Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  7

  The secret of the success of the Spartan helots

  The helots of Sparta were remarkably successful in their revolts and are famous for their willingness to take action against their masters, as has been noted in the course of this book. For that reason alone, they merit some attention. It is also worth noting the special circumstances of their condition, which aided their rebellious activities. For some historians the helots are not to be classified as slaves and hence their results cannot be termed slave revolts. That they were not slaves is indicated by the fact that they are generally referred to as “helots”. This was not always the case, however. For example, when Athenaeus quotes Theopompus, again with reference to the Chians, he writes: “The Chians were the first Greeks, after the Thessalians and Lacedaimonians, to use slaves, but they did not acquire them in the same way”.1 Theopompus viewed helots as slaves, but as slaves that were acquired differently from those in most other Greek cities. The circumstances of the workforce in Sparta were indeed not identical to those in many classical Greek cities, and were certainly different from those in Athens.

  There is a curious passage in Pollux of Naucratis’s Onomasticon that says that helots (and the Thessalian Penestai and others) are between slave and free (μεταξὺ δ’ἐλευθέρων καὶ δούλων οἱ Λακεδαιμονίων εἵλωτες καὶ Θετταλω̑ν πενέσται).2 Pollux wrote his Onomasticon in the second century CE and the information he gives us here is thought to come from Aristophanes of Byzantium, who lived four centuries earlier. However, the manuscripts that are extant are from a tenth century epitome, possessed and interpolated by Arethas, bishop of Caesarea. One cannot, then, safely deny the helot slave status merely on the basis of this passage, especially in the light of conflicting evidence. As Jean Ducat comments, this passage of Pollux is contradicted by most of the other ancient texts that deal with the subject.3

  The Greeks (and Romans) had a variety of terms to describe their unfree workers.4 One of the Greek words for slaves is ἀνδράποδα, which literally means “man-footed”, as opposed to τετράποδα, meaning “four-footed”. Here we see a very clear indication of the nature of slaves as property where the word distinguishes human from animal stock.5 Greeks and Romans owned human beings as they owned horses, dogs, farms and household implements; the slaves worked for them as their farm animals worked for them. In a famous passage Aristotle called them “animate tools”: “So a piece of property is similarly a tool needed to live; ‘property’ is a collection of such tools, and a slave is an animate piece of property”.6 They did the work of a hammer but could also speak. If there were robots, there would be no need of slaves, as Aristotle went on to say, as if looking forward to the industrial revolution:

  Every assistant is a tool taking the place of several tools – for if every tool were able to perform its particular function when it was given the order or realised that something had to be done … so that shuttles would weave cloth or harps play music automatically, then master craftsmen would not need assistants, nor masters slaves.7

  Yet Aristotle also saw the authority of a master as like the rule of a king over his subjects, a husband over his wife, or father over children, so that the sense of personhood is present.8 In accordance with the acknowledgment of the slave as a “person”, in the ancient world killing slaves arbitrarily was not generally sanctioned, although the Spartans evaded this prohibition by declaring war on them every year.

  Helots lived in circumstances different from those of many slaves in the ancient Greek world, not least important of which was their shared language, to which Thucydides refers several times, but they seem to have performed very similar work, and performed the same role in society as slaves in other cities. The main difference appears to be their origin and the circumstances of their enslavement, which automatically led to a different situation.9 They could all speak the same language, they were living on the land before the arrival of the Spartans and family ties already existed, and would have been difficult to break given the relatively small area in which they lived.

  What is striking is the number of ancient sources who do refer to them as slaves; for instance, a peace treaty between Athens and Sparta said that Athens had to help in the event of a slave revolt, referring to helots.10 The term δουλεία, which appears to have been used here to refer to helots, was an official one, since the text appears to contain a verbatim copy of the treaty.

  Strabo, who gives us some crucial information, describes the helots as being a form of public slaves. He wrote at the time of the emperor Augustus but had access to reliable sources, one of whom was the Greek historian Ephorus, who lived in the fourth century BCE. Strabo starts paragraph 4 of Geography 8.5 with the words “Ephorus says”; he then proceeds to give information on Laconia, including details on helots. He describes how, in the very earliest times, Eurysthenes and Procles took possession of Laconia, and made Sparta their residence and how they subjugated the neighbouring peoples who, although they were subject to the Spartans, had rights of citizenship and access to offices of state. However, the son of Eurysthenes, Agis, required them to pay tribute, and when the people of Helos refused they were attacked and enslaved.11 This enslavement had certain terms: the owner could not free them or sell them outside the borders. The war was called the war against the helots, Strabo reports, and he adds that one could say that it was Agis and those around him who introduced the whole system of helot slavery, which remained until the time of the Romans. Strabo’s reason for explaining helots to his readers as public slaves is that the state allocated them certain places to live and functions to perform.12

  The picture is one of helots as an indigenous people, who had been subjugated into their present position, but who therefore had a shared history, language and culture and a memory of freedom.13 They were allowed to keep part of what they produced and could not be sold or freed by an individual but by the polis. They have been called serfs, although this term is normally reserved for the feudal system of the Middle Ages.14

