwint, \"The Female Athletic Costume at the _Heraia_ ,\" 79\u201381, 83, considers the dress an Amazon costume\u2014contra Scanlon,\"The Footrace of the Heraia at Olympia.\"\n\n. Apollod. 3.10.6. According to Athenagoras _Leg._ 1.1, Phylono\u00eb was worshipped as Enodia, an epithet of Hecate.\n\n. H. W. Catling, \"Archaeology in Greece, 1975\u201376,\" _AR_ 22 (1975\u201376), 3\u201333, esp. 14, and \"Excavations at the Menelaion, Sparta, 1973\u201376,\" _AR_ 23 (1976\u201377), 24\u201342, esp. 36\u201337,on dedications to Helen alone.\n\n. P. Cartledge,\"Early Lacedaimon: The Making of a Conquest-State,\"in _Philolakon: Lakonian Studies in Honour of Hector Catling_ , ed. J. M. Sanders (London, 1992), 49\u201355, esp. 55.\n\n. See Carla M. Antonaccio, _An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece_ (Boston, 1995), 155, 158, 160, and chap. 1 n. 65, above.\n\n. Linda Lee Clader, _Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition_ (Leiden, 1976), 79\u201380.\n\n. E.g., Eur. _Hel._ 1667, Isocr. _Hel._ 61, M. L. West, _Immortal Helen_ (London, 1975), and see Appendix, below.\n\n. Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles_ , vol. 1, 333\u201350, argues that the cult of Helen at Therapne emphasized her role as a wife, while the cult at Platanistas was initiatory and celebrated Helen before marriage. However, distinctions between the two cults are difficult to detect. Furthermore, the story in Herodotus (6.61) refers to an infant who was taken to Helen at Therapne.\n\n. On connections between the cults of Artemis Orthia and Helen, see Clader, _Helen_ , 74\u201377.\n\n. She was also worshipped at Rhodes as a vegetation goddess connected with trees: Paus. 3.19.10. See further Otto Skutsch,\"Helen:Her Name and Nature,\" _JHS_ 107 (1987), 188\u201393, esp. 189.\n\n. _IG_ V.i.1390.27, 32 (92\/91 b.c.e.Andania) = _LSCG_ 65. The Andanian cult in Messenia is perhaps derived from a Spartan cult. A. M. Woodward, \"Excavations at Sparta, 1908: Inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Orthia,\" 74\u2013141, esp. 125, distinguished the gynaikonomos in the Andania inscription as an official pro tempore from those who held state office as in _IG_ V.i.170.3\u20134, 209.10, and 1390.27. More recently, however, Spawforth, \"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" 229 n. 17, argues that they were state officials. For other gynaikonomoi (whose existence is conjectured based on the expansion of abbreviations in _IG_ V.1.1314 and 1315), see Spawforth 230 n.21, and see _SEG_ (1950), XI.626\u201329 \"Catalogi gynaeconomorum.\"\n\n. Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 1.6, Plut. _Lyc._ 15.4, and see chap. 2 n. 26. Deborah Larson, _Greek Heroine Cults_ (Madison,Wis., 1995),20,68, suggests that originally the cult of the Leucippides emphasized their virginity rather than marriage.\n\n. Hesych. s.v. polia. For additional references to virgins as colts (with sexual implications), see chap. 1 n. 66, and Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ (New York, 1999), 47\u201348.\n\n. Paus. 3.16.1: see further Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles_ , vol. 1, 323\u201333.\n\n. See further M. L. Napolitano, \"Donne spartane e teknopoiia,\" _AION_ ( _archeol._ ) 7 (1985), 19\u201350, esp. 28, and Musti and Torelli, _Pausania: Guida della Grecia,_ vol. 3, _La Laconia_ , 208\u20139.\n\n. Paus. 3.13.8\u20139, and see further Musti and Torelli, _Pausania: Guida della Grecia_ , vol. 3, _La Laconia_ , 209\u201310.\n\n. Paus. 3.13.7. On Artemis, Dionysus, and virgins: Hesych. s.vv.Dionysiades and Leukippides; Nilsson, _Griechische Feste,_ 184\u201385, 297\u201399; Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles,_ vol. 1, 271\u201376, 323\u201333, and _Alcman_ (Rome, 1983), 520\u201321; Bremmer,\"Greek Maenadism Reconsidered,\" 282\u201384; and Ziehen, _RE_ II.6 (Stuttgart, 1929), s.v. Sparta (Kulte), 1452\u20131525, esp. 1495\u201396, and n. 21 above.\n\n. See further Susan Walker, \"Two Spartan Women and the Eleusinion,\" in _The Greek Renaissance in the Roman Empire_ , ed. S.Walker and A. Cameron, _ICS Bull._ suppl. 55 (1989), 130\u201341 and pls. 51\u201352, esp. 131.\n\n. _IG_ V.i.602. For her name, see A. J. S. Spawforth,\"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus: Some Prosopographical Notes,\" _ABSA_ 80 (1985), 239.\n\n. _SEG_ XI.677, 1st cent. C.E., _LGPN_ 3A, s.v. Agesippia, 2nd cent. C.E. See also J. M. Cook, \"Laconia: Kalyvia Sochas,\" _ABSA_ 45 (1950), 261\u201381, esp. 270, 277, and chap. 4 n. 9, above.\n\n. Spawforth,\"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,\" 206.\n\n. See further Susan Cole,\" _Gynaiki ou Themis_ : Gender Difference in the Greek _Leges Sacrae_ ,\" _Helios_ 19 (1992), 104\u201322, esp. 114.\n\n. Robert Parker,\"Demeter,Dionysus and the Spartan Pantheon,\" in _Early Greek Cult Practice: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens 26\u201329 June, 1986_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg,N.Marinatos, and G. C.Nordquist (Stockholm, 1988), 99\u2013103, esp. 102.\n\n. Cook,\"Laconia: Kalyvia Sochas,\" _ABSA_ 45 (1950), 261\u201381, esp. 265\u201367.\n\n. One of the \"Aberdeen reliefs\"( _IG_ V.i.248), 1st or 2d cent. C.E.:Walker,\"Two Spartan Women and the Eleusinion,\" 135\u201338 and pl. 51.\n\n. C. N. Edmonson,\"A Graffito from Amyklai,\" _Hesperia_ 28 (1959), 162\u201364, suggests a connection between the festival and a list of women's names. See further Appendix.\n\n. But probably, originally, not every year: see chap. 1 n. 122.\n\n. _IG_ V.i.586.7,Memmia Xenocratia: Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians_ , 276, and _IG_ V.i.587.5\u20136; Pompeia Polla, early 2d cent.: Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians_ , 352, and Spawforth, \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,\" 244. Riet van Bremen, _The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods_ (Amsterdam, 1996), 88 n. 21, has overemphasized the isolation of the woman in the role of theoros at the Hyacinthia. This festival was open to all, and girls participated actively (see chap. 1).\n\n. _IG_ V.i.602.12\u201315: Pomponeia Callistonice, see below n. 90. _IG_ V.i.168 + 608.1\u20132 refers to another woman who officiated at an agonistic festival. Neither her name nor the name of the festival is extant: see further A. J. S. Spawforth,\"Notes on the Third Century a.d. in Spartan Epigraphy,\" _ABSA_ 79 (1984), 263\u201388, esp. 285\u201386.\n\n. Athen. 4.139d\u2013f; Paus. 3.19.1\u20135; and see further Michael Pettersson, _Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai, and the Karneia_ (Stockholm, 1992), 10, 38, etc., who follows Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles_ , vol. 1, 305\u201319, in interpreting the activities as rites of initiation preparing girls for marriage. However, since the ages of the girls are not specified, one would have to conclude that just about anything they did until the age of marriage at eighteen was preparatory for marriage.\n\n. Eur. _Hel._ 1465\u201375,Hieronymus, _Adv. Iovinianum_ 1, 308, and see chap. 1.\n\n. See further Cartledge,\"Early Lacedaimon,\" 55.\n\n. Hondius and Woodward, \"Laconia: Inscriptions,\" 117\u201318, no. 66. Callicrateia dedicated a bell: _ABSA_ 30 (1928\u201330), 252, no. 5.\n\n. S. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London, 2000), 293 and 301 n. 39, quoting unpublished work of Alexandra Villing.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3 s.v., 6th?\/5th cent.; M. L. Lazzarini, _Le formule delle dediche votive nella Grecia arcaica,_ Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Memorie. Classe di Scienze Morali, Stor., e Filol., ser. 8, 19 (Rome, 1976), p. 102, no. 91, middle of the 5th cent.\n\n. Athen. 13.574d. Nothing more is known about her: L. Preller, _Polemonis Periegetae Fragmenta_ (Leipzig, 1838), 48\u201349, para. 18.\n\n. Paus. 3.13.9. For connections between the cults of Aphrodite and Hera, see M. Torelli, \"Il santuario greco di Gravisca,\" _PP_ 32 (1977), 398\u2013458, esp. 437.\n\n. Paus. 17.5 also mentions the temple of Aphrodite Areia (Warrior) on the citadel near the temple of Athena.\n\n. The Armed Aphrodite attracted a great deal of attention from non-Spartans, and was the subject of epigrams and rhetorical exercises: Gow and Page, _The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams_ , vol. 2, 334\u201335.\n\n. Paus. 3.15.11. According to Hesiod (fr. 176 Merkelbach and West), Tyndareus had ignored Aphrodite in his sacrifices. In revenge, the goddess had made his three daughters adulterous. The chains were probably a compensatory gift.\n\n. _Div_. _Inst._ 1.20, 29\u201332. Fritz Graf, \"Women,War, and Warlike Divinities,\" _ZPE_ 55 (1984), 250, sees the Armed Aphrodite as reversing gender roles. This interpretation may be true in most parts of the Greek world: however, as an exception note Spartan women's bravery at the invasion of Pyrrhus: Plut. _Pyrr._ 27.4, and see chap. 4.\n\n. Cf. the story of the poet Telesilla who armed the women of Argos and defeated Spartan invaders: Paus. 2.20.8\u201310, Plut. _Mul.Virt._ 245c\u2013e, see also Herod. 6.77.2.\n\n. They were probably also associated with Helen in a cult at the Phoebaeum near Therapne: Paus. 3.20.2, and see further Musti and Torelli, _Pausania: Guida della Grecia_ , vol. 3, _La Laconia_ , 253\u201354.\n\n. A red figure vase of the late 5th cent. manufactured in the Peloponnese depicts Helen's birth. Her upper torso and arms rise from the egg. The eagle of Zeus flies over her head and Leda flies toward the left. Unlike scenes ofHelen's birth in Attic vase painting, Tyndareus is not shown at all. See S. Karouzou,\"He Helene tes Spartes,\" _AE_ 1985 (1987), 33\u201344, esp. 37, and pl. 6.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 73\u201375, and n. 90 below, for references to seven illustrious women of the 2d\u20133d centuries named Callistonice.\n\n. See above, n. 54,Hipparchia ( _IG_ V.i.611, 1st cent. B.C.E.), etc., and chap. 1 nn. 75\u201376.\n\n. See further Robert Palmer, \"Roman Shrines of Female Chastity from the Caste Struggle to the Papacy of Innocent I,\" _RSA_ 4 (1974), 113\u201359.\n\n. For prosopographical studies of these inscriptions, see Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians_ ; Spawforth, \"Notes on the Third Century _A.D_. in Spartan Epigraphy\"; Spawforth, \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus\"; and Spawforth, \"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire.\"\n\n. P. A. Cartledge and A. J. S. Spawforth, _Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities_ (London, 1989), 99.\n\n. See the warning against reading religion from the Roman period back to the archaic and classical periods in Robert Parker, \"Spartan Religion,\" in _Classical Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1989), 142\u201372, esp. 163 n. 1.\n\n. Walker,\"Two Spartan Women and the Eleusinion,\" 132.\n\n. I owe this suggestion to Lucia Nixon, and see n. 81, above.\n\n. E.g., _IG_ V.i.229, 589, _SEG_ XI (1950),Add. et Corr. 812a.\n\n. N. Kennell,\"Where was Sparta's Prytaneion?\" _AJA_ 91 (1987), 421\u201322.\n\n. Preucletia: _IG_ V.i.116, late 2d cent. c.e., and see further N. Kennell, \"The Elite Women of Sparta,\" paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 28, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 84.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.v. Kallistonike (6), 3d cent. c.e. A. M. Woodward, \"Inscriptions,\" 285\u2013377, in Dawkins, _AO_ , 295, and see n. 63 above and Appendix n. 70.\n\n. Anthousa, daughter of Damainetus ( _IG_ V.i.248), 1st or 2d cent. c.e.:Walker, \"Two Spartan Women and the Eleusinion,\" 132.\n\n. Spawforth,\"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,\" 200.\n\n. Freedmen of both Eurybanassa (50 B.C.E.\u201320 C.E.) and Tyndares are attested in _IG_ V.i.212.57\u201358.\n\n. P. Memmius Deximachus IV and Memmia Xenocratia; Eurybanassa and Tyndares; and P. Memmius Pratolaus III and Volusene Olympiche (3d cent.): see further Spawforth, \"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" 231, and \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus,\" 197, 235.\n\n. For examples of children ( _paidia_ ), see _IG_ V.i.141, and see further Spawforth,\"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" 229 n. 1.\n\n. Spawforth,\"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" 231.\n\n. Claudia Damosthenia: _IG_ V.i.589, 2d\u20133d cent. C.E.; name not extant: _IG_ V.i.608; Julia Etearchis: _IG_ V.i.593, ca. 250\u201360 C.E.; Preucletia: _IG_ V.i.116, ca. 170 c.e.; Claudia Tyrannis: _SEG_ XXXV (1985), 337; and see further Van Bremen, _The Limits of Participation_ , 167, 348, 350.\n\n. See chap. 2 n. 27, and Pomeroy, _Families_ , 48\u201350.\n\n. E.g., Aristodama: see Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity_ (New York, 1995), 126, and Van Bremen, _The Limits of Participation_ , passim.\n\n. E.g., _BMC_ V.clxxvi and cxcv; _CIL_ VIII.26598;Dio 72.5; and _HA_ , _Marcus_ 26.8.\n\n. L. Robert, \"Laodic\u00e9e du Lycos: Les inscriptions,\" in _Laodic\u00e9e du Lycos: Le Nymph\u00e9e, campagnes 1961\u20131963_ , ed. J. des Gagniers et al. (Paris, 1969), 247\u2013387, esp. 316\u201322.\n\n. Kennell,\"The Elite Women of Sparta.\"\n\n. Poralla2, 416, Teisamenos (4), and Dawkins, _AO_ , 295\u201396.\n\n. _IG_ V.i.540 ( _SEG_ XI.797), ca. 225\u201350 c.e., and see further Spawforth, \"Notes on the Third Century _A.D_. in Spartan Epigraphy,\" 276\u201377.\n\n. E.g., _IG_ V.i.587.6, and see further Helen North, _Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature_ (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), esp. 252\u201353, and Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), 275, 279, 344.\n\n. E.g., Leonis: _IG_ V.i.610, and Hipparchia: _IG_ V.i.611, 1st cent. b.c.e.\n\n. _SEG_ XI.626.1\u20132.\n\n. See further A. J. S. Spawforth, \"Balbilla, the Euryclids, and Memorials for a Greek Magnate,\" _ABSA_ 73 (1978), 249\u201360 and pls. 34\u201335, esp. 254.\n\n. Seneca, _QN_ 4.2.13, and see further T. C. Brennan,\"The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon,\" _CW_ 91 (1998), 215\u201334, esp. 218.\n\n. Thus Brennan,\"The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of Memnon,\" 227.\n\n. Diana Kleiner, _The Monument of Philopappos in Athens_ (Rome, 1883), esp. 52, 95.\n\n. E. L. Bowie, \"Greek Poetry in the Antonine Age,\" in _Antonine Literature_ , ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford, 1990), 53\u201390, esp. 62, suggests she was the equivalent of Hadrian's Antinous; and see chap. 1, above.\n\n. E.g., _manteis_ in _IG_ V.i.142.5, 7, _IG_ V.i.599.17\u201318, and see further Spawforth, \"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire,\" 228, 234.\n\n## CONCLUSION\n\n## GENDER AND ETHNICITY\n\nOf all the earth, Pelasgic Argos is best, and Thessalian horses, and Lacedaemonian women, and men who drink the water of beautiful Arethusa.\n\nParke and Wormell, _The Delphic Oracle_ , no. 1\n\n### Gender and Ethnicity\n\nDo knowledge and consideration of Spartan women change our overall view of Spartan society and institutions? In what ways were Spartans different from other Greek women, and how does this difference contribute to our ideas about Sparta as a whole? Studies of Spartan ethnicity have not heretofore used gender as a defining category, except in a negative way so as to exclude women. In this brief epilogue, I will attempt to remind the reader of some of the points made in the book and draw some conclusions. I will not review change over time, nor repeat the details, arguments, and citations of ancient sources that can be found in the preceding chapters.\n\n### The First Spartan Woman\n\nEveryone in ancient Greece and every educated person in the western world even nowadays knows the name of at least one Spartan woman: Helen. Legends about Helen have helped shape the image of Spartan women. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was also wealthy, and she dominated men. Guilty of flagrant adultery, she nevertheless was able to subjugate her infuriated warrior husband. Although Aristotle does not mention Helen, he repeats most of these attributes in his denunciation of Spartan women and their effect on the community. He considered that gender relations in Sparta were the reverse of what they should be in a normal Greek society like that of Athens.\n\n### Beauty\n\nFrom earliest times, Sparta was known as a land of beautiful women\u2014in Homer's words, _Sparte kalligynaika_ ( _Od._ 13.412). Spending time out of doors in the nude meant that women were exposed to public scrutiny from the time when they were very young. They competed with their peers not only in formal athletic events, but also in the eyes of their beholders and in their own judgment. Young girls learned to evaluate the beauty of other girls, and to compare their own appearance with that of their peers. In Alcman, _Partheneion_ 1 (57\u201358), the chorus decide that Agido is first in beauty, and Hagesichora is second. Three hundred years later, Theocritus captured the sentiment. The 240 girls who race in honor of Helen declare that when they compare themselves to Helen not one of them is faultless ( _Idyll_ 18.25). Lycurgus had outlawed cosmetics, but Spartan women had mirrors, proving there can be artifice in nature. Ancient mirrors that have been identified as Laconian had a convex disk which displayed the face, hair, neck, and cleavage (see Appendix). The user would have been able to dress her hair, care for her skin, and adjust her facial expression and posture. In _Partheneion_ 1 (6, 21), the girls refer to Agido's radiance and to Hagesichora's silver face. When the color of a woman's hair is mentioned, it is blonde, like Helen's. The girls in Alcman's _Partheneia_ and the poet Megalostrata whom Alcman was said to love were all blonde.\n\nMen also prized beautiful women and sought them as brides, even breaking some of society's rules to win them. Unlike men in Athens where girls were secluded and veiled, Spartans will have had many opportunities to look over potential brides who were completely nude. Herodotus (6.61) tells the story of a young girl who was afflicted with _dysmorphia_ (misshapenness) _._ More than ugly, she may have been deformed, for her parents had forbidden her nurse to show her to anyone. The nurse was concerned that the daughter of fortunate parents was so disfigured: she carried her every day to the shrine of Helen at Therapne and prayed to the goddess to free the child from her ugliness. Helen appeared, and touched the child. Thereupon the ugliest girl grew up to be the most beautiful of all Spartan women. Helen's magic had made her lovely (Paus. 3.7.7,Herod. 6.61). When the girl grew up her beauty, like Helen's, became a curse and a cause for a bitter quarrel between men who had been the best of friends. Although she was married, the Spartan king Ariston, who had two wives already, conceived a desperate passion for her. Tricking his friend, he won the woman, who became his third wife. The competitive phrase \"most beautiful woman\" occurs in the story of the prostitute whom Cinadon was ordered to bring back to Sparta (see chap. 5). At the other end of the social scale, the wealthy Agiatis was lovelier than other Greek women (Plut. _Cleom._ 1.2, 22.1\u20132).\"More beautiful than all the other women in the Peloponnese\" also appears in the story of Xenopeithia, mother of Lysandridas, who had commanded Spartan forces at Thebes in the time of Agesilaus II.\n\nLysander, who was famous for bending the rules of proper Spartan behavior, rejected the bride he had acquired at a \"lottery,\" and planned to marry a more beautiful one. Perhaps he married the homely woman after all, and his daughters took after their mother. They were unable to find husbands not only because their father was poor, but because, as their father said, they were \"ugly\" ( _aischrai_ : Plut. _Lys._ 2.5, 30.5).\n\nIn Sparta, beautiful people were highly esteemed: the best looking man and woman were most admired (Heraclides Lembus in Athen. XIII.566a = _FHG_ III.168). Since Homer ( _Od._ 6.102\u20137) described Nausicaa as towering over her handmaidens like a palm tree, and in the visual arts gods were depicted as taller than mortals, Greeks considered height an attribute of beautiful, noble women. Timasimbrota, who is mentioned in a fragment of archaic poetry, was as tall as a man, for she is described as resembling the golden-haired son of Polydorus in her noble stature. The Ephors fined King Archidamus for choosing a short woman, because it was expected that the children produced by the couple would look like their mother. Plutarch ( _Cleom._ 38.5) described the heroic wife of Panteus, who accompanied Cleomenes' family to Egypt, as tall and robust.\n\n### Nutrition\n\nDiet reflected ethnic difference. The height of Spartan women probably resulted not only from heredity and eugenics, but also from their generous food rations. Spartans were the only Greek women who were well fed and drank wine. Aristophanes alludes to Cleitagora, a Spartan woman poet whose name was associated with a skolion, or drinking song. A Laconian vase depicts women at at a mixed symposium. Dionysus was a god of women in Sparta.\n\nSince wine drinking by women was not approved of elsewhere in Greece, the practice took on a negative connotation among critics of Spartan women. In Plato, _Laws_ (637C), the Athenian Old Man talking to the Spartan criticizes Spartan women for licentiousness. This gratuitous and stereotypical criticism follows praise of moderate drinking by Spartan men at symposia and may allude to women's intoxication. It was known that Spartan women drank wine as part of their regular diet, but there is no evidence that they were less temperate than Spartan men.\n\n### Dress\n\nWomen's style of dress was used to characterize Dorians in general. _Doriazein_ means \"to dress like a Spartan girl\" and connotes nudity or semi-nudity. The standard Greek-English dictionary gives the meaning \"dress like a Dorian girl, i.e. in a single garment open at the side,\" and gives _doriazo_ as an equivalent of _dorizo_ \"imitate the Dorians in life.\"\n\nClothing, as well as the lack of it, marked differences between Spartans and other Greek women. Because Spartans spent time out of doors, they needed warm garments in some kinds of weather. The Dorian peplos was a heavier woollen dress than the Ionian, and had to be fastened on the shoulders by fibulae. This heavy dress had been worn by all Greek women in the archaic period. Spartan fashion was conservative. The light gauzy dresses of the Ionian style were new fashions. Herodotus explains that the change came about when a sole survivor of a battle returned to Athens and told the women that all their men had died. They killed the bearer of this devastating news with their pins, which were subsequently associated with aggression on the part of women. Thereafter the women were forbidden to wear fibulae. Indeed, some of the jewelry dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia resembles nails with very long spikes.Wearing a Doric peplos meant always having a weapon to hand. Only when she was dressed in a man's costume as a bride was a woman disarmed.\n\n### Definition of Ethnicity by Women\n\nAs we have mentioned in chapter 3, Gorgo is the first Spartan woman who is reputed to have drawn attention to the special identity of Spartan women. When she was asked by a woman from Attica, \"Why is it that you Spartans are the only women who can rule men?\" she replied, \"That is because we are the only ones who give birth to men.\" In this story, the interlocutor assumes the special identity before Gorgo replies. About a century later, another royal woman, Cynisca, emphasized her uniqueness by declaring, \"I am the only woman in all of Greece to have won this [Olympic] crown.\"We have also mentioned the anonymous Spartan woman who was equally conscious of her ethnic distinctiveness: When an Ionian woman was proud of something she had woven (which was very valuable), a Spartan woman showed off her four well-behaved sons and said these should be the work of a noble and honorable woman, and she should swell with pride and boast of them (Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women_ 241.9). We observe, in passing, the competitive nature of the Spartan's retort.\n\nThat Spartan women were taught to speak and were encouraged to do so distinguishes them from Spartan men, who did not debate in law courts or in their General Assembly, and from Athenians and other Greek women, who were expected to remain silent and by no means to speak to men. In the _Oeconomicus_ , Xenophon describes a young wife who was brought up so that she might see and hear and speak as little as possible.Having an enlightened view of marriage, her husband describes how he taught his wife to converse with him. More than five hundred years later, Plutarch cautions: \"the words of a modest woman must never be public property. She should be shy with her speech as with her body, and guard it against strangers, Feelings, character, and disposition can all be seen in a woman's talk. . . . A wife should speak only to her husband or through her husband.\"\n\n### Status, Autonomy, and Moral Authority\n\nAccording to several criteria that may be applied to assess the status of women, Spartans were distinctive.\n\n### _Health_\n\nSpartans must have been among the healthiest of Greek women. There are no reports that they suffered infanticide, as did some male babies. We have seen that a baby girl who was distressingly ugly or even malformed was reared. The nutrition of Spartan women was superior and their reproductive health was a matter of public concern. Prohibition of the use of cosmetics eliminated exposure to toxic substances. Marriage at a mature age produced healthy children for healthy mothers.\n\n### _Education_\n\nConsistent with the concern for women's health, of all Greek women only Spartans were given physical training as were men. They also studied _mousike_ (music, dancing, poetry).\n\n### _Sexual Expression_\n\nThe nudity of girls for athletics had sexual consequences, and girls and women alike were free to engage in homosexual relationships. Xenophon and Plutarch depict heterosexual intercourse as also desirable and pleasurable for both partners, and declare that constraints on the frequency of intercourse are beneficial for husband and wife alike.\n\n### _Control over Reproduction_\n\nWomen exercised some control over their own reproduction. According to Plutarch, Timaea thought she knew whether her child was fathered by her lover Alcibiades or by her husband. According to Xenophon, women took the initiative in husband-doubling arrangements for the sake of producing children who would inherit from more than one father. According to Cicero, Spartan women were in charge of their own fertility.\n\n### _Control over Property_\n\nProperty at Sparta was real property. It is impossible to discuss the Spartan economy and to exclude women. Women controlled real property including immovables, for Xenophon declares unambiguously that the wife who duplicates husbands wants to get possession of two oikoi ( _gynaikes . . . boulontai katechein_ ). By the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, some of the wealthiest Spartans were women.\n\n### _Influence in Society_\n\nSpartan women are rarely depicted as passive. Plutarch reports marriage by capture, but this ritual was an enactment of a previous arrangement and came as no surprise to the bride. She was carefully prepared ahead of time. In his description of the wedding, Xenophon draws attention to the wife as an active partner. The phrase _epei . . . gyne elthoi_ (\"after the woman goes\": _Lac. Pol._ 1.5) appears in his first sentence about marriage. In contrast, in descriptions of the marriage ceremony in Athens, where the father or guardian gives the bride to the groom, who takes her, the verb commonly used is _lambano_ (take, seize). Furthermore, as we have noted, Xenophon mentions the personal ambitions of the woman who wants to control two oikoi.\n\nWomen also understood and enforced societal norms. They not only spoke, but jeered at cowards and bachelors. In some cases they wielded the power of life and death over their adult sons. Women also tested newborn male babies, and female babies were simply turned over to them. Though we cannot generalize from the activities of priestesses, some of them regulated the behavior of men. At least by the Hellenistic period, the Priestess of Orthia controlled the intensity with which the boys were whipped, especially when she saw that a man wielding the whip was showing favor to a particular boy. Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ give many examples of women's leadership and control over men throughout Spartan history.\n\nBecause of their influence and authority in society as a whole, to study Spartan women is not only to learn women's history, but also to have a more complete knowledge of Spartan history.\n\n* * *\n\n. E.g., Jonathan Hall, _Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity_ (Cambridge, 1997), and J.-P.Vernant, \"Entre la honte et la gloire: L'identit\u00e9 du jeune spartiate,\" _M\u00e9tis_ 2 (1987) 269\u201399, repr. in _L'individu, la mort, l'amour_ (Paris, 1989), 173\u2013209, the latter a study of the development of self-identity in the young Spartan male, and see Preface n. 5, above.\n\n. He was also called Lysanoridas. See Theopompus in Athen. 13.609b = _FGrH_ 115 F 240.\n\n. Hermippus of Smyrna = Athen. 13.555b\u2013c = _FGrH_ IV.3 1026 F 6 = fr. 87 (Wehrli). C. Meillier, \"Une coutume hi\u00e9rogamique \u00e0 Sparte?\" _REG_ 97 (1984), 381\u2013402, esp. 388\u201389, suggests that this story was invented to discredit Lysander. See further chap. 2 n.32.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), 306.\n\n. _PMGF_ 5, fr. 2, col. ii.17\u201318. For other interpretations of these fragmentary lines, see M. L. West,\"Alcmanica,\" _CQ_ 15 (1965), 188\u2013202, esp. 189\u201390.\n\n. Athen. 13.566a\u2013b; Theophrastus in Plut. _Ages._ 2.3, _De educ. puer._ 1d.\n\n. Robert Parker, \"Spartan Religion,\" in _Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success_ , ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1988), 142\u201372, esp. 151.\n\n. Thus N. R. E. Fisher,\"Drink,Hybris and the Promotion of Harmony in Sparta,\" in _Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success_ , ed. A. Powell (Norman, Okla., 1988), 26\u201350, esp. 29\u201330.\n\n. For Spartan temperance: Critias fr. 6 (Diels-Kranz) = Athen. 10.432d, and Plut. _Lyc._ 12.7.\n\n. _LSJ_ s.v.Doriazo.\n\n. Herod. 5.87. On the fictitous nature of this aetiology, which emphasizes the cruelty of Athenian women, see Thomas J. Figueira,\"Herodotus on the Early Hostilities Between Aegina and Athens,\" _AJP_ 106 (1985), 49\u201374, esp. 50, 56\u201357 = _Excursions in Epichoric History: Aeginetan Essays_ (Lanham,Md., 1999), 35\u201360, esp. 36, 41\u201342.\n\n. See further I. Jenkins,\"Dressed to Kill,\" _Omnibus_ 5 (1983), 29\u201332.\n\n. Dawkins, _AO_ , 382\u201383 and pl. CCII. Dawkins published another bronze fibula in \"Artemis Orthia: Some Additions and a Correction,\" _JHS_ 50 (1930), 298\u201399 and pl. XI.1.\n\n. Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women_ = _Mor_. 240e5; cf. Plut. _Lyc._ 14, and _Sayings of Spartans_ , 7e13.\n\n. See chap. 1.\n\n. Xen. _Oec_. 7.6, 10, and see further Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus_ , ad loc. Laura McClure, _Spoken like a Woman_ (Princeton,1999), 164\u201368, discusses the negative reflections of Spartan's women's outspokenness in Athenian literature and in Aristotle.\n\n. _Advice to the Bride and Groom_ , 31\u201332, and see further Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ (New York, 1999), 38, 41, 42, 53, 104, 106, 119\u201320, 126, 151, 160.\n\n. On the ekdosis in the Greek world, see most recently A.-M.V\u00e9rilhac and C. Vial, _Le mariage grec du VIe si\u00e8cle av. J.-C. \u00e0 l'epoque d'Auguste_ , _BCH_ suppl. 32 (Paris, 1998), 254\u201358.\n\n## APPENDIX\n\n## SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF SPARTAN WOMEN\n\nIn this survey I will discuss important works of literature and material remains that shed light on Spartan women. My purpose is not to include everything that could be said about a specific author or work of art, nor to raise formal literary, philological, or esthetic questions, but rather to focus on the ways in which the work in question can be exploited in the quest for the history of Spartan women. I will also try to draw attention to the limitations of the genre of the work, the bias of the author or craftsman, and the potential problems of modern interpretation. The amount of space devoted to the various sources discussed in this chapter is commensurate with their importance in constructing the history of Spartan women, rather than their general place in the hierarchy of great works of classical literature and art. Nor will this survey be exhaustive: not every primary source cited in the book will be discussed in this chapter. The sources will be examined, as far as possible, in chronological order: first, written texts; second, art and archaeological evidence. The sources range in date from the archaic through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The chronological picture, however, is not straightforward, because some of the literature was performed again and the artifacts reused many years after their creation. The record is uneven, with certain kinds of evidence plentiful in one period, but rare or absent in another. The Spartans were xenophobic and did not use precious metals (at least openly) from the late archaic period until about the fourth century B.C.E. Consequently, for a long period in their history they could not pay foreign poets or artisans for their work, and there is a dearth of artistic material from this time. Furthermore, although statistical corroboration is lacking, the number of inscriptions dealing with women from the Roman period seems disproportionate to the size of the population. As is true for major archaeological monuments, the remains of inscriptions from the Roman period are more likely to have survived than earlier artifacts.\n\nWRITTEN SOURCES\n\nAlmost all our major sources on Spartan women are the work of authors who were not Spartans, and who lived much later than the time periods they discuss. With the exception of a few poems by Alcman, Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , and some brief inscriptions, none of the works focus on women; rather remarks about women usually constitute a small fraction of a text devoted to another subject. Furthermore, there are few inscriptions concerning private matters in pre-Hellenistic Sparta, for, in addition to the kings, only men who had died in battle, or women who had died in childbirth were permitted to have inscribed epitaphs (see chap. 3). Most important, in Sparta there are no counterparts to the private orations that supply so much information about Athenian women and gender relationships. The orations are also a crucial source for Athenian law. In contrast, Spartan law and any debate over it were not written down, though there are occasional remarks scattered in other sources. For example, Herodotus (6.57.4\u20135) reports that the kings had jurisdiction over the marriage of an heiress; Philo ( _De spec. leg._ 3.4.22) supplies the odd bit of information that at Sparta children by the same mother were permitted to marry, while at Athens only children by the same father could do so; and Aelian in _Various Histories_ lists customs and laws including those relieving fathers of three or more children from various taxes and obligations (6.6 and see chap. 3). Xenophon's _Spartan Constitution_ 2 and Plutarch's _Life of Lycurgus_ give substantial accounts of the legislation attributed to Lycurgus. The use of such sources for legal history, however, poses many problems. Most of this information is reported without chronological reference. Aelian neglects to state when some of the practices he records were in force. Thus Aelian (6.6) and other sources tell us that women married without dowries, while different sources report that they had dowries and often quite large ones (see chap. 4). Even Xenophon ( _Lac. Pol._ 14.1) is uncertain whether the laws of Lycurgus were unchanged in his own day. Nevertheless, scholars have deduced some features of Spartan law. Analogies with the laws of Gortyn, in Crete, a Dorian polis whose laws are extant in a lengthy inscription written in the fifth century, but recording archaic law, have been useful.Women at Gortyn could inherit, control, and bequeath property. Laws governing real property and inheritance have also been inferred from descriptions of results: thus Aristotle's information on heiresses and land tenure has been used to determine women's economic position (see chap. 4). As is the case in general for Greek history, almost all our evidence concerns the upper class: little is known about female perioeci or helots (but see chap. 5). In any case, because the upper-class (Spartiates) constituted a ruling aristocracy, they were not a mere political minority as they would be in a democratic city.\n\n### _How Unique Was Sparta?_\n\nAlmost all extant ancient literature about Spartan women was written by non-Spartans who never lived in or even visited Sparta. The Greeks tended to organize their thoughts in polarized categories; for example, Greek\/barbarian, male\/female, and Athenian\/Spartan. This way of thinking exaggerated differences between the categories being compared. As a consequence, differences between Spartan and Athenian women were emphasized. Following ancient precedent, throughout this book, where relevant, I too have compared Spartan women to Athenian. It must be admitted that two highly unusual Greek cities are being compared: neither one might be described \"average\" or \"ordinary.\" This comparison, however, is the only one possible, for we do not have abundant information on women in other Greek cities from the archaic through the Roman periods. For these reasons, the works of Alcman, Xenophon, and Plutarch are particularly important. Alcman may have been a Spartan. Certainly he was able to write the Doric dialect. According to another tradition, he was born in Lydia, perhaps as a slave, and came to work in Sparta. This tradition links him by birth with the luxuries of Lydia. In either case, he was certainly familiar with Spartan society, and the state authorized him to be one of its most influential poets. Xenophon, as well, lived in Sparta. Plutarch visited Sparta, but, of course, as an antiquarian, not as a direct observer of the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic society that interested him.\n\n### _Women's Voices_\n\nAll the extant literature about Sparta was written by men. Nevertheless, unlike Athenian women, whose voices were silenced, Spartans may perhaps be heard through several literary sources. For example, in the poetry of Alcman, girls who are named make statements about their current situation (see below). They are not dramatizing a myth, but rather talking about themselves and other girls like them. It would have seemed most peculiar to the speakers as well as to any observer if what they said was completely unnatural or unlike statements that could be made in such a situation. Another text where a woman's voice may be heard is the epigram composed in honor of Cynisca's chariot victories (see chap. 1).Cynisca is depicted as speaking in the first person. If she did not write the epigram herself, she may well have commissioned the poet and given orders about the content. A final source for women's words is Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women._ Spartan women were anything but laconic (see chap. 1).Moreover, they were not separated from their mothers and grandmothers, for they married men from their own polis. It is quite conceivable that through the oral tradition they passed down the _bons mots_ of their female ancestors. Furthermore, male descen-dents as well could have remembered the pithy statements of their mothers and grandmothers. The _Sayings_ show the wit, grace, and brevity characteristic of the Spartan style ( _Lyc._ 19.2, 21.1). Even in the modern world, where people often live in places remote from those of their ancestors, such oral traditions constitute a vital part of family histories. Thus it is quite credible that eventually some Hellenistic anthologizer compiled a collection of actual words once uttered by Spartan women and that Plutarch used this work as his source. That the statements are quoted out of their original context enhances their exaggerated and dramatic qualities.\n\n### Archaic\n\n_Alcman_ lived in Sparta in the archaic period, probably after the Second Messenian War, but before the ensuing militaristic reforms had profoundly transformed society. As we have mentioned above, his origin and exact dates are disputed. He was variously said to be Laconian and the descendant of slaves, or Lydian. Textual evidence points to the late seventh century.Archaeological evidence indicates that he died no later than 570. His tomb was near Helen's in Platanistas. Whether an autobiographical interpretation of Alcman's oeuvre is appropriate has been debated. Be that as it may, even if the poems may not provide completely reliable testimony about the life of the poet, nevertheless they constitute some of the most valuable evidence for the lives of Spartan women.\n\nChoral songs like those of Alcman were passed down through the generations at Sparta and probably elsewhere, forming a stable element in the educational curriculum. In 370\/369, after the battle of Leuctra, the victors asked the helots to sing songs of Terpander, Alcman, and Spendon (Plut. _Lyc._ 28.5). They refused, not because as helots in the fourth century they did not know these songs, but on the grounds that if they sang them they would anger their Spartan masters. Athenaeus (14.632f\u2013633a), who lived in the late second or early third century C.E., reports that even in his day the Spartans took painstaking care of their ancient songs and were well taught in them. The fragmentary nature of the poems of Alcman that are now extant is due to several reasons in addition to the obvious one that they were written more than 2,500 years ago. First, many brief quotations were preserved only in the works of later authors, especially grammarians and compilers of anecdotes such as Athenaeus. The grammarians were primarily interested in the unusual Doric dialect and in the use of meters, and do not always quote a full sentence or thought. These tantalizing tidbits of Alcman were all that were known to the modern world until the great papyrological discoveries of the nineteenth century. _Partheneion_ 1, the oldest long fragment of archaic Greek lyric poetry, happens to be preserved because in the first century C.E. someone made a copy of the text on papyrus. Sometime later the manuscript probably became worn, bits of papyrus flaked off, and its owner or his or her heirs discarded it. The papyrus was then reused to wrap a crocodile mummy. In the course of excavating at Saqqara, the Egyptologist Auguste F. F. Mariette discovered the mummy and sent the papyrus to Paris, where it is now stored in the Louvre. The first edition was edited by the Greek scholar \u00c9mile Egger in 1863. The papyrus must have belonged at first and some time later to a scholar or student. It includes a large number of marginal comments (scholia); most of these are in the same handwriting as the text. This papyrus provides a glimpse of a long tradition of scholarship on the text of Alcman. Some of the most erudite explanations are attributed to the great text editors of the third and second centuries, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, who worked in the library established by Ptolemy I and II in Alexandria. These scholia attempt to explicate the text, and usually include citations to other ancient authors and scholars. Their existence does not indicate that Alcman's poetry was more obscure and difficult than other archaic lyrics, but rather that the Alexandrians had deemed his work, like that of many archaic and classical authors, worthy of painstaking editorial attention.\n\nPapyri published in the twentieth century have brought to light additional fragments of Alcman's poetry. Among these, most significant for the history of women is _Partheneion_ 3, first published in 1957. The fragmentary text of this poem was discovered on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus dated to the second century C.E. Like the Louvre papyrus, the Oxyrhynchus text has scholia written in the margins, as is apparent in the upper left corner of the fragment illustrated in fig. 9. Translations of _Partheneia_ 1 and 3 are printed in chapter 1, pages 6\u20137.\n\nFig. 9. Alcman, _Partheneion_ 3, fr. 3 ( _P.Oxy_. xxiv.2387).\n\nPhoto courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.\n\n_Performance and Preservation of Alcman_. The poems contain highly specific references to girls who are named and whose appearance, emotions, behavior, and effect upon other girls are described. Consequently, scholars have debated whether each poem was composed to be sung by identifiable girls at a particular occasion or whether the _Partheneia_ were originally composed to be performed repeatedly at ritual occasions. The two hypotheses are not exclusive. The poems could have been composed to be sung by the girls who are named and described the first time, and then, because of their sheer excellence as well as the lack of subsequent poetic composition, repeatedly performed at rituals by other girls who played the roles of their predecessors. Because of their use in ritual and Sparta's general conservatism, the poems will not have been changed or updated. In other words, the poems could have been an accurate reflection of erotic feelings and behavior in the days of Alcman, and have become more of a theatrical reenactment in later times. Another possibility is that they were originally written for performers who impersonated the characters named. A corollary to this theory is that Hagesichora and Agido were simply generic names for choir leaders, and that the rest of the girls were fictitious as well. This theory seems less plausible to me because of the specificity of the descriptions of the individual girls and the fact that some of the names are real names and recur in Spartan prosopography.\n\nThe poet gained circulation for his poetry by travelling to populated areas including pan-Hellenic sanctuaries and festivals. He claimed that his work was known far and wide (Ael.Arist. _Or._ 28.54 [II.159 Keil] = _PMGF_ 148 [i]). Although this Appendix is not the place to discuss the complex issues concerning the preservation of archaic poetry through oral and written traditions, it seems likely that Alcman's poetry circulated by both means.\n\nThere is evidence for the performance of Alcman's poems more than a hundred years after his lifetime. The circumstances of the performance may have changed over time. Originally the _Partheneia_ may have been performed before an audience comprised mostly of women, with the poet and perhaps a few officials as the only men present. In later times, when the poems had become part of Sparta's great heritage, men as well may have been welcome to witness the performances. It has been suggested that terracotta masks from the sanctuary of Ortheia beginning in the second half of the seventh century were used for enactments of _Partheneion_ 1 as a ritual marriage. Gold and silver were outlawed in Sparta, evidently some time after Alcman composed _Parthenion_ 1 in which they are mentioned. If the performers in later times were actually wearing the luxurious apparel described in the poem, it must have been part of a costume, distributed solely on the occasions of the performance and then returned to storage until the next performance.\n\n_Herodotus_ of Halicarnassus was born a little before the Persian War and lived until the Peloponnesian War. He wrote the history of the Persian War, with many digressions. Spartan women are mentioned in the tales about Helen; in some of the descriptions of the royal succession (e.g., 5.39: the two wives of Anaxandrides; 6.61\u201366: Ariston's three wives and the parentage of Demaratus), the judicial duties of the kings, and in a variety of anecdotes. Herodotus imparts this information straightforwardly, without approval or criticism. Scholars differ greatly in their assessment of the historical veracity of Herodotus. In my view, not all anecdotes are necessarily false. The fact that Herodotus heard stories like those about Gorgo suggests that there was at least a kernel of historical truth behind them. From Herodotus' various brief remarks, it can be surmised that the ideal Spartan woman was clever, witty, tall, and beautiful. (See esp. chap. 1 and Conclusion.)\n\n### Classical\n\n### _Dramatic Poetry_\n\nIn Athenian drama, Spartans may play the role of \"Other\" to the Athenians: they fill the conceptual space usually occupied by barbarians, and provoke questions about the assumed superiority of Greeks over barbarians. Female characters are used to exaggerate the distinctiveness of both ways of life. Thus in Euripides, _Andromache_ (e.g., 29, 194, 889), Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus, is often referred to as a \"Laconian\" or \"Spartan\" woman, and herself criticizes Spartans as deceivers (445\u201353).\n\nTragic and comic dramatists alike draw attention to the semi-nudity and the physical development that was connected with the education of Spartan women. The Spartans were xenophobic in the fifth century and no Athenian poet is likely to have ever seen a Spartan woman. Perhaps the rumors spread when an embassy came from Athens, or when some ambassador from Corinth, for example, traveled to Sparta for a meeting of the Peloponnesian League and drove his chariot past a group of women exercising out of doors. Works of art that circulated beyond the frontiers of Laconia, including mass-produced bronze figurines in the shape of Spartan female athletes, and some vases that showed women engaged in activities that may have seemed scandalous (see below), probably also inspired ideas that foreigners held about Spartan women.\n\nEuripides' portrait of Hermione as vicious and self-centered in _Andromache_ , produced in the early years of the Peloponnesian War (427\u2013426 B.C.E.), reflects the anti-Spartan bias of contemporary Athens:\n\nNo Spartan girl could ever be modest even if she wanted to be,\n\nThey go outside their houses with the boys with naked thighs and open dresses\n\nand they race and wrestle with the boys. Insufferable!\n\nIt's not surprising that you don't train women to be chaste.\n\n( _Andromache,_ 595\u2013601)\n\nSimilarly Sophocles:\n\nAnd that young woman, whose tunic is still unbelted\n\naround her thigh, revealingly.\n\n(fr. 872 Lloyd-Jones)\n\nSophocles also wrote a tragedy titled _Lakainai_ (\"Laconian Women,\" frs. 367\u201368 Lloyd-Jones).\n\nIn contrast to Euripides and Sophocles, Aristophanes in _Lysistrata_ (411 B.C.E.), also produced during the Peloponnesian War, portrays his representative Spartan woman favorably, for such a portrayal suits his story of reconciliation. Lampito is physically fit, and confident in her ability to carry out the sex strike. Aristophanes' plays are the only complete comedies from the classical period now extant. Spartan women occur in other Athenian comedies in brief fragments or mere titles. Eupolis, a contemporary of Aristophanes,wrote a play titled _Heilotes_ (\"Helots\") in which he mocks them as lascivious (fr. 148, see also 385 Kassel-Austin). He also wrote a comedy titled _Spartans_ or _Leda_ (frs.60\u201362Kassel-Austin). The tradition continued in Middle and New Comedy. Alexis (ca. 372\u2013270) wrote four comedies based on myths about Helen (frs. 70\u201376) and Apollodorus Carystius (third century) or Apollodorus Gelous (fourth or third century) wrote a _Lakaina_ (\"The Spartan Woman,\" Kassel-Austin II.508\u20139, frs. 7, 8).\n\n### _Prose_\n\n_Critias_ , an Athenian aristocrat related to Plato, lived ca. 460\u2013403 and was one of the most ruthless of the Thirty Tyrants who ruled Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War with the backing of the Spartans. He wrote poetry and prose, including a treatise on the Spartan Constitution. This work, known only through a few fragments, began with the statement:\"I start, as you see, from a man's birth. How might he become physically best and strongest? [He could,] if the man who plants his seed would exercise and eat wholesome food and harden his body, and if the mother of the child-to-be would strengthen her body and exercise.\" Critias was an associate of Socrates and a Sophist. Plato and Xenophon probably read his work, and Xenophon may have been influenced by Critias' views about the importance of the mother.\n\n_Plato_ lived ca. 429\u2013347, a turbulent period in Athenian history. Sparta had defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, and the restored democracy at Athens condemned Socrates to death. Like other disciples of Socrates, he found much to admire in Spartan society. His utopian works, especially the _Republic_ and _Laws,_ prescribe features of women's life that in many cases correspond to the Spartan reality, or at least to the Spartan ideal. In the _Republic_ these include, for example, a full program of education for women administered by the state; physical exercise; late marriage; prohibition of money and private property (hence of dowries); wife-sharing; and marriage \"lotteries.\" The _Laws_ are less radical: Spartan lawgivers are criticized for permitting women (who are half the society) to indulge in a luxurious, expensive, and disorderly way of life ( _Laws_ 7.806C). It is perhaps more accurate to state that Plato is not so much a source for Spartan women; rather, Spartan women were an inspiration for Plato's ideas about the roles of women in utopia.\n\n_Xenophon_ ,who lived ca. 430\u2013356, was Plato's contemporary and a student of Socrates as well. His _Spartan Constitution_ ( _Lacedaimonion Politeia_ ) is our best source on Spartan women in the classical period.Xenophon spent twenty years on an estate granted to him by the Spartans near Elis. His sons were probably educated in the agoge, for in the fourth century this education was made available to a few youths who were not full-fledged Spartan citizens. Thus he writes about Sparta from the unique perspective of a first-hand witness. Xenophon admired some aspects of Spartan society, though he was critical of others. When he wrote the _Spartan Constitution_ is unclear. Most recently it has been dated to after 371. According to an alternative theory, if the treatise was written earlier, chapter 14, in which he laments the abandonment of the way of life established by Lycurgus, may have been written later than the rest of the work. There is a contemporaneous parallel to Xenophon's change in attitude. We may compare Plato's optimism about the Spartan way of life that may be detected in the _Republic_ with the disillusionment he expresses in the _Laws_ (see above) _._ In any case, the viewpoint of Xenophon, like that of any writer, should be considered a lens through which we view his narrative. Nor did Xenophon come to Sparta as a _tabula rasa._ His ideas about Spartan women were doubtless shaped by prior influences and experiences. To start with the most obvious: he would have been in the audience at the production of _Lysistrata_ and have seen the robust and aggressive Lampito, so different from the Athenian women whom he knew. He also will have seen tragedies in which mythological Spartan women were portrayed in an unfavorable light (see above). In Athens he will have known the bright young Laconizers of his day in a group associated with Socrates, and may have read what Critias wrote about women in his treatise on Sparta. Furthermore, he will have learned much about Spartan society from Clearchus, Cheirisophus, Agesilaus, and the numerous Spartans who were engaged with him in military service in Asia over the years. It is universally acknowledged that soldiers gossip about sex and women.\n\nXenophon gives the theme of the _Spartan Constitution_ in his opening sentence, by asking how it is possible for Sparta to be the most powerful and renowned of the Greek poleis when it has such a small population ( _oliganthro-potaton_ a translation of this passage is given in [chap. 3]). He goes on to answer this rhetorical question. In brief, according to Xenophon, Lycurgus had designed social, political, and military institutions that created superb hoplites. As we have mentioned above, he states that he does not know whether the laws of Lycurgus were still unchanged in his day, because they were often disobeyed; nevertheless he describes them.\n\nFollowing a brief eulogy of Lycurgus, Xenophon resumes his discussion of reproduction with a detailed description of the rearing of girls. That Xenophon begins the _Spartan Constitution_ with the upbringing of girls underlines his view of the importance of women in Spartan society.\n\nStating that he is beginning at the _arche_ (beginning), Xenophon highlights women's role in child production. He points out that only in Sparta were girls well fed and given undiluted wine. In fact, women had easy access to quantities of wine, for they used it in bathing newborns. Xenophon criticizes the rest of the Greeks for not providing adequate nourishment for girls who are destined to become mothers of citizens. Xenophon approves of the generous food allocation of Spartan girls. As he stated in the _Oeconomicus_ (10.11), if a woman exercises she will have a better appetite and a vibrant complexion. Comparisons between Spartan women and women elsewhere in Greece may well have fostered Xenophon's admiration of Sparta.\n\n_Ephorus_ of Cyme (ca. 405\u2013330, _FGrH_ II.70) read works by the Spartans Pausanias and Lysander. Though Ephorus is extant only in fragments, he was the main source for Diodorus, who wrote in the last quarter of the first century B.C.E. Diodorus (11.45, 12.74) probably found his stories about the mothers of Pausanias (the traitor) and Brasidas in Ephorus.\n\n_Aristotle_ lived from 384 to 322 B.C.E. Although he was born at Stagira in the Chalcidice, he spent much of his life studying and teaching in Athens and adopted the Athenian model as the standard against which he measured Greek family life and gender relations. Aristotle doubtless discussed women in his treatise _The Constitution of the Spartans_ which is no longer extant. That Aristotle disapproved of the Spartan way of life is apparent from passages in other works. In the _Politics_ (1333b5), he criticizes other authors including a certain Thibron, a Spartan who had written in the first quarter of the fourth century in praise of the Lycurgan system. Of course, Thibron wrote just after his polis had won the Peloponnesian War, and Aristotle wrote after the defeat at Leuctra. A lengthy critique of gender relations at Sparta appears in the _Politics_ (1269b\u20131270a6 a translation of this passage is given in [chap. 4]). Aristotle believed that the basic oikos (family, household, estate) consisted of an adult male, who played the roles of husband, master, and father; an adult female, who played the role of wife and mother; a child; and a slave. The master of the house was the dominant figure in all his three relationships. This hierarchy existed by nature and any perversion of it was monstrous. That Spartan women enjoyed authority in the oikos and owned and managed property appeared to him outrageous. He echoes Plato in the _Laws_ (7.806C, see above) when he angrily declares that the women indulged in all sorts of luxury and licentiousness ( _Pol._ 1270a1: _anesis_ , see also Arist. _Rhet._ 1361a) because they would not accept the laws Lycurgus had designed for them and he decided not to continue the attempt _._ Plutarch ( _Lyc._ 9), however, rejected Aristotle's view (see below).\n\n### Hellenistic\n\nWith the important exception of Polybius, all the Hellenistic historians surveyed below are extant not in complete or nearly complete works, but only through one or at most a few fragments cited by later authors, chiefly Plutarch.\n\n_Phylarchus_ of Athens (?) lived in the third century B.C.E. and gives the history of Sparta from the death of Pyrrhus (272) to the death of Cleomenes III (220\/219). He admired Agis and Cleomenes and dramatizes the importance of women in furthering their revolutionary program. Phylarchus was a principle source for Plutarch's _Lives_ of Agis, Cleomenes, and Pyrrhus, and for his favorable desciptions in these _Lives_ of the behavior of royal women including Archidamia, Agesistrata,Agiatis, Chilonis, Cratesicleia,and Cratesicleia's companion, the wife of Panteus, whose name Plutarch does not report. All the women, even Chilonis, wife of Cleonymus, who fell in love with her stepson Acrotatus, are presented favorably. Phylarchus was also Plutarch's source for his description of the bravery of Spartan women when Pyrrhus besieged Sparta (Plut. _Pyrr._ 27\u201330). In the Hellenistic period, the exaltation of heroines was a feature of the history of other ethnic groups as well. For example, among the Ptolemies, Arsino\u00eb II (ca. 316\u2013270) and Berenice II (ca. 273\u2013221), and among the Jews, Judith and Esther (fictitious heroines, though with some historical features), were prominent.\n\n_Sosibius_ of Lacedaemon, a historian, who worked in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II, wrote a treatise or commentary _On Alcman_ in at least three books, and other works about Sparta including _On the Sacrifices in Lacedaemon_ and _On Mimes in Laconia._\n\n_Teles_ ofMegara was a Cynic philosopher (fl. ca. 235 B.C.E.) whose work is preserved in fragments in Stobaeus. Some of Plutarch's _Sayings of Spartan Women_ echo Teles'anecdotes about Spartan mothers. Either Plutarch read Teles or they used a common source.\n\n_Polybius_ (ca. 200\u2013118 B.C.E.) was aristocratic and anti-Spartan. He attributes to the Spartans behavior including polyandry (12.6b.8) that other Greeks would consider bizarre. He is a hostile source for the reports about Nabis (d. 192 B.C.E.), his cruel wife Apega, and the iron maiden, and for the ways in which both Nabis and his wife humiliated women (13.6\u20137, 18.17, and see chap. 4).\n\n_Hellenistic Epigrams_ : Dioscorides, Nicander, Tymnes, and perhaps Asclepiades of Samos wrote epigrams about Spartan mothers that were later incorporated into Plutarch's, _Sayings of Spartan Women._ 40 Dioscorides commemorates a mother who lost eight sons in one battle, Nicander a mother of seven who lost six, and Tymnes a mother who slew her cowardly son.\n\n_Polycrates_ was probably Hellenistic, since he predated Didymus (fl. ca. 40 B.C.E.), who quotes him. Polycrates wrote a work titled _Lakonika_. One paragraph is extant: a vivid description of the Hyacinthia (see chaps. 1 and ).\n\n_Nicolaus of Damascus_ , who was born ca. 64 B.C.E., wrote an immense universal history in the Peripatetic encyclopedic style. He gives odd bits of information about Spartan women: for example, husbands compel their wives to have children by well-built Spartiates and foreigners. Yet, according to Xenophon, who must have have had more accurate knowledge than Nicolaus, women were not compelled, but rather were willing to bear children by Spartan men other than their husbands. Xenophon does not mention foreigners (see chap. 3).\n\n### Roman Period\n\n### _Greek Authors_\n\n_Plutarch_ lived 46\u2013ca. 120 C.E., when Greece was a province of the Roman Empire. He is the author of the largest portion of extant ancient writing on Spartan women and has also had more influence than any other ancient author in shaping ideas about Sparta held by later generations to the present.\n\nPlutarch's writing about Spartan women is concentrated in several of the _Lives_ and in one work of the _Moralia_ : the _Life of Lycurgus_ ; the _Lives_ of Agis and Cleomenes; and the _Sayings of Spartan Women_. There are also brief remarks scattered among his other works _._ The most important of these texts, the _Life of Lycurgus,_ was probably written between 97 and 110 C.E., nearly one thousand years after the date generally attributed to the legendary Spartan lawgiver. Plutarch visited Sparta and was an eyewitness at the whipping ceremonies held in honor of Artemis Orthia ( _Lyc._ 18.1); he reports that he saw many young men die. There, he also conducted research in the official Spartan archives which must have included records of oracles, official documents, victor lists, names of priests and magistrates, and the like. In the Roman period there were officials in charge of preserving and interpreting Lycurgan customs and laws. Some of the cult organizations kept their own records, and we can assume that, inspired by his profound interest in religion, Plutarch consulted these.\n\nPlutarch must also have had a huge library of his own as well as an excellent memory and in his writing on Spartan women, he cites many philosophers, poets, and ancient historians from the archaic through the Hellenistic period as his sources. These include Ibycus, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle. Although he does not repeat Xenophon's name explicitly in the context of his discussions of women, Plutarch's views are generally consistent with those of Xenophon. Like Xenophon, Plutarch was optimistic about the human potential for moral improvement, especially through education ( _Advice to the Bride and Groom_ , 145c). Both believed that virtue is the same in women and men. Both felt that the goal of human existence was to live the good life in a way that would prove beneficial to oneself, one's family, and one's state. Both thought that child production was not the only purpose of marriage. Plutarch ( _Comp. Lyc. Num._ 4.1) believed that Spartan marriage customs were conducive to a relationship characterized by goodwill rather than hatred. Moreover, he asserted that the educational system designed by Lycurgus was ennobling for women inasmuch as it gave them a share in the arena of virtue and ambition ( _Lyc._ 14.4). Plutarch appears somewhat ambivalent, if not self-contradictory, since he also prefers the Roman practice of marrying girls at twelve or younger, for it enabled the husband to mold the wife's character. Spartan marriage practices were better for child production, but Roman practices were better for marital harmony. Though in the _Life of Lycurgus_ (14) Plutarch seems to approve of the physical and moral educational program designed for women by Lycurgus and to reject Aristotle's critical analysis, in the _Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa_ (3.3\u20135) he declares that Spartan women were too bold and masculine and offered opportunities for poets to criticize them. He quotes Ibycus, Euripides, and Sophocles on the girls'uncovered thighs (see above). In any case, his views of women and marriage are not a direct reflection of gender relations as they existed in Roman Greece in his day, where women certainly enjoyed more authority and independence from men than readers confined to Plutarch's works would surmise. For example, he tells the story of the Spartan girl who was asked whether she made overtures to her husband, and replied,\"No, but he has come to me\"( _Advice to the Bride and Groom_ , 140c, _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 242c). Plutarch endorses the wife's reluctance to take the initiative, preferring her husband to make the advances. On the other hand, he does approve of the Spartan women who goad their men to virtuous and brave actions or who set a good example themselves when the men appear to waver. In fact, Plutarch's Greek heroines are good competition for some of Rome; for example, the mother and sister of Coriolanus (Livy 2.40) and Arria (Pliny the Younger, _Epistles_ , 3.16; Martial, _Epigrams_ , 1.13), whose Stoic deaths resembled those of Cratesicleia and Panteus' wife.\n\nPlutarch was not a historian; rather, he wrote philosophical and biographical works. Doubtless because Hellenistic writers were interested in women and personal details, in writing about Spartan women Plutarch refers most frequently to Hellenistic historians, some of whom have been mentioned in the survey above. Since Plutarch was not a historian, chronological precision is not a high priority for him (see Preface). Not only is he naive about the Spartan's reinvention of their own history, but he is also an active participant in the creation and perpetuation of the Spartan legend. The Sparta of Plutarch's day was a living museum, a theme park, in which some features of life in Sparta before Roman domination were revived or reenacted perhaps to the point of exaggeration or charicature. For example, Roman tourists accustomed to gladiatorial contests came to witness the spectacle of the boys enduring whipping until they met death. Whether such contests had ever been conducted with so much cruelty before the Hellenistic and Roman periods is questionable.\n\n_Pausanias_ wrote a guide to Greece in the second century C.E.Women are not prominent among his interests, though he gives some tantalizing bits of information. Thus he reports that the length of the stadion is shortened for girls who race at the Heraea, but does not say why or how this alteration is done. He does give some useful information on women, particularly on religious practices, on commemorative statues erected by or in honor of women, and historical and mythological anecdotes in which women are the protagonists. Thus he mentions that there is an island off the Peloponnese where Helen and Paris first had intercourse (3.22.1).Some women are remarkable for deeds usually performed by men. At Sparta, a statue of Artemisia stood along with images of Mardonius and other Persians in a stoa built with spoils from the Persian War (3.11.3).\n\n_Athenaeus_ of Naucratis (second\u2013third century C.E.) wrote a lengthy work, the _Sophists at Dinner_ , a pastiche of valuable earlier sources including Sosibius and Polycrates.\n\n### _Latin Authors_\n\nFor the history of women, the most significant aspect of the Spartan tradition or mirage in authors who wrote in Latin is the emphasis on patriotic, self-sacrificing mothers. This focus derives from the Roman interest in motherhood. Intellectuals and politicians were particularly concerned with the declining birthrate among the Roman elite. They blamed the \"new-style\"Roman matron for abandoning the traditional role of mother. Barbarian and non-Roman women were cited as exemplars. Thus the patriotic Spartan mothers of the past are mentioned in Ovid (43 B.C.E.\u201317? C.E.);Valerius Maximus (first century C.E.); Aelian (ca. 170\u2013235 C.E.); Sextus Empiricus, a Sceptic (end of the second century C.E.); Himerius of Prusa (fourth century C.E.); Palladas, a schoolteacher in Egypt (fifth century C.E.); and Julianus (sixth century C.E.), who writes of the armed Aphrodite who prompts Spartan mothers to bear brave warriors. There is little that is new in these anecdotes and quotations from Spartan mothers; for the most part they echo one another and Plutarch as well. Cicero (106\u201343 B.C.E.) also writes of the Spartan mother who nobly sent her son to his death for his country, but he is unique among these Latin authors in observing that the Spartan women of his own day were no longer so willing to bear children as their foremothers had been.\n\n### _Byzantine Dictionaries_\n\nMuch esoteric information about Spartan customs can be gleaned from explanations of unusual words in encyclopedic works by authors such as Pollux of Naucratis (second century C.E.), Hesychius of Alexandria (fifth century C.E.), and the collection called the _Suda_ (tenth century). These compilations, though valuable, pose special problems for the historian for there is generally only one citation for each word and it is given out of context. (See, e.g., Hesychius on _Brudalicha_ in chap. 6 n. 16).\n\n### Prosopographical Problems\n\nCompared with the names of Greek men, relatively few women's names are known. A reluctance to name respectable women, at least while they were alive, was a feature of Athenian etiquette. In Athens, however,women were named on their tombstones. In contrast, there are few inscriptions concerning family matters in pre-Hellenistic Sparta, for, in addition to the kings, only men who had died in battle or women who had died in childbirth were permitted to have inscribed epitaphs.