26. The Spartan Version of Slavery
New World chattel slavery made slaves the legal private property of individual masters. Thousands of years earlier, Sparta went a different route and socialized slavery; the slaves belonged not to individual Spartans, but to the state. That set Spartan slavery not only from American slavery but from the slavery practiced by other Ancient Greeks. The Spartans differed from other Ancient Greeks in other ways: unique among their peers, they were the only ones who enslaved other Greeks. Indeed, Sparta could not have existed in the form it did but for the mass enslavement of other Greeks.
It began when Sparta fought and conquered her Messenian neighbors in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. After a long war, the victorious Spartans transformed the entire Messenian population into state slaves, known as Helots. Before it subjugated the Helots, Sparta differed little from other Greek states. After the conquest, it became a wholly militarized state and society in order to control the restive Helots, who outnumbered the Spartans ten to one. Thucydides noted that “most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots“. They had few rights, could be killed almost at will by their Spartan overlords and were subjected to sundry humiliations to constantly remind them of their inferior status.
