By the time Kleomenes I died, the process of internal construction in Lakonia, including now what Thucydides (4.3.2; 41.2) accurately described as ‘the land that was once Messenia’, had been completed; and Spartan hegemony was recognized generally within the Peloponnese and to some extent outside it. A decade later Sparta was the automatic choice as leader of loyalist Hellas against the invading forces of the Persian Empire. Since this military and political supremacy can only be explained against its Lakonian background, I propose to pull together the threads of the foregoing chapters by discussing systematically the status and functions of first the mainspring and then the essential complement of the Spartan power, respectively the Helots and the Perioikoi. As far as the archaeological and epigraphical evidence goes, 500 will be taken as an approximate terminus. But it will be necessary to draw on literary and environmental evidence from a far wider period than the seventh and sixth centuries.
Plato2 had occasion to remark that the Helots afforded the subject for the liveliest controversy in Greece; the remark was noted and repeated some six centuries later by the learned Naucratite Athenaios. The controversy was not of course conducted primarily on the moral plane, for the number of Greeks who argued that slavery was not merely not in accordance with nature but actually contrary to it and wrong was small; slaves found a place even in some of the literary utopias which envisaged a general liberation from backbreaking toil and a superabundance of the good things of life (Finley 1975, ch. 11; Vogt 1975, ch. 2). The question rather was one of practical management, and it was in this sense that in the eyes of Aristotle (Pol. 1269),
For example, the Helot-system was one of the seven most defective elements in the Spartan polity.
What struck non-Spartans from at least the fifth century was, in the first instance, the sheer number of the Helots in comparison to the surprisingly small, and shrinking, master class. Secondarily, it was noted that the Helots were Greeks who, at least in the case of the Messenians, were being denied their legitimate political aspirations—political precisely because the Messenian Helots wished to become the polis of ‘the Messenians’. Modern scholarly controversy, which can afford to stay neutral on the moral and political aspects, has arisen chiefly from the inadequacies of the ancient sources. The origin of the (Lakonian) Helots, a vexed question already in antiquity, has been considered above (Chapter 7). Here I shall be concerned with the further problems of their juridical status, their economic functions within the complex system of Spartan land-tenure, and the way in which the juridical and economic aspects of Helotage conditioned Spartan political practice.
Unlike the Romans, the Greeks lacked a ‘developed jurisprudence’ (Finley 1973, 64). But even the Roman lawyers were not always able to articulate the complexities of social status and structure in precise and unambiguous legal language. Particularly instructive is the case of the late Roman colonate. We need not here consider its origins, which so nicely express the transformation of economic life in the Roman Empire during the first three centuries AD. What matters is that after Diocletian the ‘colonus’ though formally free was in a condition so close to slavery that only the (technically inappropriate) vocabulary of that institution was found adequate to describe his subject status. The Helot, by contrast, was formally unfree, but yet he or she apparently enjoyed aspects of life normally associated with the status of a free person rather than a slave—or, to be precise, a chattel slave. Hence there was coined, perhaps by Aristophanes of Byzantion in the third century, the expression ‘between free men and slaves’ to characterize the Helots and several other unfree populations scattered over the Greek world from Sicily to the Black Sea.
Unfortunately, though, Pollux, a lexicographer of the second century AD, is our only source for this expression, and he fails to tell us exactly in what respects these populations were thought to resemble each other. It seems to me therefore to be in principle wrong to regard this unclear and ambiguous expression as the most useful classificatory label. Rather, I suggest, we should follow the lead of the Spartans themselves and most of our nonSpartan literary sources, who describe the Helots simply as ‘slaves’, whether using the most general word douloi or terms which more strictly refer to their place of work (oiketai) or mode of acquisition (andrapoda). Indeed, Kritias, the pro-Spartan Athenian oligarch (Chapter 13), reportedly said that in Lakedaimon could be found the most free and the most enslaved of all Greeks. It is this formulation, rather than the one recorded in Pollux, which deserves consideration above all.
For one of the key questions in Greek history, as I see it, is whether the propertied class (‘the rich’ or ‘richest’ in Greek parlance) derived their surplus wealth mainly from the exploitation of unfree and especially slave labour. As far as the propertied classes of most Greek states are concerned, the evidence is scattered, allusive, slight. But for the Spartiates (to use the technical term for Spartan citizens of full status) the evidence is relatively full and unambiguous. Spartan citizen-rights were tied strictly to the ability to contribute a certain amount of natural produce to a common mess in Sparta (below). This produce was procured by Helots who were bound, under pain of death, to hand it over to the individual Spartan on whose land they worked. Thus were Spartiates wholly freed from agricultural production and able—indeed, in a sense compelled—to devote their lives to the one practical craft to which no social stigma was ever attached, the craft of warfare.
Two passages will sufficiently illustrate this peculiar feature of Spartan society. The first comes from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (4.20-5), a disquisition on good husbandry probably composed in the 350s. In accordance with the then ideology of the Greek propertied class, Sokrates is here made to commend agriculture as the only one of the mechanic arts worthy to be cultivated. In passing he recounts the story of the visit by the Spartan Lysander to the home of his friend Cyrus, the Persian prince (cf. Anderson 1974, 68f.). What particularly amazed Lysander were not so much the sweet smells and beautiful colours of Cyrus’ garden as the fact that Cyrus had actually laid it out and planted it with his own hands. The other passage occurs in the Rhetoric (1367a28-33) of Aristotle, according to whom the wearing of long hair in the Spartan manner is the mark of a ‘gentleman’, since long hair is incompatible with manual labour.
What Kritias was saying, then, is that the Spartans were the ‘freest’ of the Greeks because they had taken the exploitation of slave labour to its logical limit and contrived to perform no productive labour themselves whatsoever. It should be noted in this connection that Aristotle did not criticize the Spartans for thereby securing an abundance of leisure but for misusing the leisure thus obtained. The Spartans, he thought, through devoting themselves exclusively to military matters and neglecting the arts of peace had become little better than wild beasts (passages cited in Ste. Croix 1972, 91). For Aristotle shared the view generally accepted in Greek (and Roman) antiquity that to be a fully free man almost necessarily involved being able to utilize slave labour.
