A Spartiate poet compares the Helots to "loaded asses
stumbling under their burdens and the blows inflicted."
=The Perioeci.=--The Perioeci (those who live around) inhabited a
hundred villages in the mountains or on the coast. They were sailors,
they engaged in commerce, and manufactured the objects necessary to
life. They were free and administered the business of their village,
but they paid tribute to the magistrates of Sparta and obeyed them.
=Condition of the Spartiates.=--Helots and Perioeci despised the
Spartiates, their masters. "Whenever one speaks to them of the
Spartiates," says Xenophon,[62] "there isn't one of them who can
conceal the pleasure he would feel in eating them alive." Once an
earthquake nearly destroyed Sparta: the Helots at once rushed from all
sides of the plain to massacre those of the Spartiates who had escaped
the catastrophe. At the same time the Perioeci rose and refused
obedience. The Spartiates' bearing toward the Perioeci was certain to
exasperate them. At the end of a war in which many of the Helots had
fought in their army, they bade them choose those who had especially
distinguished themselves for bravery, with the promise of freeing
them.
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