\n\nIn Sparta, there was no stigma attached to giving women's names in public. Considering how few words are extant in all of Alcman's poetry combined, the oeuvre includes many names. One of the names in the _Partheneia_ appears in the work of an archaic poet outside Sparta. Mimnermus of Colophon and Smyrna had written a collection of elegies titled _Nanno,_ after his beloved (Hermesianax in Athen. XIII.597f, Strabo 14.1.28 [643]). For Damareta, compare Damatria in Plutarch, _Sayings of Spartan Women_ , 241.1, and in an epigram by Tymnes, who worked in the third century B.C.E. Astaphis was a name used also by a man ca. 428\u2013421.Arete, the name also of the Phaeacian queen in Homer's _Odyssey,_ reappears much later in the name of Pomponia Callistonice Arete.  Some of the names indicate that the girls were members of the royal houses. The prefix \"Ag\" that appears in the names of Agido and Hagesichora is common in royal nomenclature, and suggests that they were Agiads, related to one line of Spartan kings. Timasimbrota (5 fr. 2 col. ii, line 16) is perhaps descended from the Spartan king Leotychidas (ca. 625\u2013600).\n\nThe names of twelve women are inscribed on a rooftile from the second half of the third century B.C.E., perhaps in connection with the cult of Apollo and Hyacinthus at Amyclae. Nevertheless, we still have very few names of Spartan women, for most of the literary sources are non-Spartan. For example, Herodotus (5.39\u201341) speaks of the wives of Anaxandridas, but does not name them. Though Agesilaus was an old friend, Xenophon does not give the names of his wife and daughters. Xenophon's etiquette was that of an Athenian gentleman in the classical period: he was too polite to ask Agesilaus, or if he knew the names he was reluctant to publicize them. Plutarch ( _Ages_. 19.10) discovered the names. Xenophon does name Agesilaus' sister Cynisca ( _Ages_. 9.6), but she was notorious because of her horseracing (see chap. 1). Though he refers to them, Plutarch does not give the names of Lysander's daughters ( _Lys_. 2.5, 30.5).\n\nThe problem is exacerbated by the neglect of women by modern scholars. For example, before the publication of vol. 3A of _A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names_ ,on _The Peloponnese, Western Greece, Sicily, and Magna Graecia_ ,  the standard Spartan prosopographies  omitted some women, for example, Thylacis and Astumeloisa (Alcman, _Partheneia_ 1.72, 2.64), Argeia, wife of King Aristodemus, and Euonyma, Eirana, Callicrateia (dedicators to Athena), or listed them under the name of their father, although the primary source for the woman's name may not have given the patronymic.\n\nA related problem is the tendency of some scholars to interpret evidence in a narrow manner so as to eliminate any connection with women. A case in point is the Gymnopaideia (\"Festival of Nude Youths\"). The Greek word _paides_ can mean \"boys,\" or \"slaves,\" but it can also refer to children of both sexes. Those who understand the meaning of Gymnopaideia in the limited sense believe that only boys attended the festival; in contrast, those who take the word in an inclusive sense would have nude girls and boys at the festival together.\n\n### Secondary Sources\n\nA book that continues to exert a tremendous influence on Spartanologists is F. Ollier, _Le mirage spartiate_ , volume 1, _\u00c9tude sur l'id\u00e9alisation de Sparte dans l'an-tiquit\u00e9 grecque de l'origine jusqu'aux cyniques_ , and volume 2, _\u00c9tude sur l'id\u00e9alisa-tion de Sparte dans l'antiquit\u00e9 grecque du d\u00e9but de l'\u00e9cole cynique jusqu'\u00e0 la fin de la cit\u00e9_ (Paris, 1933\u201343).\n\nDespite their size and inclusiveness, however, the volumes offer little comment on women. Neverthless, it is illuminating to review the few categories in which Ollier distributes some ancient testimonia about women. Under \"la vraie Sparte,\" Ollier (vol. 1, 34\u201335) includes women's gymnastic program, their pride, and their influence in the public sphere. Under \"les forces adverses\" to the idealization, he (vol. 1, 64\u201367) mentions the scandalous sexual practices of men and women alike. In his analysis of Aristotle's views of Sparta's faults Ollier (vol. 1, 302\u20133) draws attention to an absence of governmental controls on women and to economic problems resulting from women's ownership of property. In volume 2, Ollier (50\u201351) detects Cynic influence in some of the quotations attributed to Spartan women. He argues (194\u201397, 210\u201315) that Plutarch does not idealize Sparta in all his works, but that he certainly does so in the _Life of Lycurgus._ Ollier points out (212) that in his idealization of Lycurgus and the simple, austere way life he designed for Sparta, Plutarch accepts features such as breaches in sexual monogamy that he does not sanction elsewhere in his writings. Ollier, however, unlike some more recent scholars, does not argue that such practices never existed or that reforms attributed to Lycurgus were actually innovations of the fourth century and Hellenistic period.\n\nIn 1979, Paul Cartledge published a solid historical survey of what were then regarded as facts: _Sparta and Lakonia_. Cartledge, writing much later with A. J. S. Spawforth, described the gradual degeneration of the Lycurgan polity and dated the \"normalization\"to the later fifth century.More recently, perhaps influenced by deconstruction and French literary theory, he has examined Sparta as a utopia, stating that \"practically all our detailed evidence for what they were 'really' like comes from within the mirage.\" The influence of Marxism and of M. I. Finley, who taught many ancient historians at Cambridge, has been in large part responsible for the popularity of the study of Spartan history through the lens of the mirage. Finley ignored women in his analyses of Greek economy, slavery, and citizenship. Thus it is no surprise that, as was customary among mainstream ancient historians until the end of the twentieth century, Cartledge did not devote much space to women in his books.\n\nThe most frequently cited and admired article on this subject, however, was published by Paul Cartledge in 1981. In this article, which is now referred to as a \"classic study,\" Cartledge gives priority to the testimony of Aristotle over that of Xenophon and Plutarch. Despite (what seems to the modern reader) his misogynistic perspective, Aristotle does emphasize Spartan women's control over property and over their husbands, and labels Sparta a \"gynaecocracy.\"Xenophon and Plutarch, in contrast, approve many features of the lives of Spartan women in comparison with the lives of women in other Greek states, but in this article Cartledge disdains the testimony of Xenophon and relegates Plutarch to the never-never land of utopia. Despite starting with Aristotle, Cartledge pictures Spartan women as \"passive\" victims who were exploited for purposes of reproduction. He does not fully recognize that Xenophon's report that the wives actively sought husband-doubling arrangements runs counter to his argument, for it indicates that wives employed their own childbearing strategies. He argues away women's ownership of property by stating that only a few elite women enjoyed this economic power, without making it clear that their brothers would be in similar straits. Cartledge also adopts a Victorian stance in questioning whether Spartan girls enjoyed homosexual relationships with older women. Cartledge concludes (105) that he hopes his readers \"hesitate before seeking to enlist the women of ancient Sparta as allies in the just cause of feminism.\" It is anachronistic to discuss Spartan women in terms of contemporary feminist criteria and goals, and these criteria and goals have been and are now multiple and diverse. Nevertheless, I venture to suggest that if Cartledge had compared Spartan women to other Greek women, and compared both to the men of their poleis, his conclusions concerning Spartan women would have been less pessimistic (see Conclusion, above).\n\nStephen Hodkinson generally retains the perspectives on the study of Sparta that were established by Finley and Cartledge. Whereas Cartledge treated Xenophon's works on Sparta with contempt, he was willing to accept some of Plutarch's reports. In contrast, Hodkinson regards Plutarch's information about archaic and classical Sparta with suspicion. He often blames Ephorus as the original source for what he regards as Plutarch's misrepresentations about the Spartan economy, and argues that the land tenure system that Plutarch attributes to archaic Sparta was actually a Hellenistic invention designed to promote the reforms of Agis and Cleomenes. Hodkinson does not explain why, if his hypothesis is true, the reformer kings (who had many opponents) were able to convince the Spartans themselves about the antiquity of their institutions. Although Hodkinson discusses women in much of his book, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ , he has not fully integrated them into his picture of Spartan society. For example, in the Introduction he writes of \"a political system . . . which gave the mass of citizens in assembly a formal role in decision-making\"(3);\"Rich citizens were able to employ their surplus wealth with potentially significant socio-political consequences: through horse-rearing and engagement in equestrian contests\" (5); and \"The perioikoi . . . were excluded from political decision-making which was reserved to the Spartiates alone\"(7 n. 5).Since Spartan women did engage in equestrian contests, but did not have a formal role in making political decisions Hodkinson's generalizations appear inconsistent and demonstrate that he tends to consider only male citizens, except in the parts of the book where he specifically talks about women.\n\nARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES\n\nArchaeological evidence has certainly been less influenced by the \"mirage\" and by interpretations from the perspective of the \"mirage\" than literary evidence, but it is not completely free of this bias. In any case, Sparta has not received the attention lavished on Athens and other sites that are generously endowed with artistic monuments. Not only does Sparta boast few temples and public buildings predating the Roman period (cf.Thuc. 1.10), but owing in part to the much-vaunted Spartan austerity, archaeological evidence for private life is sparse. Spartans may have owned some valuables, but the ethic prevailing at least to the end of fifth century discouraged and even forbade display.Athenaeus (14.633a) actually uses the word _austeria_ to describe life at Sparta. Because death was not commemorated by monuments before the Hellenistic period, there are no counterparts to the funerary reliefs that portray women in other parts of the Greek world. Only in the second century B.C.E., following the defeat at Sellasia (222) and the reforms of Nabis (207\u2013192), do the Spartans begin to use the same reliefs as those found in the rest of the Greek world. Building projects in the Hellenistic and Roman period also contributed to the disturbance and destruction of earlier remains. Numismatics also provides insights into the symbolic qualities and status of queens, goddesses, and female allegorical and mythical figures in Greece. The Spartans, however, did not mint their own currency until 280 B.C.E. Furthermore, since the modern city of Sparta not only sits on top of the ancient city but also is not located in a densely populated area of Greece, archaeological finds have not come to the surface serendipitously as the result of excavations for subways or the laying of foundations of buildings.\n\nIn terms of women's history, the most important finds have been at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where the British School at Athens conducted extensive excavations for five years beginning in 1906. Thousands of lead figurines, including many depicting adult women wearing nicely woven dresses, as well as pendants with a variety of incised patterns representing weaving, have been found. Interesting material, in some cases related to the finds at the Orthia sanctuary, has also been discovered at the sanctuary of Helen and Menelaus called the \"Menelaion\" (see chap. 6). The finds have been published gradually but systematically in the _Annual of the British School at Athens_.The final synthetic report on the Orthia sanctuary was published by R. M. Dawkins and others in a single volume: _The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta_. Since this major excavation nearly a century ago, little new archaeological evidence directly relevant to women's history has been published. Brief mentions of some dedications by women at the Menelaion constitute a minor exception. Field surveys may produce some evidence for the lives of perioecic and helot women, but these women are doubly silenced in history as members of subordinate groups and as women.\n\nSecondary scholarship in the field of archaeology has been devoted principally to the pottery, bronzes, and inscriptions from Laconia. While there are several catalogues of the pottery, the rest of the material has usually been treated in articles; see, for example, the bibliographies to the articles on \"Sparta\", \"Spartan Cults,\" and the \"Menelaion,\" in the third edition of the _Oxford Classical Dictionary_. Some of the material remains, notably the bronze mirrors, support the evidence of the written sources. In contrast, a few depictions of women on pottery give evidence not supplied from the written sources, while others clarify the texts (see chap. 6,fig.6). It must be admitted that the iconographical evidence alone is more difficult for the modern scholar to decipher than the written evidence (which is not without problems: see above). The figures depicted in Laconian sculpture and vase painting are not labelled: rather scholars must deduce their identity. Representations of nudity and sexual activity pose problems of interpretation. In archaic and classical Athenian art, a woman playing a flute or reclining with men at a symposium would not be judged to be a respectable citizen. A scene of an orgy that includes satyr-like creatures and phalloi would be assumed to be connected to the cult of Dionysus, certainly not that of Artemis. The same scenes need not have the same implications in Laconian art. Furthermore the women or men who beheld or used these objects in antiquity may have reacted to them intellectually and emotionally in ways totally different from our own. Ancient sentiments doubtless changed as the objects were reused over time. Places of manufacture and find spots varied as well: the reactions of the craftsmen and of the users in different localities varied accordingly. There is no point in speculating about women artists in Sparta. By the classical period no Spartiate engaged in manual labor. Whether any lower-class women living in Sparta participated in manufacturing the objects depicting women is not known. Finally, it must be acknowledged that we are dealing with a very small oeuvre of recovered and published works that shed light on the history of mortal women. Scholars differ not only in interpreting the depictions, but on the place of manufacture of many of the objects, and on whether objects such as the Vix crater (see fig. 4) found outside the borders of Laconia (but resembling those found within) should be considered as Spartan art.\n\n### _Mirrors and Bronze Statuettes_\n\nSeven archaic bronzes showing naked girls have been found in Sparta and Messenia.  The majority of these were mirror handles, intended for use by women. Other examples have been found outside Spartan territory. Some of the girls are shown wearing a chiton that does not reach the knee and that covers only the left breast. The modern viewer may find the nudity most startling; in antiquity (though perhaps not in archaic Sparta), the bare female breast was an extremely potent image. The unabashed nudity of the figures seems to reflect the athletic nudity of Spartan women. Therefore it is likely that this type of statuette was manufactured in Sparta, but was exported and imitated elsewhere in Greece. Some of the girls hold musical instruments or other objects that may have been used for religious purposes. Their date is ca. 570 to ca. 470.\n\nThese mirrors did not stand up on their own when women used them: a woman had to hold such a mirror in her hand. As in many ancient mirrors, the disk was convex. The mirror reflected not only the face, as would a flat mirror, but hair, neck, and cleavage. The owner of the mirror would gaze at her own face and chest, reflected smaller than actual size, over the figure on the mirror handle. Grasping a mirror in one's hand is more intimate than merely looking at a vase. We may speculate about the esthetic and tactile pleasure a woman would feel while she was partially dressed herself and held the image of a nude slender female body. We may also suggest that this experience might be related to the fact that female children spent their time with each other and with adult women and engaged in homosexual erotic activities (see chap. 1).\n\nThough works of art depicting nonmortal females are beyond the scope of this survey, it is relevant to the discussion of nudity in sculpture to point out that an archaic figure of Eileithyia is one of the earliest sculptures in the round of the nude female in the Greek world (see chap. 6, fig. 7).\n\n### _Vase Painting_\n\nSparta offers very little to compare with the huge number of vases from Athens that have been excavated and studied. Two ceramic cups that are significant for women's history which show women with men, one at a symposium, another at an orgy, are discussed in chap. 6. It is necessary to point out, however, that though the vase with the symposium scene was manufactured in Laconia, it was excavated in Samos. It has been argued that it may represent the artist's view of a feast in Samos, rather than a local Spartan scene. It has also been argued that the women depicted in the orgy or komos scenes are hetairai and flute girls with no historical Spartan counterparts, and that the iconography is simply borrowed from Corinthian vases. The closest parallels for this symposium scene, with women wearing Lydian mitres and reclining outdoors alongside men on the\n\n(a)\n\n(b)\n\nFig. 10. Athlete. Bronze mirror handle, front and back views.\n\nAthlete as Mirror Caryatid. Bronze, ca. 550.Unknown provenance. Maiden wears an athlete's cap to hold her hair. She also wears flowers over her ears, a necklace with a pendant, and diagonally across her chest a strap holding amulets and a sickle that was awarded as a prize for victors. She holds an oil flask or pomegranate in her left hand and probably held a flower in her right. Griffins flank the disk of the mirror. The maiden stands on a lion. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art inv. 38.11.3. Fletcher Fund, 1938. Photos courtesy of Joan R. Mertens.\n\nFig. 11. Musician. Bronze mirror handle.\n\nFrom the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amyclae. Bronze, ca. 550\u2013530. Girl wears diadem with flowers above her ears, necklace with pendant, strap with sickle, and holds cymbals. Athens, National Museum, X 7548 = Maria Pipili, _Laconian Iconography of the Sixth Century B.C._ , Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph, no. 12 (Oxford, 1987),cat. no. 216 d, fig. 110. Photo courtesy Deutsches Arch\u00e4ologisches Institut, Athens.\n\nground are actually in Etruscan painting. In the Etruscan context there is no doubt that the women represented are wives, not hetairai.\n\n### _Sculpture_\n\nHelen is frequently depicted on Athenian vases as being threatened by Menelaus and running away from him. These scenes, however, were created outside Sparta for a non-Spartan clientele, and fall outside the limits of this study. Spartan maidens raced in honor of Helen, but in Laconian art Helen herself is not shown fleeing. Helen appears on an archaic stele depicting Menelaus wooing Helen on one side, and their initial encounter after the fall of Troy on the other (see chap. 6, fig.8). Although Menelaus is taller than she is and armed with a sword, Helen meets him without cowering and faces him boldly, looking directly into his eyes. All who looked at this stele would know that although he had intended to kill her, when he saw her he changed his mind. Her beauty was a more potent weapon than Menelaus' sword. The recovery of Helen is also depicted on a few smaller works of Peloponnesian art from the end of the seventh to the mid-sixth century. In these Helen is shown carrying a wreath. Her husband looks back at her and holds his sword aloft vertically. In contrast, on Athenian vases of ca. 550\u2013470 which show the same recovery theme, Menelaus threateningly points his sword at her.\n\n### _Conclusion_\n\nThe wealth of Greek vase painting and sculpture depicting women has enabled some scholars of gender and women's history to interpret the visual arts in a multiplicity of ways including as propaganda. Images of rape are common in Athenian vase painting, as are scenes of women confined in the house or in the women's quarters, often weaving. The message is generally designed to foster male sexual dominance and female subordination. Iconography oppressive to women is not confined to Athens. In a discussion of decorations on bronze mirrors of the fourth century from Elis and Corinth, Andrew Stewart comments:\n\nnone of these case-mirrors offers an unequivocal vision of an independent, mature female sexuality. All of them may be made to conform to the peculiarly Greek dogma that unmarried girls are more like animals than human beings; that they are sexually voracious . . . helping to ensure that these women remained exactly where their menfolk wanted them.\n\nHow different was the iconography at Sparta? We have mentioned a statue of Artemisia who commanded her fleet admirably at the battle of Salamis (Herod. 8.88, 93); lead figurines showing women dressed in fine fabrics and pendants representing the textiles; statuettes and mirror handles in the form of female athletes; a vase showing luxuriously attired women playing musical instruments at a co-ed symposium; another vase showing men and women revelers; and a relief of Helen facing down Menelaus. As Thucydides indicated, there was not much material culture to attract the attention of a viewer in Sparta. Nevertheless, judging from the visual propaganda directed at women in the rest of the Greek world, a modern feminist might consider the absence of art as a positive and creative force for Spartan women.\n\n* * *\n\n. P. A. Cartledge and A. J. S. Spawforth, _Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities_ (London, 1989), 133, estimate a population of no more than 12,000.\n\n. Herein referred to in brief citations as _Lac. Pol._\n\n. See further R. F. Willetts, _The Law Code of Gortyn_ , _Kadmos_ , suppl. 1 (Berlin, 1967).\n\n. T. Boring, _Literacy in Ancient Sparta_ (Leiden, 1979), chap. 3, surveys Spartan authors.\n\n. All references to Alcman's poetry are to M. Davies, _Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_ ( _PMGF_ ), vol. 1 (Oxford, 1991). Except where noted, the translations of Alcman in the present book are from Davies's Greek text. I am grateful to Dr. Davies for his comments on my translation of _Partheneion_ l. For a text of Alcman with brief apparatus criticus (but in general more restorations than Davies), commentary, and translation, see D. A. Campbell, _Greek Lyric_ , vol. 2 (Cambridge,Mass., 1988). Campbell also provides useful indexes. For full commentary with text, see C. Calame, _Alcman: Fragmenta_ (Rome, 1983). Biographical testimonia are cited from Davies.\n\n. See _PMGF_ , T A1a\u20139, 11a.\n\n. See F. D. Harvey, \"Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2390 and Early Spartan History,\" _JHS_ 87 (1967), 62\u201373, esp. 69. Poralla2, p. 18, no. 65, dates Alcman to the second half of the seventh century.\n\n. W. G.Cavanagh and R. R. Laxton,\"Lead Figurines from the Menelaion and Seriation,\" _ABSA_ 79 (1984 _),_ 23\u201336, esp. 35.\n\n. Paus. 3.15.1. F. B\u00f6lte, s.v. Platanistas, _RE_ 20.2 (Stuttgart, 1950), cols. 2333\u201334.\n\n. M. Davies, review of _Alcman: Fragmenta_ , by Claude Calame, _Gnomon_ , 58 (1986), 385\u201389, esp. 387 n. 2, questions Calame's dogmatic rejection of such an interpretation.\n\n. \"Un fragment in\u00e9dit du po\u00ebte Alcman,\" in _Memoires d'histoire ancienne et de philologie_ (Paris, 1863), 159\u201375.\n\n. _PMGF_ 3.3 = _P.Oxy_. xxiv.2387. See further E. G. Turner, _Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World_ (Princeton, 1971), pp. 42\u201343, no. 15.\n\n. See further J. Herington, _Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition_ (Berkeley, 1985), 22\u201326, 48, 54\u201355, 207. The ancient evidence for reperformance of Alcman concerns male choruses, not _Partheneia._ Herington (25) argues that Sosibius was an eyewitness to a performance of Alcman: see below on Sosibius.\n\n. See further Denys L. Page, _Alcman: The Partheneion_ (Oxford, 1951), 64, and Herington, _Poetry into Drama_ , 238 n. 38.\n\n. _LGPN_ 3A s.vv. cites the names in the _Partheneia,_ and see below.\n\n. Sosibius, _On the Sacrifices in Lacedaemon, FGrH_ 595 F 5 = Athen. 15.678b\u2013c for a choral performance of Alcman celebrating a Spartan victory ca. 546. See further E. Stehle, _Performance in Ancient Greece_ (Princeton, 1997), 55, and G. Nagy, _Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past_ (Baltimore, Md., 1990), 349. On the transmission of Alcman beyond Sparta, see P. A. Cartledge, \"Literacy in the Spartan Oligarchy,\" _JHS_ 98 (1978), 28.\n\n. Excluding the editions of the texts, probably the most influential full-length study of the _Partheneia_ to be published in the later part of the twentieth century is Claude Calame, _Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Gr\u00e8ce archa\u00efque_ , vol. 1, _Morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale_ ; vol. 2, _Alcman_ (Rome, 1977). In his first volume, Calame gives a lengthy survey of the composition and formal structure of the lyric choir not only in archaic Greece, but in later periods. In volume 2, he examines the work of Alcman, especially _Partheneia_ 1 and 3,which he understands to have been performed at pubertal rites of initiation for girls that paralleled those for boys. Calame reiterates this view in \"Iniziazioni fem-minili spartane: Stupro, danza, ratto, metamorfosi e morte iniziatica,\" in _Le donne in Grecia_ , ed. G. Arrigoni (Bari, 1985), 33\u201354. Calame's interpretation has been widely adopted by many scholars who write about Alcman's poems, Spartan girls, and religion. Nevertheless, there is nothing inherent in the texts that makes Calame's view more than an attractive suggestion.\n\n. Christina A. Clark, \"The Gendering of the Body in Alcman's _Partheneion_ 1: Narrative, Sex, and Social Order in Archaic Sparta,\" _Helios_ 23 (1996), 143\u201372, assumes that men were in the audience and interprets the poetry as produced ultimately in order to make women conform to \"their culture's male-structured gender codes\" (169).\n\n. Jane B. Carter,\"Masks and Poetry in Early Sparta,\" in _Early Greek Cult Practice: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 26\u201329 June 1986_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg,N. Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist (Stockholm, 1988), 89\u201398, esp. 89, 98.\n\n. Herod. 5.51, 6.61, 7.239, and see further Carolyn Dewald, \"Women and Culture in Herodotus' _Histories_ ,\" in _Reflections of Women in Antiquity_ , ed. Helene P. Foley (New York, 1981), 91\u2013125.\n\n. See further E. N. Tigerstedt, _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_ , 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1965\u201374), vol. 1, 114\u201327; Ellen Greenstein Millender,\"Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Female,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 355\u201391, esp. 357\u201362, 373; and most recently Helene P. Foley, _Female Acts in Greek Tragedy_ (Princeton, 2001), 99\u2013102, 318\u201331.\n\n. See further Edith Hall, _Inventing the Barbarian_ (Oxford, 1989), 214\u201315. Hall does not discuss gender issues.\n\n. Diels-Kranz II (1969), 88, fr. 32.\n\n. _Republic_ 5, passim, _Laws_ 5.742C, 6.774C, 784\u201385, 7.814, 8.833D\u2013834D.\n\n. I presented this material first in \"Xenophon's Spartan Women,\" paper delivered at The World of Xenophon conference, University of Liverpool, July 8, 1999.\n\n. D.L. 2.54 and see further Nigel M. Kennell, _The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta_ (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1995), 16. E. Badian, \"Xenophon the Athenian,\" paper\n\ndelivered at The World of Xenophon conference, University of Liverpool, July 10, 1999, questions whether the sons participated in the agoge.\n\n. See further C. Tuplin,\"Xenophon,Sparta, and the _Cyropaedia_ ,\"in _The Shadow of Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell and S. Hodgkinson (London, 1994), 127\u201381, esp. 132.\n\n. Badian,\"Xenophon the Athenian.\"\n\n. Lampito had been the name of a historical woman, daughter of Leutychides II (a Spartan king), and was the mother of Agis II who was reigning in 411: Herod. 6.71 and Poralla2, no. 474.\n\n. _Lac. Pol._ 1.4. According to Aristoph. _Birds_ , 1281, all Athenians were Laconizers.\n\n. See n. 23, above.\n\n. In Athens, small children participated in the Anthesteria, and drank the new wine from small choes (pitchers). That many more choes with designs appropriate for boys than for girls have been excavated suggests that more boys were brought to the festival. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, _Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece_ (Oxford, 1997), 69, 118\u201319.\n\n. Arist. _HA_ 608b observes that the female eats less. Doubtless this was both the effect and cause of systematically allocating less food to women.\n\n. See further Pomeroy, _Families_ , 42\u201345, 61\u201366.\n\n. _FGrH_ 581. Jacoby ad loc. suggests that by writing favorably about his polis, Thibron was trying to curry favor with potentates in Asia or with the Spartan authorities, or to denigrate (as not following the Spartan ethic) the ephors who had exiled him. On Spartan authors of the fifth and fourth centuries, including Thibron, Pausanias, and Lysander, see also T. Boring, _Literacy in Ancient Sparta_ (Leiden, 1979), 50\u201355.\n\n. See further _FGrH_ II.81; T. W.Africa, _Phylarchus and the Spartan Revolution_ (Berkeley, 1961, repr. Millwood, N.Y., 1980), 43\u201347, 61; and cf. K. Chrimes, _Ancient Sparta_ (Manchester, 1949), 6, who asserts that Phylarchus was ill-informed about Sparta in the days of Agis IV.\n\n. See Deborah Gera, _Warrior Women: The Anonymous_ Tractatus de Mulieribus (Leiden, 1997), for paragraph-long descriptions of fourteen women (including the Spartan Argeia),written in the first century b.c.e. or later; and most recently Stanley M. Burstein, \"Cleitarchus in Jerusalem,\" in _The Eye Expanded_ , ed. F. B. Titchener and R. F. Moorton, Jr. (Berkeley, 1999), 105\u201312, esp. 107. See further chap. 4.\n\n. According to _OCD_ 3, he was a Spartan who worked in Egypt probably in the mid-third century. Jacoby, _FGrH_ III b, no. 595, is more doubtful about Sosibius' date and Spartan origin. Boring, _Literacy in Ancient Sparta_ , 56, places him between 250 and 150,with the lower date more likely.\n\n. Edward O'Neil (ed.), _Teles,_ t _he Cynic Teacher_ (Missoula,Mont., 1977), \"On Freedom from Passion,\" pp. 65\u201366, ll. 53\u201376 (= _Teletis: Reliquiae_ , ed. O Hense, 2d edn. [1909] 57.11\u201358.12), is very close to Plut. _Sayings of Spartan Women,_ 241a3,b4, c8, and cf. _Virtues in Women_ 246a. See further Tigerstedt, _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_ , vol. 2, 27, 38.\n\n. _Anth. Pal._ 7.433\u201335.= A. S. F.Gow and D. L. Page, _The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams_ , 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1965), vol. 1, Dioscurides, 32; Nicander, 1; Tymnes, 6; and Ascleipiades, 47. A Spartan mother who kills her son appears also in Erycius, _Anth. Pal._ 7.230 and Antipater Thess. _Anth. Pal._ 7.531 (Augustan). See further, Tigerstedt, _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_ , vol. 2, 27, 86.\n\n. _FGrH_ III b F 588 quoted from Didymus by Athenaeus 4.139d\u2013f. See further L. R. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ (Oxford, 1896\u20131909), vol. 4, 265\u20136.\n\n. Stobaeus iv.2.25 (p. 160 Hense) = _FGrH_ 90 F 103 (144) and see further Tigerstedt, _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_ , vol. 2, 92.\n\n. Elizabeth Rawson, _The Spartan Tradition in European Thought_ (Oxford, 1969), 112.\n\n. _Sayings of Spartan Women_ is now generally agreed to be the work of Plutarch: Donald Russell, in a personal communication. See also Tigerstedt, _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_ , vol. 2, 16\u201330.\n\n. For the dating, see Luigi Piccirilli and Mario Manfredini, _Plutarco: Le vite di Licurgo e di Numa_ 2 _(_ Milan, 1990), xl. For the five _Lives_ (including _Lysander_ and _Agesilaus_ ) as a unified cycle, see D. R. Shipley, _A Commentary on Plutarch's_ Life of Agesilaos (Oxford, 1997), 3\u20134. Shipley (3) judges that Plutarch gives \"a valid account of Agesilaos' character and reign.\"\n\n. _Ages._ 19.10 = _FGrH_ 596 F 5. See further L. Piccirilli, \"Cronologia relative e fonti delle _Vitae Lycurgi et Numae_ di Plutarco,\"in _Philias Charin: Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni_ (Rome, 1980), vol. 5, 1754\u201364, esp. 1762; Manfredini and Picciirilli, _Plutarco: Le vite di Licurgo e di Numa_ 2, xl\u2013xlii; and Boring, _Literacy in Ancient Sparta_ , 88\u201393.\n\n. See further Sarah B. Pomeroy, \"Reflections on Plutarch, _Advice to the Bride and Groom:_ Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed,\" 33\u201342 passim, and Cynthia Patterson, \"Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom: Traditional Wisdom through a Philosophic Lens,\"128\u201337,\n\npassim, both in _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (New York, 1999).\n\n. Xen. _Oec._ 7.14\u201315, 9.14\u201315, 10.1, Plut. _Virtues of Women_ 249f, and see further Sarah B. Pomeroy,\"Reflections on Plutarch,\" in _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_ (Oxford, 1994), ad loc., and chap. 4, above.\n\n. Xen. _Oec._ 7.11\u201312. See further Pomeroy, _Xenophon, Oeconomicus_ , ad loc.; Plut. _Comp. Lyc. Num._ 4; and L. Goessler,\"Plutarchs Gedanken \u00fcber die Ehe\" (diss. Zurich, 1962), trans. by David and Hazel Harvey as \"Advice to the Bride and Groom: Plutarch Gives a Detailed Account of His Views on Marriage,\" in _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (New York, 1999), 97\u2013115, esp. 106\u20137.\n\n. See further Lin Foxhall, \"Foreign Powers: Plutarch and Discourses of Domination in Roman Greece,\" in _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (New York, 1999), 138\u201350.\n\n. Foxhall,\"Foreign Powers,\" 148.\n\n. Plut. _Cleom._ 38, and see chap. 4.\n\n. See further Kennell, _The Gymnasium of Virtue_ , passim, and Pomeroy, _Families_ , 62\u201366. Contra Kennell, Jean Ducat,\"Perspectives on Spartan Education,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 43\u201366, esp. 44\u201346, argues that Plutarch does give some credible information on the classical period.\n\n. See further Darice Birge, \"Women and the Greek Past in Pausanias' Descriptive Geography,\" paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Dec. 29, 1998; abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 131.\n\n. Vitruvius (1.1.6) reports that the statues of the Persians, attired in barbaric costume, supported the roof like Caryatids.\n\n. See E. Fantham,Helene Peet Foley, Natalie Boymel Kampen,Sarah B.Pomeroy, and H. Alan Shapiro, _Women in the Classical World_ (New York, 1994), 299\u2013301, and Suzanne Dixon, _The Roman Mother_ (Norman, Okla., 1989), passim.