The Helots therefore were properly called slaves in this basic economic sense. But it was also recognized from the fifth century that they differed from the more characteristic chattel slaves in important respects. Since the Spartans had no written laws, we have no Spartan equivalent of the Cretan Gortyn Code inscribed c.450 (Willetts 1967), and we cannot therefore establish precisely the regulations governing the marriages of Helots or their ownership of property. So far as marriages are concerned, in fact, we have just a single reference to Helot wives (Tyrtaios fr. 7) to prove that they were effected, though not necessarily recognized at law. Some kind of family life, however, is implied by the fact that, like slaves in the Old South, they apparently managed to reproduce themselves or at least to maintain themselves in sufficient numbers to constitute a permanent and indeed growing threat to the diminishing body of Spartiates.
This self-reproduction is of great interest in view of the modern debate over the economics of slavery, particularly slavery in the western hemisphere. But already in the eighteenth century David Hume had remarked in his essay ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ that ‘the only slaves among the Greeks that appear to have continued their own race, were the Helotes (sic), who had houses apart.’ It is uncertain whether their ‘houses apart’ were all scattered on the kleroi (allotments) to which they were attached or might also be grouped in villages. Strabo’s katoikiai could refer to either mode of habitation; Livy’s castella could be either forts or farms; and the Helos of Thucydides (4.54), Damonon (IG V.1.213) and Xenophon (Hell. 6.5.32) could be either a village or a cult-centre. Since the archaeological evidence does not resolve the matter, we can only speculate that in both Lakonia and Messenia the Helots were forced to abandon the villages of their ancestors and kept dispersed on the land of their masters (cf. Xen. Hell. 3.3.5) as a precaution against rebellious combination.
It does seem certain, however, that the Helots could in some sense own or perhaps rather possess personal property. Whether or not they possessed instruments of production is unclear and perhaps unimportant, but it appears that in 425 some Messenian Helots had their own boats (Thuc. 4.26.6f.); and in 223 or 222 6,000 Lakonian Helots were allegedly able to raise the five Attic minas required by Kleomenes III for the purchase of their freedom (Plut. Kleom. 23.1, with Welwei 1974, 163-8). Moreover, the Helots not only enjoyed private rights of religious practice, like slaves in other states, but they were also granted at least one public religious guarantee, that of asylum at the sanctuary of Poseidon at Perioikic Tainaron (though this might be violated: Chapter 11).
Such elements of ‘freedom’ in the Helot way of life may have suggested the first term of the designation ‘between free men and slaves’. We are more surely informed as to the reasons why the Helots could not be called ‘slaves’ without qualification. The main one, to continue the quotation from Hume, was that they were ‘more the slaves of the public than of individuals’. That is, relations between a Spartiate and the Helots attached to his land were as it were mediated through the state, in the sense that the Spartiate ‘owned’ Helots only in virtue of his membership of the Spartan citizen-body. This is why, incidentally, Diakonoff (1974) has appropriated the term ‘Helots’ as a generic classification for state-owned direct producers in the Ancient East.
Thus the informal agreement existing among other Greek slaveowners ‘to act as unpaid bodyguards of each other against their slaves’ (Xen. Hieron 4.3) was formalized in Sparta, where the state, represented by the Ephors, declared war annually on the Helots—a typically Spartan expression of politically calculated religiosity designed to absolve in advance from ritual pollution any Spartan who killed a Helot. The Spartan state alone had the power to manumit Helots and release them from the land to which they were forcibly bound (Thuc. 5.34.1 is an example). And any Spartan who exacted from ‘his’ Helots more than the maximum rent was liable to a public curse. Conversely, every Spartan citizen had the right to use the Helots attached to the service of any other, in the same way that he was entitled to use another Spartiate’s horses and country-stores on hunting expeditions.
Following this lead, therefore, Pausanias described the Helots as ‘slaves of the community’. Strabo, however, was yet more exact: the Spartans, he says, held the Helots as ‘in a certain manner public slaves’. The qualification, which applies to the epithet and not the noun, is crucial. For although no individual Spartiate owned Helots as other Greeks owned their chattel slaves, yet it was to an individual Spartan master that the Helots working a particular estate handed over their rent in kind, out of which the Spartiate paid his mess dues and so exercised the rights of citizenship. It is because the Helots were thus ‘tied to the soil’ and bound to pay a rent that the terminology of serfdom may be employed to describe their legal status as that of ‘state serfs’. That this does not necessarily imply any close similarity between Helotage and mediaeval feudalism will emerge as we examine in some detail the Spartan system of land-tenure.
Let us first be clear that we are being sucked into a bog: the problem of Spartan land-tenure is ‘one of the most vexed in the obscure field of Spartan institutions’ (Walbank 1957, 628). Part of the reason for this is that of the surviving sources none was writing before Sparta lost Messenia in 370. But the major complicating factor is the twist given to the Spartan ‘mirage’ in the third century by the revolutionary kings Agis IV and Kleomenes III, who claimed, inevitably, to be restoring the ‘Lykourgan’ system. The essential problems seem to me to be twofold: from what date was there private and legally alienable landed property in Lakonia and Messenia? and did this include, or was it coextensive with, the kleroi worked by Helots?
The first point to establish is that the literary sources from at least Tyrtaios onwards are unanimous that there were rich and poor Spartans. This literary evidence is fully corroborated by archaeology (from the eighth century) and epigraphy (from the mid-seventh). Again, we might cite the string of victories won by Spartans in the four-horse chariot-race at Olympia. For king Agesilaos II, according to the presumably well-informed Xenophon (Ages. 9.6), pointed out that such victories depended on the ownership of private wealth; and being the brother of a victor—or rather victrix (Kyniska)—he should have known.