  Whereas individuals could not free helots, the city could and did, fairly frequently according to our sources and there was also a specific word for these freed helots: neodamodeis. If helots could be set free, then logically they were not free before. To say they had more rights than slaves normally had is rather undercut by the fact that they could be killed at any moment; in the Greek world this was seen as something shameful.15

  In the later Roman Empire, writers, and learned ones at that, continued to view the helots as slaves. Herodian, a grammarian from the third century CE, discusses the derivation of the word “helot”. He says that helots are the inhabitants of the Messenian city of Helos and then goes on to state directly that the Spartans called all slaves helots.16 In a similar vein, in his Life of Lycurgus, Plutarch directly contradicts the aforementioned statement by Pollux that the helots were between slave and free, when, after discussing the treatment of helots, he writes: “So that it was truly observed by one, that in Sparta he who was free was most so, and he that was a slave there, the greatest slave in the world”.17 In the fourth century CE Libanius wrote a speech called About Slavery in which he makes a very similar remark. He quotes Critias as saying that in Sparta men were most free and most enslaved, and Libanius comments wryly that the Spartans in fact were not very free because they were always scared of their slaves.18

  Plutarch also tells us in his Life of Cleomenes that the Spartans had a temple to Fear,19 and he reports that the Spartans thought that their state was held together by fear.20 Plutarch was not thinking about helots in particular here, but his depiction of Sparta generally is consistent as being permeated by fear. He related another act of the ephors on entering office (besides declaring war on helots), which was to order all men to shave off their moustaches. Plutarch explains this as showing that the magistrates expected obedience in every aspect of life, however trivial.

  Elsewhere, however, Plutarch draws a distinction b
etween slaves and helots. In his comparison of Lycurgus and Numa, he says free men could not earn money so work such as the service at table and in the kitchen was left to slaves and helots.21 In his dialogue Alcibiades, Plato makes Socrates comment that the Spartans are very wealthy, possessing land in their own and in the Messenian country. He says none of the Athenian estates are a match for theirs in size, or in the possession of slaves, especially of helots or of horses or flocks or herds.22 Here, then, he appears to refer to helots as a subset of slaves.

  So although we do possess evidence that uses the term “helot” as being synonymous with “slave”, in some passages from ancient writers a distinction is made. One could argue, however, on the evidence above, that this distinction was drawn because of the geographical origin of the helots, and the fact that they are native to the land, not bought from slave markets. Pausanias, for example, explaining the origin of the term “helot”, says that the first helots came from Helos on the coast:

  Its inhabitants became the first slaves (δου̑λοι) of the Lacedaimonian state and were the first to be called helots, as in fact Helots they were. The slaves afterwards acquired, although they were Dorians of Messenia, also came to be called Helots, just as the whole Greek race were called Hellenes from the region in Thessaly once called Hellas.23

  According to this explanation, “helot” was originally a term to describe where people came from. All the people from this area became the slaves of the Spartans and later the word became a generic word for slaves, so that slaves from elsewhere might also sometimes be referred to by this name, even though they were not technically helots.

  It is useful here to see what Athenaeus has to contribute to this subject. In Book 6 of Deipnosophistae, there is a discussion of the matter of whole peoples being enslaved by others, rather than slaves being bought from many different places as was more usual. Athenaeus reports that Masurius Sabinus had said that:

  Philippos of Theangela mentions the Lacedamonian Helots and the Thessalian Penestai and says that in the past, and indeed today, the Carians use the Leleges as their houseboys. Phylarkhos, in book six of his Histories, say that the Byzantines, too exercised mastery over the Bithynians as the Spartans had towards the Helots.24

  This passage does not necessarily indicate that the legal position of the Bithynians and helots is different from that of ordinary slaves, but is rather pointing to the practice, a relatively unusual feature in the ancient world, of enslaving a whole people. The helots were indigenous to the region, which also meant that they were fellow Greeks, who did not belong to the category of natural slaves.

  Athenaeus quotes from Book 11 of Posidonius’ histories about the Mariandynians, where there is the following explanation of their subjection:

  Many persons who are unable to manage their own affairs because of the weakness of their intellect, hand themselves over to the service of men who are more intelligent, so that they be looked after by them and provided with whatever they need and may themselves give back to their masters all the service they are capable of giving through their own work. It was in this way that the Mariandynians placed themselves under the domination of the people of Heraklea, promising to serve them forever, so long as they provided them with what they needed. They added the condition that none of them should be sold beyond the borders of Heraklea, but that they should stay within their own country.25

  He carries on to say that the people of Herakleia called their slaves “bringers of gifts” (δωροφόροι) to avoid offence, just as the Spartans do with helots, the Thessalians with the Penestai, and the Cretans with their Klarotai. He quotes Ephorus on the Cretans’ slaves and explains that they are called the Klarotai because they have been “allotted”.26