\n\n. _Ibis_ 615, for the mother of Pausanias the traitor, cf. R. Ellis, _P. Ovidii Nasonis Ibis: ex novis codicibus edidit, scholia vetera commentarium cum prolegomenis appendice_ (Oxford 1881), 165.\n\n. Val. Max. 2.7, ext.2.\n\n. _VH_ 12.21.\n\n. _PH_ 3.216.\n\n. _Orat._ 24 p. 118.63\u201366 (Colonna).\n\n. _Anth. Pal._ 9.397.\n\n. _Anth. Pal._ 9.447.\n\n. See also the Anonymous Epigram _Anth. Pal._ 9.61 for a mother who slew her cowardly son. For the Spartan tradition in post-classical times, see Rawson, _The Spartan Tradition in European Thought_. See also Conclusion, above.\n\n. _Tusc_. 1.42.102, 2.15.36, and see further chap. 3.\n\n. See further David Schaps,\"The Woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women's Names,\" _CQ_ n.s. 27 (1977), 323\u201330.\n\n. See chap. 3 n. 3, Latte's emendation.\n\n. _Anth. Pal._ 7.433 = Gow and Page, _The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams_ , vol. 2, 556, Tymnes 6.\n\n. _IG_ V.i, n. 1, for the date of 428\u2013421: see further Poralla2, no.160.\n\n. Alfred S. Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C., to the Sack of Sparta by Alaric, A.D. 296_ (Munich, 1977), 227, s.v. Kallistoneike (4), and see chap. 5 nn. 53, 90, above.\n\n. See Poralla2, pp. 5\u201313, 173.\n\n. D. A.Campbell, _Greek Lyric_ , vol. 2 (Cambridge,Mass., 1988), 391, understands her to be the daughter of the Eurypontid Eurycrates (ca. 665\u2013640) and sister of Leotychidas.\n\n. C. N. Edmonson,\"A Graffito from Amyklai,\" _Hesperia_ 28 (1959), 162\u201364.\n\n. _Ages._ 8, 7, 19.10, nor could Dicaearchus discover their names: fr. 65 Wehrli2. See further Jan Bremmer,\"Plutarch and the Naming of Greek Women,\" _AJPh_ 102 (1981), 425\u201326.\n\n. Ed. Peter M. Fraser and Elaine Matthews (Oxford, 1997). In the present volume, the citation to _LGPN_ 3 is usually given in preference to earlier publications. _LGPN_ gives brief succinct identifications, often referring back to the earlier publications which provide fuller documentation, including genealogical charts. In addition, S. Hodkinson, _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta_ (London, 2000), 414, suggests that Deinicha, who married Archidamus III, was descended from Deinis, whose name is inscribed on a sixthth-century aryballus, and that Euryleonis, the Olympic victor (see chap. 1, above), was descended from Euryleon companion of Dorieus in the late sixth century.\n\n. Poralla2, and Bradford, _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Death ofAlexander the Great_.\n\n. See Sarah B. Pomeroy, \" _Technikai kai Mousikai_ : The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period,\" _AJAH_ 2 (1977), 51\u201368, esp. 52. Michael Pettersson, _Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia_ (Stockholm, 1992), 120, finds no evidence for girls participating in the Gymnopaideia, nor (125) for their being part of the age class system connected to the agoge. See above, chap. 2 n. 2.\n\n. E.g., recently Ellen Greenstein Millender,\"Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Female,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodgkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 365\u201366.\n\n. _Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300\u2013362 B.C._ (London, 1979).\n\n. Cartledge and Spawforth, _Hellenistic and Roman Sparta_ , 110.\n\n. Paul Cartledge, \"The Socratics' Sparta and Rousseau's,\" in _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (London, 1999), 311\u201337, esp. 312.\n\n. M. I. Finley,\"Sparta,\" in _The Use and Abuse of History_ (London, 1975), 161\u201377, esp. 171 (orig. pub. in _Probl\u00e8mes de la guerre en Gr\u00e8ce ancienne_ , ed. J.-P.Vernant [Paris, 1968], 143\u201360):\"For the sake of completeness, I record without discussion two further sources of tension: (a) the women, if Plato and Aristotle are to be believed.\" See further Pomeroy, _Xenophon. Oeconomicus_ , 43, no.14.\n\n. \"Spartan Wives: Liberation or Licence?\" _CQ_ 31 (1981), 84\u2013105.\n\n. See most recently Michael Whitby, review of _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell, _Scholia Reviews_ n.s. 9 (2000), 36.\n\n. \"Spartan Wives,\" esp. 86 and 89.\n\n. \"Spartan Wives,\" 103, and see chap. 3.\n\n. \"Spartan Wives,\" 105, followed by Millender, \"Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Female,\" 371.\n\n. \"Even if we should prefer not to believe that Spartan maidens enjoyed tutelary homosexual relations with older women\" (101).He was, of course, writing for a classical (presumably not feminist) audience.\n\n. See, e.g., P. A. Cartledge, _Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta_ (London, 1987), 70, where he points out that Plutarch did original research.\n\n. _Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta,_ e.g., 26\u201328, 68, 166, and see chap. 4 n. 16, above. In defense of Ephorus, Aristotle, and Plutarch, see E. David, \"Aristotle and Sparta,\" _Anc. Soc_. 13\/14 (1982\u201383), 67\u2013103, esp. 82\u201383, and chap. 4 n. 38, above. The debate over the use of Plutarch for the history of archaic and classical Sparta is not new. W. den Boer aptly writes in _Laconian Studies_ (Amsterdam, 1954), 221: \"Modern historians, though possessing no more material for interpretation than Plutarch, have all too often disposed of the customs related by him as ridiculous concoctions offered by him or his sources, and in so doing they have shown less modesty and historical discernment than Plutarch commanded.\"\n\n. See also chap. 4 nn. 61, 62, above.\n\n. London, 2000.\n\n. Nevertheless, the concept of austerity at Sparta is currently being questioned by Stephen Hodkinson,\"Bronze Dedications at Spartan Sanctuaries,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W.G. Cavanagh and S. E. C.Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 55\u201363, and several other contributors to the same volume, including F\u00f6rtsch (see n. 99). The concept of austerity is, of course, relative (one person's necessities are extravagances to another), but it must be admitted that Sparta simply has not yielded the precious metals, jewelry, fine tableware, and other personal luxury items that one might expect to find in the remains of such a powerful city. Domestic life was far more comfortable in Roman Sparta: see Stella Raftopoulou,\"New Finds from Sparta,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 125\u201340, esp. 127\u201333.\n\n. See Xen. _Hell._ 6.4.27, 30, for searching Spartan houses for sequestered valuables.\n\n. See further M. N. Tod and A. J. B. Wace, _A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum_ (Oxford, 1906), 127.\n\n. For the history of excavations at Sparta, see H. W. Catling,\"The Work of the British School at Athens at Sparta and in Laconia,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 19\u201327.\n\n. Society for the Promotion ofHellenic Studies Supplementary Papers, no. 5 (London, 1929), v\u2013vi, and R. M. Dawkins,\"Artemis Orthia: Some Additions and a Correction,\" _JHS_ 50 (1930), 298\u201399.\n\n. See chap. 6, and Catling, \"The Work of the British School at Athens at Sparta and in Laconia,\" 25.\n\n. For a survey of the number of various artifacts and their dates of manufacture, see R. F\u00f6rtsch,\"Spartan Art: Its Many Different Deaths,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 48\u201354. F\u00f6rtsch, however, fails to take into account the falling population figures, and the concentration of wealth (see chaps. 3 and 4), both of which factors created a smaller market for the luxury items he surveys. W. G. Cavanagh, J. Crouwel, R.W. V. Catling, and G. Shipley, _Continuity and Change in a Greek Rural Landscape: The Laconia Survey_ , vol. 2, _Archaeological Data_ , _ABSA_ suppl. vol. 27 (London, 1996), give laconic descriptions of material remains not yet synthesized so that they would be of much use for the writing of women's history.\n\n. E.g., Paul A. Clement,\"The Recovery of Helen,\" _Hesperia_ 27 (1958), 47\u201373. For criticism of the interpretations of Lilly B. Ghali-Kahil, _Les enl\u00e8vements et le retour d'H\u00e9l\u00e8ne dans les textes et les documents figur\u00e9s_ (Paris, 1955), see n. 111, below.\n\n. Herod. 2.167, Xen. _Lac. Pol._ 7.1\u20132, and see R. M. Cook,\"Spartan History and Archaeology,\" _CQ_ 12 (1962), 156\u201358, and Paul Cartledge,\"Did Spartan Citizens Ever Practice a Manual _Techne?\" LCM_ 1 (1976), 115\u201319.\n\n. On the Vix crater, see chap. 2, caption to fig. 4, and Marlene Herfort-Koch, _Archaische Bronzeplastik Lakoniens_ , _Boreas_ , suppl. 4 (M\u00fcnster, 1986), 70\u201373,who argues for a Laconian origin.\n\n. See most recently Andrew Stewart, _Art,Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece_ (Cambridge, 1997), esp. 29\u201334, 108\u201319, and Appendix, 232\u201334, for a complete catalogue. See also Thomas Scanlon, \" _Virgineum Gymnasium_ : Spartan Females and Early Greek Athletics,\" in _The Archaeology of the Olympics_ , ed. W. Raschke (Madison,Wis., 1988), 185\u2013216, esp. 191\u201399, 203\u20134.\n\n. See Larissa Bonfante,\"Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art,\" _AJA_ 93 (1989), 558\u201368, and see most recently Beth Cohen,\"Divesting the Female Breast of Clothes in Classical Sculpture,\" in _Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology_ , ed. Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Claire L. Lyons (London, 1997), 66\u201392.\n\n. Stewart, _Art,Desire, and the Body_ , 108, estimates that at least 4,000 of these statuettes were manufactured.\n\n. Claude Rolley, \"Le probl\u00e8me de l'art Laconien,\" _Kt\u00e8ma_ 2 (1977), 125\u201340, esp. 130, sees the girls as very young, and postulates a connection between the figurines and the cult of Artemis\n\nOrthia. See further Uta Kron, \"Sickles in Greek Sanctuaries: Votives and Cultic Instruments,\" in _Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the Archaeological Evidence (Proceedings of the Fourth International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, Organized by the Swedish Institute at Athens, 22\u201324 October 1993_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg (Stockholm, 1998), 187\u2013215, esp. 206\u20137. See also Scanlon,\" _Virgineum Gymnasium_ ,\" 194, 196.\n\n. G. Richter,\"An Archaic Greek Mirror,\" _AJA_ 42 (1938), 337\u201344, esp. 343\u201344, argues that such mirrors are not Spartan, but probably Corinthian, and that they portray hetairae, not naked athletes.\n\n. Maria Pipili,\"Archaic Laconian Vase Painting,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W.G. Cavanagh and S. E. C.Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol.4 (London,1998), 82\u201396, esp. 90, and J.Carter, review of _Laconian Iconography of the Sixth Century B.C._ , by Maria Pipili, _AJA_ 93 (1989), 473\u20136, esp. 475.\n\n. E. A. Lane,\"Lakonian Vase-Painting,\" _ABSA_ 34 (1933\u201334),99\u2013189, esp 158, but see now Tyler Jo Smith, \"Dances, Drinks, and Dedications: The Archaic _Komos_ in Laconia,\" in _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker, British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4 (London, 1998), 75\u2013 81, esp. 77\u201378.\n\n. See H. A. Shapiro,\"Modest Athletes and Liberated Women,\" in _Not the Classical Ideal_ , ed. Beth Cohen (Leiden, 2000), 315\u201337, esp. 332.\n\n. See further Ghali-Kahil, _Les enl\u00e8vements et le retour d'H\u00e9l\u00e8ne_ , 71, no. 24, and \"H\u00e9l\u00e8ne,\" _LIMC_ 4.1 (Zurich, 1988), 498\u2013563,with an addendum on 951, and plates in 4.2 (Zurich, 1988), 291\u2013358, s.v. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne;Guy Hedreen,\"Image,Text, and Story in the Recovery ofHelen,\" _CA_ 15 (1996), 152\u201384,and figs. 1\u201312. On the political background of the depiction of Helen on Attic vases, see H. A. Shapiro, \"Cult Warfare: The Dioskouroi between Sparta and Athens, in _Ancient Greek Hero Cult: Proceedings of the Fifth International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, Organized by the Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, G\u00f6teborg University, 21\u201323April 1995_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg (Stockholm, 1999), 99\u2013107, esp. 105\u20136.\n\n. Ghali-Kahil, _Les enl\u00e8vements et le retour d'H\u00e9l\u00e8ne_ , 18, 320\u201321, suggests that the judgment of Paris is depicted on an ivory comb from Sparta (= Dawkins, _AO_ 223, pl. 127), and that an ivory relief (= Dawkins, _AO_ , 214, pls. 109\u201310) shows Helen and Paris on a ship. On these identifications, see Evangelia-Lila Marangou, _Lakonische Elfenbein- und Beinschnitzereien_ (T\u00fcbingen, 1969), 85\u201390, 107\u20139, 248\u201349 n. 510, and pls. 68, 78.\n\n. For these depictions on shield bands, see further Maria Pipili, \"A Laconian Ivory Reconsidered,\" in _Philolakon: Lakonian Studies in Honour of Hector Catling_ , ed. Jan Motyka Sanders (London, 1992), 179\u201384, esp. 183.\n\n. E.g., Eva Keuls, _The Reign of the Phallus_ (Berkeley, 1985).\n\n. See the archaic and classical images in Fantham, Foley, Kampen, Pomeroy, and Shapiro, _Women in the Classical World_ , 5\u2013135, passim.\n\n. \"Reflections,\" in _Sexuality in Ancient Art_ , ed. 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London, 1983.\n\n_____. \"Reflections on Plutarch's _Advice to the Bride and Groom_ : Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed.\" In _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_ , ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy, 33\u201342. New York, 1999.\n\n_____.\"The Spartan Family.\" Paper delivered at the University of Cambridge, October 13, 1998.\n\n_____.\"Spartan Wives and Their Strategies.\" Paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, September 7, 2000.\n\n_____.\"Spartan Womanpower.\" Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, December 28, 1998. Abstract published in _American Philological Association 130th Annual Meeting: Abstracts_ , 81.\n\n_____.\" _Technikai kai Mousikai_ : The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period.\" _AJAH_ 2 (1977), 51\u201368.\n\n_____. _Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra_. New York, 1984. Pbk. with a new foreword and addenda, Detroit, 1990.\n\n_____. _Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary_. Oxford, 1994.\n\n_____.\"Xenophon's Spartan Women.\" Paper delivered at The World of Xenophon conference,University of Liverpool, July 8, 1999.\n\n_____,ed. _Plutarch's Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife_. New York, 1999.\n\n_____,ed. _Women's History and Ancient History_. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991.\n\nPomeroy, Sarah B., Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. _Ancient Greece_. New York, 1998.\n\nPool, Phoebe. \"The History Pictures of Edgar Degas and Their Background.\" _Apollo_ 80 (1964), 306\u201311.\n\nPoralla, Paul. _A Prosopography of Lacedaemonians from the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great (X\u2013323 B.C.)_. 2d edn. with an introduction, addenda, and corrigenda by A. S. Bradford. Chicago, 1985.\n\nPowell, A.\"Spartan Women Assertive in Politics? Plutarch's Lives of Agis and Kleomenes.\" In _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell, 393\u2013419. London, 1999.\n\nPr\u00e9aux, C. _L'\u00e9conomie royale des Lagides_. Brussels, 1939.\n\nPreller, L. _Polemonis Periegetae Fragmenta_. Leipzig, 1838.\n\nPritchett, W. K. _The Greek State at War_. 4 vols. Berkeley, 1971\u201385.\n\nRaftopoulou, Stella.\"New Finds from Sparta.\" In _Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium_ , ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker. British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4, 125\u201340. London, 1998.\n\nRawson, Elizabeth. _The Spartan Tradition in European Thought_. Oxford, 1969.\n\nRedfield, James.\"The Women of Sparta.\" _CJ_ 73 (1977\u201378), 146\u201361.\n\nRicher, N.\"Aspects des funerailles \u00e0 Sparte.\" _Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz_ 5 (1994), 51\u201396.\n\n_____. _Les \u00e9phores: \u00c9tudes sur l'histoire et sur l'image de Sparte (VIIIe\u2013IIIe si\u00e8cle avant J\u00e9sus-Christ)_. Paris, 1998.\n\nRichter, G.\"An Archaic Greek Mirror.\" _AJA_ 42 (1938), 337\u201344.\n\nRobert, L.\"Les femmes th\u00e9ores \u00e0 \u00c9ph\u00e8se.\" _CRAI_ (1974), 176\u201381.\n\n_____.\"Laodic\u00e9e du Lycos: Les inscriptions.\" In _Laodic\u00e9e du Lycos: Le Nymph\u00e9e, cam-pagnes 1961\u20131963_ , ed. J. des Gagniers et al., 247\u2013387. Paris, 1969.\n\nRolley, Claude.\"Le probl\u00e8me de l'art laconien.\" _Kt\u00e8ma_ 2 (1977), 125\u201340.\n\nRomano, David G.\"The Ancient Stadium: Athletics and Arete.\" _AncW_ 7 (1983), 9\u201315.\n\nRomano, Irene Bald. \"Early Greek Cult Images.\" Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980.\n\n_____. \"Early Greek Cult Images and Cult Practices.\" In _Early Greek Cult Practice: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 26\u201329 June, 1986_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg, N. Marinatos, and G. C. Nordquist, 127\u201334. Stockholm, 1988.\n\nRose, H. J.\"The Cult of Artemis Orthia.\" In _The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta_ , by R.M. Dawkins et al., 399\u2013407. Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Supplementary Papers, no. 5. London, 1929.\n\nRoussel, Pierre.\"L'exposition des enfants \u00e0 Sparte.\" _REA_ 45 (1943), 5\u201317.\n\nSalus, Carol.\"Degas'Young Spartans Exercising.\" _Art Bulletin_ 67 (1985), 501\u20136.\n\nSaunders, Trevor J. _Aristotle, Politics: Books I and II_. Translation with commentary. Clarendon Aristotle Series. Oxford, 1995.\n\nScanlon, Thomas.\"The Footrace of the Heraia at Olympia.\" _AncW_ 9 (1984), 77\u201390.\n\n_____. \" _Virgineum Gymnasium_ : Spartan Females and Early Greek Athletics.\" In _The Archaeology of the Olympics_ , ed. W. Raschke, 185\u2013216. Madison,Wis., 1988.\n\nSchaps, David M. _The Economic Rights ofWomen in Ancient Greece_. Edinburgh, 1979.\n\n_____.\"The Woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women's Names.\" _CQ_ n.s. 27 (1977), 323\u201330.\n\n_____.\"The Women of Greece in Wartime.\" _CPh_ 77 (1982), 193\u2013213.\n\nSch\u00fctrumpf, E.\"The Rhetra of Epitadeus: A Platonist's Fiction.\" _GRBS_ 28 (1987), 441\u201357.\n\nSerwint, N.\"The Female Athletic Costume at the Heraia and Prenuptial Initiation Rites.\" _AJA_ 97 (1993), 403\u201322.\n\nShapiro, H. A. \"Cult Warfare: The Dioskouroi Between Sparta and Athens.\" In _Ancient Greek Hero Cult: Proceedings of the Fifth International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, Organized by the Department of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, G\u00f6teborg University, 21\u201323 April 1995_ , ed. R. H\u00e4gg, 99\u2013107. Stockholm, 1999.\n\n_____. \"Modest Athletes and Liberated Women.\" In _Not the Classical Ideal_ , ed. Beth Cohen, 315\u2013337. Leiden, 2000.\n\nShefton, B. B.\"Three Laconian Vase Painters.\" _ABSA_ 49 (1954), 299\u2013310.\n\nShimron, B. _Late Sparta_. Buffalo, N.Y., 1972.\n\nShipley, D. R. _A Commentary on Plutarch's \"Life Of Agesilaos\"_. Oxford, 1997.\n\nShipley, Graham. \"The Extent of Spartan Territory in the Late Classical and Hellenistic Periods.\" _ABSA_ 95 (2000), 367\u201390.\n\n_____. _The Greek World After Alexander, 323\u201330 B.C._ London, 2000.\n\nSkutsch, Otto.\"Helen:Her Name and Nature.\" _JHS_ 107 (1987), 188\u201393.\n\nSmith, Tyler Jo. \"Dances, Drinks, and Dedications: The Archaic _Komos_ in Laconia.\" In Sparta in Laconia: Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium, ed. W. G. Cavanagh and S. E. C. Walker. British School at Athens Studies, vol. 4, 75\u201381. London, 1998.\n\nSourvinou- Inwood, Christiane. \"Erotic Pursuits: Images and Meanings.\" _JHS_ 107 (1987), 131\u201345.\n\n_____. _Studies in Girls' Transitions: Aspects of the_ Arkteia _and Age Representation in Attic Iconography_. Athens, 1988.\n\nSpawforth, A. J. S.\"Balbilla: The Euryclids, and Memorials for a Greek Magnate.\" _ABSA_ 73 (1978), 249\u201360.\n\n_____. \"Families at Roman Sparta and Epidaurus: Some Prosopographical Notes.\" _ABSA_ 80 (1985), 191\u2013258.\n\n_____.\"Notes on the Third Century a.d. in Spartan Epigraphy.\" _ABSA_ 79 (1984), 263\u201388.\n\n_____. \"Spartan Cults Under the Roman Empire.\" In _Philolakon: Lakonian Studies in Honour of Hector Catling_ , ed. Jan Motyka Sanders, 227\u201338. London, 1992.\n\nSprague, Rosamond Kent. _The Older Sophists_. Columbia, S.C., 1972.\n\nSte Croix, G. E. M. de.\"Some Observations on the Property Rights of Athenian Women.\" _CR_ n.s. 20 (1970), 273\u201378.\n\nStehle, Eva. _Performance in Ancient Greece_. Princeton, 1997.\n\nStewart, Andrew. _Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece_. Cambridge, 1997.\n\n_____.\"Reflections.\" In _Sexuality in Ancient Art_ , ed. Natalie Boymel Kampen, 136\u201354. Cambridge, 1996.\n\nStibbe, Conrad M. _Das andere Sparta_. Mainz, 1996.\n\n_____. _Lakonische Vasenmaler des sechsten Jahrhunderts v. Chr_. Amsterdam, 1972.\n\nSturtz, F.W. _Lexicon Xenophonteum_. 4 vols. 1801\u20134. Repr.Hildesheim, 1964.\n\nSykes, M. H.\"Two Degas Historical Paintings: _Les jeunes spartiates s'exercent \u00e0 la lutte_ and _Les malheurs de la ville d'Orl\u00e9ans_.\"Master's thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1964.\n\nTexier, J.-G. _Nabis_. Paris, 1975.\n\n_____.\"Nabis and the Helots.\" _DHA_ 1 (1979), 189\u2013205.\n\nThesleff, Holger. _An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period_.\u00c5bo, 1961.\n\nTigerstedt, E. N. _The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity_. 2 vols. Stockholm, 1965\u201374.\n\nTod, M. N., and A. J. B. Wace. _A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum_. Oxford, 1906.\n\nToher, M.\"On the _Eidolon_ of a Spartan King.\" _RhM_ n.s. 142 (1999), 113\u201327.\n\nTorelli, M.\"Il santuario greco di Gravisca.\" _PP_ 32 (1977), 398\u2013458.\n\nTracy, Stephen V., and C. Habicht.\"New and Old Panathenaic Victor Lists.\" _Hesperia_ 60 (1991), 187\u2013236.\n\nTregaro, Christien J. \"Les b\u00e2tards spartiates.\" In _M\u00e9langes Pierre L\u00e9v\u00eaque_ , ed. M.-M. Mactoux and E. Geny, 33\u201340. Paris, 1993.\n\nTuplin, C.\"Xenophon, Sparta, and the Cyropaedia.\" In _The Shadow of Sparta_. ed. A. Powell and S. Hodkinson, 127\u201381. London, 1994.\n\nTurner, E. G. _Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World_. Princeton, 1971.\n\nV\u00e9rilhac, Anne-Marie, and Claude Vial. _Le mariage grec du VIe si\u00e8cle av. J.-C. \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque d'Auguste_. _BCH_ suppl. 32. Paris, 1998.\n\nVernant, J.-P. \"Entre la honte et la gloire: L'identit\u00e9 du jeune spartiate.\" _M\u00e9tis_ 2 (1987), 269\u201399. Repr. in J.-P. Verant, _L'individu, la mort, l' amour: Soi-m\u00eame et l'autre en Gr\u00e8ce ancienne_ , 173\u2013209. Paris, 1989.\n\nVoyatzis, Mary. \"Votive Riders Seated Side-Saddle at Early Greek Sanctuaries.\" _ABSA_ 87 (1992), 259\u201379.\n\nWace, A. J. B., M. S. Thompson, and J. P. Droop,\"The Menelaion.\" _ABSA_ 15 (1908), 108\u201357.\n\nWalbank, F.W. _A Historical Commentary on Polybius_. 3 vols. Oxford, 1957\u201379.\n\nWalker, Susan.\"Two Spartan Women and the Eleusinion.\" In _The Greek Renaissance in the Roman Empire_ , ed. S. Walker and A. Cameron. _ICS Bull._ suppl. 55 (19889), 130\u201341.\n\nWehrli, F. _Die Schule des Aristoteles_ , suppl. 1. Basel, 1974.\n\nWest, M. L.\"Alcmanica.\" _CQ_ 15 (1965), 188\u2013202.\n\n_____. _Immortal Helen_. London, 1975.\n\nWhitby,Michael.\"Two Shadows: Images of Spartans and Helots.\" in _The Shadow of Sparta_ , ed. A. Powell and S.J. Hodkinson, 87\u2013125. London, 1994.\n\n_____. Review of _Sparta: New Perspectives_ , ed. S. Hodkinson and A. Powell. _Scholia Reviews_ n.s. 9 (2000), 36.\n\nWilletts, R. F. _The Law Code of Gortyn_. _Kadmos_ suppl. 1. Berlin, 1967.\n\nWoodward, A. M. \"Excavations at Sparta, 1908: Inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Orthia.\" _ABSA_ 14 (1908), 74\u2013141.\n\nZiehen, L.\"Das spartanische Bev\u00f6lkerungsproblem.\" _Hermes_ 68 (1933), 218\u201337.\n\nZiehen, P.\"Sparta.\" _RE_ 18.3, col. 1466. Stuttgart, 1949.\n\nZuckerman, L.\"Spartan Women, Liberated.\" _New York Times_ , Jan. 1, 2000, sec. F, pp. 1, 3.\n\nZweig, Bella. \"The Only Women Who Give Birth to Men: A Gynocentric, Cross-Cultural View of Women in Ancient Sparta.\" In _Woman's Power, Man's Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King_ , ed. Mary DeForest, 32\u201353. Wauconda, Ill., 1993.\n\n## INDEX\n\nPage numbers in italics refer to illustrations.\n\nabortion, \u2013. _See also_ family planning\n\nAchaea,\n\nAchaean League,\n\nAcrotatus, , , 76n.6,\n\nadoption, ,\n\nadultery, , , \u2013, 122n.74, . _See also_ husband-doubling\n\nAegina, 5n.11\n\nAelian, , , ,\n\nAenesimbrota,\n\n_agelai_ (herds), , 28n.110\n\nAgesilaus II, 8n.16, , , , , ,\n\nAgesippia,\n\nAgesistrata, , 76n.7, , , ,\n\nAgiatis, , , , , , , ,\n\nAgido, \u2013, , ,\n\nAgis, , 29n.115\n\nAgis II, , , , 149n.29\n\nAgis IV\n\nbeginning of reign of, ix\n\ndeath of,\n\nand dowries,\n\nfamily and upbringing of, 83n.31,\n\ngrandmother of,\n\nmarriage of, ,\n\nPlutarch's life of, ,\n\nreforms of, , , , \u2013, , 90n.53, ,\n\nson of,\n\n_agoge_ (boys' program), , , , , , 158n.77\n\nagriculture, , , , , , ,\n\nAlcibia,\n\nAlcibiades, , , ,\n\nAlcippus, 49n.47\n\nAlcman\n\non Artemis, ,\n\non beauty,\n\nbiographical information on, , , , 142n.7\n\nand education of Spartan girls, \u2013,\n\non female swimmers, 13n.38\n\non horses,\n\ninterest of, in women, 4n.3\n\non Megalostrata,\n\non music,\n\nperformance and preservation of works by, \u2013, 144n.13\n\non physical education,\n\npoetry by, \u2013, , , , , \u2013, __,\n\non sexual behavior,\n\nas source on Sparta, ,\n\ntomb of,\n\non weaving, ,\n\nAlcon, , 14n.43\n\nAlexander,\n\nAlexis,\n\nAmastris,\n\nAmazons, , 114n.35\n\nAmerican Civil War, \u2013\n\nAmycla,\n\nAnaxandridas II, , , , ,\n\n_andragathia_ (manly virtue),\n\n_Andromache_ (Euripides), , 83n.31, \u2013\n\n_anesis_ (licence), 58n.31\n\n_Anonymus Iamblichi_ , ,\n\nAnthesteria, 150n.32\n\nAnthousa, 125n.91\n\n_anthropoi_ ,\n\nAntinous,\n\nAntiochus IV,\n\nAotis,\n\nApega (Apia), \u2013,\n\nApelleas (Apelles), , 23n.87\n\nAphrodite, 34n.4, , \u2013, 122n.74, ,\n\nAphrodite Areia (Warrior), , 122n.72\n\nAphrodite Hera, ,\n\nAphrodite Morpho,\n\nApia, . _See also_ Apega\n\nApollo, , , \u2013,\n\nApollo Hyacinthius, ,\n\nApollo of Amyclae, , 30n.122, , \u2013, __\n\nApollo Temple at Delphi,\n\nApollodorus Carystius, \u2013\n\nApollodorus Gelous, \u2013\n\narchaeological evidence, , , , \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nArchagathus,\n\narchaic period, \u2013, \u2013\n\nArchelaus II,\n\nArchidamia, , , 76n.8, , , ,\n\nArchidamus II, , ,\n\nArchidamus III, , 158n.75\n\nArchidamus V,\n\nArchippia,\n\nAres, ,\n\nArete,\n\n_arete_ (virtue), \u2013. _See also_ virtues of Spartan women\n\nAreus I, , 76n.6\n\nAreus II, 76n.6\n\nArgeia, ,\n\nArgileonis,\n\nArgonauts,\n\nArgos, 123n.76\n\nAristaenus, \u2013\n\nAristides,\n\nAristippus of Argos,\n\nAristodemus, ,\n\nAristomenes, ,\n\nAriston, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nAristophanes, , , , , \u2013, , ,\n\nAristotle\n\nbiographical information on,\n\non constraints on men versus women,\n\non dowries,\n\nand Epitadeus, x\n\non heiresses, , \u2013,\n\non inheritance of acquired characteristics,\n\non land tenure, \u2013, 90n.53,\n\non luxury,\n\non military defense by women,\n\non _oikos_ , ,\n\non _oliganthropia_ , ,\n\nand Plutarch,\n\non polis,\n\non reproduction, ,\n\nas source on Sparta, 58n.31, \u2013, ,\n\non wealthy women,\n\non women's influence, , , ,\n\nArmed Aphrodite, , 122n.73, 122n.75, ,\n\narmy. _See_ military; and specific wars and battles\n\nArrephoroi,\n\nArria,\n\nArrigoni, Giampiera, 12n.37\n\nArsino\u00eb,\n\nArsino\u00eb II,\n\nArtemis, , , , ,\n\nArtemis Corythalia, , ,\n\nArtemis Limnatis,\n\nArtemis Orthia: archaeological findings on, \u2013; clothing for figure of, \u2013; compared with cult of Helen, ; dancing at sanctuary of, \u2013; jewelry in sanctuary of, , 77n.12, ; meanings of \"Orthia,\" \u2013; priestesses of, ix, , , , , , ; religious worship of, \u2013, __, \u2013n.; sanctuary of, , 77n.12, \u2013, , , ; terracotta figurines of, on horseback, \u2013, 20n.65; and whipping ceremonies, 58n.30, , , ,\n\nArtemis Patriotis,\n\nArtemisia, ,\n\nAsclepiades of Samos,\n\nAsclepius, \u2013\n\nAsclepius Schoinatas,\n\nAstaphis,\n\nAstrobacus,\n\nAstumeloisa, ,\n\nAtalanta,\n\nAthena, , 21n.71, , , , \u2013, 122n.72\n\nAthena of the Bronze House (Chalkioikos), , , \u2013, ,\n\nAthena Poliouchos,\n\nAthenaeus, , , , , ,\n\nAthens\n\nadultery in,\n\nAnthesteria in, 150n.32\n\nanti-Spartan bias of, \u2013\n\nchildhood in, ,\n\ncruelty of women of,\n\ndivinities of,\n\ndowries in, \u2013\n\ndramatic poetry from, \u2013\n\neconomy of, , ,\n\neducation in, ,\n\nheiresses in,\n\ninfanticide in, \u2013\n\ninferior position of women in generally,\n\ninheritance in,\n\nland ownership in,\n\nliteracy in, , 5n.10\n\nmarriage and family in, , , , \u2013, ,\n\nmonument of Philopappus in,\n\nmotherhood in, , , \u2013\n\nmourning in, , ,\n\npolis of,\n\nproperty ownership by women in, \u2013\n\nprose from, \u2013\n\nreligion in, ,\n\nslave women in, ,\n\nsources on history of,\n\nspeaking by women in,\n\ntravel by women in,\n\nvase painting from,\n\nweaving in, \u2013, ,\n\nweddings in, \u2013, ,\n\nwives of citizens in,\n\nwomen of, during Peloponnesian War,\n\nwomen's clothing in, ,\n\nyoung girls in,\n\nathletic nudity, \u2013, __, \u2013, ,\n\nathletics\n\nco-ed competitions, , 14n.41, __,\n\ncompetitive racing and trials of strength for women, \u2013\n\nin Hellenistic Sparta, \u2013\n\nhorsemanship, \u2013, ,\n\nas incitement for marriage,\n\nnudity in, x, \u2013, __, \u2013, , , , _\u2013_\n\nand physical education, \u2013, __, __\n\nand religion, , , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nin Roman Sparta, \u2013\n\n_See also_ Cynisca; Euryleonis; horsemanship\n\nAugustus, , 55n.19, ,\n\nAuletes, 80n.24\n\nAurelia Heraclea,\n\nausterity of Sparta, , , , 162n.93\n\nauthority of Spartan women, \u2013, , , \u2013, \u2013\n\nAutocharidas, , 11n.30\n\nAymard, Andr\u00e9, 91n.56, 91n.58\n\nbachelors, , , , , ,\n\nBalbilla, Julia, \u2013\n\nBalbillus, Ti.Claudius,\n\n_baryllika_ ,\n\nbeauty, , , \u2013,\n\nBeauvoir, Simone de, \u2013\n\nBerenice II, 24n. 89,\n\n_bibasis_ ,\n\n_biduoi_ (magistrates),\n\nbigamy, , \u2013\n\nBilistiche, 23n.86, 24n.89\n\nbody size, 53n.6, , 54n.13\n\nBoer, W. den, 161n.90\n\nBradford, A. S., 87n.44\n\nBrasidas, ,\n\nbravery, , , \u2013, , , , 156n.64\n\nBremen, Riet van, 120n.62\n\nBriscoe, John, 90n.54\n\nbronze mirrors. _See_ mirrors\n\nbronze statuettes, \u2013, 164n.105\n\nByzantine dictionaries, \u2013\n\nCalame, Claude, 121n.64, 142n.10, 145n.17\n\nCallicles,\n\nCallicrateia,\n\nCallimachus, 24n.89\n\nCallistonice, 123n.79\n\nCampbell, D. A., 157n.72\n\nCartledge, Paul, , 78n.16, \u2013\n\nCaryae, , 107n.9\n\nCastor, , ,\n\nCeres,\n\nChaeron, \u2013\n\nchariot riding and racing, , , , , , ,\n\nCharision,\n\nchildbirth\n\ndeaths from, , 52n.3, , , ,\n\nEileithyia as goddess of, \u2013\n\n_See also_ motherhood\n\nchildhood, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013. _See also_ education; Spartan boys\n\nchildless Spartan women, , , , , , , \u2013\n\nChilon,\n\nChilonis, \u2013, , , , , 76n.6, \u2013,\n\nchiton, , , , , ,\n\n_chiton exomis_ (tunic with one sleeve), ,\n\nchoruses, , \u2013. _See also_ Alcman; _mousike_\n\nChrimes, K., 151n.36\n\nChristien, J., 92n.60\n\nChryse, , 76n.10\n\nCicero, , \u2013, , ,\n\nCinadon, ,\n\nCivil War, American, \u2013\n\nClark, Christina A., 145n.18\n\nClaudius,\n\nCleaichma, , 11n.30\n\nCleanor,\n\nCleanthes,\n\nClearchus, 107n.9\n\nCleaver celebration,\n\nCleitagora, , 10n.25, \u2013\n\nCleombrotus, ,\n\nCleomenes I, , ,\n\nCleomenes III\n\nand _agoge_ (boys' program),\n\nchildren of, ,\n\ndeath of,\n\nand dowries,\n\nend of reign of, \u2013,\n\nand freedom for helots, 97n.8\n\nPlutarch's life of, ,\n\nreforms of, , , , \u2013, 90n.53,\n\nand Stoicism, ,\n\nwife and concubine of, , , , ,\n\nCleonymus, , ,\n\ncleruchies (land allotments), , \u2013\n\nCloelia, 21n.71\n\nclothing\n\nof Athenians, ,\n\nof Spartan men and boys,\n\nof Spartan women, \u2013, , __, \u2013\n\nfor statues, \u2013, 30n.122. _See also_ weaving\n\ncoinage, , ,\n\ncompetitiveness, , \u2013, , , . _See also_ athletics\n\nConfederate States of America, \u2013\n\n_Constitution of the Spartans_ (Aristotle),\n\ncontraception. _See_ family planning\n\nCorinth,\n\nCoriolanus,\n\ncosmetics, ,\n\nCottina, , ,\n\ncowardice, , , \u2013, , , , 152n.40, 156n.64\n\nCratesiclea,\n\nCratesicleia, , , \u2013, , , ,\n\nCratinus,\n\nCrete, ,\n\nCritias, ,\n\ncross-dressing, ,\n\nCrouwel, J., 163n.99\n\n_cryptoi_ (secret hunters of helots), ,\n\nCynics, ,\n\nCynisca\n\nbirth year of, 21n.77\n\ndefiance of brother by, ,\n\nepigram on, , \u2013\n\nfamily of,\n\nhorseracing by, \u2013,\n\nas Olympic victor, \u2013, ,\n\nshrine and sculptures of, \u2013, 23n.87,\n\nas unmarried, 22n.79,\n\nwealth and vanity of, 22n.81, ,\n\nCyrene, 24n.89\n\nDamocrita, 49n.47\n\nDamainetus, 125n.91\n\nDamareta,\n\nDamatria, ,\n\nDamatrius,\n\ndancing, , __, , , \u2013, ,\n\nDarwin, Charles, \u2013\n\nDawkins, R. M., 135n.13,\n\nDegas, Edgar, , 16n.44, __\n\nDeinicha, , , 158n.75\n\nDeinis, 158n.75\n\nDemaratus, , , , ,\n\nDemeter, 54n.13, \u2013,\n\nDemetrius of Phalerum, 90n.51\n\nDemin, Giovanni, __,\n\ndemography, \u2013, . _See also_ family planning; fertility; infanticide; life expectancy; marriage; polyandry; sex ratio\n\nDettenhofer, Maria H.,\n\nDicaearchus, 158n.74\n\nDidymus,\n\ndiet. _See_ food and diet\n\nDiodorus, 58n.29,\n\nDiogeitus,\n\nDionysiades,\n\nDionysius, ,\n\nDionysus, , , , \u2013, ,\n\nDionysus of the Hill (Colonatas),\n\nDioscorides,\n\nDioscuri, , , , ,\n\ndivorce, . _See also_ marriage\n\n_doriazein_ (to dress like a Spartan girl),\n\nDorieus, 158n.75\n\n_doulai_ (slave women), , \u2013\n\n_douloi_ (slaves), , 100n.24\n\ndowries, \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013\n\ndramatic poetry, \u2013. _See also_ specific playwrights\n\ndress. _See_ clothing\n\nDriodones,\n\n_dromos_ (racecourse),\n\nDroop, J. P., 77n.12\n\nDucat, Jean, 92n.60, 100n.24\n\nearthquake, , 67n.55, 80n.26\n\neating. _See_ food and diet\n\neconomics of marriage and family, \u2013, , . _See also_ dowries; wealth of elite women\n\neducation\n\nin Athens, ,\n\nand athletic competitions, \u2013\n\nand childhood, \u2013\n\ngoals of, , \u2013\n\nin Hellenistic Sparta, \u2013\n\nand horsemanship, \u2013\n\nand learned Spartan women, \u2013\n\nand literacy, \u2013, 5n.10,\n\nand motherhood, , ,\n\nand _mousike_ , , , ,\n\nphysical education, \u2013,\n\nin Roman Sparta, \u2013\n\nsources, vii\n\nof Spartan boys, , , \u2013\n\nand the state, \u2013,\n\nEgger, \u00c9mile,\n\nEgypt, \u2013, ,\n\nEileithyia, , \u2013, 113n.29, 113n.31,\n\nEirana, ,\n\nelections,\n\nEleusinion, \u2013\n\nElis\n\nCynisca's commemorative sculptures at,\n\nHera's sanctuary at,\n\nmirrors from,\n\nSparta's attack on,\n\nwomen's races at, x\u2013xi, 22n.79, \u2013, 30n.121, \u2013\n\nelite women\n\nand adultery and bigamy, \u2013\n\nautonomy and social power of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nand dowries, \u2013\n\nas heiresses, , , \u2013,\n\nhonors and titles for, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nand land tenure, \u2013\n\nand luxury, \u2013, 83n.31,\n\nmarriage of, \u2013\n\nas priestesses, \u2013\n\nand reforms of Agis and Cleomenes, \u2013, 90n.53,\n\nand reforms of Apega, Nabis and Chaeron, \u2013\n\nroyal women, \u2013, \u2013\n\nwealth of, , \u2013, 90n.53, \u2013, \u2013\n\n_See also_ Spartan women; and specific women\n\nendogamy, \u2013,\n\nEngels, F.,\n\nEnodia, 114n.36\n\nEpaminondas,\n\nEphorus, ,\n\nEpidaurus, \u2013\n\n_epikleros_ (heiress), , \u2013. _See also_ heiresses\n\nEpiphanes, C.Antiochus,\n\nEpitadeus, x, xn., , , , ,\n\n_Epithalamium to Helen_ (Theocritus), ,\n\nequestrianship. _See_ horsemanship\n\nEsther,\n\nEthnicity, Spartan, vii, , \u2013\n\nEtruscan painting,\n\neugenics, \u2013, , 48n.45, , \u2013,\n\nEuonyma, ,\n\nEupolia, ,\n\nEupolis, ,\n\nEuripides, , , 