Chapter 4. Agreste genus: Helots in Hellenistic Laconia

Nigel M. Kennell

In the aftermath of the battle of Leuctra, Sparta lost a third of its territory, comprising over half its arable land, and the majority of its helots. While their fellows west of Taygetus soon established a free state, Laconian helots, with no similar collective identity invented or genuine to differentiate themselves from their masters, remained under Spartan domination for centuries more. This was not for lack of spirit. Laconian helots joined in a general revolt in the wake of Leuctra, and the majority of the helots who crossed over to the Theban army as it advanced on Sparta must have been Laconian. [1] On the other hand, helots responded to a Spartan call to arms in return for a pledge of freedom in such numbers that they aroused suspicion and fear among the Spartiates. [2] The revolt petered out or was repressed, and the fate of the helot volunteers is unknown.

Despite the massive disruption in the lives of most Spartans the loss of Messenia must have caused, especially among those whose principal holdings had been located there, the lot of the helot in the middle of the fourth century remained the same as it had been for hundreds of years. According to Aristotle, helots still farmed for the Spartans as the penestai did for the Thessalians and due to their harsh treatment were still prone to revolt. [3] The continued existence of helots well into the next century is solidly attested: in the spring of 272 BC when the army of king Pyrrhus was bearing down on Sparta accompanied by the pretender Cleonymus, that man’s friends and helots, we are told, decorated his house as if to welcome the invader to dinner. [4] Helots also appear in the accounts of king Cleomenes’ preparations for the battle of Sellasia in 222 and in Nabis’ attempts to suppress dissent {81|82} prior to his showdown with the Romans in 195. These sources number less than ten. But even this meager harvest provokes questions on two matters of interest: the end of helotage in Laconia and the status of helots in later Spartan society.

The history of Sparta in the third and second centuries is marked by a series of attempts, all ultimately unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, to restore Sparta to the predominant military position the city once held. Areus I, king from 309/8 to (probably) 265, and Nabis, last ruler of an independent Sparta (c. 207-192), both aimed for that goal by endeavoring to transform Sparta into a Hellenistic state comme les autres, while the two more famous kings Agis IV (c. 244-241) and Cleomenes III (c. 235-222) drew upon and elaborated the Lycurgan legend. Helots, however, simply did not enter into their calculations: no Spartan reformer or revolutionary ever seems to have decided to tap the immense manpower resources they represented to renew the Spartiate class. Not even Nabis, whose changes to the citizen body were radical, attempted it. Although some have mistakenly thought that he “liberated the helots”, the evidence that he freed any helots at all is at best slight, as we shall see.

Areus need not detain us because we have no means of determining what impact his modernization policy had upon Laconia’s helot population. One might speculate that it facilitated even greater concentration of landed wealth and consequently brought more helots under the control of fewer masters. By the middle of the third century, if the images of an extremely polarized society that have come down to us from Phylarchus are more or less accurate in general outline, the role of the helots had changed significantly. With the land owned by a small minority of plousioi, perhaps as few as one hundred, helots no longer provided a significant portion of their agricultural produce to support contributions from a broad range of Spartiates to the sussitia who thus maintained their status among the homoioi. [5] Instead, as the helots were now working for far fewer Spartiates than before, they would have produced for their masters a surplus increased far beyond what was needed for their survival and for their masters’ contributions to the sussitia. Although, as Stephen Hodkinson pointed out, this pattern of ownership had existed in Laconia well before Leuctra, the loss of Messenia must have exacerbated it. [6] As the trend continued, it produced a vicious circle which caused more and more Spartiates to fail to make their contributions to the sussitia, because they did not own sufficient land from which to obtain the produce. Sussitia thus would have failed, and land passed into the ownership of fewer and fewer people, whose messes {82|83} now became theaters for unreserved display of disposable income. In addition, the Spartan aristocracy’s obsession with breeding and racing horses suffered no setback after 370: Isocrates in the Archidamus has Agesilaus’ son say that Spartans were still rearing teams of voracious horses, in spite of being a people under dire compulsion and lacking even daily necessities. [7] The economic implications of such land use are important; for, although large areas of land for pasturage were needed, fewer helots could manage the herds than were necessary in the more labor-intensive activity of farming. For their masters, horse-breeding and animal husbandry in general significantly mitigated the impact of Leuctra. The helots’ role thus changed from providing the broad economic foundation for a warrior class to being producers of wealth for a small elite.

Upon ascending the throne, the young king Agis IV set out to redress the gross imbalances that had arisen in Sparta by instituting quite radical reforms, in the distribution of land for example, which he justified as a return to the ideals of the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus. [8] He aimed at replenishing the Spartiate class by enfranchising perioeci and mercenaries who had sufficient means to live as gentlemen, were healthy, and of military age, but did not consider extending the offer of citizenship to the helots. [9] On the other hand, his policy of land redistribution that was eventually brought to fruition by Cleomenes certainly touched the lives of helots who had worked for generations on the vast estates of the elite. Although no ancient source alludes to this aspect of the reforms and no modern study has addressed it, the pooling of all land owned by Spartans and its allotment as equal kleroi to the renewed Spartiate citizen body must have entailed a considerable increase in manpower needs as the old economies of scale were lost.

The Spartans could have addressed this problem in one of three ways: either the mass of helots might simply have been divided up and assigned along with the kleroi to new masters; the helots might have continued to work the same land as before, even though it was now subdivided, with the produce from each of the kleroi within the larger unit going to its respective Spartiate owner; or the helots might have stayed with their original masters, leaving the new kleros-owners without helots of their own to fend for themselves. This last solution is impossible, in light of the ‘Lycurgan’ ideology of the revolutionary kings. The first solution would have produced an outcome more or less matching the situation before Leuctra, as it has been recently {83|84} reconstructed, when Spartiates actually owned helots on their land, albeit with certain restrictions on their rights as property owners. [10] But it would have been horrendously complicated to put into effect, as it required breaking up at least some pre-existing helot communities and dispersing their members into smaller units over wide areas to work the scattered kleroi. It also remains unclear whether, after centuries of land passing into the hands of fewer and fewer owners, the helot population had the numbers to make the exploitation of kleroi in this way economically viable.

