HELOTS

It is a staple of popular (and some academic) books on Sparta that its servile population, the Helots, were serfs – tenant farmers who were bound to the land and forced to pay some form of rent (in labour or in kind). Yet over the last thirty years, professional scholars have turned in increasing numbers to the view that the Helots were not serfs, but privately owned slaves. Most leading Sparta specialists now reject the serfdom view. Why, though, does it matter? Is this not just terminological hair-splitting?

David Lewis

SPECIAL REALLY BETWEEN FREE MEN AND SLAVES? There are at least two reasons why this debate matters. First, it has consequences for how we understand the ‘on the ground’ operation of Helotage. If one takes the serfdom view, then Helots, for all the ways in which they were oppressed, could at least enjoy a stable family life by being assigned to a single Spartan, living on his land in the secure knowledge that their families would not be broken up by gift or sale. If the Helots were slaves, then their prospect of an unbroken family life was not secure. Secondly, it matters for how historians of ancient Greece think about slavery. Was slavery in the Greek world basically like the system of slavery that existed in Athens, which relied on…

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Ancient History (Digital) - 1 Issue, AH 48

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