The specific problems posed by the sources on Spartan land-tenure concern above all the precise meanings of certain technical or semitechnical terms. We are told by Aristotle (Pol. 1270a19-21) that Lykourgos (for Aristotle an eighth-century figure) had declared it immoral for a Spartan to buy or sell landed property. It may be anachronistic to think of ownership in juridical terms at so early a date, but, given the congruence at Sparta between what was customary and what was legally permitted, we might assume that Spartans practically never bought or sold privately owned land. This assumption seems to be supported by Aristotle himself, since he then points out that the lawgiver in effect frustrated his own intention by allowing anyone complete freedom to donate his land away from the heirs by gift or bequest.
It is important to realize that Aristotle is here discussing only one category of land, legally alienable private property. But in a passage of the Aristotelian Lak. Pol. preserved by Herakleides Lembos (373.12 Dilts) a different distinction is drawn. While it was deemed shameful for a Spartan to sell any land whatsoever, it was forbidden, presumably by law, to sell the ‘ancient portion’. However, although the notion of two different categories of land is introduced, the two passages are not formally irreconcilable. For it is not denied that the ‘ancient portion’ might also be alienated through gift or bequest. We might recall Aristotle’s definition of ownership as ‘alienation consisting in gift and sale’ (Rhet. 1361a21f.). This ‘ancient portion’ reappears in slightly different wording in Plutarch (Mor. 238E).
Polybius (6.45.3), however, introduces a further complication. Writing in the second century and discussing the allegedly unique features of the ancestral Spartan polity, he says that the first of these, according to the fourth-century writers Ephorus, Xenophon, Kallisthenes and Plato, was the landed property regime: no Spartan citizen might own more land than another, but all must possess an equal quantity of the ‘politike’ land. Unfortunately, ‘politike’ is ambiguous, since it could be the adjective of either polls (city) or politai (citizens). Most scholars have in fact derived it from polls and argued that Polybius provides evidence for a pool of state property distinct from the land owned privately by the citizens. It seems to me, however, that Polybius is most easily interpreted as referring only to land owned by the citizens. For this would be a natural distinction to make in the case of the Spartans, whose own land was not coextensive with the territory of the polls as a whole, which embraced also the land of the Perioikoi.
At all events, this interpretation would bring Polybius into line with Plutarch (Lyk. 8.3), who, perhaps drawing ultimately on a common source, agrees with Polybius in the matter of equal shares. Significantly, though, he adopts a different criterion of equality, according to yield of produce rather than surface area; and he is far more explicit and detailed than Polybius. In his account Lykourgos conducted a thoroughgoing land-redistribution and carved up Spartan territory into kleroi. Plutarch was uncertain how many of the 9,000 kleroi had been created by Lykourgos (Polydoros had a reputation for distributing kleroi too), but he was certain that 9,000 was the eventual total and that the corresponding number of 9,000 citizens, one per kleros, had remained constant down to the reign of Agis II at the end of the fifth century (Lyk. 29.10; cf. Agis 5.2).
The implication that all Spartan land was distributed into kleroi and that these kleroi were somehow in public control is consonant with Plutarch’s description of the process whereby a Spartan acquired his kleros: the allocation was made at birth, provided that the ‘eldest of the tribesmen’ had passed the infant as fit to be reared. Here, however, Plutarch is undoubtedly in error, and the error is instructive. For he has conflated two separate procedures, the enrolment of the new-born into a tribe and the allocation of a kleros. The latter, even if we accept that it was a tribal matter, could only have been effected at a later stage, when a man had passed through the controlled system of public training called the agoge and been elected to a common mess. The simplest explanation of Plutarch’s error is to suppose that he has tried to reconcile the fact (made unambiguous by Aristotle) of hereditary succession to a privately owned and legally alienable kleros with his false belief in a publicly owned and controlled system of equal and inalienable kleroi.
This explanation of the error, to whose source I shall shortly return, is confirmed in my view by his description, apparently following the third-century Phylarchos, of the rhetra of Epitadeus (Agis 5.3). This measure is said to have provided that anyone who wished might legally dispose of his household and kleros by gift or bequest. Most scholars have automatically identified the freedom of gift and bequest criticized by Aristotle as the consequence of this measure. Aristotle, however, as we saw, attributed the dispensation to Lykourgos, and there is reason to suspect that the rhetra of Epitadeus may be an invention designed to explain away the failure of ‘Lykourgos’ to foresee the drastic fall in citizen numbers during the fifth and early fourth centuries (Chapter 14). For no matter what measures had been taken to forestall the alienation of kleroi, these had been circumvented long before the date usually assigned to Epitadeus’ rhetra, the early fourth century. As Forrest (1968, 137) has succinctly put it, ‘Epitadeus, if he existed, does not belong to the fourth century or, if he does, did not create the trouble.’
I cannot therefore accept that there had ever been a pool of equal and inalienable kleroi owned or controlled by the state. On the other hand, I do not of course mean to deny that there had ever been a redistribution of Spartan land before the redistributions of Kleomenes III and Nabis in the third century. Some form of distribution was indispensable to provide the economic basis for transforming all Spartan citizens into hoplites in the seventh century. Moreover, if we can give any sense to the expression ‘ancient portion’, I feel this must refer to the land owned in Lakonia, mostly by aristocrats, prior to the creation of what we might call the ‘new portions’ in Messenia. An attempt must have been made to achieve a rough equality between these new kleroi, since it was on the produce from a kleros that a
Spartan’s citizenship and membership of the hoplite army was made to depend—in a manner to be discussed shortly.