I think the second solution is the most logical and is the one which fits the almost non-existent evidence for the status of helots following the reigns of Agis and Cleomenes. One vital testimonium for this period has only recently been recognized as such. It appears in a passage of Strabo we will have occasion to revisit later, in which he provides a capsule history of helotage: Hodkinson recognized that the sentence referring to Agis I’s institution of the heiloteia cannot have come from Ephorus, as it begins with the statement that there were helots until the time of the Romans. [12] The syntax of the passage confirms this insight. The material taken from Ephorus is presented in indirect discourse, whereas the sentence in question was written in oratio recta and is undoubtedly from Strabo himself. Although this information is therefore irrelevant to the study of helots in the archaic and classical periods, it is of great value for our understanding of helotage after Cleomenes III. In contrast to the earlier period, helots were now state-owned, lived in communities dictated by the state, and provided some of the services normally associated with public slaves in other cities. Such explicit codification of the status of the helot would conform well with Cleomenes’ program of reform, in which traditional practices were reconstituted and reshaped to produce new versions of the citizen training system and the sussitia. [13] {84|85}

The smooth operation of the renewed sussitia depended on all members being able to provide contributions in kind from their own land. Since the Lycurgan ethos prevented Spartans from sowing and reaping themselves, sussitia depended ultimately on helots. Thus, any distribution of land intended to revivify the common messes must inevitably have entailed a corresponding reform of the heiloteia. Along with losing (or giving up) their land, the Spartan elite also lost control of many helots. The state took their place, regulating where helots might live to ensure a stable pool of labor for the new kleros-holders and utilizing them for certain public duties beneath the dignity of the revived Spartiate class. After Cleomenes, individual Spartans could not own helots, but they were able to make use of the products of their labor on the land assigned to them. One final advantage of this “minimalist” version of Cleomenes’ land reforms is that it would have taken only a short time to implement and could have been in place soon after he launched his coup against the ephors in 227.

Spartan military successes over the next few years, combined with the threat Cleomenes’ ideas posed to property owners elsewhere in Greece, soon provoked the Achaean League to seek help from its old enemy Macedon. This alliance turned the tide against Cleomenes despite some astonishing Spartan victories, such as the sack of Megalopolis in 223. All ended with the massive defeat at Sellasia and Cleomenes’ subsequent flight into Egyptian exile. [14] In 223/2, just before the battle of Sellasia, helots again had the promise of freedom dangled before them. Through this offer, made for the first time since Leuctra and under similar duress, Cleomenes raised 500 talents from the 6000 helots who could afford the price of 5 Attic minae each. [15] The sum has been thought high but, as has been pointed out, it is within the range of manumission fees paid by slaves elsewhere. [16] He also notes that helots who had worked on the large estates before redistribution might have had ample opportunity to amass capital from the sale of produce that was surplus to their own or their masters’ needs. Cleomenes armed 2000 of the newly-liberated hoplites in the Macedonian style to confront Antigonus’ elite troops. [17]

The fate of these ex-helots after Antigonus Doson’s swift settlement of Spartan affairs remains unclear. Much remains unclear about the settlement as a whole. Polybius describes it twice. In his narrative of the reign of Cleomenes he polishes it {85|86} off in a single sentence: “Securing Sparta after his assault Antigonus for the rest treated the Lacedaemonians with magnanimity and humanity, and having restored the ancestral politeuma within a few days withdrew with his forces from the city”. [18] Later, in assessing the character of Philip V after his vicious destruction of Thermon in 218, Polybius compares Antigonus’ behavior towards the defeated Spartans. The meaning of politeuma, the key word in both passages, has been the subject of some debate, especially since Cleomenes himself claimed to be reviving Sparta’s traditional or ancestral constitution (politeia). [20] Against Shimron’s contention that Polybius used politeuma strictly to denote governmental institutions in contrast to politeia, which he used for social institutions in general, Walbank argued that the words were essentially synonymous. [21] According to him, Polybius blamed Cleomenes for destroying the Lycurgan constitution which had survived, albeit in disarray, even Leuctra. Antigonus re-instituted the ephorate, which Cleomenes had abolished tyrannically in 227, and which Polybius evidently believed was genuinely Lycurgan. However, Walbank did agree with Shimron’s distinction between the purely governmental and the social aspects of Cleomenes’ program. But on the crucial question of which, if any, reforms Antigonus left in place, he remained agnostic: “Whether in fact on this occasion some of Cleomenes’ measures remained in force is a matter that can only be determined independently”. [22] {86|87}

Nonetheless, Shimron’s idea that there was a distinction between politeia and politeuma has more support than Walbank allowed, although the words do not have the meanings he thought they did. We can invoke the authority of Aristotle in the Politics: “Since politeia and politeuma mean the same thing, politeuma is the sovereign authority in cities; and it is necessary for that sovereign authority to be either an individual, a few people, or the many”. [23] Politeuma here is “government,” “state,” or, more precisely, “the body of citizens with full rights of participation in government”. [24] Walbank quoted this passage only partially in his rebuttal to Shimron, omitting everything after the first clause and thus passing over the subtle but important difference between the two words. Aristotle moves from the more general term politeia, “constitution,” or “rights of citizenship,” to a discussion of the more specific politeuma. Their meanings did overlap in general usage, like the modern “state” and “constitution,” and Aristotle uses that blurring to his advantage, but there was a real distinction between the two. This distinction can be seen quite easily in epigraphical texts. For example, in the decree of the Smyrnaeans ratifying their sumpoliteia with Magnesia ad Sipylum from the middle of the third century, the demos is described as having “given citizenship (politeia) to the inhabitants of Magnesia,” while later in the document the new citizens are characterized as “those who are being registered in the citizen body” (τοὺς καταχωπιζομένους εἰς τὸ πολίτευμα). [25] In a letter to the people of Larissa, Philip V describes their need for new citizens: Through a sumpoliteia agreement at the end of the third century, the Milesians enfranchised all citizens of Seleucia/Tralles who lived there up to the date of the {87|88} grant and allowed anyone who became a citizen of Seleucia by decree but who did not live there or was given citizenship (δοθῆι . . . πολιτεία) later also to become Milesian during a grace period of ten years following the original enrollment of the Seleucians into the citizen body (ἀπο τῆς πρὸς τὸ πολίτευμα). [27] In the sumpoliteia with Herakleia neither Milesians nor Herakleians who had not been resident in either city for more than five years were allowed to be enrolled in the citizen community (προσγπαφῆναι πρὸς τὸ πολίτευμα) of the other city.

As a rule, the inscriptions distinguish between the rights of citizenship (politeia), which can be granted to outsiders, and the community of citizens (politeuma), into which the new citizens were then enrolled. The difference resulted in the words acquiring in the Roman period two quite different meanings—magistracy (politeia) and community (politeuma). [28] Plutarch uses the latter word with almost exactly this meaning when noting the general decline of the state due to pervasive corruption just before the accession of Agis IV (ἐγκεκλικότων ἤδη τῆι διαφορᾶι τοῦ πολιτεύματος ὀμαλῶς ἁπάντων). Polybius also observes this distinction. His summary of the declaration of war against the Aetolians that opened the Social War in 220 contains a pledge to liberate states which were unwilling members of the Aetolian League and to “reestablish them in their ancestral states (ἀποκαταστήσουσιν εἰς τὰ πάτρια πολιτεύματα), with their own territory and cities, ungarrisoned, untaxed, and free, enjoying their traditional constitutions and laws (πολιτείαις καὶ νόμοις χρωμένους τοῖς πατρίοις)”. [29] On occasion Polybius’ usage comes close to that found in inscriptions. In Book 3 he specifies how in his narrative he will touch on the “development of the Rhodian state” (τῆς αὐξήσεως τοῦ ᾽Ρωδίων πολιτεύματος). In a letter Laodice III recounts the benefactions of Antiochos III to the city of Iasos in Caria: “he granted you liberty and laws and for the rest has shown that he will develop the state (συναύξειν τὸ πολίτευμα) and will lead it to a better condition”. [30] Polybius’ use of politeuma thus coincides with Aristotle’s definition and with the epigraphical record. Both it and politeia can denote systems of government, but whereas politeia emphasizes the legal and administrative structure of government, politeuma is concerned with the body of citizens who have effective control of that system.

To return, at last, to Antigonus’ settlement in Sparta. In both passages Polybius says that Antigonus restored the ancestral politeuma, which must mean at the very least that he restored the citizen body to its original, pre-Cleomenean configuration, {88|89} stripping the perioeci and mercenaries of their citizenship and possibly reinstating those wealthy Spartans who were in exile. Any hopes the helots freed by Cleomenes had to become full citizens would have been dashed. In the strictly constitutional sphere, his changes seem to have been minimal: the restoration of the ephorate is the single action that can be plausibly attributed to Antigonus. [31] The dyarchy was no more, Cleomenes’ new magistracy, the patronomate, and his reformed agoge were both allowed to remain in place, thus winning Antigonus Polybius’ admiration for his light-handed treatment of the defeated enemy [32] For what it is worth, Pausanias later claimed that Cleomenes’ constitution, except for the monarchy, lasted until his own time. [33]

As for the unfortunate ex-helots, we should not just assume that they simply reverted to their former status. When Philopoemen stripped many people of their Spartan citizenship in 188 he conspicuously did not re-enslave those who obeyed his order to forsake Laconia. As Philopoemen’s attitude to Sparta was much harsher and more unforgiving than Antigonus’ appears to have been, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Macedonian victor took similar or even milder sanctions against the new citizens than did the Achaean three decades later.

Antigonus’ gentleness with Sparta was not entirely altruistic. As events during the next few years would show, there was still a base of support for Cleomenes among the population, and Doson may have thought it wise not to provide that faction with too many ready-made grievances around which to rally. But grievances there were, enough to provide the pretender Cheilon with ammunition for his attempted coup four years later against the ephors’ choice of Lycurgus as king. [34] Although the uprising soon collapsed when he failed to win significant public support for a program of debt cancellation and land redistribution, Cheilon must have gambled that these issues would again strike a chord among Spartans at large. That the populace turned against Cheilon upon hearing his announcements in the agora may have been due more to his connections with Achaea and Macedon, with whom Sparta was then at war, than to its own satisfaction with the status quo. [35] Assuming that Cheilon had not completely misread the situation, it would appear that by 218 Sparta was again suffering from grossly unequal ownership of land. This inequality, I believe, was caused by the disenfranchisement of Cleomenes’ new {89|90} citizens and the subsequent freeing-up of substantial lots of land that had constituted their kleroi. Whether or not those exiled under Cleomenes returned after Sellasia, the action taken by wealthier Spartans to acquire the newly available lots to re-establish their estates would have had serious consequences for the Cleomenean ideal of complete equality among Spartan citizens. It is doubtful that the renewed imbalance in land ownership altered the status of the helots. Our only sure source for their post-Cleomenean status, Strabo, gives no indication that they remained “sort of public slaves” only for the five years of the revolutionary regime. During the unrest and turmoil of the next decade, nothing appears in our sketchy evidence to suggest that helots took part in any agitation to improve their position in Spartan society. The stasis between the remnants of Cleomenes’ party and their enemies was confined exclusively to Spartan citizens. Despite a succession of exilings, massacres, and the like, we hear of no helot revolt.

