Helots
Helots ( Greek εἵλωτες , from the Greek. Heléin take =, conquer, so "the conquered," "prisoners") was called by people in the State of the members of a social class Sparta (now usually after its main town of Sparta called), while in State settled, but were not citizens . They were tied to the clod and were regarded as the numerically largest group of the "public slaves ".
Source problem
Many sources on the history of the Helots contradict one another or are inaccurately presented. So called Strabon (8, 5, 5) it as a "public slave" while Pollux (3, 83) "between free and bond" in the 1st century. Looks at. In Pausanias (3, 20, 6) in the 2nd century. Chr. Is of "Spartan state slaves" and slaves of the "community" is mentioned. Therefore, in today's research there is no consensus on the status of helots. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Helots could by no means have been the private property of individual Spartans, as there was a double dependency on the community and on their individual owner.
The origins of the helotie
One thesis is that the Helots in Laconia can be traced back to the pre-Dorian population that was subjugated by the Spartans in the Dark Ages . In the 7th / 8th Century BC This form of slavery was passed on to the citizens of the conquered Messinia by the Spartans . Of course, the name Helote is also derived from Helos or the Helos plain (Pausanias 3, 20, 6) in ancient times, in which many people were the first to be captured. This theory of the origin of the term is rejected from today's etymological point of view and explains the name from the Greek word “to capture”. In 464 BC There was a devastating earthquake that caused a great uprising by the Messenian Helots: the third Messenian War, in which the Helots were defeated after many years of defense.
The institution of heloty persisted until Roman rule, but was increasingly replaced by the usual forms of slavery.
Laconic and Messenian helots
A difference between laconic and Messenian helots was that the submission of the Messenian, in contrast to the laconic, required several wars, some of which lasted a long time. Furthermore, high demands were placed on the agricultural performance of the Messenian helots, which were associated with a degrading monitoring of the delivery of the harvest. In contrast, the laconic helots were not checked during the harvesting process. They had to pay a fixed amount to the Spartians, while according to Tyrtaios around 600 BC. The Messenian helots had to deliver half of the harvest. The laconic helots never rebelled against the Spartians - even when their power was broken - and, according to some scholars, they even fought alongside the Spartians in the phalanx . In recent research, this has led to the assumption that at least the lot of the laconic helots was in fact much better than the (already problematic) sources suggest. The uprisings of the Messenians would then perhaps be understood more as a general rebellion against foreign rule than against Helotie.
The role of the helots in Sparta
The Helots cultivated the land of the Spartians and thus provided for their livelihood. According to Lycurgus , a law stipulated that no Spartiate was allowed to cultivate his land himself or pursue any other acquisition. Rather, they should live from the income that the Helots earned and transferred to them. How high the taxes were is still controversial today. So one can say that the Spartan system was also based on the work of the Helots, because it enabled the Spartans to live away from their courts in Sparta and to get involved militarily and politically.
A Helot who tilled the land with his family only worked for a single Spartan, but despite the personal bond with his master, was only partially his property, because the Helots always remained connected to the ground in the event of a change of ownership. Because of the regular deductible from the harvest, they had property and could lead a family life. The helots could not be sold or released by their master. Only the Spartan community was able to obtain releases on the basis of special merits, for example in the war. These freed people were then referred to with the expression Neodamoden (new citizens).
Both men and women served in the Spartian households. The helotic men took over a. Work as guards, grooms, table servants and were used in the war as lightly armed men who accompanied their masters or supplemented a ship's crew. Thucydides writes that the Spartan general Brasidas 424 BC. BC carried 700 armored helots on his way to Thrace, who after the Peace of Nicias and their subsequent return in 421 BC. Were released (which at the same time removed their ties to the floe).
Other aspects are the display of the drunken helots at the Syssitia ; the communal feasts of the Spartians, and the killings of the helots during the crypt . Every year the Ephors issued a declaration of war on the Helots to justify these killings. Under normal circumstances they would have been enslaved as defeated enemies, but not always at war, in the form of the annual declaration of war against the Helots by the Spartians. This fact determined the difference between helots (also called "state slaves") and "normal" slaves. The helots were deliberately denied the natural but unsecured legal status of a state of peace for the slaves.
Thucydides reports of an insidious murder of helots when the Spartans selected about 2000 of those helots who would have served them most courageously in the war with the promise of freedom, then put them aside and no one knew how each of them perished . They would have done this out of fear of their fermenting mass , for in Sparta the sense of almost all measures has always been to be safe from the helots .
See also
literature
- Ernst Baltrusch : Myth or Reality? The danger of helots and the Peloponnesian League . In: Historische Zeitschrift 272, 2001, pp. 1-24.
- Paul Cartledge : Helots. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 5, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01475-4 , Sp. 333-336.
- Manfred Clauss : Sparta. An introduction to its history and civilization . Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09476-7 .
- H. Klees: On the judgment of the heloty in historical and political thought of the Greeks in the 5th and 4th centuries BC Chr. Part I, In: Laverna 2, 1991, pp. 27-52; Part II, In: Laverna 3, 1992, pp. 1-31.
- Stefan Link: The Sparta cosmos . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1994, ISBN 3-534-12273-9 .
- Nino Luraghi , Susan Alcock (Eds.): Helots and their Masters in Laconia and Messenia . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Ma.) 2003.
- Nino Luraghi: The helots: comparative approaches, ancient and modern. In: Stephen Hodkinson (Ed.): Sparta: comparative approaches. Swansea, Classical Pr. Of Wales 2009, pp. 261-304.
- Lukas Thommen : Sparta. Constitutional and social history of a Greek polis . Metzler, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-476-01964-0 .
- Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Unfree in ancient military service. Vol. 1: Athens and Sparta. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1974, ISBN 3-515-01918-9 .
- Karl-Wilhelm Welwei: Sparta. The rise and fall of an ancient great power. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-94016-2 .
Web links
- Jona Lendering: Helot . In: Livius.org (English)