83n.31, \u2013, ,\n\nEurybanassa, 126n.93\n\nEurycrates, 157n.72\n\nEuryleon, 158n.75\n\nEuryleonis, , , 158n.75\n\nEurysthenes,\n\n_eusebeia_ (piety), , \u2013\n\n_euteknos_ (blessed with good children),\n\nexomis (tunic),\n\nextramarital intercourse, \u2013, 41n.23. _See also_ sexual behavior; Timaea\n\nfamily\n\nin Athens, \u2013, \u2013\n\nBeauvoir on, \u2013\n\nchanges in, over time, \u2013\n\nfather-daughter relationship, \u2013\n\nof free noncitizens,\n\nof helots, ,\n\nand interlocking public and private spheres, \u2013\n\nmen's relationships within,\n\nmother-daughter relationship,\n\nmother-son relationship, \u2013, __,\n\nas _oikos_ , , \u2013, , , , \u2013\n\nsize of, , ,\n\nwomen's dominance in, , , ,\n\nwomen's influence in, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ fatherhood; marriage; motherhood; _oikos_ (family, household, estate)\n\nfamily planning, \u2013, , , ,\n\nFates,\n\nfather-daughter relationship, \u2013\n\nfatherhood, \u2013, , , 55n.18, \u2013, ,\n\nfeasting, \u2013, , , , ,\n\nfemale infanticide, \u2013, 35n.8, \u2013,\n\n\"Female Swimmers\" (Alcman), 13n.38\n\nfeminist theory, ,\n\nfertility, \u2013, , 65n.46, , , , , ,\n\nFigueira, Thomas J., 80n.26\n\nFinley, M. I., \u2013, 160n.82\n\nFlamininus, ix\n\nfood and diet, , \u2013, \u2013, 52n.5, \u2013, , \u2013, , 150n.33. _See also_ feasting; syssitia; wine-drinking\n\nF\u00f6rtsch, R., 163n.99\n\nfree noncitizens, , , \u2013,\n\n_genitor_ (biological father), , , 47n.38\n\n_gennaia_ (well born),\n\ngold, , \u2013, 77n.12, , ,\n\nGorgo, , , , , , , , ,\n\nGortyn, \u2013, 92n.60, ,\n\ngrave markers, , 52n.3, , , ,\n\ngreed, ,\n\nGylippus, , ,\n\nGymnopaidia (Festival of Nude Youths), , , , 158n.77\n\n_gymnos_ (nude, lightly dressed),\n\n_gynaikonomos_ (regulator of women), , , 118n.45, \u2013\n\nGyrtias, ,\n\nHadrian, , ,\n\nHagesichora, , , , ,\n\nHagnon of Tarsus,\n\nhair, , , , \u2013, __, 42n.26,\n\nHall, Edith, 146n.22\n\nhealth and healing, \u2013, ,\n\nHecate, 114n.36\n\n_Heilotes_ (Eupolis),\n\nheiresses, , , , , \u2013, , . _See also_ inheritance\n\nHelen\n\nin art, _\u2013_, , 169n.12\n\nbirth of, , 123n.78\n\nbronze votive of, on horseback,\n\nchildren presented to, ,\n\ncompared with cult of Artemis Orthia,\n\ncult of, at Therapne, 115n.42,\n\ndaughter of, \u2013\n\nfamilies claiming descent from,\n\nHerodotus on,\n\nlegends of, \u2013\n\nmeaning of name,\n\nMenelaion as sanctuary of, 22n.78, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nand Menelaus, , ,\n\nand Paris, , 169n.112\n\nPausanias on,\n\npriesthoods of,\n\nraces in honor of, , ,\n\nrape of, by Theseus,\n\nreligious worship of, , , 105n.1, \u2013, 115n.42, 123n.77\n\nas spinner and weaver, , 31n.125,\n\nstatuary of, __, __,\n\nwealth of, , ,\n\nand wrestling,\n\nHeleneia,\n\nHellenistic period, \u2013, , \u2013, , , \u2013\n\nhelots\n\nand agriculture, , ,\n\nchildren born of Spartans and, , , ,\n\ndefinition of,\n\nand eugenics, \u2013\n\nfamilies of, ,\n\nfreedom for, , 97n.8,\n\nkillings of, \u2013\n\nmarriage between Spartan women and, \u2013, 90n.52, 91nn.56\u2013\n\nNabis and citizenship for, \u2013\n\nas nurses, , 99n.13\n\npopulation of,\n\nprocreative unions between Spartan men and, , , \u2013\n\nprocreative unions between Spartan women and, , 48n.45, , , ,\n\nrebellion of, in 460s,\n\nreligion of, \u2013\n\nroles and duties of, , , \u2013\n\nslaves compared with, \u2013,\n\nas soldiers, ,\n\nsources of information on helot women,\n\nand Spartan songs,\n\nand weaving,\n\nwomen's discussion of financial matters with,\n\n_Helots_ (Eupolis), ,\n\nHera, x\u2013xi, \u2013, 25n.95, 30n.121, 31n.124, , \u2013\n\nHera Hypercheiria, \u2013\n\nHeraea, x\u2013xi, \u2013, , 30n.121, \u2013,\n\nHerculanus,\n\nHerington, J., 144n.13\n\nHermione, 83n.31, \u2013\n\nHermippus,\n\nHerodotus\n\non bigamy,\n\nbiographical information on,\n\non clothing, \u2013\n\non cult of Helen at Therapne, 115n.42,\n\non heiresses,\n\non marriage, , , ,\n\non Menelaion,\n\nas source on Sparta, , ,\n\non ugly girl turned beautiful by Helen, \u2013\n\non wives of Anaxandridas, , ,\n\non wives of Minyae,\n\nHesiod,\n\nHestia Poleos (Hestia of the City), ,\n\nHesychius, ,\n\nhetairai, , , , , ,\n\nHilaeira, ,\n\n_himatia_ (outer dresses),\n\nHimerius of Prusa,\n\nHippoco\u00f6n, 14n.43,\n\nHippocrates, 64n.44\n\nHippocratics,\n\nHippodamia, , 113n.33\n\nHippomedon,\n\nHodkinson, Stephen J., xn. , 35n. 6, 69n.60, 78n.16, \u2013, 92n.60, 97n.7, 158n.75,\n\nHomer, 23n.83, , , ,\n\n_homoioi_ (men of equal status or similars), , , ,\n\nhomosexuality\n\nbetween men, , , , \u2013,\n\nbetween women, , 16n.44, , , , , , 160n.88,\n\n_See also_ sexual behavior\n\nHorace, 42n.26\n\nhorsemanship, \u2013, 19n.61, 20n.62, 24n.89, , , , , \u2013, ,\n\nHrdy, Sarah Blaffer, \u2013\n\nHume, David,\n\nhunting,\n\nhusband-doubling and wife-sharing, \u2013, 37n.12, 39n.18, 40n.21, , , 47n.40, , , , , \u2013, . _See also_ marriage\n\nHyacinthia, , , , \u2013, 120n.62, 121n.64, , . _See also_ Apollo\n\nhypogamy, \u2013, \u2013. _See also_ Tarentum\n\n_hypomeiones_ (demoted citizens),\n\nhyporcheme,\n\n_hypostatria_ (dresser of the cult image),\n\nIamblichus, \u2013\n\nIbycus, , ,\n\nillegitimacy, ,\n\n_ilotae_ (helots), . _See also_ helots\n\nincest, 69n.60,\n\ninfanticide, \u2013, , \u2013, ,\n\ninheritance, \u2013, , , , , 78n.17, \u2013, , , . _See also_ heiresses\n\nIonia,\n\nIphigenia,\n\n_ius trium liberorum_ (law of three children), , 55n.19\n\nJudith,\n\nJulia Balbilla, the Pious, \u2013\n\nJulia Domna,\n\nJulianus,\n\nJustin,\n\n_kallabides_ , _kallabidia_ ,\n\n_kleronomos_ (heir apparent),\n\n_kleros_ (plot of land), x, , , , , , , \u2013, , , , , . _See also_ land tenure\n\n_komos_ (revel),\n\n_kopis_ (Cleaver celebration),\n\nKore, 54n.13\n\n_kosmiotes_ (orderliness),\n\nKrone, Julie, 19n.61\n\nKunstler, Barton,\n\n_kyrioi_ , 92n.60\n\n_kyrittoi_ ,\n\nLacedemonians, ,\n\nLacey, W. K., \u2013\n\nLaconia, , , , , , , , , \u2013,\n\nLaconian hounds, 21n.75\n\nLactantius,\n\nLagren\u00e9e the Elder, Louis Jean Fran\u00e7ois, __\n\n_Lakaina_ (Apollodorus Carystius or Apollodorus Gelous),\n\n_Lakainai_ (Sophocles),\n\n_Lakonika_ (Polycrates),\n\n_lambano_ (man who takes a wife), ,\n\nLampito, , , , , 149n.29\n\nland tenure, \u2013, \u2013, , . _See alsokleros_ (plot of land)\n\nLarson, Deborah, 118n.46\n\nLatin authors, . _See also_ specific authors\n\n_Laws_ (Plato), , , , ,\n\nlaws of Sparta, x, , , , 92n.60, , , ,\n\nLeda, , 123n.78\n\n_Leda_ (Eupolis),\n\nleisure, ,\n\nLeonidas, , , , , \u2013, 87n.44\n\nLeotychidas,\n\nLeotychidas II, , 149n. 29, , 157n.72\n\nlesbianism. _See_ homosexuality\n\nLesbos, 5n.10\n\nLeucippides, , , , 118n.46,\n\nLeucippus, ,\n\nLeuctra, battle of, ix, , , , 66n.49, , , ,\n\nLex Oppia,\n\nlife expectancy,\n\n_Life of Lycurgus_ (Plutarch), , , , ,\n\nliteracy, \u2013, 5n.10. _See also_ education\n\nLivy, , 90n.54\n\nlower classes\n\nin Athens,\n\n_doulai_ (slave women), \u2013\n\nhelots, , 48n.45, , , , , , \u2013,\n\n_mothakes_ (mixed-blood children), , , 96n.4,\n\nnurses, \u2013\n\n_perioikoi_ (free noncitizens), , , \u2013,\n\nprostitutes,\n\nreligion of, \u2013\n\nand reproduction, \u2013\n\nworking women, \u2013\n\nLuraghi, Nino, 95n.1\n\nluxury, \u2013, 83n.31, . _See also_ austerity; wealth of elite women\n\nLycurgus\n\nConstitution attributed to, ix, x, ,\n\ncosmetics outlawed by,\n\ndowries outlawed by,\n\neconomic system of, 78n.16\n\nhistorical existence of, x,\n\nand land tenure,\n\nlaws of, x, 78n.16, , , , , ,\n\non marriage, , , ,\n\non motherhood, ,\n\npaintings of, , __, , __\n\non physical education, ,\n\nPlutarch on, 78n.16, , , ,\n\nprostitution outlawed by,\n\non weaving,\n\nXenophon on, x, , , , , , , , ,\n\nLysander\n\nchitons for daughters of,\n\nengagements of daughters of, and lack of wealth, \u2013, , , \u2013,\n\nand Ephorus,\n\nmarriage of, 45n.32, , 133n.3\n\nPlutarch on daughters of,\n\nLysander (general),\n\nLysandridas,\n\nLysanoridas, , 133n.2\n\n_Lysistrata_ (Aristophanes), , , ,\n\nMacedonia, ,\n\nmale infanticide, \u2013, ,\n\nMalicha of Cytheria,\n\nMarcus Aurelius Teisamus,\n\nMardonius,\n\nMariette, Auguste F. F.,\n\nmarriage\n\nabduction myths as metaphor for, \u2013, ,\n\nage at marriage, , , , 56n.22,\n\nin Athens, \u2013, \u2013,\n\nbigamy, , \u2013\n\nand bride capture, , , ,\n\nand dominance of men by women, , , , ,\n\neconomics of, \u2013\n\nof elite women, \u2013\n\nand endogamy, \u2013,\n\nEngels on,\n\nand eugenics, \u2013,\n\nand extramarital intercourse, \u2013, 41n.23,\n\nof heiresses,\n\nof helots and Spartan women, , \u2013, 90n.52, 91nn.56\u2013\n\nhusband-doubling and wife-sharing in, \u2013, 37n.12, 39n.18, 40n.21, , , 47n.40, , , , , \u2013,\n\nand husband's rights,\n\nand illegitimacy,\n\nand infanticide, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nof older man and younger woman, , ,\n\nreproduction as goal of, , , \u2013,\n\nresidences of bride and groom following, \u2013,\n\nin Rome,\n\nof royal women, \u2013\n\nsecret marriage, \u2013, , , ,\n\nand selection of spouse, , \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsex ratio and polyandry, \u2013\n\nsexual behavior in, , , , , \u2013,\n\nand shortage of husbands, \u2013\n\nSpartan laws on,\n\nwedding customs, , \u2013, ,\n\nwomen's influence in, , , , ,\n\n_See also_ family; motherhood\n\nMarxism,\n\nMcClure, Laura, 135n.16\n\nMegalopolis,\n\nMegalostrata, ,\n\nMegistonous,\n\nMenelaion, , 20n.65, , \u2013, ,\n\nMenelaus, , , _\u2013_, , \u2013, ,\n\nmenstruation and menarche, , 27n.107, ,\n\nmercenaries, \u2013\n\nMessenia, ix, , , , , , , , ,\n\nMessenian War, Second, , , , , , ,\n\nmilitary, , , \u2013, \u2013, , , , , , , 156n.64. _See also_ specific wars and battles\n\nmilitary defense by Spartan women, , , \u2013, 122n.75\n\nMiller, Margaret C., 108n.17\n\nMimnermus,\n\nMinyae,\n\nmirage, Spartan, viii, , , , , \u2013\n\nmirrors, , , , \u2013, _\u2013_,\n\n_monochitones_ (tunic),\n\n_Moralia_ (Plutarch),\n\n_mothakes_ (mixed-blood children), , , 96n.4, , 97n.7, \u2013\n\nmother-daughter relationship,\n\nmother-son relationship, \u2013, __,\n\nmotherhood\n\nin Athens, , \u2013\n\nathletics as preparation for, ,\n\nand bravery\/cowardice of sons, , , \u2013, , , , 156n.64\n\nas bridge between private and public spheres, \u2013\n\nchange over time, ,\n\nin Confederate States of America, \u2013\n\ndemographic speculations on, \u2013\n\nand dominance of men by women, , , ,\n\nand educational goals for girls, , ,\n\nand family planning, \u2013, ,\n\nand fertility, \u2013, ,\n\nand food and diet for females, \u2013,\n\nas fulfilling experience for women, ,\n\ngrave markers for mothers who died in childbirth, , 52n.3, , , ,\n\nideology of, \u2013\n\nimportance of, in Sparta,\n\nand infanticide, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nkilling of cowardly sons by mothers, \u2013, , , 152n.40, 156n.64\n\nand later tradition, , __\n\nand literacy of women,\n\nLycurgus on, ,\n\nmother-daughter relationship,\n\nmother-son relationship, \u2013, __,\n\nand number of children, ,\n\n_oikos_ and family economy,\n\nand refusal of Spartan women to bear children, , \u2013, , , , , ,\n\nand religion,\n\nrewards for, , 52n.3,\n\nRoman interest in,\n\nand the Spartan polis, , \u2013, \u2013\n\nin United States, \u2013\n\n_See also_ eugenics; husband-doubling; marriage; _oliganthropia_\n\nmourning, , , , ,\n\n_mousike_ (music, dancing, poetry), , , , , , ,\n\nMurray, Julia Sargent,\n\nmusic, , , , , , , , \u2013,\n\nMyllias of Croton,\n\nMyrto,\n\nNabis, \u2013, 90n.53, , ,\n\nnakedness. _See_ nudity\n\nnames of Spartan women, , , 52n.3, , , \u2013, , , \u2013\n\n_Nanno_ (Mimnermus),\n\nNausicaa,\n\n_neodamodeis_ (freed helots),\n\nNeoptolemus, 83n.31\n\nNeo-Pythagoreans,\n\nNepos, 58n.29\n\nNero,\n\nNicander,\n\nNicippia, 76n.9, ,\n\nNicolaus of Damascus, , ,\n\nNistheadousa, , 11n.29\n\n_nothoi_ (bastards), ,\n\nnudity\n\nathletic nudity, \u2013, __, \u2013, , ,\n\nand choice of spouse,\n\nerotic nudity, \u2013, __, ,\n\nof females in front of bachelors, , ,\n\nGymnopaidia (Festival of Nude Youths), , , , 158n.77\n\nPlutarch on, , , 34n.5\n\nin Spartan art, \u2013, _\u2013_\n\nnurses, \u2013\n\nnutrition. _See_ food and diet\n\n_Odyssey_ (Homer), ,\n\n_Oeconomicus_ (Xenophon), , , ,\n\nOgden, Daniel, , , 48n.45\n\n_oiketai_ (household slaves), , 100n.24\n\n_oikos_ (family, household, estate), , \u2013, , , , \u2013, , , , , , , , . _See also_ family\n\n_oligandria_ ,\n\n_oliganthropia_ (sparse population), , \u2013, ,\n\nOllier, F., . _See also_ mirage\n\nOlympia and Olympiads, , \u2013, 22n.79, \u2013, 25n.95, , , ,\n\nOlympio,\n\n_On Alcman_ (Sosibius),\n\n_On Mimes in Laconia_ (Sosibius),\n\n_On the Sacrifices in Lacedaemon_ (Sosibius),\n\nOrestes,\n\nOrthia, . _See also_ Artemis Orthia\n\nOrthia sanctuary, ix, \u2013, 20n.65, \u2013, 58n.30, \u2013, , , , \u2013. _See also_ Artemis Orthia\n\nOvid, ,\n\n_paidika_ (young boyfriends),\n\nPalladas,\n\nPanathenaea,\n\nPanteus, , , ,\n\nPanthalida, 29n.115\n\nParis, , 169n.112\n\n_Partheneion_ (Alcman), \u2013, , , , \u2013, , , \u2013, __, 145 _nn_ 17\u2013,\n\nPartheniai, 48n.44\n\n_parthenoi_ (virgins, unmarried women), ,\n\npartible paternity,\n\n_pater_ (legal father and husband),\n\npatriarchy, , ,\n\n_patroiokos_ (heiress), \u2013\n\n_patrouchos_ (heiress), \u2013\n\nPatterson, Cynthia B., 40n.21\n\nPausanias\n\non Aphrodite,\n\non Artemis,\n\non chariot racing, 22n.79,\n\non Cleomenes,\n\non Cynisca, ,\n\nand Ephorus,\n\non Leucippides,\n\non physical education,\n\non religion of helots,\n\nas source on Sparta,\n\non weaving, ,\n\nPausanias (traitor), , 58n.29, ,\n\nPax Romana,\n\nPeloponnesian League,\n\nPeloponnesian War, x, , , , , , , ,\n\nPelops, 113n.33\n\nPenelope,\n\n_peplos_ (tunic), , , 30n.121, , , \u2013\n\nPercalus,\n\nperfume,\n\nPericles, ,\n\n_perioikoi_ (free noncitizens), , , \u2013,\n\nPerithoos,\n\nPersepolis, 52n.5\n\nPersia, ,\n\nPersian War, ,\n\nPettersson, Michael, 121n.64\n\n_phalli_ , , 108nn.15, . _See also_ transvestism\n\nPhilip V ofMacedon,\n\nPhilo,\n\nPhilopappus,\n\nPhilopator,\n\nPhilopoemen, ,\n\nphilosophers, \u2013. _See also_ specific philosophers\n\nPhilostratus, 14n.41,\n\nPhoebe, ,\n\nPhylarchus, 11n.34, , 151n.36\n\nPhylono\u00eb, , 114n.36\n\nPhyscoa,\n\nphysical education, \u2013, __, _. See also_ athletics\n\nphysicians,\n\npiety, , \u2013\n\nPiper, Linda, 91n.56\n\nPlataea, battle of,\n\nPlatanistas,\n\nPlato\n\non age for parenthood,\n\nand Critias,\n\non dowries,\n\non education, ,\n\non military defense by women,\n\non nudity of women, \u2013\n\nand Plutarch, xn.,\n\non sexuality,\n\nas source on Sparta, , ,\n\non weaving,\n\non wine drinking by Spartan women,\n\nPliny, 34n.4, 42n.26\n\nPlutarch\n\non abortion,\n\non adultery,\n\non _agoge_ ,\n\nbiographical information on,\n\ncompared with Xenophon, \u2013\n\non Cynisca,\n\nDegas and,\n\non dowries,\n\non Epitadeus, x, xn.\n\non extramarital intercourse, \u2013\n\non family,\n\non female infants,\n\non food and diet,\n\non helots,\n\non heterosexual intercourse, \u2013,\n\non homosexuality, \u2013,\n\non infanticide,\n\non _kleroi_ , , , ,\n\non land tenure,\n\non luxury, 83n.31\n\non Lycurgus, 78n.16, , ,\n\non marriage, , \u2013, 42n.26, \u2013, 56n.22, , ,\n\non motherhood, , , \u2013, ,\n\non nudity, , , 34n.5\n\non nurses, ,\n\non Panteus,\n\non Philopoemen,\n\non physical education, , ,\n\nPomeroy's research on, vii\n\nas priest at Delphi,\n\non religion,\n\non reproduction, ,\n\non sexuality, , \u2013\n\nas source on Sparta, 89n.48, , \u2013, \u2013, 161n.90\n\nand Sparta chronology, ix\n\non Spartan divinities with weapons, \u2013\n\non speaking by women, ,\n\non wealthy women, , , ,\n\non weaving, , ,\n\non women's ability to defend themselves,\n\nPolemon, ,\n\npolis, \u2013\n\n_Politics_ (Aristotle), \u2013\n\nPollux, , , ,\n\nPollux of Naucratis,\n\n_poloi_ (fillies),\n\n_polos_ (head-dress),\n\nPolyaenus, 58n.29\n\npolyandry, \u2013, \u2013\n\nPolybius, , \u2013, , , , 90n.52,\n\nPolycrates, ,\n\nPolydorus, , ,\n\nPompeius Trogus, 16n.49\n\nPomponia Callistonice, , 120n.63,\n\nPomponia Callistonice Arete,\n\nPoralla Paul, 58n.29, 158n. 76\n\nPoseidon,\n\npottery, . _See also_ vase painting\n\nPowell, A., 87n.43\n\npriestesses, ix, , , , , \u2013, ,\n\n_principes iuventutis_ ,\n\nprivate property, , , , \u2013, , , , . _See also_ property ownership\n\nProauga,\n\nProcles,\n\nProcris,\n\nProlyta, , ,\n\nPropertius, , 42n.26\n\nproperty ownership\n\nin Athens, \u2013\n\nprivate property, , , , \u2013, , , ,\n\nby Spartan women, \u2013, , 90n.53, \u2013, 92n.60, \u2013\n\n_See also_ dowries; inheritance; land tenure; wealth\n\nprosopography, , \u2013. _See also_ names of Spartan women\n\nprostitutes, , , ,\n\nPtolemaic queens, , ,\n\nPtolemy I, ,\n\nPtolemy II, 24n.89, ,\n\nPtolemy III Euergetes,\n\nPtolemy IV, Philopator,\n\nPtolemy XII Auletes, 80n. 24\n\npuberty, , 54n.12. _See also_ menstruation and menarche\n\npublic speaking, ,\n\npublic sphere, , \u2013. _See also_ althletics; royal women\n\nPyrrhus, , , , 122n.75,\n\nPythagoras and Pythagoreans, \u2013\n\nPythagoras of Argos,\n\nPythia,\n\n_quadriga_ (four-horse chariot), ,\n\nqueen as title, \u2013\n\nraces. _See_ chariot riding and racing; running races\n\nrape, , , , , , 108n.13, , ,\n\nRedfield, James,\n\nreligion\n\nAphrodite, 34n.4, , \u2013,\n\nApollo, \u2013\n\nArtemis Orthia, ix, \u2013, 20n.65, \u2013, 58n.30, , 77n.12, \u2013, , \u2013, 164\u201365n.106\n\nAthena, \u2013\n\nin Athens,\n\nand athletics, , \u2013, , \u2013\n\nDemeter, 54n.13, \u2013,\n\nDionysus, , , , \u2013,\n\nEileithyia, , \u2013, 113n.29, 113n.31,\n\nand feasting, \u2013, , , , ,\n\nHelen, , , 105n.1, \u2013\n\nHera, \u2013\n\nand Julia Balbilla, the Pious, \u2013\n\nof lower classes, \u2013\n\nand nurses,\n\nand priestesses, ix, , , , , \u2013, ,\n\nin Roman period, \u2013\n\nsources of information on,\n\n_See also_ specific gods and goddesses and specific festivals\n\nreproduction. _See_ family planning; fertility; infanticide; motherhood\n\n_Republic_ (Plato), , \u2013, , ,\n\nRepublican motherhood,\n\n_rhetra_ (legislation), x, , . _See also_ Epitadeus\n\nRicher,Nicolas, 16n.47\n\nrobots, \u2013, 90n.51\n\nRolley, Claude, \u2013n.\n\nRoman period, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nRome\n\nchariot riding in,\n\nchildbearing among upper classes of, , 55n.19, ,\n\nequestrian statues in, 21n.71\n\nmarriage in,\n\nmotherhood in,\n\nOppian Law of, ,\n\nphysicians in,\n\nand Second Punic War,\n\nwealth of, ,\n\nwrestling match at,\n\nRoussel, Pierre,\n\nroyal women\n\nand adultery, \u2013\n\nauthority of, \u2013\n\nand bigamy, \u2013\n\nmarriage of, \u2013\n\npiety of, \u2013\n\nand reforms of Agis and Cleomenes, \u2013\n\nand reforms of Nabis and Chaeron, \u2013\n\nand religion, , \u2013\n\nand succession,\n\nwealth of, \u2013, \u2013\n\n_See also_ elite women; and specific women\n\nrunning races, x\u2013xi, , __, 22n.79, \u2013, 25n.95, 25n.97, , , 30n.121, \u2013, , ,\n\nSabina, ,\n\nSalamis, battle of,\n\nSamos, ,\n\nSappho, 5n.10, ,\n\n_Sayings of Spartan Women_ (Plutarch), , , \u2013, , , , , , , ,\n\nScanlon, T., 14n.41\n\nsculpture, \u2013, 164n.105, \u2013\n\nSeleucus Nicator, 87n.44\n\nSellasia,\n\n_semnotes_ (dignity),\n\n_servi_ (slaves),\n\nSerwint, N., 26n.102\n\nsex ratio\n\ndemographic speculations on, \u2013\n\nand infanticide, \u2013,\n\nand polyandry, \u2013\n\nSextus Empiricus,\n\nsexual behavior\n\nanal intercourse, 29n.118,\n\nDarwin on, \u2013\n\nextramarital intercourse, \u2013, 41n.23\n\nhomosexuality, , 16n.44, , , , \u2013, , , , , , 160n.88\n\nin marriage, , , , , \u2013,\n\nin sculpture and vase painting, \u2013\n\nof Spartan women and girls, , , , \u2013,\n\n_See also_ rape; virginity\n\nShimron, B., 91n.57\n\nShipley, D. R., 153n.45\n\nShipley, G., 163n.99\n\nSicily, ,\n\nsilver, , 77n.12, , ,\n\nSimonides,\n\nsinging. _See_ music\n\n_skolion_ (drinking song),\n\nslave women, , , , 99n.13, \u2013,\n\nslaves, \u2013,\n\nSocrates, , ,\n\nsoldiers. _See_ military; and specific wars and battles\n\nSolon, ,\n\n_Sophists at Dinner_ (Athenaeus),\n\nSophocles, viii, , ,\n\n_sophrosyne_ (modesty), ,\n\nSosibius, 144n.13, , 152n.38,\n\nSparta\n\narchaeological evidence on, , , \u2013\n\narchaic period of, \u2013, \u2013\n\nausterity of, , 162n.93\n\nchronology of, viii\u2013xi\n\nclassical writers on, \u2013\n\neconomic changes in, \u2013\n\nHellenistic historians on, \u2013\n\nHellenistic Sparta, \u2013, , \u2013, ,\n\nland tenure in, \u2013\n\nLatin authors on,\n\nlaws of, x, , , 92n.60, ,\n\npopulation of and population decline in, , , , \u2013, , , 139n.1\n\npopulation of helots in,\n\nprosopographical problems of, \u2013\n\nreforms of Agis and Cleomenes, \u2013, 90n.53,\n\nand reforms of Apega, Nabis, and Chaeron, \u2013\n\nRoman period of, \u2013, \u2013, \u2013\n\nRoman writings on, \u2013\n\nsecondary sources on, \u2013\n\nsex ratio in, \u2013, , \u2013\n\nterritory controlled by, \u2013, 66n.49\n\nuniqueness of,\n\nwritten sources on, \u2013\n\nSpartan boys\n\nand _agoge_ , , , , , 158n.77\n\nand athletic nudity, \u2013, __,\n\nclothing of,\n\neducation of, , , \u2013\n\nfood for, , 53n.6\n\nand Gymnopaidia (Festival of Nude Youths), , , , 158n.77\n\nand Hyacinthia,\n\ninfanticide of male babies, \u2013, ,\n\nmodesty of,\n\nand mother-son relationship, \u2013, __,\n\nand whipping ceremonies, 58n.30, , , , ,\n\n_Spartan Constitution_ (Xenophon), , , , \u2013\n\nSpartan men\n\nand bachelorhood, , , , , ,\n\nclothing of,\n\ndominance of, by women, , , , ,\n\nemigration of, after Peloponnesian War,\n\nfather-daughter relationship, \u2013\n\nand fatherhood, \u2013, , , 55n.18, \u2013, ,\n\nfood for, \u2013, 53n.6\n\ngrave markers for men who died in war, , 52n.3, , , ,\n\ngreed of,\n\nas _homoioi_ , , , ,\n\nand homosexuality, , , , \u2013,\n\nand lack of wealth,\n\nlife expectancy of,\n\nprocreative unions between helots and, \u2013, \u2013\n\nrewards for fathers, , 55n.18,\n\nsex ratio on, \u2013, \u2013\n\n_See also_ marriage; sexual behavior; syssitia\n\nSpartan women\n\narchaeological evidence on, , \u2013\n\nand beauty, , \u2013,\n\nchildhood of, \u2013\n\nclothing for, \u2013, , __, \u2013\n\nand dowries, \u2013, ,\n\neducation, \u2013,\n\nelite women,\n\nexclusion of, from state administration,\n\nhair of, \u2013, 42n.26,\n\nhealth of, , ,\n\nhomosexuality of, , 16n.44, , , , , , 160n.88\n\nlife expectancy for,\n\nliteracy of, \u2013\n\nand marriage, , \u2013\n\nand motherhood, , , \u2013, , \u2013, \u2013,\n\nnaming of, \u2013\n\nas philosophers, \u2013\n\nphysical education for, \u2013,\n\nas poets, \u2013,\n\nprocreative unions between helots and, , 48n.45, , , ,\n\nrecording of names of, , 52n.3, , , , , \u2013\n\nand reforms of Agis and Cleomenes, \u2013, 90n.53,\n\nand reforms of Apega, Nabis, and Chaeron, \u2013\n\nrefusal of, to bear children, , \u2013, ,\n\nreligion of, \u2013\n\nroyal women, \u2013\n\nsex ratio on, \u2013, \u2013\n\nsexuality of, , , , \u2013\n\nsources on, \u2013\n\nstatus of, \u2013\n\nunmarried and childless women, , , , 49n.47, , , , , , \u2013,\n\nvirtues of, \u2013\n\nwealth of, , \u2013, 90n.53, \u2013, \u2013\n\nand weaving, \u2013,\n\nwords of, \u2013\n\nwritten sources on, \u2013\n\n_See also_ specific women\n\n_Spartans_ (Eupolis),\n\nSpawford, A. J. S., 118n.45,\n\nSpendon,\n\nSphaerus, , ,\n\nsports. _See_ athletics\n\n_stathmos_ (billet or dwelling place), \u2013\n\nstatus, , \u2013\n\nSte Croix, G. E. M. de,\n\nStehle, Eva, 106n.5\n\nStewart, Andrew,\n\nStoicism, , 11n.34, ,\n\nStrabo, 24n.89\n\nsuccession and royal women,\n\n_Suda_ ,\n\nSura, M. Palfurius,\n\n_synoikein_ (marry, cohabit), \u2013, 46n.38\n\n_syssition_ (mess group), 18n.53, , , ,\n\nTarentum, , 16n.47, , 48n.45, ,\n\nTaygetus Mount, , __, __, , , , ,\n\nTeiresias,\n\n_teknopoiia_ (child production),\n\nTeles,\n\nTelesilla, 123n.76\n\nTerpander,\n\nTexier, J.-G., 90n.53\n\nTheano, , 58n.29,\n\nThebans,\n\nTheocritus, , 14n.39, , ,\n\nTheopompus,\n\nThermopylae, battle of, ,\n\nTheseus, ,\n\nThibron, , 150n.35\n\nThird Social War,\n\n_thoinarmostria_ (mistress of the banquet),\n\nThucydides, , 58n.29,\n\nThylacis,\n\nTiberius,\n\nTimaea, \u2013, ,\n\nTimareta,\n\nTimasimbrota, , , 157n.72\n\nTimycha,\n\nTisamenus,\n\nTissaphernes, 107n.9\n\nTithenidia, , ,\n\ntraitors,\n\ntransvestism, , , , . _See alsophalli_\n\nTregaro, J. Christien, 41n.23\n\nTriptolemus, 54n.13\n\nTroilus of Elis, , 23n.83\n\n_trophimoi_ , 97n.7\n\nTsakona, 65n.46\n\nTymnes, ,\n\nTyndares, 126n.93\n\nTyndareus, 14n.43, , , 122n.74, , 123n.78\n\nTyrtaeus, 96n.3\n\nugliness, , \u2013. _See also_ beauty\n\nUnited States, \u2013\n\nunmarried Spartan women, , , 49n.47, , , , , \u2013\n\nupper classes. _See_ elite women; Spartan women\n\nutopia. _See_ mirage\n\nValerius Maximus,\n\n_Various Histories_ (Aelian),\n\nvase painting, n. , \u2013, \u2013\n\nVergil, ,\n\nVespasian,\n\nvirginity, , . _See alsoparthenoi_; rape\n\nvirtues of Spartan women, \u2013\n\nVitruvius, 155n.55\n\nVix crater, __,\n\nwarfare, women and, , \u2013. _See also_ military; and specific wars and battles\n\n_Wasps_ (Aristophanes),\n\nwealth of elite women, , \u2013, 90n.53, \u2013, \u2013\n\nweaving, \u2013, , , , , , ,\n\nwedding. _See_ marriage\n\nwhipping ceremonies, 58n.30, , , , ,\n\nwidows, , , ,\n\nwife-sharing. _See_ husband-doubling and wife-sharing; marriage\n\nwine drinking, , , , __, , \u2013, , 150n.32\n\nworking women, \u2013\n\nwrestling, \u2013, __, , ,\n\nXenaria, \u2013\n\n_xenelasia_ (strangers),\n\nXenopeithia, ,\n\nXenophon\n\nbiographical information on, \u2013\n\ncompared with Plutarch, \u2013\n\nand Critias, ,\n\non Cynisca,\n\non education,\n\non extramarital intercourse, \u2013, 41n.23\n\non family,\n\non fatherhood,\n\non food and diet, , ,\n\non helots, , , 100n.24\n\non heterosexual intercourse, \u2013,\n\non homosexuality, \u2013\n\non hunting,\n\non _kleroi_ ,\n\non luxury,\n\non Lycurgus, x, , , , , , ,\n\non marriage, , \u2013, \u2013, , , , \u2013,\n\non modesty,\n\non motherhood, , ,\n\nnaming of women by,\n\non _nothoi_ (bastards),\n\non physical education, , ,\n\nPomeroy's research on, vii\n\non reproduction, \u2013, , , ,\n\non sexuality, \u2013\n\non slaves, , , 100n.24, ,\n\nas source on Sparta, , , , \u2013, ,\n\non speaking by women, ,\n\non weaving, ,\n\n_xoanon_ (wooden image),\n\nZeus, 25n.95, , , 123n.78\n\nZeus Messapeus at Tsakona, 65n.46\n\nZeuxidemus,\n\nZiehen, Ludwig, \n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright\n  3. Dedication\n  4. Preface\n  5. Contents\n  6. Illustrations\n  7. Abbreviations\n  8. 1 Education\n  9. 2 Becoming a Wife\n  10. 3 The Creation of Mothers\n  11. 4 Elite Women\n  12. 5 The Lower Classes\n  13. 6 Women and Religion\n  14. Conclusion: Gender and Ethnicity\n  15. Appendix: Sources for the History of Spartan Women\n  16. Works Cited\n  17. Index\n\n  1. i\n  2. ii\n  3. iii\n  4. iv\n  5. v\n  6. vi\n  7. vii\n  8. viii\n  9. ix\n  10. x\n  11. xi\n  12. xii\n  13. xiii\n  14. xiv\n  15. xv\n  16. xvi\n  17. xvii\n  18. xviii\n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nDecision Making  \nand  \nProblem Solving  \nStrategies\n\nJohn Adair\n\nPublisher's note\n\nEvery possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or the author.\n\nPreviously published by the Institute of Personnel and Development as Decision Making and Problem Solving 1997 and 1999\n\nFirst published in Great Britain and the United States in 2007 by Kogan Page Limited as Decision Making and Problem Solving Strategies\n\nReissued 2010\n\nApart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses:\n\n120 Pentonville Road | 525 South 4th Street, #241 | 4737\/23 Ansari Road\n\n---|---|---\n\nLondon N1 9JN | Philadelphia PA 19147 | Daryaganj\n\nUnited Kingdom | USA | New Delhi 110002\n\nwww.koganpage.com | |\n\nIndia\n\n\u00a9 John Adair, 1997, 1999, 2007, 2010\n\nThe right of John Adair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.\n\nISBN 978 0 7494 5551 4\n\nE-ISBN 978 0 7494 5890 4\n\nThe views expressed in this book are those of the author, and are not necessarily the same as those of Times Newspapers Ltd.\n\n* * *\n\nBritish Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data\n\nA CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.\n\n* * *\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nAdair, John.\n\nDecision making and problem solving strategies \/ John Adair. -- 2nd. ed.\n\np. cm.\n\nOriginally published in 2007.\n\nIncludes index\n\nISBN 978-0-7494-5551-4 -- ISBN 978-0-7494-5890-4\n\n(ebook) 1. Decision making. 2. Problem solving. 3. Thought and thinking. I. Title. II. Title: Decision making and problem solving strategies.\n\nHD30.23.A3 2010\n\n658.4'03--dc22\n\n2009031517\n\n* * *\n\nTypeset by Jean Cussons Typesetting, Diss, Norfolk\n\nPrinted and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt Ltd\n\neBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong\nContents\n\nAbout the author\n\nIntroduction\n\n1 Your mind at work\n\nIs your brain working now?\n\nThe functions of the mind\n\nIntroducing the Depth Mind principle\n\nKey points\n\n2 The art of effective decision making\n\nDefine the objective\n\nCollect relevant information\n\nGenerate feasible options\n\nMake the decision\n\nImplement and evaluate\n\nKey points\n\n3 Sharing decisions with others\n\nYour role as leader\n\nTask need\n\nTeam maintenance need\n\nIndividual needs\n\nThe three circles interact\n\nThe functions of leadership\n\nKey points\n\n4 Key problem-solving strategies\n\nHow problems differ from decisions\n\nA unified model for decision making and problem solving\n\nAsking the right questions\n\nHow to approach systems problems\n\nKey points\n\n5 How to generate ideas\n\nBrainstorming\n\nGuidelines for brainstorming\n\nHow to run a brainstorming session\n\nKey points\n\n6 Thinking outside the box\n\nTowards a more creative approach\n\nLook wider for solutions\n\nHow to use your Depth Mind\n\nThe creative thinking process\n\nMental roadblocks\n\nKey points\n\n7 Developing your thinking skills\n\nWhat is an effective practical thinker?\n\nCheck that you are in the right field\n\nKey factors in choosing your field of work\n\nHow to design your own learning strategy\n\nKey points\n\nAppendix\n\nFurther reading\n\nIndex\nAbout the author\n\nJohn Adair is now widely regarded as the world's leading authority on leadership and leadership development. The author of 30 books on the subject, he has been named as one of the 40 people worldwide who have contributed most to the development of management thought and practice.\n\nEducated at St Paul's School, John Adair has enjoyed a varied and colourful career. He served as adjutant in a Bedouin regiment in the Arab Legion, worked as a deckhand on an Arctic trawler and had a spell as an orderly in a hospital operating theatre. After attending Cambridge University he became Senior Lecturer in Military History and Leadership Training Adviser at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, before becoming the first Director of Studies at St George's House in Windsor Castle and then Associate Director of the Industrial Society. Later he became the world's first Professor in Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey. He also helped to found Europe's first Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter.\n\nJohn Adair now acts as a national and international adviser on leadership development. His recent books, published by Kogan Page, include Not Bosses But Leaders, The Inspirational Leader, How to Grow Leaders and Leadership and Motivation.\nIntroduction\n\nThere are three forms of applied thinking that we all need: decision making, problem solving and creative thinking. These overlap considerably but they can be distinguished.\n\nDecision making is about deciding what action to take; it usually involves choice between options. The object of problem solving is usually a solution, answer or conclusion. The outcome of creative thinking, by contrast, is new ideas.\n\nAny leader such as yourself who aspires to excellence obviously has a vested interest in seeing that the best decisions are taken, that problems are solved in the optimum way and that the creative ideas and innovations so necessary for tomorrow's business flow freely. Of course, everyone in the team or organisation should be engaged in meeting these essential requirements. But you are the one who is called to provide the intellectual leadership that is needed. Are you willing to do so?\n\nOne step towards that end that you should definitely take is to become master of the processes of practical thinking, the processes that lie behind all effective decision making, problem solving and creative thinking. You cannot guarantee outcomes \u2013 for luck or chance plays a part in all human affairs \u2013 but you can at least make sure that you use the well tried-and-tested processes of thinking to some purpose. You own that responsibility. For my part, the aim of this book is to equip you with the necessary knowledge of those processes and to help you to acquire skill in using them.\n\nOne further word. Forget the idea that thinking is somehow a painful and laborious feeling in the mind, a kind of headache that is best avoided if possible. Thinking is fun. By fun here I do not really mean a diversion that affords enjoyment. For the word also means an activity that engages one's interest or imagination, an activity that may prove to be more than a diversion and may involve challenge and hard work but is still a source of enjoyment. If you come to love thinking for yourself you will learn naturally to do it well.\n\nAs Roy Thompson, one of the greatest businessmen of our time, once said, 'If I have any advice to pass on, as a successful man, it is this: if one wants to be successful, one must think; one must think until it hurts.' He added that, 'From my close observation, I can say that there are few people indeed who are prepared to perform this arduous and tiring work.' Are you one of them?\n\nIn the following pages we shall explore some practical ways in which you can improve your skills in this key area. By the time you have worked through the book you should:\n\n  * understand the way in which the mind works and the principles of effective thinking; \n  * have a clear framework for decision making; \n  * be aware of the relation between decision making and problem solving; \n  * be able to use a unified model for both making decisions and solving problems; \n  * have sharpened up your creative thinking skills; \n  * be in a position to chart a way forwards for improving your thinking skills across the board.\n\n**1**\n\nYour mind at work\n\nBehind your practical, everyday thinking there lies the most complex thing in the known universe: the human mind. Nobody hires and pays you nowadays for your physical strength. You are employed because you have a mind \u2013 and can use it effectively.\n\nThere is a vital distinction between brain and mind. Take a computer as an analogy. Your brain is what you see if you open up the back of the computer \u2013 all those chips and circuits \u2013 whereas the mind is what appears dynamically on the screen. In this book we are focusing on the mind, for that is accessible to us without peering into the skull.\n\nThere are two aspects to the mind: the information it can store in the memory, and what it can do. What we call technical or professional knowledge usually involves both. You not only need knowledge about a subject but you also need to be able to apply it in a variety of unforeseen situations.\n\nSuch applications of professional knowledge invariably involve the activities of decision making and problem solving. A doctor, for example, is problem solving when he or she tries to diagnose the cause of your weak left leg. Indeed, decision making and problem solving are so bound up with particular kinds of information or knowledge \u2013 areas of professional competence \u2013 that we find it hard to think of them in the abstract.\n\nAre there any generic or transferable skills in these areas? Yes, I believe there are. The characteristic function of the mind is to think. So let's leave on one side for a moment the memory or database function of the mind and concentrate on its primary role as a thinking tool. What is the nature of thinking? Are there any universal principles? If so, how can you use these principles to sharpen your skills as a practical thinker?\n\nIs your brain working now?