Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Spartan Secret: How Helots Built a Warrior State
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Athens in this show — democracy, philosophy, the fleet. But I think it's time we turned our gaze south, to Sparta. And not to the battle scenes or the agoge, but to the foundation that kept the whole Spartan machine running: the helots. Luna: Helots. Those are the enslaved population, right? The ones who did all the farming while Spartans trained? Lucas: Exactly. But the word 'enslaved' doesn't quite capture the uniqueness of the helot system. Helots weren't chattel slaves like the ones in Athens — you couldn't buy or sell them on a market. They were bound to the land, a specific plot called a kleros, and they belonged to the Spartan state rather than to individual Spartans. Lucas: And the scale of it was staggering. By the fifth century BCE, helots outnumbered Spartans by something like seven to one. The entire Spartan economy — the food, the labor, the surplus that let Spartan men devote their lives to warfare — came from these people. Luna: Seven to one? That's a recipe for paranoia. Lucas: You've hit on the central fact of Spartan life. The entire Spartan state was organized around the fear of a helot uprising. And the origins of that fear go back centuries — to the Messenian Wars. Lucas: See, the helots weren't some foreign people scooped up in war. They were Greeks — specifically, the population of Messenia, a fertile region in the southwestern Peloponnese. Sparta fought two brutal wars to conquer Messenia, the first around 740 to 720 BCE, and the second around 685 to 668. Lucas: After the Second Messenian War, the entire Messenian population was reduced to helot status. And they never forgot they had once been free. Luna: So the helots were essentially a conquered people living under occupation, generation after generation. Lucas: Exactly. And the Spartans knew it. They developed an entire system of control — part surveillance, part terror — to keep the helots in line. The most infamous element was the krypteia. Luna: The krypteia. I've heard that word — something like a secret police? Lucas: It's worse than that. Plutarch describes it in his Life of Lycurgus. Young Spartan men, the most promising ones, would be sent out into the countryside armed only with daggers. They'd hide during the day and at night they'd ambush helots — specifically, the strongest and most likely to rebel. They'd kill them and disappear. Lucas: It was a rite of passage, a way to harden soldiers, and a deliberate policy of culling the helot population. Thucydides mentions a famous incident during the Peloponnesian War where the Spartans invited helots who had fought well to register for a reward — then killed two thousand of them. Just like that. Luna: That's horrifying. But also — it suggests the helots did fight. They were armed sometimes? Lucas: They were. In fact, helots served as light troops and rowers in the Spartan army. Some even fought as hoplites in emergencies. But the Spartans were terrified of arming them en masse. There's a famous story, probably apocryphal, about a Spartan king who, when asked how many Spartans there were, said 'Enough to keep the helots down.' Lucas: And yet, despite all this, the helots did revolt. The most serious uprising came after a massive earthquake in 464 BCE that devastated Sparta. Luna: The earthquake — I've heard about that. It killed thousands of Spartans. Lucas: It did. Plutarch says the earthquake killed over twenty thousand people in Laconia, including many Spartan citizens. And the helots saw their chance. They rose up and fortified Mount Ithome in Messenia. The revolt lasted nearly a decade — Sparta had to call in help from Athens, of all places, to suppress it. Lucas: That revolt, the Third Messenian War, was the closest the helots ever came to winning their freedom. But it also shows how deep the fault lines ran. The helots had their own identity, their own memory of freedom, and their own heroes. Luna: Were there any helot leaders we know by name? Lucas: The most famous is Aristomenes, who led the Messenian resistance during the Second Messenian War. He's a semi-legendary figure — Pausanias writes about him centuries later. According to tradition, he led a guerrilla campaign that nearly broke Sparta. He raided deep into Spartan territory, defeated Spartan armies in battle, and even sneaked into Sparta itself — to the temple of Athena — to dedicate a shield as an insult. Lucas: The Spartans were so desperate they consulted the oracle at Delphi, and the oracle basically told them to get help from Athens — which they did, sending for the poet Tyrtaeus. Tyrtaeus's war poetry roused Spartan morale and helped them finally defeat the Messenians. Luna: So poetry was a weapon too. Lucas: In Sparta, definitely. But the helot story doesn't end with the Messenian Wars. The system lasted until the second century BCE, when the Romans finally freed the Messenian helots. By then, Sparta had become a sort of tourist attraction — people would visit to watch the bizarre rituals of a once-great military power. Lucas: You know, thinking about all this — about how a society that prided itself on freedom and discipline was built on the backs of an enslaved majority — it reminds me of something. We're able to have these conversations, to dig into history without advertisements or paywalls, because of listeners who choose to support the show. It keeps us independent, and it keeps us focused on stories that don't usually get told. Luna: Absolutely. And if you want to help us keep exploring these hidden histories, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that makes a big difference. Lucas: Right. And speaking of stories that don't usually get told — there's another layer to the helot system that's even stranger. The Spartans had a peculiar custom where they would get helots drunk at public festivals, to show young Spartans what drunkenness looked like. They used them as negative examples. Luna: Wait — they deliberately made helots drunk? That seems almost like a form of psychological warfare. Lucas: It was. And it's one of those details that makes you realize just how pervasive and intentional the control was. The helots were constantly being reminded of their place — through violence, through ritual humiliation, through the krypteia. And yet, they never fully broke. Lucas: There's a fascinating passage in Myron of Priene, a historian who wrote about the helots. He says the helots were forced to wear dogskin caps and leather cloaks — a kind of uniform of servitude. And if a helot ever showed signs of being too capable or too proud, they were killed. The Spartan ephors, upon taking office, would formally declare war on the helots — so that killing them wouldn't be a religious pollution. Luna: They declared war on their own population? That's a chilling legal fiction. Lucas: It is. And it shows how the Spartans themselves understood their situation — they were living on a powder keg. The entire Spartan way of life, from the agoge to the phalanx, was designed with the helot threat in mind. Even their famous equality among citizens was a way to prevent any individual Spartan from becoming powerful enough to lead a helot revolt. Luna: So the famous Spartan discipline — was it really about freedom, or just about control? Lucas: That's the question, isn't it? Spartan freedom was only for a few, and it came at an enormous cost. The helots remind us that every great civilization has a hidden foundation — and sometimes it's built on the backs of people we never see in the statues and the battle paintings.