For two reasons, however, I do not believe there is any way we can rationally calculate the size or number of the kleroi. First, we lack the requisite ancient evidence for all the relevant factors; in particular, the recent demonstration that the geomorphology of the Eurotas and Pamisos valleys has changed significantly since our period (Chapter 2) makes it impossible to estimate with any precision the ancient agricultural potential of the Spartans’ land, besides automatically ruling out of court all modern calculations based on existing conditions. Second, such ancient evidence of a quantitative nature as we do possess is either relevant only to the third-century reforms or, if relevant to the period from c.650 to 370, is not sufficiently reliable or precise. It may none the less be useful to set out this evidence in some detail, if only to demonstrate that the host of wildly fluctuating and mutually incompatible modern estimates are indeed built on sand.
According to Isokrates (12.255), the original number of Dorians who ‘invaded’ Lakonia was 2,000. This figure can only have been a guess, perhaps related to the number of Spartan citizens at the time (339 BC)—an even smaller figure. Aristotle (Pol. 1270a36f.), however, about the same time as Isokrates referred vaguely to a report that there had once been as many as
10,000. Obviously he is referring to the period before 370, when Sparta controlled Messenia as well as Lakonia, and indeed to a time well before 370, since he knew that then there were only about 1,000 Spartan citizens. It would be rash to place much trust in such a round number thus allusively cited, although it is possible that Aristotle’s 10,000 is a rounding up of Herodotus’ 8,000 given for 480 (Hdt. 7.234.2). Certainly, though, Herodotus’ figure is the earliest reliable figure we have.
Whether or not it is absolutely correct, when taken with Aristotle’s figure for the second quarter of the fourth century it is sufficient to prove that, despite Plutarch, there was no necessary one-to-one correspondence between the number of citizens and the number of kleroi. In other words, even if each Spartan paterfamilias had been allocated a kleros in the seventh-century distribution, that number of kleroi did not determine the size of the citizen body for all time. Yet this was precisely what Plutarch wrongly but revealingly believed. We may now turn to consider the possible source or sources of his error.
First, we recall a serious discrepancy between Plutarch and Polybius. The latter, naming four fourth-century sources, gave size as the criterion of equality among the holdings of ‘politike’ land. Plutarch, however, is confident that the kleroi were so carved out as to yield an equal amount of produce, from which the Spartan master and his wife might receive respectively seventy and twelve medimnoi of barley and a corresponding amount of fresh fruits. The simplest explanation of the discrepancy is that Plutarch has followed the sources implicitly rejected by Polybius, namely those of the third century who swallowed or indeed formulated the propaganda of Agis and Kleomenes. This explanation is perhaps supported by the number 9,000 given by Plutarch for the kleroi distributed by Lykourgos and Polydoros. For Agis proposed to raise the citizen body from 700 to 4,500 by redividing Spartan land in the Eurotas valley, and this land was thought to be roughly equal to the land once held in Messenia.
It could of course be argued that Agis’ projected figure was based on the number of citizens known or believed to have existed in the ‘Lykourgan’ heyday. But for me this would only reinforce the suspicion that Plutarch was using Agis-tainted sources, as there was in fact no one-to-one correspondence numerically between citizens and kleroi in the fifth and fourth centuries at least. A second clue pointing in the same direction is Plutarch’s statement that Lykourgos had also redistributed the land owned by the Perioikoi into 30,000 kleroi. Since there is no evidence, and no reason to suspect, that the Spartans had interfered with Perioikic land before the third century—apart from assigning ‘choice precincts’ to their kings (Xen. Lak. Pol. 15.3)—this figure can only be explained as a doubling of the 15,000 Perioikic allotments envisaged by Agis. In short, it seems highly probable that Plutarch’s figure for the kleroi and citizens under the ‘Lykourgan’ dispensation is a backwards projection of the figure envisaged by Agis and almost achieved by Kleomenes.
It is far harder to handle the figure of eighty-two medimnoi of barley given by Plutarch as the (maximum) annual rent to be paid by the Helots to a kleros-holder and his wife. On the one hand, the fact that in Plutarch the rent was to be paid just to a Spartan master and his wife corresponds to the situation immediately following or envisaged in the third-century redistributions rather than to the one criticized by Aristotle in the Politics, in which the sons of such a couple were falling into poverty and forfeiting citizen-rights through division of the inheritance (cf. Chapter 14). Moreover, it was only after a relatively large number of approximately equal kleroi had been created that an average rent could have been fixed. On the other hand, these arguments would apply no less to the situation following the seventh-century distribution, and it could be argued further that Agis aimed to produce kleroi commensurate with the payment of the ‘Lykourgan’ mess dues.
For in the case of the latter Agis could have been genuinely following rather than setting a precedent. That is, the quantities given by Plutarch (Lyk.
12) for the monthly mess contributions so correspond to those given by the fourth-century Dikaiarchos (fr. 72 Wehrli) that both must have been drawn from a common source (Kritias or Aristotle has been suggested). This does not of course mean that we may extrapolate from these quantities the size and yield of a ‘Lykourgan’ kleros. For it is unclear precisely which land was redistributed in the seventh century; we do not know the ratio between rent and yield (the proportion of one half cited in Tyrtaios fr. 6, even if it is a rent paid by Helots, does not necessarily apply to the situation after the ‘Second’
Messenian War); and the minimum contributions to the mess do not exhaust the commodities produced on Spartiate land. None the less, these contributions do provide our best evidence for the economy certainly of Lakonia and probably of Messenia too before the third century.
According to Dikaiarchos, the prescribed minimum contribution was: one and a half Attic medimnoi (roughly bushels) of barley flour; eleven or twelve choes of wine; an unspecified weight of cheese and figs; and ten or so Aiginetan obols to buy extras. Plutarch gives: one medimnos of barley; eight choes of wine; five minas of cheese; two and a half minas of figs; and an unspecified sum of money for extras. In other words, Dikaiarchos has translated Lakonian measures and weights into their Attic equivalents where he was reasonably sure of the ratio. Let us consider each item in turn, incorporating other literary, archaeological and epigraphical evidence.