\n\nThe physical base of your mind is of course your brain, the grey matter housed in your head. Your brain is composed of about 10,000 million cells. In fact it has more cells than there are people on the face of the earth! Each one of those cells can link up with approximately 10,000 of its neighbours, which gives you some 1 plus 800 noughts of possible combinations.\n\nOur potential brain power is known to be far greater than the actual power it achieves. No one has remotely approached the limits of it. One estimate suggests that we use no more than about 10 per cent of our brain power. So don't be worried by the fact that you are losing about 400 brain cells every day \u2013 indeed, if you do not exercise your mind throughout your life your brain will shrink at a faster rate.Use it or lose it!\n\nBefore we go any further, I suggest we double-check that all your 10,000 million brain cells are warmed up and working properly by trying to solve some problems. Actually, the three problems below require only about 3,000 million brain cells, so they will not take long or cause us much delay!\n\nTwo other points before we begin. The three problems are not just brain-teasers: they illustrate principles about thinking. So I am not playing games with you. Second, I am not going to give you the answers in this chapter to the first two problems, though I shall do so later. This can be a bit frustrating. But I have a reason for leaving you in suspense. For reasons I shall explain later, I believe that the answers to problems 1 and 2 \u2013 assuming that you cannot solve them immediately \u2013 may come to you later.\n\nProblem 1 The nine dots\n\nTake a piece of paper larger than this page and put on it a pattern of nine dots, like this:\n\nNow connect up the dots by four straight consecutive lines (that is, without taking your pen or pencil off the paper). You should be able to complete this task within three minutes.\n\nProblem 2 The six matchsticks\n\nPlace six matchsticks \u2013 preferably of the wooden variety \u2013 on a flat surface. Now arrange the matchsticks in a pattern of four equilateral (ie equal-sided) triangles. You may not break the matchsticks \u2013 that is the only rule. Again, you should be able to do it within three minutes. There are at least two solutions, but I want the best one.\n\nProblem 3 Who owns the zebra?\n\nHaving got the two easy ones safely behind you \u2013 well done if you have solved both those problems \u2013 we come now to something a little more demanding, so you must call up your reserve brain cells.\n\nThe world record for solving both parts of this problem is 10 minutes. So I will give you 30 minutes which, I am sure you will agree, is overgenerous of me!\n\n  1. There are five houses, each with a front door of a different colour, and inhabited by people of different nationalities, with different pets and drinks. Each person eats a different kind of food.\n  2. The Australian lives in the house with the red door.\n  3. The Italian owns the dog.\n  4. Coffee is drunk in the house with the green door.\n  5. The Ukrainian drinks tea.\n  6. The house with the green door is immediately to the right (your right) of the house with the ivory door.\n  7. The mushroom-eater owns snails.\n  8. Apples are eaten in the house with the yellow door.\n  9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.\n  10. The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left.\n  11. The person who eats onions lives in the house next to the person with the fox.\n  12. Apples are eaten in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.\n  13. The cake-eater drinks orange juice.\n  14. The Japanese eats bananas.\n  15. The Norwegian lives next to the house with the blue door.\n\nNow, who drinks water and who owns the zebra?\n\nThe functions of the mind\n\nLet's now look at how the mind works. I suggest that there are three main functions: analysing, synthesising and imagining, and valuing.\n\nFigure 1.1 The main functions of the mind\n\nIn the applied forms of effective thinking \u2013 decision making, problem solving, and creative or innovative thinking \u2013 all three of these functions are at work. It is their underlying health that largely determines the quality of your thought. Few people have them in harmonious balance, as shown in the illustration above. Most of us are better at one rather than the other two.\n\nOur differing mental strengths are a powerful reason why we need each other: effective thinking in all its forms is both a solitary and a social activity. You should always see yourself alternately as thinking alone (for yourself) and as thinking with others \u2013 either face to face or, as in this case, by reading or some other method of communication. Still, it is a good idea to seek to develop your skills in the weaker areas, like a person building up muscles in a limb through exercise: you will not always have the right people at hand to correct your bias towards a particular function.\n\nAnalysing\n\nThe word 'analyse' comes from a Greek verb meaning 'to loosen', and it means separating a whole into its constituent parts. In tackling the 'Who owns the zebra?' exercise you were using your analytical skills of dissection, trying to break down the task into its parts.\n\nAnalytical thinking is closely related to logical or step-by-step reasoning. You may have noticed that one of the skills you were using in tackling that particular problem was your power of deduction.\n\nLogic has two main parts: deduction and induction. Deduction means literally to subtract or take away. It is the process of deducing a conclusion from what is known or assumed. More specifically, it is a question of inferring from the general to the particular. 'All swans are birds. This is a swan. Therefore...' Induction works the other way round. It is the process of inferring or verifying a general law or principle from the observation of particular instances \u2013 the core of the 'scientific method'.\n\nExercise 1: Spot the fallacy\n\n**Can you spot the logical fallacy in the following statement?**\n\nThe chief executive of St Samaritan's Hospital Trust cleared his throat and began.\n\n'Thank you all for coming to this meeting, which is, as you know, about how to improve the quality of our service in this hospital. To begin with I have decided to sack all the surgeons and physicians over the age of 55 years. Look at these letters! I have had five letters of complaint about the abruptness and lack of communication of doctors here, and two mentioned that the doctors are too old or have passed their \"sell-by\" date. The way to deal with this problem is to lower the average age of the staff, so I am going to ask everyone to take voluntary retirement at 55. Any questions before we move on to the next item on the agenda \u2013 litter in the corridors?'\n\nFor the main part, unlike the manager in the 'Spot the fallacy' exercise (above), most of us are quite good at analysing problems or situations. This is not surprising, as much of our education is concerned with developing our deductive\/inductive powers (mathematics, sciences, history, and literature) and sharpening our analytical skills.\n\nYou may now like to look at the solution to the 'Who owns the zebra?' problem (see page 85). As you will see, it combines a test of your powers of reasoning or logical thinking with the important principle of trial and error. When you are faced with two alternatives \u2013 such as two roads at a junction without signposts that lead in the right general direction \u2013 there is no other way but to try each one in turn. In the case of this exercise, using a computer would save you time. But in real life you may, as they say, have to 'suck it and see'. Decision making is not an exact science.\n\nSynthesising\n\nIt is not easy to give a single label to the second function. Synthesising \u2013 another Greek word \u2013 is putting or placing things together to make a whole. It is the reverse process of analysing. You can synthesise things with your hands, which you do whenever you assemble or make anything. All products and services are the results of syntheses. But you can also do it mentally.\n\nWhen that happens, another faculty is called into play \u2013 imagination. Now, imagination works in pictures, and a picture is a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. If you shut your eyes for a moment and think of your house or your car, you see a picture. In fact, it is almost impossible not to see a picture. Your computer-like memory flashes it up on the inner screen of your mind very quickly. What you see is neither a pile of bricks, in the case of your house, nor a heap of car components, but in each case a whole.\n\nIf, so to speak, you turn up the volume knob of your imagination, you can see things that do not exist. Imagine, for example, a 56-metre-tall man... This road takes us into how to generate ideas, the subject to be explored more fully in Chapter 5.\n\nThe link between creativity and the synthesising process is clear when you contemplate how nature works. A baby arrives whole and it grows. Nature is holistic. A famous South African, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, who was also a keen agricultural scientist, coined the word holism to describe nature's way of creating wholes by ordering or grouping various units together. The essential realities in nature, Smuts argued, are these irreducible wholes. If analysed into parts, they lose their essential holistic quality. As the poet William Wordsworth put it, 'We murder to dissect.' Your mind has a holistic dimension. It can think holistically \u2013 in terms of wholes \u2013 as well as analytically (taking wholes to bits).\n\nValuing\n\nThe third function comes into play in such mental activities as establishing success criteria, evaluating, appraising performance, and judging people \u2013 as, for example, in a selection interview. Criticism (from the Greek word for a judge) is a form of valuing.\n\nIncidentally, criticism, as commonly understood, most often suggests disapproval \u2013 some sort of a negative judgement. But in its more formal use it can suggest neutral analysis or even approving evaluation. Judgement is not always un favourable.\n\nIn all valuing there is an objective (outside yourself) element and a subjective one. We are all born with the capacity to value. What we actually value \u2013 our values \u2013 depends very largely upon our environment and its culture.\n\nValues are rather like colours. What is the colour of grass? 'Easy,' you reply. 'It is green.' But scientists tell us that grass has no intrinsic colour: it is merely reflecting light in the wave band that we call green. The structure of our eyes is also a factor. Our subjective contribution to the perception of colour is significant. Being colour-blind to certain shades of the red\u2013green spectrum \u2013 fortunately not to the greenest of grass \u2013 I am personally very aware of that fact.\n\nThe word value comes from a market metaphor: it is what you have to give in order to receive something across the counter. The invention of money revolutionised bartering. One merit of money is that it was a universal measuring stick. But there are plenty of other values that enter into any form of decision making, especially in business today. (See Exercise 2.)\n\nExercise 2: Values at work\n\nMake a list of all the values \u2013 apart from financial value (profit) \u2013 which might influence any business decision over the coming 10 years.\n\nCheck to see whether the organisation you work for has issued a statement of its corporate values. If so, obtain a copy and underline what you judge to be the master value in it.\n\nHow far do your organisation's values overlap with your own philosophy of life?\n\nWhether or not values in the popular sense have a separate existence, and where they come from if not from ourselves, are philosophical questions that lie beyond the scope of this book. But in all thinking there is a strong case for acting as if truth \u2013 one member of the trinity of goodness, truth, and beauty \u2013 really does exist 'out there'. It would be impossible, for example, to explain the immense success story of modern science without the working belief of scientists such as Einstein that the truth is 'out there' waiting to be discovered.\n\nIntroducing the Depth Mind principle\n\nAs we all know, we have subconscious and unconscious minds. But we are not so aware of the vital part that the dimension that I have named the Depth Mind plays in our thinking. You can, as it were, analyse, synthesise and value in your sleep or when you are consciously doing something quite different, like gardening or washing the dishes. Far from being chaotic, the Depth Mind plays a large part in scientific discovery and creative art. It is also the source of intuition \u2013 that all-important sixth sense.\n\nConrad Hilton was trying to buy an old Chicago hotel. A few days before the deadline for sealed bids, Hilton submitted a bid for US $165,000, a figure he had reached by some hasty calculations, as he was busy on other things at the time. He went to bed that night feeling vaguely disturbed and awoke the following morning with the feeling that his bid was not high enough. Another figure kept coming to him out of his Depth Mind \u2013 US $180,000. 'It satisfied me. It seemed fair. It felt right. I changed my bid to the higher figure on that hunch. When the envelopes were opened the closest bid to mine was US $179,000.'\n\nCan you think of a similar decision or problem in your experience when your Depth Mind has played a similar role?\n\nChecklist: Listening to your Depth Mind\n\n| Yes| No  \n---|---|---  \nDo you have a friendly and positive attitude to your Depth Mind?   \nDo you expect it to work for you?|\n\n|\n\nWhere possible, do you build into your plans time to 'sleep on it', so as to give your Depth Mind an opportunity to contribute?|\n\n|\n\nDo you deliberately seek to employ your Depth Mind to help you to:|\n\n|\n\nanalyse a complex situation|\n\n|\n\nrestructure a problem|\n\n|\n\nreach value judgements?|\n\n|\n\nHave you experienced waking up next morning to find that your unconscious mind has resolved some problem or made some decision for you?|\n\n|\n\nDo you see your Depth Mind as being like a computer? Remember the computer proverb: Garbage in, garbage out.|\n\n|\n\nDo you keep a notebook or pocket tape-recorder at hand to capture fleeting or half-formed ideas?|\n\n|\n\nDo you think you can benefit from understanding how the Depth Minds of other people work?|\n\n|\n\nRoy Thompson, in his autobiography After I Was Sixty (1975), explains how the Depth Mind works.\n\nWhen a new problem arose, I would think it over and, if the answer was not immediately apparent, I would let it go for a while, and it was as if it went the rounds of the brain cells looking for guidance that could be retrieved, for by the next morning, when I examined the problem again, more often than not the solution came up right away. That judgement seems to have come to me almost unconsciously, and my conviction is that during the time I was not consciously considering the problem, my subconscious had been turning it over and relating it to my memory.\n\nThe use of your Depth Mind in decision making, problem solving and creative thinking is such an important principle that I shall return to it later. The million-dollar question is: Can we develop our Depth Mind capability? My answer is: Yes, we can. And the first step is awareness that it both exists and works. The secret of effective thinking is working with the natural grain of your mind \u2013 go with the flow as they say, but see if you can steer the boat.\n\nKey points\n\n  * We are called homo sapiens on account of our minds. The human capacity to exercise the mind \u2013 the activity we call thinking \u2013 is truly remarkable. Yet few of us use our minds to anything near their full capacity.\n  * Thinking is to regard or examine in the mind, to reflect or to ponder. As we experience it, thinking is a single stream of consciousness. But we can discern three interweaving currents in thinking to some purpose: analysing, synthesising and valuing.\n  * Analysing, the first function, tends to be highly developed by Western education. It is the men115tal ability to take things \u2013 material and non-material \u2013 to bits, to separate them into their component parts. It is related, but not identical, to logical or step-by-step thinking. \n  * Synthesising is the reverse process of putting things together to form a whole. When the resultant whole is formed from parts previously thought to be unconnected, when it looks new and has real value, then synthesising has become creative.\n  * Valuing, the third main function in purposive thinking, is self-explanatory. Even in the strictest schools of science or logic, it is impossible to exclude value. We are all valuing creatures; our actual values are largely shaped by our cultural experience. Of course, by helping us to escape out of the cultural box of our particular lives we encounter more universal values: goodness, truth and beauty.\n  * These functions \u2013 analysing, synthesising and valuing \u2013 can do their work at the unconscious level I have called the Depth Mind. Indeed, where complex decisions have to be made, problems solved or truly creative products involved, the Depth Mind is a vital dimension in the effective use of your mind.\n\nWe do not think as long as things run along smoothly for us. It is only when the routine is disrupted by the intrusion of a difficulty, obstacle or challenge that we are forced to stop drifting and to think what we are going to do.\n\nJohn Dewey\n**2**\n\nThe art of effective decision making\n\nThere is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow, or the relentless drift of events will make the decision.\n\nFranklin D Roosevelt\n\nIn decision making there is a classic five-step approach that you should find extremely helpful. That does not mean you should follow it blindly in all situations. It is a fairly natural sequence of thought, however, and so even without the formal framework you would tend to follow this mental path. The advantage of making it conscious is that it is easier to be swiftly aware when a step is missing or \u2013 more probably \u2013 has been performed without understanding or intention.\n\nIt is useful to think of the five steps on page 19 as five notes of music. Logically they should be played in strict sequence. But the mind darts about. The notes can be combined in different sequences and mental chords. Thinking is not a tidy process, but it should be done with a sense of order.\n\nRemember that we are not talking here about just big decisions, for there's a lot more to running a business than making one life-or-death decision. Indeed no decision, no matter how big, is any more than a small fraction of the total outcome. Yes, some decisions are much bigger than others, and some are forks in the road. But it is really more the case that a much larger number of small decisions have a cumulative result. By hindsight we can usually identify those few pivotal decisions, but it is really the stream of smaller decisions over time, made and executed with a craftsman's skill, that yields great outcomes.\n\nDefine the objective\n\nDo you know what you are trying to achieve? You do need to be clear \u2013 or as clear as possible \u2013 about where you want to get to. Otherwise the whole process of decision making is obscured in a cloud. As the proverb says, If you do not know what port you are heading for, any wind is the right wind.\n\nIf you are in doubt about your aim, try writing it down. Leave it for a day or two, if time allows, and then look at it again. You may be able to see at once how it can be sharpened or focused.\n\nCollect relevant information\n\nThe next skill is concerned with collecting and sifting relevant information. Some of it will be immediately apparent, but other data may be missing. It is a good principle not to make decisions in the absence of critically important information that is not immediately to hand, provided that a planned delay is acceptable.\n\nRemember the distinction between available and relevant information. One classic mistake is to look at the broad decision and then turn to the information we have that will help us decide. Some thinkers do not, however, look at the information at their disposal and ask themselves, 'Is this relevant?' Instead they wonder, 'How can I use it?' They are confusing two kinds of information \u2013 as is illustrated on page 20.\n\nFigure 2.1 The classic approach to decision making\n\nLife would be much simpler if you could just use the information at your disposal, rather than that which you really need to make the decision! So often quantities of data are advanced \u2013 there are acres of it on the internet \u2013 that merely add bulk to, say, a management report without giving its recommendations any additional (metaphorical) weight.\n\nThe rapid growth of methods of communication such as faxes, voice mail, e-mail, junk mail and the internet has now contributed to a new disease: Information Overload Syndrome. A recent international survey of 1,300 managers listed the new disease's symptoms, which included a feeling of inability to cope with the incoming data as it piles up, resulting sometimes in mental stress and even physical illness requiring time off work. The survey found that such overload is a growing problem among managers \u2013 almost all of whom expect it to become worse.\n\nFigure 2.2 Information categories\n\nExecutives and their juniors say they are caught in a dilemma: everyone tells them that they should have more information so they can make better decisions, but the proliferation of sources makes it impossible to keep abreast of the data.\n\nThe growth of information has been relentless. The New York Times contains as much distinct information every day as the average seventeenth-century person encountered in a lifetime. No wonder that half the managers surveyed complained of information overload, partly caused by enormous amounts of unsolicited information. The same proportion also expected the incredible expansion of the internet to intensify the problem year-on-year. To avoid succumbing to Information Overload Syndrome you need all the skills described in this book!\n\nSuppose that the overlap between information required and information available is not sufficient: what do you do? Obviously you set about obtaining more of the information required category. But getting information or \u2013 to use a grander description \u2013 doing research incurs costs in time and money. Your organisation may not be in the business of making profits, but it certainly has to be businesslike when it comes to containing costs.\n\nWhat the graph below suggests is that you usually acquire a great deal of relevant information in a relatively short time and, possibly, at a relatively low cost in money. But the line soon curves towards a plateau. You will find yourself spending more and more time to discover less and less relevant information. For example, if you and I sat next to each other at a dinner, I should learn all the really important things about you in the first half hour. The longer we talked, the smaller the increments of knowledge about you would become. After three hours I should be down to discussing relatively fine details.\n\nGenerate feasible options\n\nFigure 2.3 The time\/information curve\n\nNotice the word options rather than alternatives. An alternative is literally one of two courses open. Decision makers who lack skill tend to jump far too quickly to the either\u2013or alternatives. They do not give enough time and mental energy to generating at least three or four possibilities. As Bismarck used to say to his generals, 'You can be sure that if the enemy has only two courses of action open to him, he will choose the third.' Alfred Sloan, the renowned President of General Motors, was even known to adjourn meetings in which he was presented with two alternatives. 'Please go away and generate more options,' he would say.\n\nYou need to open your mind into wide focus to consider all possibilities, and that is where generating ideas (see Chapter 5) comes in. But then your valuing faculty must come into play in order to identify the feasible options. 'Feasible' means capable of being done or carried out or realised. If it is feasible it has some real likelihood of being workable. It can attain the end you have in mind.\n\nIn moving along the lobster pot (see the illustration below) from the feasible options (no more than five or six, for the mind finds it difficult to handle more) to three options and then to two (the true alternatives), the principle to bear in mind is that it is easier to falsify something than to verify it.\n\nSuppose you are choosing between five medium-sized estate cars for your family. It is easy to eliminate the unsuitable ones.\n\nAs you work on it, for example, you may discover that one of the cars is 9 inches longer than the others, which will cause you a problem given the size of your garage. As for a second car, on studying the specifications you cannot see why it is \u00a31,200 more expensive than the rest \u2013 apart from its prestigious name. So you drop that one too, leaving you now with three choices. You will notice another principle coming into play here, which (subject to the information\/time curve) does take most of the pain out of decision making. Let me continue with the car example. Because your partner does not like the colours of the Toyota model and, being an artist by profession, feels strongly about it, you are able to eliminate that one. Your alternatives are now the Nissan and the Peugeot.\n\nYou have just read this book and so, being persuaded by its argument, you decide to trade some more time for some more information, and test drive the alternative cars. Both feel great and perform really well. You know that either will serve your purpose. It is now a question of money and the availability of the colours your partner likes. One of the dealers offers you a much better price and can deliver the right model in the range. Why hesitate?\n\nFigure 2.4 The lobster pot model\n\nMake the decision\n\nThe critical preliminary activity here is to establish the selection criteria. It is worth dividing them into different levels of priority. (See the illustration below.)\n\nFigure 2.5 Decision-making criteria\n\nUnless an option meets the MUST requirements you should discard it. But after the essentials have been satisfied, the list of desirables \u2013 highly desirable SHOULDs or pleasant addition MIGHTs \u2013 comes into play.\n\nChoosing a car is a relatively simple case, because there is a finite number of models to choose from and a relatively simple list of criteria. In order to help you choose in more complex cases, remember that you can make a decision by:\n\n  * listing the advantages and disadvantages;\n  * examining the consequences of each course;\n  * testing the proposed course against the yardstick of your aim or objective; \n  * weighing the risks against the expected gains.\n\nAssessing risk\n\nWhat makes decisions really difficult is the factor of high risk. You may recall the conflicting advice of the two proverbs Look before you leap and He who hesitates is lost. There is an important skill in calculating risk. Calculation sounds mathematical, and there are plenty of management books with 'decision making' in the title that offer various 'probability theories' and statistical methods to take the pain out of risk assessment. Sometimes it can help to assign numbers and calculate in that way, but the contribution of mathematics to this field is very limited. Experience plays a much larger part.\n\nOne helpful idea is to define the worst downside \u2013 what happens in the worst scenario? Can you accept that, or will it sink you? But in high-risk\/high-reward situations, although you may know that you will be sunk if it does not all work out, you may still decide to take the high-risk course because the reward is just too important for you to forgo it.\n\nYou then have to address your mind to doing all you can to reduce the risk. It is here that experience, practice, consultation with specialists, reconnaissance and mental rehearsals may all be relevant techniques. You are trying to turn the possibility of success into the probability of success, but you will not be able to eliminate risk altogether: in this situation there are too many contingencies.\n\nAssessing consequences\n\nRisk is one aspect of thinking through the consequences of the feasible courses of action.\n\nConsequences come in two forms: manifest and latent. Manifest consequences are ones that, in principle, you can foresee when you make your decision. I say 'in principle' because that does not mean to say that you did foresee them. What I mean is that any reasonable person with the knowledge, experience, or skill expected of someone in your position would foresee those consequences. If you try to rob a bank, for example, the manifest consequences are obvious to any reasonable person:\n\n  * You might become amazingly rich.\n  * People, including you, might get hurt.\n  * You could be sent to prison.\n\nLatent consequences are different in that they are not nearly so probable, or even possible, and a reasonable person might be forgiven for not seeing the knock-on effects that result from the complex chain of events triggered off by a decision. Admittedly, with the aid of computers it becomes a little easier in certain fields to identify latent consequences, but it is seldom possible to insulate yourself against pleasant or unpleasant surprises. We just cannot foresee the future in that way.\n\nThe emergence of latent consequences, of course, triggers off another round of decision-making and problem-solving activity. Yet solutions are the seeds of new problems.\n\nIntroducing performance-related pay for individuals, for example, solves some motivational problems, but what other problems does it tend to create for teams and organisations, not to mention the individuals concerned?\n\nFill the quarters of the window in the illustration below with the consequences of a decision to make pay totally performance-related. Review the completed window \u2013 remember, you are looking for insights.\n\nI suppose that if we knew all the latent consequences of all our decisions at the time of making them, we should soon decide to stay in bed all day and never make another decision! But that decision in itself would have manifest and latent consequences... All that we can do, as humans and not angels or gods, is to make the best decisions we can, given the information and circumstances, and then make other decisions to deal with the latent consequences as they arise.\n\nRemember that there is a big difference between a wrong decision and a bad decision. A wrong decision is choosing to dig your only oil well in this place rather than that one. It's an expensive mistake, but the fault lies with the method. A bad decision is launching the space shuttle Challenger on a severely cold morning when the contracting engineers responsible for the seals in the engines have predicted a nearly 100 per cent chance that the seals will fail in such conditions. They did \u2013 with a tragic loss of life. Here the method or process of decision making was deliberately ignored or irresponsibly put on one side.\n\nThe distinction is important because it separates outcomes, which you cannot fully control because of the part that luck or chance plays, from process, which you can. Wrong decisions are an inevitable aspect of life, both in our personal and professional lives. We redeem them by learning the lessons they teach us, paying the fees that life charges as cheerfully as we can. But bad decisions are predictable pitfalls; they are unforced errors. They are eminently avoidable if you use the proven processes, methods and techniques outlined in this book.\n\nFigure 2.6 The outcomes window\n\nImplement and evaluate\n\nDecision comes from a Latin verb meaning 'to cut off'. It is related to such cutting words as 'scissors' and 'incision'.\n\nFigure 2.7 The point of no return\n\nWhat is 'cut off' when you make a decision is the preliminary activity of thinking, especially the business of weighing up the pros and cons of the various courses of action. You now move into the action phase. Out with your cheque book \u2013 start talking about delivery dates! Things begin to happen.\n\nIt is always worth identifying what I have called the Point of No Return (PNR), a term that comes from aviation. At the half-way point in crossing the Atlantic, it is easier for the pilot to continue to Paris in the event of engine trouble than to turn back to New York. The pilot has passed the PNR and he or she is committed.\n\nIn its wider sense the PNR is the point at which it costs you more in various coinages to turn back or change your mind than to continue with a decision that you now know to be an imperfect one. In most decisions you do have a little leeway before you are finally committed: you can still change your mind. Often, as in the case study of Conrad Hilton (see page 12), it is your Depth Mind that double-checks your decision. It either whispers, 'Yes, I am satisfied' or begins an insidious and insistent campaign to make you at least review your decision, if not change your mind.\n\nThere is another reason for seeing implementation as a part in the decision-making process rather than the end of it. Your valuing faculty is bound to come into play at some stage in order to evaluate the decision. Did you get it right? Could you have made the decision more quickly or more gracefully, perhaps at less cost to others? All this data goes into your memory bank and informs the Depth Mind, so that the next time you make a similar decision this information about your past may be available to you in the form of a more educated intuition. This is what constitutes what we call experience.\n\nRemember, your Depth Mind really does work!\n\nIn 2006 some researchers at the University of Amsterdam decided to put the Depth Mind theory to the test. The psychologists asked a group of volunteers to pretend they were about to buy one of four cars. The volunteers were given lots of information about the cars, and one model was much better than the others.\n\nHalf the volunteers were given time to ponder the merits of each car, while the others were given puzzles to solve to keep their minds busy. Both groups were then asked to pick the car they would buy.\n\nThe results showed that those who restricted themselves to conscious thought were less likely to have chosen the best deal.\n\nThose whose surface minds were occupied with the irrelevant puzzles made better choices. In a second experiment, the volunteers were faced with furniture choices at Ikea.\n\nWhat the experiments show is that your Depth Mind can deal with more facts and figures than your conscious mind. The latter is good at simple choices, such as buying different towels or different sets of oven mitts. But choices made in complex matters, such as between different houses or cars, are better if your Depth Mind is involved.\n\nThe principle, I may add, always applies over people decisions, especially the choice of one's life partner. 'I have no other but a woman's reason. I think him so because I think him so,' says one of Shakespeare's heroines. In less eloquent language we might say that it is our Depth Mind that can best process all the complex information that comes from another person and transform it into a simple but profound judgement. Who knows how this work is accomplished in the inner hive of the mind?\n\nTake care that the honey does not remain in you in the same state as when you gathered it: bees would have no credit unless they transformed it into something different and better.\n\nPetrach\n\nKey points\n\n  * Sometimes it is useful for the mind to have a framework for approaching potentially difficult tasks. In decision making there is such a simple framework of five steps or phases. Think of it more as a spiralling process, like this:\n\n  * Defining the objective is invariably important in decision making. One useful tip is to write it down, for seeing it in writing often helps you to attain the necessary clarity of mind.\n  * Collecting relevant information involves both surveying the available information and then taking steps to acquire the missing but relevant information to the matter in hand.\n  * For generating feasible options, remember the lobster pot model! You should be able to move systematically from a host of possibilities \u2013 some of them may be the results of imaginative thinking \u2013 to a diminishing set of feasible options, the courses of action that are actually practicable given the resources available.\n  * In making the decision your chosen success criteria (the product of the valuing function of the mind) come into play. It is useful to grade these yardsticks into the criteria that the proposed course of action MUST, SHOULD and MIGHT meet. You will also need to assess the risks involved: what are the manifest and the possible latent consequences of the decision in view? \n  * Implementing and evaluating the decision should be seen as part of the overall process. You may hardly notice the actual point of decision, just as passengers on a ship may be asleep when their ship crosses the equator line. The 'cut off' point, be it conscious or unconscious, is when thinking ends \u2013 your mind is made up \u2013 and you move into the action or implementation phase. But you are still evaluating the decision, and up to the Point of No Return (PNR), you can always turn back if the early signs dictate.\n  * If you have all the required information, the mind goes through the point of decision effortlessly \u2013 indeed, do you really have to take a decision? Thus it has been said that 'a decision is the action an executive must take when he or she has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself'.\n\nNot to decide is to decide.\n\nEnglish proverb\n**3**\n\nSharing decisions with others\n\nA key issue in leadership is how far the designated leader (appointed or elected) should share decisions with others \u2013 team members or colleagues. Of course it is also an issue for all of us \u2013 how far should we make our decisions after solitary and silent thought, or how far should we consult others?\n\nYour role as leader\n\nBefore looking together at the decision-making aspect of leadership let me put it in context by reminding you of the generic role of leader \u2013 true for all fields of work and all levels of leadership.\n\nIf you look closely at matters involving leadership, there are always three elements or variables:\n\n  * the leader \u2013 qualities of personality and character;\n  * the situation \u2013 partly constant, partly varying;\n  * the group \u2013 the followers: their needs and values.\n\nIn fact, work groups are always different, just as individuals are. After coming together they soon develop a group personality. So that which works in one group may not work in another. All groups and organisations are unique.\n\nBut that is only half the truth. The other half is that work groups \u2013 like individuals \u2013 have certain needs in common. There are three areas of overlapping need which are centrally important, as illustrated in the figure below.\n\nFigure 3.1 Overlapping needs\n\nTask need\n\nWork groups and organisations come into being because there is a task to be done that is too big for one person. You can climb a hill or small mountain by yourself, but you cannot climb Mount Everest on your own \u2013 you need a team for that.\n\nWhy call it a need? Because pressure builds up a head of steam to accomplish the common task. People can feel very frustrated if they are prevented from doing so.\n\nTeam maintenance need\n\nThis is not so easy to perceive as the task need; as with an iceberg, much of the life of any group lies below the surface. The distinction that the task need concerns things and the second need involves people does not help much.\n\nAgain, it is best to think of groups that are threatened from without by forces aimed at their disintegration or from within by disruptive people or ideas. We can then see how they give priority to maintaining themselves against these external or internal pressures, sometimes showing great ingenuity in the process. Many of the written or unwritten rules of the group are designed to promote this unity and to maintain cohesiveness at all costs. Those who rock the boat or infringe group standards and corporate balance may expect reactions varying from friendly indulgence to downright anger. Instinctively a common feeling exists that 'United we stand, divided we fall', that good relationships, desirable in themselves, are also an essential means towards the shared end. This need to create and promote group cohesiveness I have called the team maintenance need. After all, everyone knows what a team is.\n\nIndividual needs\n\nThird, individuals bring into the group their own needs \u2013 not just the physical ones for food and shelter (which are largely catered for by the payment of wages these days) but also the psychological ones: recognition; a sense of doing something worthwhile; status; and the deeper needs to give to and receive from other people in a working situation. These individual needs are perhaps more profound that we sometimes realise.\n\nThey spring from the depths of our common life as human beings. They may attract us to, or repel us from, any given group. Underlying them all is the fact that people need one another not just to survive but to achieve and develop personality.\n\nThe three circles interact\n\nNow these three areas of need overlap and influence one another. If the common task is achieved, for example, then that tends to build the team and to satisfy personal human needs in individuals. If there is a lack of cohesiveness in the team circle \u2013 a failure of team maintenance \u2013 then clearly performance in the task area will be impaired and the satisfaction of individual members reduced. Thus, as above, we can visualise the needs present in work groups as three overlapping circles.\n\nNowadays when I show the model on an overhead projector slide I usually colour the circles red, blue, and green, for light (not pigment) refracts into these three primary colours. It is a way of suggesting that the three circles form a universal model. In whatever field you are, at whatever level of leadership \u2013 team leader, operational leader, or strategic leader \u2013 there are three things that you should always be thinking about: task, team, and individual. Leadership is essentially an other-centred activity \u2013 not a self-centred one.\n\nThe three-circle model is simple but not simplistic or superficial. Keeping in mind those three primary colours, we can make an analogy with what is happening when we watch a television programme: the full-colour moving pictures are made up of dots of those three primary and (in the overlapping areas) three secondary colours. It is only when you stand well back from the complex moving and talking picture of life at work that you begin to see the underlying pattern of the three circles. Of course they are not always so balanced and clear as the model suggests, but they are nonetheless there.\n\nThe functions of leadership\n\nWhat has all this got to do with leadership? Simply this: in order to achieve the common task and to maintain teamwork, certain functions have to be performed. And a function is what you do, as opposed to a quality, which is an aspect of what you are. For example, someone has to define the objectives, make a plan, or hold the team together if it is threatened by disruptive forces.\n\nNow we are on firm ground. For you can learn to provide the functions of leadership which are called for by task, team and individual needs. This is the entrance door to effective leadership. The function approach set out here is also sometimes called action-centred leadership. A function is one of a group of related actions contributing to development or maintenance, just as each part of the body has its function in relation to the whole. It comes from a Latin word meaning performance. Sometimes it is used more widely to mean what I have called role \u2013 the special kind of activity proper to a professional position. In the figure below I have listed the main functions that are required if the task is to be achieved, the team held together, and the needs of individuals met.\n\nFigure 3.2 Leadership functions\n\nIt should not be supposed that a leader has to perform all these functions himself or herself. Indeed, in groups of more than five people there are too many functional contributions or activities for one person to do them all on his or her own. Functions have to be shared and sometimes \u2013 in all or part \u2013 delegated. Or, putting it another way, all team members are responsible (even if not legally-speaking accountable) for the three circles. The difference between an effective team member and an effective leader is not great; it is one more of role than of commitment to all three circles or skill in meeting the common needs.\n\nObviously decision making is potentially going to be an ingredient in all the functional domains. Planning is a good example. Planning means building a mental bridge from where you are now to where you want to be when you have achieved the objective before you. The function of planning meets the group's need to accomplish its task by answering the question how. But the 'how' question soon leads to 'When does this or that have to happen?' and 'Who does what?'\n\nFrom the leadership perspective, the key issue is how far you should make the plan yourself or how far you should share the planning function with your team. Let's look at the options.\n\nThere is a lot to be said for moving as far to the right end of the continuum as you can (see Figure 3.3 below). For the more people share in decisions that affect their working life the more they are motivated to carry them out. That consideration, however, has to be balanced against the fact that the wider you open the door of the Inn of Decision the less control you have of the outcome. The team may make a plan that, although meeting the requirements you have identified, is not the way you would have done it yourself. Can you live with that?\n\nJust where you should act on the planning continuum depends on several key factors, notably the time available to plan and the competence level of the team members. There is no one right 'style'. The best leaders are consistent \u2013 you know where you stand with them and they are in many respects predictable. But when it comes to decision making they are infinitely flexible. So a good leader, working with individuals or teams, will operate at different points on the scale during a day.\n\nFigure 3.3 The planning continuum\n\nOnce work has started on the plan, it may be necessary to revise or adapt the plan as circumstances or conditions dictate. Again, you must steer a middle course between the perennial need for flexibility as change unfolds and a certain persistence or tenacity in sticking to the agreed plan. Certainly, allowing too many unnecessary changes in the plan can itself breed confusion. As the military proverb says, Order \u2013 counter-order \u2013 disorder.\n\nAlways remember that everyone who works for you has 10,000 million brain cells. If time allows, it is always worthwhile to listen to people. You will be constantly surprised at the quality of the thinking and ideas available to you.\n\nWhen Fort Dunlop was taken over by Sumitomo, the Japanese management asked for money-saving ideas from the workforce. A junior employee saved the company \u00a3100,000 a year in electricity payments by suggesting that every other fluorescent light in the huge factory did not need to be used \u2013 an idea that he had had for years!\n\nIn fact you should develop a habit of listening for ideas, whether with a particular decision in mind or as a wider strategy. There are plenty of ideas around for those who are ready to receive them. That great business leader Roy Thompson capitalised some of this potential wealth:\n\nThe way I look at it, everyone has an idea and one in a dozen may be a good idea. If you have to talk to a dozen people to get one good idea, even just the glimmering of an idea, that isn't wasteful work. People are continually passing things on to me, because I have given them to believe that I will be interested, I might even pay for it! Sometimes, usually when it is least expected, something comes up that is touched with gold.\n\nIn summary, the degree to which you as a leader can share decisions differs according to such factors as the situation \u2013 especially the time available \u2013 and the relative and relevant knowledge of the team members. Actually deciding where to decide on a continuum that has control at one end and freedom at the other is in itself an important decision when working with others. Here are some questions to ask yourself:\n\nChecklist\n\n| Yes| No  \n---|---|---  \nHave you agreed the aims and objectives with the team?|\n\n|\n\nHave you involved the team in the collecting and sifting of the relevant information?|\n\n|\n\nHas the team helped you to generate a number of possible courses of action?|\n\n|\n\nHave you used the synergy of the team members' minds to firm up the feasible options?|\n\n|\n\nHave you tested for consensus to see how far, in the circumstances, a course of action you favour is seen to be the optimum one?|\n\n|\n\nHave you secured everyone's commitment to make it work?|\n\n|\n\nHave you reviewed the decision with the team so that the lessons of success and failure are learnt for the future?|\n\n|\n\nKey points\n\n  * Thinking is both solitary and social. We need to think for ourselves \u2013 and make time to do so. But we also need to talk with and listen to others, for stimulus and encouragement, fresh perspectives and new ideas. Conversation at its best is a form of mutual thinking.\n  * The role of a leader is defined by the three circles of need \u2013 task, team and individual \u2013 and the responding set of functions. Communication and decision making are complementary dimensions. A key issue for all leaders is how far they should share decisions with their team or colleagues.\n  * The more you share decisions the higher the quality of the decision is likely to be. Moreover, the more that people share decisions which directly affect their working life, the more they tend to be motivated to implement them. Yet the exigency of the situation \u2013 shortage of time and the crisis factor \u2013 sometimes restricts the scope for sharing. And you also have to remember that the more you share a decision the less control you have over the resulting decision's quality and direction. So you need judgement here.\n  * When the decision-making process is over, you still have to take the decision.\n  * Outside the confines of the making of a particular decision you should always be open to the ideas, suggestions and information that people offer you. The more you show interest, the more that people will tell you. Ten per cent of their ideas are lined with gold.\n\nThree cobblers with their wits combined  \nEqual Zhage Liag, the master mind.\n\nChinese proverb\n**4**\n\nKey problem-solving strategies\n\nDecision making, problem solving, and creative thinking have in common the fact that they are all forms of effective thinking. But there are some distinctions between them. You can, for example, think creatively, in the sense of having an original idea, without either making a decision or solving a problem. In this chapter the main focus is upon problem solving.\n\nHow problems differ from decisions\n\nWhat is a problem? A 'problem' is literally 'something thrown in front of you'. Another of those Greek words by origin, it is related to 'ballistics'. Originally what was thrown or put in front of one by the Greek teachers was the sort of puzzle or question that you encountered in the first chapter: 'The nine dots', The six matchsticks' and 'Who owns the zebra?' (Incidentally, has your Depth Mind come up with solutions \u2013 or extra solutions \u2013 to the first two yet?)\n\nYou will notice that in problems like these, all the elements of the solution are already there. All that you have to do is arrange or rearrange what has been given. In that sense, a problem is a solution in disguise.\n\nAs a result of solving such problems your life is not going to be different. By contrast, a decision usually does mean that life will be different. It opens the way to changes of some kind or other. Some of these changes are planned, wanted, expected or at least foreseen (the manifest consequences), whereas others are not. But solving or not solving a crossword puzzle is not going to change your life in any way.\n\nIn this respect such problems are similar to games \u2013 in fact, games are sets of problems. Why do we invent them? Because there is nothing that humans enjoy more than solving problems. The skills of a problem solver in this limited sense, however, differ from those of a decision maker. As a problem solver you have to be clever, with analytical skills well honed on many other problems in that particular field. By contrast, a decision-maker needs a much wider range of skills and characteristics.\n\nMoving away from puzzles and games, the problems we encounter in real life are mostly obstacles placed in front of us. If you decide to climb Mount Everest, for example, you may find that all goes well until \u2013 a day before your final ascent \u2013 a heavy storm suddenly develops on the South Col, the ridge leading to the summit. You have a problem! Notice that you would not have that particular problem \u2013 or any problems \u2013 on Everest unless you had made a decision to climb to the summit. It is not a problem for anyone else. And it would cease to be a problem for you if you changed your mind and decided to go off and climb some other mountain in the Himalayas.\n\nTherefore problems as obstacles or difficulties in the path ahead of us are always secondary to the results of decision making. Decisions create problems. One way of solving them \u2013 or rather the problem state in your mind \u2013 is to alter your decision, or at least your plan. Did you have a contingency plan \u2013 a Plan B \u2013 for your route up the mountain if the weather deteriorated or avalanches (unexpected at this time of year) occurred?\n\nIf you stick with your decision, then, in consultation with your team, you have to find a way of overcoming the problem. Because the mental framework you must use is so similar to the decision-making process, a single model covering them both is possible.\n\nFigure 4.1 The bridge model\n\nA unified model for decision making and problem solving\n\nIf you are trying to cross a mountain stream you will jump from rock to rock, zig-zagging your way to the far bank. Like thinking inside your head, this is an untidy but purposeful activity. But when you have to get a team across a metaphorical river you need to be able to construct a simple bridge, so that everyone knows where they are in the decision-making\/problem-solving discussion. (See the illustration above.)\n\nYou can see that the skills required, as one phase merges into the next, change. A new function with its family of more specific skills comes into play. The model is useful for your team as well as yourself. It can help everyone to keep in step.\n\nAsking the right questions\n\nA key skill, both when you are thinking something through by yourself and when you are leading or participating in a team, is to ask the right questions. Questions are the spanners that unlock the mind. Here are the kind of questions you should ask yourself \u2013 and others.\n\nUnderstanding the problem\n\n  * When did you first sense or become aware of the problem or the need for a decision?\n  * Have you defined the problem or objective in your own words? (Remember that a problem properly defined is a problem half-solved.)\n  * Are there any other possible definitions of the problem worth considering? What general solutions do they suggest?\n  * Are you clear about what you are trying to do? Where are you now and where do you want to get to?\n  * Have you identified the important factors and salient facts? Do you need to spend more time on obtaining more information? Do you know the relevant policies, rules, limitations, and procedures?\n  * Have you reduced the problem to its simplest terms without oversimplifying it?\n\nTowards solving the problem\n\n  * Have you checked all your main assumptions?\n  * Out of all the possible courses or solutions, have you identified a shortlist of the feasible ones?\n  * Can you eliminate some of these in order to shorten the list still further?\n  * If no solution or course of action seems right by itself, can you synthesise elements in two or more solutions to create an effective way of dealing with the problem?\n  * Have you clearly identified the criteria by which the feasible options must be judged?\n  * If you are still stuck, can you imagine yourself in the end-state where you want to be? If so, can you work backwards from there to where you are now?\n  * Has anyone else faced this problem? How did they solve it?\n\nEvaluating the decision and implementing it\n\n  * Have you used all the available information?\n  * Have you checked your solution from all angles?\n  * Are you clear about the manifest consequences?\n  * Have you an implementation plan with dates or times for completion?\n  * Is the plan realistic?\n  * Do you have a contingency plan if things do not work out as expected?\n  * When are you and your team planning to review the decision in the light of experience?\n\nYou may feel rather overwhelmed by this long list of questions. But you do not have to ask them all every time you are involved in making decisions or solving problems, for some of the questions will already have clear answers. What you should develop are three levels of competence:\n\n  * Awareness of problems or the need for decisions \u2013 either actual or potential. Have your feelers out, so that you are not taken by surprise.\n  * Understanding of where you and the team are in relation to the problem or decision. In what phase of the bridge model (see page 47) are you? Does more work need to be done on analysing information and defining the problem or decision? Or are you in the business of generating feasible options?\n  * Skill in asking the right questions of the right people at the right time, and being able to test the answers for their truth content. Action based on truth is much more likely to be effective than action based on a faulty perception of reality.\n\nIt may all sound like hard work. You recall Roy Thompson's words about 'thinking until it hurts' and 'this arduous and tiring work'. Yes, yes \u2013 but it is also great fun. It is what life is all about! I repeat: there is nothing more satisfying than being faced with a mental challenge and overcoming it. The harder the problem, the more elation you and your team will feel when you overcome it. So resolve to enjoy decision making and problem solving. The more you enjoy something the more of it you will want to do \u2013 and the better at it you will get.\n\nHow to approach systems problems\n\nObstacle-type problems account for 80 per cent of the problems that leaders encounter, but you should also be aware of systems problems \u2013 the other 20 per cent. If you are a technical specialist, of course, those proportions are reversed and the majority of your working time will be spent on systems problems.\n\nA system is a whole made up of integrated parts. It can be organic (your body), mechanical (your car engine), or a process (your system for billing customers). A systems problem is essentially a deviation from the norm. We can represent it visually by two lines (see the illustration above). The greater the difference between the normal performance (how the system is supposed to work) and the active performance (what is actually happening), the bigger the problem.\n\nFigure 4.2 Systems problems\n\nThe main strategy in systems problems is to find the point of deviation and then establish what caused it. The first aim is to establish the exact time and place of that critical deviation. What happened? When? How much? Who was affected? Who saw it? And so on. Notice again that the key skill of asking the right questions is in play, focusing on the deviation point on the diagram.\n\nExercise 3: The W5H Formula\n\nChoose any systems problem facing you and practise your question skills \u2013 Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why? and How? See if you can pinpoint the deviation from the normal working of the system in question.\n\nOnce you have done that, list the possible causes. Now begin to eliminate the causes that can be proved innocent. You will be left with two or three suspects.\n\nHaving established when and where the deviation occurred, you then have to identify the cause or causes. Only by tackling these can you really solve a systems problem. Treat causes, not symptoms, if it is possible to do so.\n\nPlastec Ltd \u2013 a company making plastic containers \u2013 discovered that a rising percentage of its output was developing cracks. A project group studied the manufacturing process in detail and eventually defined the points of deviation: a change of supplier and a failure to clean out some storage vats. The new supplier inadvertently used these storage vats, and the plastic therefore became contaminated. Once the causes had been identified, the systems were altered to prevent any repetition, and the problem did not recur.\n\nBeware of the fallacy of the single cause. In relatively simple problems there is only one cause but, in more complex ones, two or three causes may be combining to produce the unwanted effect. In the case study on Plastec Ltd you will have noticed that it was the combination of two changes from the norm \u2013 a new supplier and poor cleaning procedures \u2013 that produced the problem.\n\nKey points\n\n  * Problems come in two main forms: problems that are really obstacles that appear across your chosen path, and systems problems.\n  * The broad approach to both families of problems and to decision making is the same. It can be compared to building a bridge across a river on three pillars:\n\nDefining the problem\n\nGenerating feasible options\n\nChoosing the optimum course\/solution\n\n  * A key thinking skill for an effective problem-solver is asking the right questions \u2013 to oneself initially but also to others. Questions are the spanners that unlock the problem in the mind, or at least the gates that bar entry to it. 'To act is easy,' said Goethe, 'to think is hard.'\n  * Systems problems are best approached by regarding them as deviations from an expected norm. Diagnosis includes identifying and establishing the exact nature of that deviation and what caused it. The solution \u2013 if one is possible \u2013 is to remove the cause of the problem. A secondary strategy for a problem solver where 'cure' isn't possible is to mitigate the effects of the problem on the performance of the system as a whole.\n  * People who are good with hammers see every problem as a nail.\n\nOne should never impose one's views on a problem; one should rather study it, and in time a solution will reveal itself.\n\nAlbert Einstein\n**5**\n\nHow to generate ideas\n\nTo raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.\n\nAlbert Einstein\n\nWhen you are stuck in problem solving \u2013 that is, when the techniques you have applied successfully in the past are not working \u2013 try a more creative thinking approach. You may be trying to dig the same hole deeper, worrying at your problem like a terrier, when perhaps you should be digging your hole somewhere else.\n\nBrainstorming\n\nThe best-known and most widely used creative thinking technique is brainstorming. It was introduced in the 1930s, so it has been around a long time \u2013 a sign of its usefulness. You can employ its principles when you are thinking alone, but they work better in a team setting.\n\nWhen brainstorming, don't overlook the obvious! The obvious solution is sometimes the best. It may not, anyway, be obvious to everyone; and it may be possible to twist an obvious idea into something not so obvious. Don't fear repetition, either! Accusing someone of being repetitive is a form of adverse criticism and should be avoided. The same idea may trigger a different response at a different time in the brainstorming session.\n\nTake the common paper clip as an example. In five minutes one brainstormer came up with the following new uses.\n\nPipe cleaner| Fuse wire  \n---|---  \nNail cleaner| Letter opener  \nTie-clip| Catapult missile  \nEar de-waxer| Toothpick  \nPicture hook| Cufflink  \nSmall-hole poker| Ornament  \nScrewdriver| Typewriter cleaner  \nFishing hook| Tension reducer (like worry beads)  \nBroken bra-strap mender| Zip-fastener tag mender\n\nI expect you can do even better than that! Are you ready to have a go? Look at the Guidelines opposite first.\n\nExercise 4: Brainstorming skills\n\nTake a pair of scissors and list 50 new uses for them \u2013 apart from cutting things.\n\nYou have 10 minutes. Write your ideas down and \u2013 if stuck \u2013 go back and build on your first 10 ideas.\n\nGuidelines for brainstorming\n\nSuspend judgement| Give imagination the green light by withholding the critical evaluation of ideas until later. Accept ideas without judging them.  \n---|---  \nWelcome free-wheeling| Take off the brakes in your mind and go with the flow of your ideas. The more unusual the idea, the better \u2013 it is easier to tone down than think up.  \nStrive for quantity|  The greater the number of oysters, the more likely you are to find some pearls in them.  \nCombine and improve|  Listen to the ideas of others and see if you can build on them. Their way-out ideas may stimulate some buried memories or sleeping brain cells in your Depth Mind.  \nDo not edit| Ideas should not be elaborated or defended, just quickly stated and recorded.\n\nOne major reason why brainstorming is useful is that it helps to free us from 'functional fixedness'. We have a fixed idea, for example, that a thing has only one function and that is what it is there for. By banning the use of that familiar function (in the case of scissors, the function of cutting), the mind is released to consider other possibilities. With a little adaptation, scissors would make an interesting geometrical instrument.\n\nTake the modern British Army bayonet. Did you know that it is ingeniously designed to combine with its scabbard to form a pair of wirecutters? Or that it has a third function (officially!) built into it \u2013 that of a bottle-opener?\n\nPilkington Brothers Limited in the UK had a technical problem... During the final inspection of sheet glass, small globules of water were identified by the inspection machine as flaws in the glass. A brainstorming session produced 29 ideas in less than five minutes. After research and development, three of these were used in the system, which solved the problem.\n\nH J Heinz in the USA had a marketing problem... The company wanted to get sales promotional material to consumers more quickly. Brainstorming produced 195 ideas. After evaluation, eight were immediately used. A member of Heinz, when talking about another brainstorming session, said, 'Brainstorming generated more and better ideas than our special committee produced in 10 meetings.'\n\nThe essential principle behind brainstorming is simple. Please refer back to Chapter 1 and the three functions of analysing, synthesising and valuing. What brainstorming commands you to do is to make a temporary and conscious division between synthesising on the one hand and valuing on the other \u2013 for much of our valuing is negative and premature, like unseasonable frost that kills off the buds of spring. As Jean-Paul Sartre once said, 'Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.' Brainstorming's suspension of judgement is an invitation to exercise some inner mental discipline. Analysing and valuing have their time and place, but your imagination has wings \u2013 let it fly free!\n\nHow to run a brainstorming session\n\nNo more than 10 people should be involved. Some may know about the field, others may not \u2013 a mixture of both is desirable. They should ideally have been trained in the brainstorming technique before the meeting. When you run the session:\n\n  * Define the problem (using your analytical and briefing skills).\n  * Help people to understand the problem by highlighting the background information and history.\n  * Clarify the aim in a succinct sentence: 'In how many ways can we...?'\n  * Have a brief warm-up session, using a common problem or object.\n  * Brainstorm 70 ideas in 20 minutes, or a similar target. One person should write up the ideas on a flipchart. Allow time for silent reflection. Check that no critical remarks are made. Encourage cross-fertilisation.\n  * Establish criteria for selecting the feasible ideas. Choose the best.\n  * Reverse brainstorm: 'In how many ways can this idea fail?'\n\nAbout 40 minutes is the optimum time for a brainstorming session. But you should ask the participants to go on consid-ering the problem and let you have further suggestions. Remember that they have programmed their Depth Minds by the brainstorming session, and other ideas will come to them unexpectedly.\n\nA leading US firm of jigsaw-puzzle makers held a brainstorming session to think up ideas for new puzzles. It produced some worthy ideas but nothing brilliant. A month later, one of the participants went to see an exhibition of Tutankhamun's treasures in Washington DC. The gold mask of the pharaoh struck him as a great jigsaw puzzle idea! He was right \u2013 it broke all records for jigsaw puzzle sales in the United States.\n\nKey points\n\n  * Being creative involves the use of the imagination or original ideas in order to create something. Creative thinking is that part of it which produces the new ideas.\n  * 'It is the function of creative people,' writes the poet William Ploner, 'to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different, and to be able to combine them into some new forms \u2013 the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.'\n  * Brainstorming is a useful technique, for generating ideas, whether you practise it on your own or in a team context. The essence of it is to make a temporary wall in the mind between the analysing\/synthesising functions on the one side, and the (critical) valuing function on the other side.\n  * Ideas rarely arrive in this world fully-formed and gift-wrapped. With a little practice you can learn to build on ideas, to take the germs of success in someone else's half-baked idea and to develop it towards fruition. By the same warrant, allow others to build on your ideas for the common good. Only God owns the intellectual property rights to truth.\n  * 'I start where the last man left off,' said the inventor Thomas Edison.\n  * Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud. Any of us will put out more and better ideas if our efforts are appreciated.\n\nCreative thinking thrives in an environment of mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive criticism \u2013 in a community of creativity.\n\nAnon\n**6**\n\nThinking outside the box\n\nValuable though brainstorming is, not least as an introduction to one or two of the fundamental principles of creative thinking, it is not the whole story. To develop your skills as a creative problem-solver you need to adopt and practise the strategies set out below.\n\nTowards a more creative approach\n\nBrainstorming challenges one kind of unconscious assumption, namely that hammers are for knocking in nails or that scissors are for cutting. But there are other forms of unconscious assumption that may inhibit your thinking.\n\nFigure 6.1 'The nine dots' solution\n\nTake the 'Nine dots' and 'Six matchsticks' problems in Chapter 1. The reason why many people cannot do the first one is that they put an unconscious or invisible framework around the dots, and try to solve the problem within it. That is impossible. But if you break out of that self-imposed limitation, the solution to the problem is easily reached. (See 'The nine dots' solution below.)