In 413 BC, according to Thucydides, an estimated 20,000 Athenian slaves ran away to the Spartans, who had established a permanent fortress at Dekeleia. For these oppressed and exploited individuals, the Spartans were liberators. Their story, however, is virtually ignored by the usual depictions of Sparta that stress the “exceptionally harsh” lot of Sparta’s helots.
As
I have tried to point out in earlier posts, helots enjoyed significant
privileges that chattel slaves in the rest of the ancient world did not. First
and foremost, they lived in family units, could marry at will and raise their
own children. Almost equally
significant, they could retain half their earnings. Such income could be substantial, as is
demonstrated by the fact that no less than 6,000 helots were able to
raise the significant sum of five attic minae necessary to purchase their
freedom in 369 BC, according to Xenophon.
In
contrast, chattel slaves had no family life and their children belonged –
literally – not to them but their masters. As to the fruits of their
labor, these accrued
exclusively to their masters, and even freed slaves (at least in the
case of former
prostitutes) had to surrender some of their earnings in perpetuity to
their former masters after their manumission. In Athens, furthermore,
slaves could be tortured
for evidence in trials against their masters, because the Athenians
believed a
slave’s word was worthless unless obtained under torture – a bizarre and
chilling attitude to fellow human beings.
I
would like to note, further, that Athens’ economy was no less dependent on
slaves than Sparta’s was on helots. Slaves worked Athens silver mines -- under
appalling and dehumanizing conditions worse than any horror story told of
helots even by Sparta’s worst enemies. Slaves also provided essential
agricultural labor and manned the workshops that made Athens famous for its handcrafts.
Even the statues on the acropolis, the wonder of all the world to this day,
were largely the work of slaves, who earned “wages” only for their master’s pockets
and had to make do with whatever scraps he deigned to give them.
Defenders
of Athens are apt to point out that Athens’ laws prohibited the execution of
slaves and no one but the slave’s own master was allowed to flog a slave. In contrast, war was declared on Spartan
slaves annually and an organization, the kryptea, allegedly existed solely for
the purpose of eliminating potentially rebellious helots. These Spartan customs are indeed harsh, but
they should also be viewed in perspective.
First,
according to Plutarch, both the annual declaration of war and the creation of
the kyrptea post-date the helot revolt of 465 and have no place in the Golden
Age of Sparta, the archaic period.
Second, even after the helot revolt and the onset of Spartan decline, we
know of only a single incident in which helots were in fact executed without
cause. According to Thucydides, in ca.
425/424, 2,000 helots were led to believe they would be freed, were garlanded
and paraded through the city, only to then “disappear.” Everyone presumes they
were killed.
If
this really happened as described, it was an unprecedented atrocity. If true,
it besmirches the record of Sparta for eternity. It would nonetheless also still
be only an isolated incident. Beside this atrocity, I would like to place as
exhibit B the slaughter of the entire male population of island city-state of Melos
by Athens in 416. Melos was a free city. It’s only “crime” was to remain
neutral in the Peloponnesian war. Yet Athens subjugated the city, slaughtered
the adult males and made all the women and children chattel slaves. I’d call
that an atrocity too – and every bit as bad as the disappearance of 2,000
helots.
There
is no doubt about what happened to Melos. We have many sources and know the
fate of many individuals that further verify and illuminate the brutality of
the event. But the story of the 2,000
helots has only a single – albeit usually reliable – source: Thucydides. As Nigel Kennell in his book Spartans: A New History
notes, Thucydides’
dating of the incident must be off because at exactly the same time
(425/4)
Brasidas was recruiting helots to fight with him – something he did
successfully. Why would young men have been willing to volunteer to
fight with Brasidas (which they most
certainly did), if they had just seen 2,000 of their fellows
slaughtered? It is so unreasonable to believe helots would have
volunteered if the alleged massacre had just taken place, that Kennel
concludes that Thucydides was referring to an incident that had occurred
at some vague/unknown time in the past.
That
is surely one explanation, since after
Brasidas’ helots had proved their worth as soldiers, i.e. after they had proved
just how dangerous they could be to the Spartiates, no less than 700 of them were
liberated by a vote in the Spartan Assembly. This means that, if Thucydides is
correct and the Spartans had once been so afraid of strong, healthy helots
that they slaughtered 2,000 of them before they were trained to bear arms, by
421 a majority of Spartan citizens had
no qualms about freeing 700 helots, who were not only healthy, but trained and
experienced fighting men. Why would they free these 700 hundred after killing
2,000 others? It doesn’t add up, and so the story of the murder of the 2000 has
to be questioned.
While
it is possible Thucydides was describing an earlier event, it is almost certain
that the only evidence he had was hearsay. The modern historian should not
exclude the possibility that the entire “atrocity” was either a gross
exaggeration or outright propaganda.
And
who would have a greater interest in spreading rumors of such an atrocity than
Athens itself? An Athens, whose slaves were deserting in droves by 413. One thing is clear: those 20,000 Athenian
slaves, who turned themselves over to Spartan mercy, did not expect to be slaughtered. Either they had not heard the “truth”
about how the Spartans “really” treated their helots, or they didn’t believe the stories they were told by
their Athenian masters.
Thucydides
is silent on what happened to those 20,000 former Athenian slaves, either
because he doesn’t know – or it wouldn’t fit into his neat polemic against
Spartan brutality. We know, however,
that Sparta’s citizen population had already declined dramatically by the
end of the 5th Century BC and yet Sparta kept fighting and
winning
battles. It did so by relying more and more on non-citizen soldiers, and
a
fleet manned by non-Spartiates. It is also in this period that the first
references to a curious new class of people, the “Neodamodeis,” emerge
in literature. The most common interpretation of this term
is that these “New Citizens” were freed helots or the children of
Spartiate men by helot women. There is, however, no
reason to assume that some of these new citizens were not freed Athenian
slaves
as well. If so, then these men surely found freedom in Lacedaemon.
Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:
Spartans and their unique culture are depicted as realistically as possible in all my Spartan novels:
