Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/391

HELOTS IN THE VILLAGES. 375 cultivating their lands and paying over their rent to the master at Sparta, but enjoying their homes, wives, families, and mutual neighborly feelings, apart from the master's view. They were never sold out of the country, and probably never sold at all ; belonging, not so much to the master as to the state, which con- stantly called upon them for military service, and recompensed their bravery or activity with a grant of freedom. Meno, the Thessalian of Pharsalus, took out three hundred Penestse of his own, to aid the Athenians against Amphipolis : these Thessalian Penestze were in many points analogous to the Helots, but no individual Spartan possessed the like power over the latter. The Helots were thus a part of the state, having their domestic and social sympathies developed, a certain power of acquiring prop- erty, 1 and the consciousness of Grecian lineage and dialect, points of marked superiority over the foreigners who formed the slave population of Athens or Chios. They seem to have been noway inferior to any village population of Greece ; while the Grecian observer sympathized with them more strongly than with the bought slaves of other states, not to mention that' their homogeneous aspect, their numbers, and their employment in military service, rendered them more conspicuous to the eye. The service in the Spartan house was all performed by mem- bers of the Helot class ; for there seem to have been few, if any, other slaves in the country. The various anecdotes which are told respecting their treatment at Sparta, betoken less of cruelty than of ostentatious scorn, 2 a sentiment which we are noway surprised to discover among the citizens at the mess-table. But the great mass of the Helots, who dwelt in the country, were objects of a very different sentiment on the part of the Spartan ephors, who knew their bravery, energy, and standing discontent, 1 Kleomenes the Third, offered manumission to every Helot, who could pay down five Attic minse : he was in great immediate want of money, and he raised, by this means, five hundred talents. Six thousand Helots must thus have been in a condition to find five minae each, which was a very consider- able sum (Plutarch, Kleomenes, c. 23). 3 Such is the statement, that Helots were compelled to appear in a sta'e of drunkenness, in order to excite in the youths a sentiment of repugnance against intoxication (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 28; also, Adversus Stoicos d Commun. Notit. c. 19. p. 1067).