\n\nIncidentally, I first published 'The nine dots' problem in 1969, in a book called Training for Decisions. It was the origin of a new phrase in the English language, now credited to me \u2013 thinking outside the box.\n\nThere is a similar assumption made in the second problem. People assume that they must arrange the six matches in a pattern of four equilateral triangles in only one plane. If they take one small step and give themselves permission to place the matches on top of one another, they can reach the first solution. But if they break out of the two-dimensional constraint into three dimensions, they achieve the most elegant solution.\n\nPlease don't mistake me: you cannot think without making assumptions. But they should be conscious ones from which you can retreat when they become indefensible. The assumptions that trip you up are the unconscious ones, the constraints or limitations that you are not aware of. That is one reason why effective thinking needs social interaction. We need critical input from others to remove these filters from our eyes.\n\nA senior manager in the UK marketing department of, Hoover, the household appliance company, once had the bright idea of introducing a 'free flights' promotional scheme as an incentive for buying their products. It was a spectacularly bad decision. Some 200,000 people flew with the scheme, but it cost the company around \u00a348 million. Some 127 people sought compensation in the courts, facing Hoover with a possible bill of millions of pounds if they succeeded. The president of Hoover Europe was dismissed from his \u00a3500,000-a-year post, and the US owners quickly sold the company for a knock-down price. You do not get decision making more wrong than that.\n\nFigure 6.2 'The six matchsticks' solution\n\nWhy did this fiasco happen? Because the Hoover managers concerned made a false assumption. They assumed that when most of the people who bought appliances saw the small print wrapped about the 'free flights' offer \u2013 the complex restrictions and qualifications they deliberately built in to deter applicants \u2013 these new customers would not bother to go through such a complex approach for the sake of a free air ticket. They under-estimated the public! Enough people persevered in finding a route through all the complex rules and conditions that their free flights brought the company to its knees.\n\nThis true story is a parable to remind us of the importance of checking to ensure that we are not allowing unconscious assumptions to act like hidden reefs and rip the bottom of the ship.\n\nLook wider for solutions\n\nMy phrase thinking outside the box ties in with the concept of lateral thinking, introduced by the well-known thinker and writer Edward de Bono in The Five Day Course in Thinking (1968). Lateral thinking means abandoning the step-by-step approach and thinking, as it were, 'to one side'.\n\nVertical thinking| Lateral thinking  \n---|---  \nChooses| Changes  \nLooks for what is right| Looks for what is different  \nOne thing must follow| Makes deliberate jumps directly from another  \nConcentrates on relevance| Welcomes chance intrusions  \nMoves in the most likely directions| Explores the least likely directions\n\nThe sideways (or lateral) thinking involved often leads to reversing what appears to be the natural or logical way of doing things. For example, the earliest method of making cars involved teams of men moving from one car to another. Henry Ford turned it all upside down. He put the car frames on belts and moved them past the men \u2013 the birth of the assembly line.\n\nIt is important to think sideways because the seeds of a solution to a problem may lie outside the box you are working in. Really creative people have a wide span of relevance: they look far afield, even to remote places or times in history, for solutions to the problems they face. When the eighteenth-century agriculturalist Jethro Tull invented the seed drill he summoned up his previous experience as an organist: he was creatively transferring technology from one area to another. Most of us, however, tend to think in compartments, and the divisions in work that make specialisation possible encourage this blinkered thinking.\n\nAlways be willing to challenge widely accepted assumptions.\n\nAs the exercise 'The nine dots' and 'The six matches' illustrate, thinking outside the box means being able to spot assumptions, habits or customary ways of thinking that are widely and uncritically accepted but have no basis in reality. Many of these we breathe in by virtue of the society in which we live. They are among the everyday conventions we accept as truths without too much examination. 'As everybody knows...'\n\nWhen 'everyone knows' something to be true, nobody knows nothing\n\nAndy Grove, later the Chairman of Intel, always remembered the oft-repeated saying of one of his professors when he was a student: 'When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothing.' It stayed with him throughout his career, and he gave the following example of its relevance.\n\n'Our little research group at Fairchild [Semi-conductor] some 40 years ago started to study the characteristics of surface layers that were the heart of modern integrated circuits. At that time, \"everybody knew\" that surface states, an artifice of quantum mechanics, would interfere with us building such chips. As it turns out, nobody knew nothin': We never found any surface states; what we found was trace contamination. When we identified and removed this, the road opened up to the chip industry as we know it today.'\n\nHow to use your Depth Mind\n\nCreative thinking cannot be forced. If you are working on a problem and getting nowhere, it is often best to leave it for a while and let your subconscious \u2013 your Depth Mind \u2013 take over. Your mind does not work by the clock, although it likes deadlines. Sometimes the answer will come to you in the middle of the night.\n\nGrasping the principle of the Depth Mind could open the way for you to a more creative approach to problem solving. Many people are still not even aware that their depth minds can carry out important mental functions for them, such as synthesising parts into new wholes or establishing new connections while they are engaged in other activities.\n\nImagine your mind to be like a personal fax machine. It would be nice and tidy if you could sit down for an hour each morning before breakfast and receive inspired fax messages from your Depth Mind. But it is not like that. The fax machine might start whirring at any time of the day or night.\n\nIf you are thinking along a certain line and nothing happens, stop. Instead of investing more time \u2013 throwing good money after bad \u2013 analyse the problem again and see if you can come up with a new approach. Usually your frustration will be caused by one of the mental roadblocks described in the table on pages 70\u201371.\n\nThe processes of analysing a problem or identifying an objective are themselves means of programming the mind. Possible solutions and courses of action almost instantly begin to occur to us. Where there is a time-delay this means that the deeper parts of the brain have been summoned into action and have made what contribution they can.\n\nHow important preparation time is for creative thinking! Careful and clear analysis, conscious imagining or synthesising (using such techniques as brainstorming either in groups or solo), and exercising the valuing function of thought in a positive rather than negative way \u2013 all these are vital to lay the foundations for thinking creatively. (See page 69.)\n\nIf you are planning to experiment and try a session before breakfast, it is useful always to have a preparation phase the night before. Imagine yourself as a house decorator, scraping down the woodwork and filling in holes and priming here and there, prior to painting a first coat the following day.\n\nThe creative thinking process\n\nPreparation| The hard work. You have to collect and sort the relevant information, analyse the problem as thoroughly as you can, and explore possible solutions.  \n---|---  \nIncubation| This is the Depth Mind phase. Mental work \u2013 analysing, synthesising and valuing \u2013 continues on the problem in your subconscious mind. The parts of the problem separate and new combinations occur. These may involve other ingredients stored away in your memory.  \nInsight| The 'Eureka' moment. A new idea emerges into your conscious mind, either gradually or suddenly, like a fish flashing out of the water. These moments often occur when you are not thinking about the problem but are in a relaxed frame of mind.  \nValidation| This is where your valuing faculty comes into play. A new idea, insight, intuition, hunch or solution needs to be thoroughly tested. This is especially so if it is to form the basis for action of any kind.\n\nAlthough it is useful for you to have this framework in mind, remember that the actual mental process is a lot more untidy than the above table suggests. Think of the phases as being four notes on a piano which can be played in different sequences or combined together in complex chords.\n\nMozart\n\n'When I am completely myself,' Mozart wrote to a friend in a letter, 'entirely alone or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best. Whence and how they come I know not nor can I force them. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them at the same time all together.'\n\nMental roadblocks\n\nLack of facts| If you are not sure you have all the relevant facts, you naturally hesitate to commit yourself. Do some more research, and that may get you moving again.  \n---|---  \nLack of conviction| Maybe you find it difficult because you lack conviction in the value of this exercise or the way in which you have been asked to do it. Re-establish a worthwhile objective.  \nLack of a starting point| Possibly the problem seems so large that you do not know where to start. If so, make a start anywhere. You can always change it later. Inspiration comes after you have started, not before.  \nLack of perspective| Perhaps you are too close to the problem, especially if you have lived with it a long time or have been worrying about it incessantly. Try leaving it for a week. Consult others. Simply explaining it to them may help. They may see new angles.  \nLack of motivation| Do you want it to happen enough? Creative thinking requires perseverance in the face of surmountable difficulty. If you are too easily put off, it may be a sign that, deep down, you lack the necessary motivation. Reinvigorate your sense of purpose.\n\nThe function of creative thinking in problem solving is to come up with new ideas. But remember that at some stage your valuing skills have to be brought into play. Here are six questions to ask about any new idea, solution, or course of action:\n\n  * Is it really new?\n  * Is it both relevant and practical?\n  * Whom will it involve?\n  * How much will it cost?\n  * How much will it save?\n  * Will it require more formal evaluation?\n\nIn times of rapid change, like our own age, there is a premium on your skills as a creative thinker. If you can think productively and constructively, as well as analytically and logically, it will give you a third dimension in all your decision making and problem solving.\n\nKey points\n\n  * One of the most valuable principles for improving your creative approach to work and life is to learn to think outside the box. Essentially that means be willing to challenge the assumptions \u2013 often unconscious \u2013 that put an invisible cage around the bird of thought.\n  * One form of thinking outside the box is to think sideways \u2013 lateral thinking. For sometimes the solution to a problem \u2013 at least in embryo \u2013 lies in a field of enterprise adjacent to one's own but quite distinct from it.\n  * There is a danger in formalising any aspect of the creative process \u2013 it is a delicate balance between following a conscious process or framework and being guided by the mind's natural inclinations. But it is worth bearing in mind the commonsense sequence:\n\nPREPARATION\n\nINCUBATION\n\nINSIGHT\n\nVALIDATION\n\n  * INCUBATION \u2013 sitting on eggs until the young birds of ideas emerge \u2013 is a metaphor for the Depth Mind's work. We all have a purposive and helpful Depth Mind; we differ as to the use we make of it.\n  * 'In the creative state,' writes the novelist E M Forster, 'a person is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experience and out of the mixture something new emerges.'\n\nThe intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.\n\nAlbert Einstein\n**7**\n\nDeveloping your thinking skills\n\nWinston Churchill once said, 'I am always willing to learn, but I do not like being taught.' Actually, when you learn, you are being taught \u2013 by yourself. No doubt Socrates, if he was here, could teach you how to think, but he is not here. Nor is decision making and creative problem solving a school and university subject; there is no formal body of knowledge, supported by empirical research. And so, if you truly want to develop your thinking skills, your task is essentially one of self-development. In this chapter we shall look at some common-sense guidelines that you will need if you choose to go down that road.\n\nWhat is an effective practical thinker?\n\nForming a clear picture of the kind of thinker you would like to be is the first step you need to take. A clear concept of what you might be one day can act as your magnet. Remember that point about formulating where you want to be and then working backwards?\n\nYou could do it in abstract terms, listing all the qualities, the knowledge, and the functions or skills you would like to acquire by such-and-such a date. I have to admit, though, that that does not work for me: it is a bit too academic. I suggest a more homely method, which any South Sea cannibal of olden times would have relished.\n\nIn Exercise 5 below I invite you to recall people whose thinking skills you have admired. They can be people you have known personally or have studied in some depth (by, say, reading more than one biography of them). In the right-hand column, write down as concisely and specifically as you can those thinking skills that impressed you and that you would like now to 'eat' by gobbling up and inwardly digesting, so that they become part of you. Write down, for instance, any key remarks or sayings by which the person concerned encapsulated his or her practical wisdom.\n\nExercise 5: Your personal thinking skill mentors\n\nName| Thinking skill  \n---|---\n\nTake some time over this exercise, and try to get a good spread across the functions (analysing, synthesising and valuing) and the applied forms of effective thinking (decision making, problem solving and creative thinking). After all, you don't want to eat a meal composed of just one ingredient.\n\nYou will probably find it easy to come up with the names of two or three people \u2013 a parent, a friend, a life partner or a boss you have worked for \u2013 who have exemplified a thinking skill that you covet. If it is not so easy, however, to come up with many names to complete Exercise 5, leave it for a week or two. Your Depth Mind will suggest other names and other lessons \u2013 influences that may have become more subconscious.\n\nFrom your list of 'appetising' thinking skills you can begin to create a composite and imaginary picture of the perfect practical thinker. He or she would have A's analytical skills, B's rich and creative imagination, C's ability to be flexible and improvise, D's extraordinary judgement in situations of uncertainty and unpredictability, E's courage to take calculated risks, F's intuitive sense of what is really going on behind the scenes, G's lack of arrogance and openness to criticism, H's decisiveness when a decision is called for, and I's tolerance of ambiguity when the time is not ripe for a decision.\n\nNow a perfect person with all these skills \u2013 a Mr or Ms ABCDEFGHI \u2013 does not, and never will, exist. You may know the story of the young man who searched the world for the perfect wife. After some years he found her \u2013 but, alas, she was looking for the perfect husband! Perfection will always elude you \u2013 but excellence is a possibility.\n\nWhat the exercise achieves, however, is to give you an ideal to aim for. Advanced thinkers in any field tend to be lopsided: like athletes, they develop one set of muscles rather than others. Did you know that sprinters are hopeless at long-distance running? I am not advocating that you should be a perfectly balanced thinker, a kind of intellectual 'man for all seasons'. Rather, I suggest you look carefully at your field and where you see yourself positioned in it in (a) five years' time and (b) ten years' time. The ideal that you formulate should be related to your field, although, of course, not all your personal thinking skill mentors will be from that field \u2013 at least I hope not, otherwise I should suggest that your 'span of relevance' needs widening.\n\nCheck that you are in the right field\n\nThinking skills are partly generic or transferable, and partly situational. Decision making and problem solving are not abstracts: they are earthed in a particular field, with its knowledge, traditions, legends, and values.\n\nDimitri Comino, the founder of Dexion plc, once discussed with me a book I was writing on motivation. 'In my experience,' he said, 'it is very difficult to motivate people. It is much better to select people who are motivated already.' The same principle holds good, I believe, for thinking skills. It is actually quite difficult to teach yourself skills that are not natural to you. So choose a field that suits your natural profile as a thinker. What is the right field of work for you? (See the table below.)\n\nKey factors in choosing your field of work\n\nWhat are your interests?| An interest is a state of feeling to which you wish to pay particular attention. Long-standing interests \u2013 those you naturally like \u2013 make it much easier to acquire knowledge and skills.  \n---|---  \nWhat are your aptitudes?| Aptitudes are your natural abilities, what you are fitted for by disposition. In particular, an aptitude is a capacity to learn or acquire a particular skill. Your aptitude may range from being a gift or talent to simply being above average.  \nWhat are the relevant factors in your temperament?| Temperament is an important factor. Some people, for example, are uncomfortable in decision-making situations of stress and your danger, while others thrive on them. Some prefer to be problem solvers rather than decision makers.\n\nIt is usually easier to identify the fields that you are not suitable for, because you lack the necessary level of interests, mental aptitude, or temperamental characteristics to do really well in them.\n\nLet me now make the assumption that you are in the right field. You have more or less the right profile of aptitudes. You have been able, in other words, to acquire the knowledge and professional\/technical skills needed and have enjoyed doing so. You have already laid the foundations of success at the team, operational and strategic levels of leadership. You will have credibility among your colleagues. Now what you have to do is focus upon the process skills \u2013 the more generic or transferable ones \u2013 in decision making and problem solving. How do you acquire them?\n\nHow to design your own learning strategy\n\nBefore planning your own self-learning programme it is useful to remind yourself of the core process of learning. (See the diagram below.)\n\nRecall what was said above about thinking skills being partly generic and partly situational. It is when sparks jump between these two poles that learning occurs. So you need both.\n\nFigure 7.1 How we learn\n\nBecause decision making and problem solving are such central activities in any person's life we have plenty of experience of them. And as you move into a professional field, and begin making decisions and tackling problems, you soon build up a repertoire of experience. You learn by mistakes. In the technical aspects of your work you do have a body of knowledge \u2013 principles or theory \u2013 to bring to bear on your practice. How can you apply the same learning method to thinking skills? Here are some practical suggestions:\n\n  * Read this book again and underline all the key principles. Put a star by the models or frameworks that you can use. Build up your own body of theory.\n  * Make an inventory of your thinking skills in relation to your own field of work. What is the present profile of your strengths, and what are the areas for improvement? \n  * See if you can identify three outstanding decision makers and problem solvers in your field to whom you have access. Ask if you may interview them briefly to discover what principles \u2013 if any \u2013 have informed their own development as applied thinkers.\n  * Select one really bad decision made by your organisation during the last 18 months. Write it up as a case study, limiting yourself to five key lessons to be learned about decision making. If you want to develop your moral courage, send it to the chief executive!\n  * Now select any outstanding innovation in your field, inside your organisation or outside it. By an 'innovation' I mean a new idea that has been successfully 'brought to market' as a new (or renewed) product or service. Again, write it up as a case study and highlight at the end the five or six key lessons for creative problem-solvers.\n  * Set yourself a book-reading programme. 'He would say that, wouldn't he?' But I do not have to persuade you to read books \u2013 you have just read this one. If you have enjoyed it, and found it worthwhile, try to read one general book each year on leadership (see Further Reading for some suggestions) and one biography of an outstanding person in your field. Again, underline the key principles in pencil. Surely you can budget time for one book in 52 weeks?\n  * Transfer your growing body of principles, examples, practical tips, sayings or quotations, and thumbnail case studies to a stiff-covered notebook. As it fills up, take it on the occasional train journey or flight and read it reflectively, relating it to your current experience.\n  * Take any opportunities that come your way to attend courses or seminars that offer you know-how in the general area of effective thinking. You should, for example, become thoroughly versed in what information technology can do \u2013 and not do \u2013 at present in your field, and become skilled in the use of computers.\n  * Lastly, go out of your way to seek criticism of yourself as a decision maker and problem solver. However savage, however apparently negative the criticism, you still need it in order to learn. It is the toughest part of being a self-learner, but remember the sporting adage, 'No pain, no gain.' Your critics, whatever their motives or manners, are doing you the service of true friends. Sift through their comments for the gold-dust of truth.\n\nIn any self-learning programme, experience is going to play the major part. There is no getting away from that. But if you rely just on learning in what has been called 'the university of experience' you will be too old when you graduate to benefit much from the course! And the fees you will pay on the way will be extremely high. Short though it is, this book gives you those essential components \u2013 the key frameworks and principles \u2013 that you can use to cut down the time you take to learn by experience \u2013 experience and principles.\n\nYou will begin to develop both your knowledge of these process skills and your ability to apply that knowledge in all the challenging and potentially rewarding situations that lie ahead of you. Good luck!\n\nKey points\n\n  * Knowledge is only a rumour until it is in the muscle, says a Papua New Guinea proverb. Think of your mind as a muscle \u2013 or a set of muscles. This book tells you in an introductory way how to develop those muscles, but it is you who have to put in the effort. Are you keen to do so?\n  * Don't think of thinking as being hard, painful or laborious \u2013 if you do that you certainly won't apply yourself to shaping and sharpening your thinking skills. Thinking is fun, even when \u2013 or especially when \u2013 we are faced with apparently insurmountable difficulties.\n  * You are more likely to be effective as a practical thinker if you succeed in finding your vocation, your right niche in the world of work. The guide here is to choose a function and field or work that is optimum for your interests, aptitudes and temperament.\n  * 'I have never met a man so ignorant,' said Galileo, 'that I couldn't learn something from him.' Prize especially those people you meet \u2013 in person or in books \u2013 who can teach you things in how to think. \n  * Practical wisdom should be your aim as a thinker, especially in the applied domain of decision making. Practical wisdom is a mixture of intelligence, experience and goodness.\n\nI learn most, not from those who taught me but from those who talked with me.\n\nSt Augustine\nAppendix: solution to 'Who owns the zebra?'\n\nThis problem can be solved by analytical and logical thinking \u2013 deductive logic \u2013 and persistence! It is necessary to compile a matrix.\n\nRoughly half-way through the problem-solving process there are two forks in the road, or mental leaps. The only way to find out which way to go is by trial and error. If you choose the wrong road, you have to retrace your steps. You can see now why the world record for finding the solution is 10 minutes!\n\nThe following is one way of solving the problem.\n\nKeep working through the facts from 1 to 15 in sequence.\n\nConcentrate on clues for which there is only one answer. That is:\n\n1 There are five houses, each with a front door of a different colour, and inhabited by people of different nationalities, with different pets and drinks. Each person eats a different kind of food.\n\n9 Milk is drunk in the middle house.\n\n10 The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left.\n\n15 The Norwegian lives next to the house with the blue door.\n\nThen look for information that has only two possible answers. This is the first mental leap. That is:\n\n6 The house with the green door is immediately to the right (your right) of the house with the ivory door.\n\nIf you place the ivory door in the middle, with the green door on its right, the answer is wrong, but you can still progress to find out who drinks the water. However, you can go no further.\n\nIf you place the ivory door in the fourth house, with the green door on the far right, this answer is correct and you can progress logically, since you will find that other items of information now have only one answer. That is:\n\n2 The Australian lives in the house with the red door.\n\n4 Coffee is drunk in the house with the green door.\n\n8 Apples are eaten in the house with the yellow door.\n\n12 Apples are eaten in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.\n\nThen look for information that has only two possible answers. This is the second mental leap. That is:\n\n3 The Italian owns the dog.\n\nIf you place the Italian in the house with the green door you are wrong, but you can still find out who drinks the water.\n\nIf you place the Italian in the house with the ivory door you are correct and you can progress logically, since you find other items of information now have only one answer. That is:\n\n5 The Ukrainian drinks tea.\n\n13 The cake-eater drinks orange juice.\n\nTherefore the Norwegian drinks water.\n\n14 The Japanese eats bananas.\n\n7 The mushroom-eater owns snails.\n\n11 The person who eats onions lives in the house next to the person with the fox.\n\nTherefore the Japanese owns the zebra.\n\nAnother way of solving this problem is to form a matrix using nationalities rather than house numbers:\n\nFront doors| yellow| blue| red| ivory| green  \n---|---|---|---|---|---  \nInhabitants | Norwegian| Ukrainian| Australian| Italian| Japanese  \nPets| fox| horse | snails| dog| zebra  \nDrinks | water| tea| milk| orange juice| coffee  \nFood| apples| onions| mushrooms| cake| bananas\nFurther reading\n\nAlder, H (1995) Think Like a Leader: 150 top business leaders show you how their minds work, Piatkus, London\n\nde Bono, E (1968) The Five Day Course in Thinking, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead\n\nde Bono, E (1971) Lateral Thinking for Management, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead\n\nde Bono, E (1971) The Use of Lateral Thinking, Penguin, London\n\nde Bono, E (1985) Six Thinking Hats, Penguin, London\n\nBuzan, T (1974) Use Your Head, BBC Publications, London\n\nCulligan, M J, Deakins, C S and Young, A H (1983) Back to Basics Management, Facts on File, New York\n\nDawson, R (1994) Make the Right Decision Every Time, Nicholas Brealey, London\n\nDrucker, P (1966) The Effective Executive, Harper & Row, New York\n\nDrucker, P (1967) The Practice of Management, Heinemann, London\n\nKepner, C H and Tregoe, B (1965) The Rational Manager, McGraw-Hill, London\n\nKoestler, A (1964) The Act of Creation, Hutchinson, London\n\nRawlinson, J G (1983) Creative Thinking and Brainstorming, Gower, Aldershot\n\nThompson, R (1975) After I Was Sixty, Hamish Hamilton, London\n\nBy the same author\n\nEffective Decision Making, (1985), Pan, London\n\nEffective Innovation, (1996), Pan, London\n\nEffective Leadership Masterclass, (1996), Pan, London\n\nHow to Grow Leaders, (2005), Kogan Page, London\n\nThe Inspirational Leader, (2005), Kogan Page, London\n\nLeadership and Motivation, (2006), Kogan Page, London\n\nNot Bosses But Leaders, (2006), Kogan Page, London\nIndex\n\naction\n\naction-centred leadership 39\n\nPoint of No Return (PNR) 28, 32\n\nalternatives 21\n\nanalysing 7\u20138, 15, 47, 69\n\napplied thinking 1\n\naptitudes 78\u201379\n\nassumptions 64\u201365\n\nBismarck, Otto von 22\n\nbrain 3\u20135\n\nbrainstorming 55\u201360\n\nChurchill, Winston 75\n\nComino, Dimitri 78\n\ncompetence 40, 50\n\nconsequence assessment 25\u201327, 32\n\nconversation 44, 83\n\ncost containment 20\n\ncreativity\n\ndepth mind 67\u201368\n\nimagination 61\n\nincubation 69, 72\n\ninsight 69, 72\n\nmeaning 1\n\nmore creative approaches 63\u201365\n\npreparation 68, 72\n\nsynthesising 10, 15, 69\n\nthinking process 69\n\nvalidation 69, 72\n\nwider solutions 65\u201367\n\ncriticism 10, 58\n\nde Bono, Edward 65\n\ndecision making\n\nbridge model 47, 50\n\nclassic approach 23\u201327\n\nconsequence assessment 25\u201327, 32\n\neffective decision making 17\u201333\n\nfive step approach 17, 19, 31\u201333\n\nmeaning 1\n\npain 22\n\nproblem solving compared 45\u201347\n\nrisk assessment 24\u201325, 32\n\nselection\/success criteria 23\u201325, 32\n\nunified model 47\n\ndecisions\n\nbad decisions 26\n\ndecision sharing 35\u201344\n\ndepth mind 27\u201330\n\nevaluation 28\u201330, 32, 49\u201351\n\nimplementation 28\u201330, 32, 49\u201351\n\nwrong decisions 27\n\ndeduction 8\n\ndelegation 40\n\ndepth mind\n\nbrainstorming 57\u201359\n\ncase study 12\n\nchecklist 13\u201314\n\ncreativity 67\u201368, 72\n\ndecisions 29\u201330\n\ndevelopment 14\n\nprinciple 12, 15\n\nDewey, John 16\n\nEdison, Thomas 61\n\nEinstein, Albert 53, 56, 73\n\nevaluation, decisions 28\u201330, 32, 49\u201350\n\nfallacy exercise 8\n\nfield of work 78\u201379\n\nfive step decision making 17, 19, 31\u201333\n\nFord, Henry 66\n\nForster, E M 72\n\nfunctional fixedness 57\n\nGalileo Galilei 83\n\nGoethe, Johann Wolfgang von 53\n\ngroup personality 35\n\nGrove, Andy 67\n\nHilton, Conrad 12, 28\n\nholism 10\n\nideas\n\ncase studies 58, 60\n\ngeneration 55\u201361\n\nimagination 9\n\nimplementation of decisions 28\u201330, 32, 49\u201350\n\nindividual needs 37\n\ninduction 8\n\ninformation\n\ncategories 20\n\ncollection 18\u201321, 32\n\nInformation Overload Syndrome 19\u201320\n\ntime\/information curve 21\u201323\n\ninsight 69, 72\n\ninterests 78\n\nknowledge 3\u20134\n\nlatent consequences 25\u201327, 32\n\nleadership\n\ncase study 42\n\nchecklist 43\n\nconsistency 41\n\ndecision sharing 35\u201344\n\nfunctions 38\u201341\n\noverlapping needs 36, 37\u201341, 44\n\nplanning 40\u201341\n\nroles 35\u201336\n\nlearning strategies 79\u201382\n\nlobster pot model 23\n\nlogic 8\u20139\n\nmanifest consequences 25, 32\n\nmental roadblocks 70\u201371\n\nmind\n\nanalysing 7\u20138, 15, 48, 69\n\nbrain distinguished 3\n\nfunctions 6\u201311\n\nmind at work 3\u201316\n\nsynthesizing 9\u201310, 15, 48, 69\n\nvaluing 10\u201311, 15, 32, 48, 69\n\nsee also depth mind\n\nMozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 70\n\nnine dots problem 5, 45, 64, 66\n\nobjective, definition 19, 32, 47\n\noptions, generating feasible options 21\u201323, 32, 47, 53\n\noutcomes\n\noutcomes window 27\n\nprocess compared 27\n\noverlapping needs 36, 37\u201340, 44\n\nPetrach 30\n\nplanning continuum 40\u201341\n\nPloner, William 61\n\nPoint of No Return (PNR) 28, 32\n\nprobability theories 25\n\nproblem solving\n\ncase study 52\n\ncompetence 49\n\ndecision making compared 45\u201347\n\nmeaning 1\n\nnine dots problem 5, 45, 64, 66\n\nprocedures 48\u201349\n\nsix matchstick problem 5, 45, 64, 65, 66\n\nstrategies 45\u201353\n\nsystems problems 50 52, 53\n\nunderstanding 48, 50\n\nunified model 47\n\nW5H formula 52\n\nzebra problem 5\u20136, 8, 45, 85\u201387\n\nquestions 48, 49, 53\n\nrisk assessment 24\u201325, 32\n\nRoosevelt, Franklin D 17\n\nSt Augustine 83\n\nSartre, Jean-Paul 58\n\nselection criteria\n\ndecision making 23\u201324\n\nmust\/should\/might 24, 32\n\nShakespeare, William 29\n\nsix matchstick problem 5, 45, 64, 65, 66\n\nSloan, Alfred 22\n\nSmuts, Jan 10\n\nsynthesising 9\u201310, 15, 47, 69\n\ntask need 36\n\nteams\n\ncompetence levels 40\n\nleaders see leadership\n\nmaintenance need 36, 37\n\ntemperament 79\n\nthinking\n\napplied thinking 1\n\ncase study 67\n\nconversation 44, 83\n\neffective practical thinkers 75\u201376\n\nimportance 2, 15\n\nlateral 66, 72\n\npain 2, 50\n\npersonal thinking skill mentors 76\u201378\n\nskill development 75, 83\n\nthinking outside the box 63\u201373\n\nvertical 65\u201366\n\nThompson, Roy 2, 14, 42, 50\n\nthree circle model 36, 38, 44\n\ntime\/information curve 21\n\ntrial and error 8\u20139\n\ntruth 11, 15, 51, 61\n\nTull, Jethro 66\n\nvalues at work exercise 11\n\nvaluing\n\nfeasible options 21\u201322\n\nmind 10\u201311, 15, 32, 69\n\nWordsworth, William 10\n\nzebra problem 5\u20136, 8, 45, 85\u201387\nCreating Success series\n\nDealing with Difficult People by Roy Lilley\n\nDecision Making & Problem Solving Strategies by John Adair\n\nDevelop Your Assertiveness by Sue Bishop\n\nDevelop Your Leadership Skills by John Adair\n\nDevelop Your NLP Skills by Andrew Bradbury\n\nDevelop Your PR Skills by Lucy Laville and Neil Richardson\n\nEffective Customer Care by Pat Wellington\n\nEffective Financial Management by Brian Finch\n\nHow to Deal with Stress by Stephen Palmer and Cary Cooper\n\nHow to Manage Meetings by Alan Barker\n\nHow to Manage People by Michael Armstrong\n\nHow to Motivate People by Patrick Forsyth\n\nHow to Negotiate Effectively by David Oliver\n\nHow to Sell Yourself by Ray Grose\n\nHow to Understand Business Finance by Bob Cinnamon and Brian Helweg-Larsen\n\nHow to Write a Business Plan by Brian Finch\n\nHow to Write a Marketing Plan by John Westwood\n\nHow to Write Reports and Proposals by Patrick Forsyth\n\nImprove Your Coaching and Training Skills by Patrick Forsyth\n\nImprove Your Communication Skills by Alan Barker\n\nOrganise Yourself by John Caunt\n\nSuccessful Interviewing and Recruitment by Rob Yeung\n\nSuccessful Presentation Skills by Andrew Bradbury\n\nSuccessful Project Management by Trevor Young\n\nSuccessful Time Management by Patrick Forsyth\n\nTaking Minutes of Meetings by Joanna Gutmann\n\nUnderstanding Brands by Peter Cheverton\n\nThe above titles are available from all good bookshops.\n\nFor further information on these and other Kogan Page titles, or to order online, visit the Kogan Page website at www.koganpage.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}