Stable government returned to Sparta when Nabis came to power c. 207. His regime lasted until his murder in 192, making it the longest since that of Areus I. Polybius apparently treated Nabis’ rule at Sparta in some detail, but unfortunately only fragments of his account have survived, along with sizeable portions of Livy’s History which are derived from him. Polybius is far from an unbiased source; he saw in Nabis the embodiment of everything he despised in a ruler: exiling the rich, freeing slaves, engaging in aggressive military adventurism abroad and physical intimidation of his opponents at home, all the while depending on mercenaries to enforce his will. [36] Polybius’ loathing has influenced all the ancient sources pertaining to Nabis’ career and has made difficult an unbiased assessment of his program (or even if he had one).

Like Areus I, Nabis evidently pursued a Hellenistic, rather than purely Spartan, model of kingship. He styled himself thus, minted coins with his portrait, had roof tiles stamped with his title, and was addressed as king in documents from other states. [37] To Polybius he was simply a tyrant, responsible for a lengthy and burdensome tyranny at Sparta. To the Romans, who had quickly become adept in the murky world of Greek politics, he was a Saddam Hussein figure, a useful tool at first, with his occupation of neighboring Argos fully tolerated, but when his actions no longer coincided with the Romans’ new policy of Greek self-determination in 196, he was subjected to the full onslaught of an allied coalition the Romans gathered against him in 195. {90|91}

Nabis himself recognized that his policies of both land reform and liberation of slaves were inimical to Roman sensibilities. [38] He was not mistaken: Titus Flamininus called them “certainly not in themselves trivial” (non quidem nec ipsa mediocria). [39] Most modern scholars have concentrated on Nabis’ enlargement of the citizen body. Almost without exception they have credited Nabis with the liberation of helots, some even with the abolition of helotage itself, to achieve this end. [40] Nabis’ liberation of helots has become as established a “fact” as any can be in the shadowy history of Hellenistic Sparta. But it rests upon a single assumption, that the word “slave” (δοῦλος, οἰκέτης, or seruus) whenever it is used in connection with Spartan affairs normally is equivalent to “helot”. [41]

Nabis did liberate slaves, of that there can be no doubt. Polybius and Livy, again our most important sources, are explicit and consistent. Polybius asserts “He liberated the slaves;” and Livy has Flamininus say to Nabis, “You say that charges of having called slaves to freedom and dividing land up for poor people have been made against you”. [42] Like other kings and tyrants Nabis expanded the citizen body by liberating slaves and enrolling foreigners as citizens. The process, known in Greek as ἀωαπλήρωσις, comes to us through Livy’s Latin version as multitudinem . . . auctam. [43] The enrollment of foreigners, particularly mercenaries who had done their host city service, was quite common. The “Thessalians and other Greeks” that Philip V referred to in his letter to the city of Larissa were almost certainly mercenaries. During the later third century the Milesians gave citizenship to a large number of Cretan mercenaries and their families. [44] At Sparta, as I have mentioned, Cleomenes provided a precedent by enfranchising mercenaries who had served him. Polybius does not say explicitly that Nabis gave his mercenaries citizenship, but it is the logical conclusion to be drawn from his statement that the tyrant gave the property and wives of those he exiled to the most conspicuous of the others in Sparta and to mercenaries. In the language of international relations, he granted the mercenaries the rights of γῆς καὶ οἰκίας ἔγκτησις and ἑπιγαμία. Nabis thus ensured that their ownership of the property was recognized at Sparta under his regime and that any offspring of their unions with Spartan women would be Spartan citizens too. [45] {91|92} Finally, there is welcome epigraphical support for intermarriage with citizen women in the form of a few grave inscriptions erected by women with impeccable Spartan names for their foreign, mercenary husbands. [46]

Polybius accused Nabis of liberating “slaves” and marrying off the wives and daughters of his opponents to them as well in a passage whose problematic nature was only recognized by Ducat. [47] He pointed to the contradictions between it and the lengthier account of Nabis’ policy in book thirteen, where Polybius says Nabis married off only the wives not to slaves, but to the most renowned of the rest of the Spartans and to the mercenaries. [48] Ducat therefore sensibly discounts the charge as une généralization passionnée et excessive. This leaves Livy’s descriptions of the events during the last years of Nabis’ reign from 195-192 and of the measures taken against Sparta by the Achaean general Philopoemen in 188 as the only accurate means of determining the extent of Nabis’ liberation of slaves at Sparta.

As already remarked, Livy has both Nabis and Flamininus mention the liberation of slaves as a major irritant in the talks they conducted in 195 before the new walls of Sparta. From the context, we can deduce that the liberation of Spartan slaves and the redistribution of Laconian land are meant, but the terms of the peace treaty Nabis finally accepted after several days of Roman attacks make it equally clear that the only slaves to be returned to their masters were those from Argos or Messene. [49] The Romans demanded no substantive change in Sparta’s internal affairs. Although they did deal a severe blow to Spartan prestige and power by drastically reducing the navy and removing the maritime cities of Laconia from Spartan control, Flamininus manifestly was only interested in removing Sparta as a major player and potential threat in international power politics. Livy tells us that Nabis was not displeased that the Romans did not require the return of any exiles; in fact they only insisted that the wives of exiles be given the option of leaving to join their husbands—an indication perhaps that not all were dissatisfied with their present marriages. [50] {92|93}