Barley today is merely a major feed grain for animals and is ingested by humans only indirectly; in Lakonia, for example, it is grown widely, especially in the Malea peninsula and east Helos plain (ESAG no. 304). In antiquity, however, it was used as well for human food as for animal feed (Moritz 1955; 1958, xxi, 167). Indeed, it appears that until perhaps as late as the fourth century barley, eaten as a ‘kneaded thing’ (maza: Plut. Kleom. 16.5 etc.), was widely preferred to wheat as food in Greece, partly for technological reasons and partly because tastes in food are always partly irrational (the ancients were aware from experience that wheat was more nutritive). The stipulated mess contribution being in barley suggests therefore that the rule had been established before the fourth century; ‘home’ rations for kings in the fifth century were also provided in barley (Hdt. 6.57.3). However, by the first half of the fourth century rich Spartiates were contributing wheaten bread to their messes (Xen. Lak. Pol. 5.3), although Theophrastos (Hist. Plant. 8.4.5; Caus. Plant. 4.9.5) remarked on the lightness of Spartan wheat at the end of the century.
A Spartan medimnos of barley a month, perhaps seventy-three or seventy-four litres in volume, undoubtedly constituted a living ration for an adult male; this can be seen by comparing our other evidence for rations, especially those sent over to the men trapped on Sphakteria in 425, although we must allow for exceptional circumstances here (Thuc. 4.16). Thus the rent of eighty-two medimnoi per annum maximum should have fed at least six or seven persons. Presumably, if the figure applies to our period and not just the third century, the surplus was either consumed by the members of the Spartiate’s household or put into a public store. We are not told how the barley made its way from field to mess, but there may have been a central mill at a place near Sparta called ‘the grindings’ (Alesiai: not yet certainly located). Alkman (fr. 95a) mentions a mill, and stone suitable for millstones occurs near Mistra in the Taygetos piedmont west of Sparta.
The grapevine can flourish in droughty, rocky and calcareous soils, on level and sloping ground, and at considerable altitudes (up to 1,219 m. today in the Peloponnese). The Mediterranean type of climate normally provides sufficient moisture for its spring vegetative phase and the dry, sunny weather to ripen the fruit. Both in relief and in climate Lakonia (especially) and Messenia are admirably suited to viticulture, although we should note that vines ‘require a greater degree of tendance and control of the environment than any other Mediterranean crop’ (White 1970, 229). The recent discovery of grape-seeds at the Menelaion site should confirm that the wine in the stoppered jars found in the Mycenaean mansion was locally produced. Pedasos (Mothone?) was noted for its vines by Homer (11. 9.152). By 600 Alkman could write as a connoisseur of five local wine-growing districts (fr. 92d: Oinous, Dentheliatis, Karystos, Onoglos, Stathmis) and even suggest an intimacy with viticulture by referring to the grubs that destroy the ‘eyes’ of vines (fr. 93). The districts, however, where they can be securely located, were in Perioikic territory. Perhaps the Spartans’ own Helot-produced wine was vin ordinaire, a potent enough brew to dement Kleomenes I if taken neat too often no doubt.
Cheese will have been made from the milk of sheep and goats rather than cows. ‘Pasture’ in the northern European sense does not exist in Greece today, and since cultivable land is a maximum of 20 per cent of the surface area per annum, livestock may merely graze the stubble to manure the soil for the next planting. Normally they must make do with the terrain between the ‘cultivable’ and the totally barren (30 per cent of the surface area in 1961), and on this basis Kythera in 1961 was reckoned to have the highest proportion of ‘pasture’ of any eparchy (ESAG no. 319). Ancient conditions will not have differed greatly. None the less, in 1961 the eparchy of Lakedaimon (roughly the Eurotas furrow) had the seventh largest number of goats, and it seems from the Pseudo-Platonic Alkibiades (1.122D) that Lakonia and Messenia were no less well equipped with small stock animals in antiquity. Indeed, it has been suggested that land in Messenia planted to wheat in the Mycenaean period was turned over to pasture under the Spartan domination. Apart from cheese, sheep and goats will have provided skins, wool, hair, animal fat and, to a minor degree, meat.
The fig, like the grapevine, was pre-eminently well adapted to the Lakonian and Messenian environment. Today the first crop in June-July is mostly eaten fresh, the second in August-October is used for drying. Charmis, Spartan victor in the prestigious stadion foot-race at Olympia in 668, is said to have trained on a special diet of dried figs. Aristophanes (fr. 108) provides a typically humorous political explanation of the relatively small size of the ‘Lakonian’ fig, but this may be a generic name rather than a reference to the figs actually grown in Lakonia or Messenia. Theophrastos (Hist. Plant. 2.7.1) adds that irrigation improves the fruit of the Lakonian fig.
The last of the items mentioned by Dikaiarchos and Plutarch is money. As we have seen, Sparta did not coin silver as early as most other states—in fact not until the early third century. Exchanges, however, did take place in
Lakonia, in which iron spits seem to have been somehow involved. This subject is too complex to go into here, but Dikaiarchos may have translated into the Aiginetan standard monetary contributions that were in fact made in the form of iron spits. It should, however, be added that at least one Aiginetan coin has been found in an Archaic context on Spartan territory, at Anoyia in the Spartan plain (perhaps the Dereion of Paus. 3.20.7). Spits, square in section, have been excavated at all the major Spartan sanctuaries, but it is unclear whether they are monetary or purely functional.
The items mentioned so far exhaust the range neither of the food consumed in the mess nor of the plants and animals raised in Lakonia and Messenia by Helots. The first notable omission is the third member of the ‘Mediterranean dietary triad’ (Chapter 4), the olive, whose possibly crucial role in the Dark Ages has been considered in Chapter 7. In fact, Dikaiarchos does mention the olive earlier in the same passage, where he indicates the range of food actually consumed in the mess. We may add that, according to Thucydides (1.6.5), the Spartans were the first Greeks to anoint themselves with olive oil and scrape themselves off after athletic exercise. This presumably betokens an abundance of the oil in Lakonia.
The same passage of Dikaiarchos also introduces another dietary staple, pork, from which the Spartans made their state speciality, the bloody black broth that so disgusted a visiting ruler and so delighted Hitler (Rawson 1969, 7, 343). The Spartan kings were privileged to receive the hides of all sacrificed animals (Hdt. 6.57.1), and Xenophon (Lak. Pol. 15.5) refers to pigs in the context of royal sacrifices.
Dikaiarchos notes that exceptionally fish, a hare or a ring-dove might be eaten in the mess. The fish were presumably sea-fish caught by Perioikoi and perhaps dried, but the hare and the dove were prizes of a favourite Spartan pastime, hunting. The chief prize, however, was the wild boar, to the capture of which the Spartans apparently devoted considerable thought. The specially bred ‘Lakonian’ hound was valued as a scenter; horses, dogs and provisions were made available on demand to all Spartans, though they were no doubt owned only by the rich; and a hunting party was one of the only two legitimate excuses for being absent from the common meal. The popularity of boar-hunting with the Spartans is demonstrated by archaeology. Lakonian artists represented boars and sometimes hunting scenes in vasepainting, terracotta, bronze and stone during the sixth century and later. A funeral mound of c. 600, to which we shall be returning in various connections, contained bones of wild boar. The chief hunting area near Sparta seems to have been the region of the lower eastern slopes of central Taygetos known as Therai (Paus. 3.20.5). The area was no doubt more densely wooded than it is today.
The horse deserves separate mention, for it occupied a special place in Lakonian life. Small bronze representations of the animal were fashioned by Lakonian craftsmen and dedicated in Spartan sanctuaries from c.750. Alkman (fr. 1.51, 59; 58.2; 60.3) displays a virtuoso familiarity with the various regional breeds and mentions galingale, which was particularly used as horse-fodder. Probably it was in Alkman’s lifetime that horses were sacrificed on the funeral mound just mentioned. Finally, there are the horses bred for racing. Being extremely expensive to maintain, horses were the prerogative of the rich and often aristocratic few. Since they require extensive pasture and abundant water, conditions in the ancient forerunners of the modern Helos plain and Pamisos valley appear to have been most suitable. The PseudoPlatonic Alkibiades suggests there was a remarkably large number of horses kept in Lakonia and Messenia, and it is no surprise to meet a Messenian supplying horses to Alexandria in the third century (Plut. Kleom. 35.3).
Three more life-sustaining creatures deserve a mention. The bee, first represented in Lakonian art on a four-sided ivory seal of 700-675 and beautifully evoked by Alkman (fr. 89.4), yielded the essential sweetener honey and the multi-purpose wax. Second, migratory quails were presumably netted in antiquity, as they are shot today, at the foot of the Tainaron and Malea peninsulas; Xenophon (Mem. 2.1.3f.) commented that their sexual ardour made them easier to catch. Third, the domesticated fowl, besides providing meat and eggs (the symbol of Helen, represented for instance on a sixth-century relief from Sellasia: below), was also a suitable object for sacrifice.
Finally, let us turn from animal to vegetable. Another unknown forbidding us to use the available quantitative evidence as a sufficient basis for estimating the size of a kleros is the amount of land planted to legumes. That they were important in the Spartan diet is suggested by Alkman’s references (fr. 17.4; 96) to a porridge of mixed pulse (perhaps pea, lentil, lupine and vetch), the food of the common man, and by Theophrastos’ citations (Caus. Plant. 7.4.5f.) of ‘Lakonian’ types of vegetable (lettuce and cucumber). Alkman also mentions sesame, a soil-improver whose seeds might be used both to flavour bread (fr. 19.2f.) and to feed animals. Flax, which is labourintensive and requires much water for its growth and processing, was grown for its fibre in Messenia in late Mycenaean times, but for the historical period we hear only of edible linseed (Alkman fr. 19.2f.; Thuc. 4.26.5). I would guess, however, that the linen used, for example, in hoplite tunics was locally produced.
Those then are the crops and animals raised by Helots in Lakonia and Messenia for Spartan use at home and abroad. We cannot estimate with precision or even roughly the size of a kleros. It is clear, however, both from the imbalance in numbers between Spartiates and Helots and from a crucial passage in Xenophon (Hell. 3.3.4-11, fully discussed in Chapters 13 and 14) that more than one Helot family worked each kleros. Unfortunately, though, only one source gives a numerical ratio, and that for a military not an agricultural context. In 479 each Spartiate who fought at Plataia was accompanied by seven Helots (Hdt. 9.10.1; 28.2; 29.1). If the figure has been correctly transcribed by Herodotus or his copyists, this would certainly be the largest number of Helots ever known to have left Lakonia. In fact, to many scholars it has seemed implausibly high. Clearly it was not demanded on strictly military grounds, although Welwei (1974, 120-4) has properly stressed the supply problem of this campaign and suggested that Helots were used to solve it. Moreover, even if the Spartans were afraid of revolution in their rear—a plausible suggestion in view of the evidence mustered for a possible Helot revolt c.490 (Chapter 9)—it is highly unlikely that they would have risked taking so many potential enemies with them on a vital campaign. It is worth remembering Xenophon’s statement that on campaign the Spartans took the precaution of debarring the Helots from the arms-dump. So if Herodotus’ seven-to-one proportion has any validity, it seems more likely to represent the ratio of the Helot to Spartan populations as a whole than the proportion at Plataia.
