ABSTRACT
Poverty is a major public concern in many countries, prompting scholars to search its roots and to suggest policies that might alleviate it. However, a methodological issue precedes every effort: how to define poverty and, consequently, to identify the poor. The combination of these two approaches, then, fostered an analysis that considers both objective and relative variables, resulting in a concept of poverty that takes into account multiple dimensions of social life, from economic to social ones. However, even this awareness did produce much specific interest in the Spartan poor: attempts to define them or even assess their experience have been few and usually. The idea is that, in the long term, a small number of families acquired most of the agricultural land mainly through inheritance and marriage strategies, leaving a greater number of Spartan oikoi without land enough to support themselves and, therefore, to ensure citizenship for their male members.