If Flamininus did not interfere in Sparta’s internal affairs in 195, the same cannot be said of Philopoemen in 188. The treaty imposed by the Romans in 195 did not settle anything, as public resentment against the loss of the maritime cities, especially the port of Gythium, was bitter. Several years of war and unrest followed as the Spartans first lost their war of recovery to the Achaeans in 193, their leader with the assassination of Nabis by his faithless Aetolian allies in 192, their independence with the city’s forcible incorporation into the Achaean League that same year, and their way of life after a failed attempt to occupy a perioecic town and leave the League in 188. Unlike Flamininus in 195, Philopoemen had a score to settle seven years later. Flamininus’ aims had been to reduce the damage Nabis could do on the international stage; Philopoemen’s were to “humble the city of the Spartans”. [51] His settlement was consequently much harsher and more interventionist: Sparta’s walls were to be torn down, the Belminatis given up, the Cleomenean agogê (now considered equivalent to the Lycurgan system) was to be abolished, the constitution was to be altered to conform to Achaean norms, mercenaries were to be dismissed, and all those made citizens by the tyrants were to be expelled. [52]

Livy mentions these people twice, the first time as quae seruitia tyranni liberassent (ea magna multitudo erat), the second as Lacedaemoniis adscriptos (ita enim uocabant qui ab tyrannis liberati erant). [53] In the same context, Plutarch calls them ὅσοι δ᾽ ἦσαν ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων ἀποδεδειγμένοι πολῖται τῆς Σπάρτης. [54] The consistent references to tyrants in the plural, rather than to a single tyrant, surely echo the language of Polybius in reporting the Achaean actions. Historians have attempted either to identify these tyrants with some of the leaders of Sparta between Cleomenes and Nabis or to discount the plural completely and associate the term solely with Nabis. But “tyrants” as used here is a propaganda term, without precise constitutional significance: one person’s tyrant could be another’s king. Lycurgus, the first king after the period of direct Macedonian rule, was accused of gaining the throne through bribery and Livy refers to him explicitly primus tyrannus Lacedaemone, yet only a few chapters later he has Flamininus style Lycurgus’ son Pelops as rege iusto ac legitimo. [55] Again relying on Polybius, he also calls Machanidas, Lycurgus’ successor, tyrannus Lacedaemoniorum. [56] To his supporters and to the Romans, when it suited them, Nabis was king of Sparta, to his enemies he was the worst tyrant of them all. Therefore, the {93|94} reference to all those liberated and/or made citizens by the tyrants reveal nothing about the policies of any particular Spartan leader.

We are left with Nabis’ reference to his own liberation of slaves. Were they then the only ones expelled by the Achaeans? Livy certainly implies as much when he defines the expression Lacedaemoniis adscripti as the Spartan name for those who had been liberated by the tyrants. [57] In the earlier passage, these same people are simply “whatever persons the tyrants had freed from slavery”. [58] In his version, Plutarch refers to ἀποδεδειγμένοι πολῖται τῆς Σπάρτης without mentioning their servile status. [59] Those who take Livy at his word have interpreted Lacedaemoniis adscripti as a special term reserved for the ex-slaves, whom they identify as ex-helots, which showed that they were not completely integrated into the citizen body and continued to constitute a separate group, analogous to the neodamodeis of old. [60] But there is nothing special about the word adscripti. Livy used adscribere elsewhere for the enrolling of Roman colonists; here it is the Latin equivalent of a Greek term. [61] A literal back-translation of adscribere is προσγράφειν, which is one of a number of verbs that designates the enrolling of new citizens. In 182 the Milesians passed a treaty of sumpoliteia with the city of Pidasa, which gave the Pidaseans who were to be enrolled as new citizens (Πιδασέων τοὺς προσγραφησομένους) exemption from liturgies for ten years. [62] In a sumpoliteia at Xanthus, the prutaneis have the duty of enrolling the new citizens (προσγραφέτωσαν) into tribes and demes as soon as possible. [63] On Delos and Tenos, when foreign benefactors were made citizens, they also received the right to be enrolled (προσγράψασθαι) in the tribe and phratry of their choice. [64] Lists of ephebes from Chaeronea marking their coming of age are headed, “These were enrolled from the ephebes into the brigades” (οἵδε προσεγράφησαν ἐξ ἐφήβων εἰς τὰ τάγματα). [65] In Polybius’ original text the expression he used was most likely οἱ προσγραφέντες πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους. From the epigraphical {94|95} parallels, it is clear that the phrase carried no connotation of inferior or separate status with it beyond that of belonging to a group of newly-enrolled citizens. Sometimes, to be sure, certain restrictions were placed on the eligibility for office of new citizens, such as the Cretans in Miletus, but these were not due to their earlier servile state. [66] Adscripti or οἱ προσγραφέντες were simply the newly enfranchised citizens in a city. In itself, the term had no association whatsoever with the new citizens’ previous status, whether slave or free, but merely with their present condition in relation to the politeuma they had just entered.

If Livy’s definition is an accurate reflection of Polybius’ text, then the Achaean historian was telling only half the truth. Adscripti Lacedaemoniis was certainly what Spartans called the freed slaves who had been made citizens by tyrants, but it was also the designation for all newly-enfranchised citizens. We must not make the same mistake of identifying all the adscripti as ex-slaves, since Nabis had also given citizenship to his mercenaries. In addition, during the years of bloody turmoil between Cleomenes and Nabis it is not difficult to imagine that various leaders selectively rewarded mercenaries and others of non-Spartiate origin with citizenship, and that there was by the early 180s a sizeable group in the population with less than impeccable claims to Spartan citizenship who could be lumped together as those who owed their status to “the tyrants”. Livy’s (and Polybius’) implication that all these new citizens were former slaves is sweeping and inaccurate. Some certainly were, but many were foreign mercenaries, as well as perhaps perioeci, foreign traders, and others, whose offspring (some by now adults) would have been included in the expulsion order.