However that may be, all our evidence indicates that at least by the fifth century the Helots were vastly more numerous than the Spartans and that this very numerical disproportion was an important factor governing relations between the two. However, the precise character of these relations is harder to discover. Thucydides in a celebrated passage (4.80) fully discussed in Chapter 12 regarded the liquidation of some 2,000 Helots in 425 or 424 as an instance, if a spectacularly horrific one, of the normal precautionary attitude of the Spartans towards the Helots. Myron too, who is of course a less reliable witness, treats the killing of Helots as a regular mode of control. Then there is the evidence for the ‘Krypteia’, which has been illuminated by Jeanmaire (1913) with a wealth of comparative anthropological material. This too appears to have been a routine institution, whereby youths who had passed through the agoge (the state educational system) completed their apprenticeship by going out into the country, lying low by day and killing Helots by night. Plutarch is emphatic that this exercise in brutality was no part of the ‘Lykourgan’ order, but only became general after the revolt following the great earthquake of c.465. Herodotus, however, in a rarely noticed passage (4.146.2) almost casually remarks, ostensibly with reference to a context of c. 800, that the Spartans perform their official killings by night; and Isokrates (12.181), admittedly with hyperbole, claimed that only the Spartans denied the wickedness of all homicide.
Some modern scholars, on the other hand, have preferred to follow Plutarch and minimize the role played by hatred, fear and judicial murder in Spartano-Helot relations. As Grote put it (though he was careful to distinguish between domestic and agricultural Helots in this regard), ‘the various anecdotes which are told respecting their treatment at Sparta betoken less of cruelty than of ostentatious scorn—a sentiment which we are noway surprised to discover among the citizens of the mess-table.’ This milder interpretation has been followed most recently by Ducat (1974), who suggests that it was because the Helots were in some ways so similar to the
Spartans that the latter were anxious to exaggerate the differences. For example, it was because the Helots were in a sense ‘within the city’ that war was declared upon them annually in order to render them legally outsiders. And the murder of Helots, Ducat argues, was essentially a magical rite, a symbolic representation intended to reaffirm the norm that Helots were not and could not become Spartans. In short, the characteristic attitudes of the Spartans towards the Helots were scorn and contempt. Hence the beatings, the intoxications, the enforced wearing of a dogskin cap and rough animal pelts—all measures designed to remind the Helots of their ‘alterity’.
No doubt there is truth in both versions. The main point, however, remains: Helotage had been initiated and maintained to serve the class interests of the Spartans. The proper question to ask then is why the Spartans, unlike other Greek master classes, found themselves constantly menaced by revolt and felt compelled to resort to such extreme repression. There is no single answer.
In the first place, as Finley (1973, 63, 68) has emphasized, the Helots were in comparison to chattel slaves a privileged group, enjoying ‘all the normal human institutions except their freedom’. Of course the context in which these institutions were forced to function was highly abnormal, but their relative privilege in such matters as family-life and the possession of personal property could have encouraged them to lay claim to greater rights and freedoms, especially since they were Greeks.
Second, the Messenian Helots, who at least by the time of Thucydides
(1.101.2) greatly outnumbered the Lakonian, were politically motivated men. In fact, they were precisely what Vernant (1974, 28) denies to have been possible in ancient Greece, ‘an active and unified social force, a group of solidary men intervening on the historical stage to orient the course of events in a direction conformable to their interests and aspirations’. They lived, moreover, far from Sparta and separated from it by a formidable mountain barrier. For these reasons no doubt it was against them rather than the Lakonian Helots that Spartan repression was more particularly directed. We should, though, recall that in 465 it was the Lakonian Helots (if Diodorus may be trusted) who began the revolt, that in the late fifth and early fourth centuries the Athenians devoted some attention to disaffecting the Lakonians as well as the Messenians, that Kinadon’s conspiracy of c. 399 may have been a primarily Lakonian affair, and, finally, that Aristotle’s often quoted comparison of the Helots to ‘an enemy constantly sitting in wait for the disasters of the Spartans’ was made after the liberation of Messenia.
Third, however, and for me decisively, the relationship between the Spartans and the Helots had been conceived in conquest, and it was essentially as a defeated enemy that the Spartans treated the Helots, whose very name perpetually recalled the fact. The relationship, however, was dialectical. The militarism which Aristotle deplored was the price Sparta inevitably paid for maintaining a uniquely profitable system of economic exploitation.
II
The origins of the Perioikoi, as already stressed in Chapter 7, were more heterogeneous than those of the Helots, but their status, as it had been gradually defined by the end of the seventh century, was no less uniform in relation to the Spartans. They were the inhabitants of the towns in Lakonia and Messenia apart from Sparta and Amyklai, free men but subjected to Spartan suzerainty and not endowed with citizen-rights at Sparta. Their free personal status and disfranchisement are not controversial. Disagreement abounds over the character of their subjection, and the social and political organization of their own communities.
According to Larsen (1938, 818), the Perioikoi stood somewhere between Helots and free allies of Sparta. According to Oliva (1971, 62), they occupied a station between Spartan citizens and foreigners or allies. The latter, I suggest, is the more fruitful perspective. For on the one hand the Perioikic communities were regarded as poleis, not only by inexact writers like Herodotus (7. 234), Xenophon (Hell. 6.5.21; Lak. Pol. 15.3; Ages. 2.24) and Stephanos of Byzantion, but even by Thucydides (5.54.1). The same idea that they were in some sense politically autonomous is conveyed by the formally incorrect description of Pharai, Geronthrai and Kythera as ‘colonies’ of Sparta. (However, the apparently corroborative epigraphical evidence for magistracies in Perioikic towns belongs to the second and first centuries and may not therefore be relevant to the period before 195, when Flamininus completed the political liberation of the Perioikoi from Sparta: see Chapter 15.) On the other hand, it was a peculiarity of the Spartan polis that its territory was not identical with the land owned by its citizens, and that the name of the state was not ‘the Spartiates’ but ‘the Lakedaimonians’, which in military contexts embraced the Perioikoi as well. Xenophon indeed several times refers to a mixed force as ‘the citizen army’ (Hell. 4.4.19; 5.4.41, 55; 7.4.20, 27). In what then did the subjection of the Perioikoi lie?
