Spartan Neighbors and Slaves
Some of the conquered inhabitants of Laconia, the territory of Sparta, continued to
live in self-governing communities. Called “those who live round
about” (perioikoi ), these neighbors were
required to serve in the Spartan army and pay taxes but lacked citizen rights. Perhaps
because they retained their personal freedom and property, however, the
perioikoi
1 never rebelled against Spartan control. Far different was the
fate of the conquered people who ended up as
helots
2, a word derived from the Greek term for “capture.” Later
ancient commentators described the helots as “between slave and
free” because they were not the personal property of individual Spartans but
rather slaves belonging to the whole community, which alone could free them.
Helots had a semblance of family life because they were expected to
produce children to maintain their population, which was compelled to labor as farmers
and household slaves as a way of freeing Spartan citizens from any need to do such work.
Spartan men in fact wore their hair very long to show they were
“gentlemen” rather than laborers, for whom long hair was an
inconvenience.
In their private lives, helots could keep some personal possessions and
practice their religion, as could slaves generally in Greece. Publicly, however,
helots lived under the threat of officially sanctioned
violence.3lived under the threat of officially sanctioned violence. Every year the
ephors formally declared a state of war to exist between Sparta and the
helots, thereby allowing any Spartan to kill a helot without any civil
penalty or fear of offending the gods by unsanctioned murder. By beating the
helots frequently, forcing them to get drunk in public as an object
lesson to young Spartans, marking them out by having them wear dogskin caps, and
generally treating them with scorn, the Spartans consistently emphasized the otherness
of the helots compared to themselves. In this way, the Spartans erected a
moral barrier between themselves and the helots to justify their harsh treatment of
fellow Greeks.