Former slaves comprised only a segment of the mass of people stripped of their Spartan citizenship. And of those ex-slaves, how many, if any, were helots? The answer to this question will also solve the problem of whether Nabis liberated any helots. We are in complete ignorance as to the number of normal, chattel slaves owned by Spartans compared to the population of helots at all periods of Spartan history. Scholars have supposed that even at this late date helots so far outnumbered other slaves at Sparta that Polybius and, after him, Livy still followed fifth-century usage in calling them δοῦλοι and serui. However, the Platonic Alcibiades, from the later fourth century, already made allusion to the wealth of Spartans as shown by their possession of large numbers of slaves, among them helots (ἀνδραπόδων κτήσει τῶν τε ἄλλων καὶ τῶν εἰλωτικῶν), which presupposes that helots formed a particular sub-category among the slaves as a whole. [67] Admittedly, this is not compelling testimony for the existence of {95|96} large numbers of chattel slaves at Sparta in the Hellenistic period. Nevertheless, on the specific point of Nabis’ relations with helots, matters are a little less obscure.

Despite the common belief that Nabis enjoyed widespread public support, even from the helot population, his actions when preparing for the Roman onslaught betray his suspicion of disloyalty at both ends of society. [68] After gathering a massive army of 2,000 Cretan troops, 3,000 mercenaries, and 10,000 locals, including helots, he eliminated eighty of what Livy calls the principes iuuentutis and followed this with the brutal beating to death throughout all the city’s districts of helots he accused of being about to desert to the Romans. [69] Nabis may have been justified in his suspicion, for Strabo says that the helots, whom he includes among the perioeci, were the first to go over to the Romans when Sparta was under a tyranny. [70] Only these two testimonia about the helots’ attitude survive, but they are consistent, with Strabo’s Ῥωμαίοις προσὲθεντο paralleling Livy’s transfugere uoluisse, and should not be lightly dismissed. This, all the evidence there is, shows helots deserting Nabis for the Romans, not the behavior to be expected if he had liberated helots in any significant proportions. It should be considered in the light of the fact that the Spartans’ name for the new citizens does not imply any of them had originally been helots.

On the other side, apart from the universal assumption that “slave” is equivalent to “helot”, is Pausanias. He baldly states that when the Spartans were far gone in civil war, Philopoemen expelled from the Peloponnese 300 of those most to blame for the unrest and sold 3000 of the helots. [71] Only Pausanias explicitly identifies the 3000 sold into slavery as helots. According to Livy, some of the Lacedaemoniis adscripti ordered to leave Laconia had scattered into the countryside where many of them were captured by pursuing Achaeans and sold. [72] Plutarch relates that Philopoemen re-settled in Achaea all those who had been made citizens by the tyrants except for 3000 who were unwilling to leave Laconia; these he sold {96|97} into slavery. [73] It is clear that Pausanias made the common mistake of identifying Polybius’ ex-slaves as ex-helots, if indeed he derived his information directly from Polybius. That may be open to some doubt, for, as the analytical table (Table 4.1) shows, Pausanias’ account of the post-Compasium settlement provides only a small fraction of the information Livy and Plutarch convey and what little it does contain is disordered and inaccurate. Pausanias’ inaccuracy is most evident when he reports that 300 ringleaders were exiled, which is almost certainly a result of confusion between the massacre at Compasium, where according to Aristocrates Philopoemen killed 350 leading members of the anti-Achaean party, and the expulsion of Nabis’ mercenaries from Sparta. [74] Pausanias is not a trustworthy authority. {97|98}

Table 4.1 Sources for the post-Compasium settlement
Livy 38.34.5-7	Plut. Philop. 15.12d-f	Paus. 8.51.3
1. Exiles Restored	Exiles restored	——
2. ——	Walls destroyed	Walls destroyed
3. Report of mercenaries dismissed	——	Expelled 300 ringleaders from Peloponnesus
4. and of Lacedaemonii adscripti (freed slaves) scattering through country	Resettled ἀποδεδειγμέοι πολῖται	——
5. General sent after them with light-armed troops to capture and sell them	3000 did not want to move from Laconia	——
5a. A great number captured and sold	Philopoemen sold them	Sold 3000 of the helots
5b. Porticus at Megapolis built with proceeds	Built a stoa in Megapolis	——
Belbinatis returned to the original owners	Great amount of land restored to Megapolis	——
Agogê abolished	Agogê abolished	Agogê abolished
——	Restore by Romans later	Restored by Romans later

A final indication that Nabis’ new citizens did not include any sizeable number of helots is the attitude towards Philopoemen’s settlement expressed before the Senate in 184 by the very persons whom he had reinstated at Sparta—the so-called “old exiles”. Among the many grievances Philopoemen’s ham-fisted treatment of his city’s old enemy had engendered, even among the very people he had ostensibly invaded Laconia to support, was his forcible deportation of what Polybius calls to πλῆθος and Livy the plebs. [75] That to πλῆθος and the plebs were precisely the new citizens exiled after Compasium is clear from Livy’s statement that they had been abducted into Achaea. [76] The conservative “old exiles,” so called because they had been expelled in the decades before the multiple expulsions that had accompanied each change of government since Compasium, would hardly have been well disposed to any of the tyrant’s policies, especially the wholesale incorporation of helots into the citizen body. [77] To remedy the present situation, a group of old exiles called for the enfranchisement of all those who were worthy of receiving citizen- ship—they surely did not intend to include ex-helots, who owed their citizenship to Nabis, the very ruler who had exiled at least some of them. [78] These considerations, combined with the intimation that there existed perhaps sizeable numbers of chattel slaves in Laconia in the Hellenistic period make it unlikely, in my view, that Nabis liberated any helots.

