Helot uprising
Uprising of the unfree Helots against their Spartan masters in ancient Greece is referred to as a helot revolt .
According to ancient sources, Thucydides in particular , the Spartans lived in constant fear of a Helot revolt. They should in particular on the subject in the two Messenian wars during the Archaic period Messenians have thought that never lost consciousness of their former independence. Little is known about the uprisings of the Helots in the laconic heartland of Sparta.
The first great Helot uprising after the conquest of Messenia broke out in 464 BC. After Sparta was struck by a severe earthquake that left numerous dead. At first the Spartians did not succeed in suppressing the uprising, which was rather joined by the not yet Helotized Messenians and the Perioec cities of Thouria and Aithaia. According to Diodorus , only the decisive action of King Archidamus prevented the capture of Sparta. The rebels turned Mount Ithome into a fortress.
The Spartans felt the situation was desperate and called the Athenians for help because they had experience in sieges. The Spartiate Perikleidas is said to have appeared in Athens as a supplicant. As of 462 BC When the Athenian army appeared in the Peloponnese under the kimon known as the friend of the Spartans , the Spartans no longer felt the situation to be so threatening that they wanted to accept foreign help, especially not from Athens, with which they wanted to rule in Greece rivaled. They sent the Athenians back; this affront led to Kimon's banishment and the beginning of open conflicts between Athens and Sparta. The Messenians in the fortress of Ithome finally gave up (according to Thucydides in the tenth year, but perhaps a little earlier) and were given free retreat; they were settled in Naupaktos by the Athenians . The Spartan rule over the remaining Messenian helots was restored.
When Athens in the first phase of the Peloponnesian War in 425 BC BC occupied the Messenian port city of Pylos and the following year the island of Kythera , the Spartans were again in fear of an uprising by the Messenian helots, especially since the Athenians brought the former rebels from Naupaktos back to the Peloponnese. It was not until the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC. BC put an end to the Spartans' fear of a major uprising, which, however, never happened.
After the Spartan defeat at Leuktra , the Thebans fell in 370 BC. In the Peloponnese. They finally helped the Messenians gain independence. The new capital Messene was founded at the foot of the Ithome . The laconic helots, on the other hand, of whom the Spartans had added 6,000 to their army , remained loyal to their masters. But Sparta's power base was decisively weakened by the loss of Messenia.
literature
- Manfred Clauss : Sparta. An introduction to its history and civilization . Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09476-7 , especially pp. 43-45, 52-53, 71, 113-115.
- JT Hooker: Sparta. History and culture . Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-010314-2 , esp. Pp. 211-213, 230-232, 237, 274.