  A little later Athenaeus cites a very similar explanation for the Penestai of Thessaly given by Archemachus, who wrote a History of Euboea.27 Whatever the actual origins of the Penestai, Athenaeus is commenting on the practice of a people entering en masse into servitude, as opposed to those bought at markets. This is followed by the comment that in the earliest times it was not the Greek custom to buy slaves, and those who did were criticized, the reason given being that it took work away from citizens. There is a quotation from Plato’s Laws about the system of helots being more controversial than that of the Mariandynians or the Penestai, presumably because, as Athenaeus had just demonstrated, the servitude of the two last-named peoples was (at least according to his sources) voluntary. He remarks:

  This form of property is not easy. This has in actual fact been demonstrated many times – by the frequent revolt of the Messenians, by all the difficulties that have occurred for those states whose citizens keep many slaves who speak the same language and by all the acts of robbery and suffering inflicted by the so-called roving bandits of Italy.28

  Plato goes on to say (and Athenaeus also reproduces this) that the lesson to be learnt is not to have slaves who come from the same country and to treat those one does possess well. The original passage from Plato’s Laws is very interesting. He has a short discussion on slavery in Book 6, 776b–778a, in which the Athenian explains to Megillus, a Spartan, and Cleinias, a Cretan, how a society should treat its slaves. The Athenian points out that the Spartan system is the most contentious system as some people approve of it and others disapprove. He goes on to say that in states where slaves speak the same language, and he uses the example of the Messenian helots, the slaves revolt frequently. So, he says, first of all, slaves should not come from the same place and speak the same language and secondly they should be dealt with properly, which means not ill treating them or behaving too leniently. He also has the observation that it is difficult to divide man easily into “slave” and “free”.

  In any consideration of the helots the most distinctive aspect is the sympathy to be found for them in our sources. The Athenian orator Isocrates described the lot of the helots thus:

  Right from the start these men have suffered severely, and in the present situation they have served Sparta well; yet the Spartan ephors are allowed to execute without trial as many of them as they wish. As far as the rest of the Greeks are concerned it is not holy to pollute oneself by killing even the most useless of one’s household slaves.29

  Plutarch tried to distance his hero Lycurgus from the brutal practice whereby Spartan youths were trained to go out and hunt helots. He nevertheless gives us details in his Life of Lycurgus, while describing the arrangements Lycurgus, an early law-giver, made for Spartan society:

  In all of this there is no sign of the injustice and excess for which some find fault with Lycurgus’ laws arguing that they make sufficient provision for courage, but are lacking in justice. The so-called krypteia [secret operation] of theirs, if it really was one of Lycurgus’ institutions, may be what led Plato as well to that opinion about the system and the man. It operated like this: the leaders of the young men from time to time would send out those who seemed to have the most sense into the countryside in different directions, equipped with daggers and sufficient provisions, but nothing else; by day they made their way in scattered groups to remote places and hid themselves and rested; at night they came down into the roads and slaughtered any of the helots they caught. Often too they journeyed into the fields and did away with the strongest and bravest of them.30

  Plutarch generally paints a very positive picture of Lycurgus but towards the end of his Life of Lycurgus he again discusses the Spartan treatment of helots and he distances his hero from this shameful episode of Sparta’s past, writing that it developed after Lycurgus’ time and that it was not owing to him. Again, in the comparison of this life with that of Numa, he tries to throw doubt on the idea that the bad treatment by Sparta of the helots was because of Lycurgus:

  whereas if we must admit the treatment of the Helots to be a part of Lycurgus’ legislation, a most cruel and iniquitous proceeding, we must own that Numa was by a great deal the more humane and Greek-like legislator, granting even to actual slaves a licence to sit at
meal with their masters at the feast of Saturn, that they also might have some taste and relish of the sweets of liberty.31

  This sympathy can also be seen in the work of Dio Chrysostom:

  Look at the example of the Messenians; after an interval of how many years was it that they got back both their freedom and their country? After the Thebans had defeated the Spartans at Leuctra, they marched into the Peloponnese together with their allies and forced the Spartans to give up Messenia; they resettled all the people who were descended from the Messenians who had previously been the Spartans’ slaves and were called Helots. No one says that the Thebans did this unjustly, but rather with great honour and great justice.32

  Thomas Figueira builds on such comments and argues that the struggle was one of national liberation, which is why the helots are presented differently in our sources.33 The Greek inhabitants of the Peloponnese had been enslaved by an invading people and they were fighting to regain their freedom. Figueira follows our sources in stressing the distinctive nature of the helots, and is surely right to stress the different nature of these subordinates from others; our sources do seem to have perceived the helots as Greek, as part of their own people, and not one of the “naturally subject” races.34

  As remarked earlier, it is certainly true that the helots were a special case, that they had different circumstances, and some of those circumstances result in a favourable portrait by historians. One circumstance is that in the end the Messenians won their independence, and Pausanias devotes Book 4 of his Guide to Greece to Messenia and their struggles against the Spartans and afterwards. Not only were the entire populations of Messenia and Laconia enslaved but they had certain rights, which other slaves did not have. Again, these circumstances aided their revolt.