When Livy describes Nabis’ execution of the disloyal helots, he calls them ilotarum quidam iam inde antiquitus castellani, agreste genus—“certain of the helots, a rural people, castellani from antiquity”. Except for Kathleen Chrimes, no historian has attempted to exploit this passage to understand how helots lived in the later Hellenistic period. She took castellani to be a technical term and, relying on a contemporary inscription from Spain in which slaves who occupied a fortress were given land after their manumission, interpreted it as denoting the garrison of a fortress (castellum). [79] The helots of Hellenistic Laconia were in her view free men, called, as in the classical period, neodamodeis, who were legally bound to guard the forts where they lived and farmed. Her interpretation has had no serious supporters; Walbank led the attack in his review by dismissing it altogether: “In Livy xxiv.27.9 castellani is Livy’s explanation of Polybius’ ‘helots;’ and we know from the lex Rubria that a castellum is virtually the same as a pagus or vicus: castellani, then, are pagani, country folk”. [80] Since Walbank’s devastating salvo, no one has taken {98|99} Chrimes’ approach seriously. This is unfortunate because, although her conclusion was faulty, her insight that castellani has a specific significance in a Laconian context still has merit.

In Chrimes’ defense, it should be pointed out that Walbank was mistaken in thinking that “a castellum is virtually the same as a pagus or vicus”. The lex Rubria itself shows that they are different entities, listed separately. In the section that lays down the procedures for settlement of claims for unpaid debts in Cisalpine Gaul, the localities where such actions might be laid are “any town, municipium, colony, praefectura, forum, village (uicus), conciliabulum, fortress (castellum), or territory”. [81] A uicus was similar to a castellum in that they were each a type of small, rural community (territorium), but they were clearly not considered the same by the redactors of the lex Rubria. Similar catalogues of settlement types appear in the treaties Livy reports, where castella are always distinguished from vici, oppida, and urbes. For example, the Treaty of Apamea awarded to the Rhodians “the towns, villages (uici), fortresses (castella), and fields that face Pisidia”. [82] In 188 King Antiochus was required to withdraw from “the cities, fields, villages (uicis), fortresses (castellis) on this side of the Taurus mountain”. [83] Such lists can also be found in the epigraphical texts. A senatus consultum of 39 BC confirmed the rights of the people of Aphrodisias/Plasara to the enjoyment of all their οἰκυρωμάτων, κωμῶν, χωρίον, ὀχυρωμάτων, ὁρῶν, προσόδων, where ὀχυρωμάτων is equivalent to castellorum. [84] Castellani, then, are not simply “country folk,” but have something to do with castella, fortresses.

The Latin castellanus means “having to do with a fortress,” and so can denote either the actual garrison of the fort itself or the civilian population who lived and worked the land around it. The key to deciding which of the two meanings the word has here in Livy lies in the wording of his source. Despite Chrimes’ assumption that the words following ilotarum quidam cannot be derived from Polybius, Livy’s sole source for this period, apparently because no Greek audience would need to be told who the helots were, there is good reason to believe that Polybius’ text lies behind this definition too. [85] It is dangerous to impose modern ideas of superfluity on an ancient historian: though we might think that not a single person capable of reading Greek would have needed to be informed that the name of the river running beside {99|100} Sparta is the Eurotas, Polybius in fact does precisely that in his sketch of the city’s topography in book 2. [86]

Unlike Latin, which only has castellum, Greek differentiates between a fortress proper, ὀχύρωμα, and the area including the fortress and its surrounding population, χορίον. [87] For example, the στρατιῶται οἱ διαταγέντες εἰς τὸ χωρίον at a fort in Lycia made a dedication in 129 BC on behalf of their commander ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀχυρώμα[το]ς. [88] In the sumpoliteia between Smyrna and Magnesia ad Sipylum, the Smyrnaeans took possession of the stronghold Palaimagnesia, whose inhabitants (τούς οἰκοῦντας ἐν τῶι χω[ρ]ίωι) were to hand the keys of the fort over to a magistrate and accept a garrison. [89] Once again Polybius’ usage is consistent with that of the inscriptions: he refers to fortresses both as ὀχυρώματα and χωρία. [90] On their advance into Laconia, the Macedonians under Doson drove the Spartan garrisons from the forts Cleomenes had constructed (ἐκ τῶν ἐποικοδομηθέντων χωπίων ὑπὸ Κλεομένους) and later forced the Spartans out of their fortified positions (ἐκ τῶν ὀχυρώματων) at the battle of Sellasia. [91] At the outset of the Social War in 221, the Aetolians seized a fort called Klarion (τὸ καλούμενον ὀχύρωμα Κλάριον), while far in the east Antiochus began a campaign against the rebel Molon by occupying two forts, one of which was called Brochoi (Βρόχοι προσαγορεθόμενόν). Polybius also refers to the civilian inhabitants of a fortress as οἱ τὸ κατοικοῦντες χωρίον. [92]

Behind Livy’s castellani, I believe, lies a expression like οἱ τὰ χωρία κατοικοῦντες, “dwelling in xopia”. In other words, the helots lived in or near fortified settlements throughout Laconia, under the protection and watchful eye of the garrison stationed there. Whether this truly went as far back into antiquity as Livy claims is unclear. The participants in the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project discovered a more nucleated settlement pattern in the area under examination than was usual elsewhere in the archaic and classical periods, which they tentatively speculated might have been connected with helot communities, but they did not report seeing any signs {100|101} of fortifications. [93] The frequent invasions of Laconia during the Hellenistic period (eight between Leuctra and Compasium) with their concomitant devastation would be reason enough for the Spartans to construct fortified settlements inside Laconia to guard the helots and their produce. Nabis had evidently made the building of forts part of his policy, as the treaty of 195 explicitly forbade him to erect any oppidum or castellum whatsoever in his own or foreign territory. [94]

