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The proportion of helots in relation to Spartan citizens varied throughout the history of the Spartan state; according to Herodotus, there were seven helots for each of the 5,000 Spartan soldiers at the time of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. [3]
Yet, beneath the gleaming armor and laconic wit of the Spartiate warriors lies a darker, often overlooked aspect of Spartan society—the Helots. These enslaved people formed the backbone of the Spartan economy and, paradoxically, both enabled and constrained the city-state's ambitions.
helot, a state-owned serf of the ancient Spartans. The ethnic origin of helots is uncertain, but they were probably the original inhabitants of Laconia (the area around the Spartan capital) who were reduced to servility after the conquest of their land by the numerically fewer Dorians.
5 cze 2015 · The lowest class, which was also the largest, in Spartan society was held a group known as the Helots. According to the Greek geographer Pausanias, the Helots hailed from a city called Helos. This city is said to have been conquered by the Spartans, and its inhabitants became their first slaves.
Helots were primarily agricultural labourers for their Spartiate masters, supplying the barley, wine, olive oil, cheese, and pork that they required for membership of the common messes. As Aristotle (384‒322 bce) bluntly put it, ‘it is the helots who farm the land for the benefit of the Spartiates’.
"The history of Sparta, it is not too much to say, is fundamentally the history of the class struggle between the Spartans and the Helots," claims Paul Cartledge in his substantial study Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (p. 13).1 For Cartledge Sparta was a society "the very existence of which was constantly
This chapter explores the slave system of classical Sparta, known to modern scholars as helotage. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to a detailed demonstration that the helots were privately owned slaves, not communally controlled serfs.