One of these fortified helot settlements may perhaps have already been discovered. On the crown of the hill Agios Konstantinos, near the village of Voutianoi to the northeast of the Eurotas valley, lies a large fort with 22 towers and a circuit wall enclosing an area of about 6 hectares. The surface finds recorded by the Laconia Survey range in date from Neolithic to Hellenistic, and the construction itself seems to be of Greek rather than Roman or later date. [95] About 2 km to the northeast is the village of Palaiopyrgos, which is a good candidate for the site of ancient Sellasia. [96] Sellasia was the final fixed point in the large, elongated loop Agis IV described leading from the water course at Pallene, along Taygetus, over to the Malea peninsula, and then north, the land within which—essentially the Eurotas valley—he proposed to divide into equal kleroi for his revived Spartiate citizen body. [97] The fort at Agios Konstantinos, just within the northern boundary of this area and with a clear line-of-sight to Sparta, was ideally situated to safeguard the Spartan-owned estates northeast of the city and, when Cleomenes III put his predecessor’s plan into force in 227, the kleroi and helots in the area. Moreover, a large amount of produce could be stored temporarily within its walls. [98] Doubtless other possible helot choria, like this fort, wait undiscovered throughout Laconia.

Finally, the end of helotage. Our single source, Strabo, says that the institution lasted at Sparta “until the Roman dominion” (μέχρι τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἐπικρατείας). Strabo uses this vague expression several other times in the course of his Geography and his meaning is clear in none of them. [99] For instance, he helpfully states that the Athenians kept their democracy “until the Roman dominion,” and the Spartans, despite their decline, kept themselves independent “until the Roman dominion”. [100] The other passage in which Strabo mentions helots does, fortunately, provide a {101|102} comfortable chronological context. In describing the founding of the League of Lacedaemonians, whose name he gets wrong, Strabo says it happened that the Eleutherolaconians also got some sort of constitutional arrangement, since the perioeci, including the helots, had gone over first to the Romans, while Sparta was under a tyranny [101] . From these two passages, some have maintained that a form of helotage lasted until the time of Gaius Julius Eurycles, the strongman installed in Sparta after Actium, but, as I and others have pointed out, Strabo is hardly likely to have characterized a protege of Augustus as a tyrant, and the passage’s larger context, as a brief aside within a longer account of the Spartan constitution until 146 and just after an allusion to the Spartans mistreating Roman generals because of being badly governed at the time, makes it certain that the tyrant meant is Nabis. [102] The Roman epikrateia therefore refers either to the establishment of Roman rule in 146 or the period when Rome’s influence was predominant over Greek states in the earlier second century.

More interesting than the attempt to establish a specific date for the disappearance of Laconian helots is to assess Strabo’s statement that the helots also received a sort of constitution along with other perioeci for transferring their loyalty first to the Romans. His Greek is clear and unambiguous: συνέβη δὲκαὶ τοὺς Ἐλευθερολάκωνας λαβεῖν τινα τάξιν πολιτείας, ἐπειδὴ Ῥωμαίοιςπροσέθεντο πρῶτοι οἱ περίοικοι τυραννουμένης τῆς Σπάρτης, οἵ τε ἄλλοι καὶ οἱ Εἵλωτες. The phrase οἱ περίοικοι… οἵ τε ἄλλοι καὶ οἱ Εἵλωτες has a close parallel in Strabo’s catalogue of peoples who live around the Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Pamphylia: καὶ οἱ μετ᾽ αὐτούς Αἰγύπτιοι καὶ Σύροι καὶ Κίλικες οἱ τε ἄλλοι καὶ οἱ Τραχεῖται λεγόμενοι, τελευταῖοι δὲ Πάμφθλοι (“and after them the Egyptians and Syrians and Cilicians, including the so-called Tracheiotai, and finally the Pamphylians”). [103] On this point Strabo is not vague: the helots, being among the perioeci, received “a sort of constitution” as well. As Ducat correctly saw, this is a reference to liberation of the helots by the Romans as a reward for their actions during the campaign against Nabis, but he does not pursue the implications of Strabo’s statement, namely that after 195 both perioeci and helots were grouped together under some very loose union or community of interest, which later evolved into the League of Lacedaemonians. [104] This small, but important piece of evidence sheds some light on the circumstances surrounding the {102|103} disappearance of helotage in Laconia. If Strabo is accepted, then we must entertain the possibility that some at least of the smaller sites in Laconia usually identified as perioecic settlements because Pausanias includes them among the members of the League of Lacedaemonians’ successor the Eleutherolaconian League may actually have begun as fortified helot communities. [105] One possible candidate is the site at Agios Athanasios, which Curtius identified as the kome Selinous, 20 stades from ancient Geronthrai, where extensive ashlar walls have been found. [106]

Excavation at one of the smaller sites in Pausanias’ catalogue might yield physical evidence of its prior existence as a helot settlement, although it is an open question what that evidence would need to be. For the voices of the helots in Hellenistic Laconia are thoroughly silenced. Almost certainly illiterate, they served a people without a living literature themselves; toiling in the country, they left no mark on the city-centered histories that have come down to us. They operated on the shadowy margins of a society famous for its obsession with secrecy. Finally, they lived in a particularly obscure period of Greek history, whose records have mostly vanished. There will never be a definitive picture of the helots in later Sparta, since the evidence is so scarce, even in Spartan terms. All aspects of any reconstruction, including this one, are open to challenge and reinterpretation. My aim in this paper has been to subject what little useful material there is to intense scrutiny and pursue the implications of that scrutiny as far as possible. {103|}