The answer, I suggest, is that they were bound, as it were, ‘to follow the Spartans whithersoever they might lead’. We do not in fact know the terms of any individual treaties between the Spartans and a Perioikic community, and their mutual relationship need not ever have been so formalized. Undoubtedly, though, they were obligated to submit without question to Spartan direction in foreign policy, and in this respect their position resembled that of the allies of Sparta outside Lakonia and Messenia before the formation of the Peloponnesian League. Indeed, I would argue that it was Sparta’s experience in dealing with its Perioikoi which provided the model for the Peloponnesian League. Unlike the League members, however, the Perioikoi never won and may never have sought the right of collective veto of a Spartan decision provided by a majority vote of the League Congress. The King’s Peace of 386, which guaranteed ‘autonomy’ to every separate Greek city, was only once interpreted to support Perioikic independence from Sparta. And the ‘haughty roughness’ (Grote) dealt out by the Spartans to their foreign allies may have been felt the more strongly by the Perioikoi.
Thus in order to explain their subjection we need not believe (pace Parke 1931; Bockisch 1965, 131-7) that the twenty harmosts mentioned in an ancient commentary on Pindar were imposed on the Perioikoi (the harmosts at Kythera and perhaps Thyrea and Aulon were exceptions due to strategic exigencies) nor that the Ephors, as Isokrates (12.181) claimed, could have any Perioikos put to death without trial. We do not, however, know when the military burden was first imposed nor when Perioikoi first fought with Spartans against an external enemy. The suggestion that the gymnetes of Tyrtaios (fr. 11.35; cf. P. Oxy. 3316) were Perioikoi is unconvincing. But the bronze figurines and grave stelai depicting hoplites found in Perioikic territory (below) suggest a terminus ante quem of c.525. Our earliest literary evidence concerns the campaigns of 480-479, but by 418, and probably by 425, Perioikoi were brigaded individually with Spartiates in the hoplite phalanx (Chapter 12).
The Perioikoi in question will have been drawn from the ranks of the wealthy, who, as elsewhere in Greece, will have included but not been coextensive with the ‘true gentlemen’ (presumably aristocrats) who volunteered for hoplite service in 380 (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9; cf. Plut. Kleom. 11 for this stratum). Again like other Greeks, these rich Perioikoi will have derived their surplus from the exploitation of chattel slaves (not Helots: see below). We have unfortunately no positive ancient evidence that they did so, but there are four pieces of evidence which strongly suggest this.
First, a fifth-century inscription cut into the living rock of Mount Koumaro (ancient Larysion) at Gytheion (IG V.1.1155) forbids anyone, whether free or slave (doulos), to quarry stone. Second, five manumission stelai of the late fifth and early fourth centuries from the sanctuary of Poseidon at Tainaron (IG V.1.1228-32), which dedicate the freed persons to the god, must be attributed to Perioikoi. It is true that the transactions are dated by the eponymous Ephor at Sparta and that Helots used Tainaron as an asylum, but from all we know it was the Spartan state alone, and not individual Spartiates, that could manumit Helots. Third, a famous anecdote concerning Agesilaos (Plut. Ages. 26.5 etc.) implies that in the early fourth century there were no craftsmen among the Perioikic hoplites; they must therefore have been farmers but freed by slaves from the necessity to labour constantly with their own hands. Finally, in c. 240 a raid by the Aitolian League on Lakonia allegedly netted no fewer than 50,000 slaves (Plut. Kleom. 18.3). The raid was directed at least in part against the Perioikoi (Polyb. 4.34.9), so if the figure is to be trusted it seems necessary to postulate that some at least of the captives were slaves of the Perioikoi rather than Helots.
A second related function of the Perioikoi, but antedating the seventh century, was to serve as a kind of territorial reserve against the Helots. The general lack of military co-operation between the Perioikoi and the Helots against the Spartans may or may not betoken different ethnic affiliations, but it is true that only once before the liberation of Messenia did Perioikic towns join a Helot revolt (in c.464) and that in this instance both were Messenian. The majority, however, was in Lakonia, where they served to separate the Helots from the Arkadians and Argives in the north and to keep an eye on the lower Eurotas valley from their less favoured situations in Vardhounia and the Tainaron and Malea peninsulas. Forts at Kosmas and Trinasos prevented the Helots from communicating with the outside world respectively across Parnon and by sea. Similarly in Messenia the fort at Vasiliko divided the Messenians from the south-west Arkadians, and Aulon blocked the way to Triphylia and Elis. All this may become clearer after the review below of Perioikic towns archaeologically attested by c. 500.
The third main function of the Perioikoi was broadly economic. There is no good reason to believe that they actually paid tribute to Sparta: the ‘royal tribute’ mentioned in the Alkibiades (1.123A) is a mystery, and the comparable reports in Strabo (8.5.4, C365) and Hesychius (s. v. kalame) are inconclusive. They may, however, have been required or encouraged to make monetary or other contributions on an individual and ad hoc basis. However this may be, it is quite certain that the chief rock, mineral and marine resources of Lakonia and Messenia lay in Perioikic territory, that imports to Sparta and other commercial relations with the outside world had to pass through Perioikic hands, and that Perioikoi played a major role in Lakonian craftsmanship.
Most of the marble used for the sculpture now in the Sparta Museum was won from Spartiate land on the eastern slopes of Taygetos in a quarry difficult of access between Anavryti and Mistra. But Lakonia was not distinguished at any period for its buildings or sculpture of marble. Subsidiary marble quarries are known at Vresthena in northern Lakonia, Chrysapha in the west Parnon foreland and Goranoi in west Vardhounia. In its uppermost course the marble from Dholiana just north of the Spartan frontier resembles Pentelic, but in Lakonia it seems only to have been used at Tyros in the east Parnon foreland. Transport was presumably too expensive for it to be used at Sparta. In fact the stone most widely used for buildings in Lakonia and Messenia was local limestone of varying quality. The chief sources for other than local use seem to have been the quarries in north-west Mani at ancient Thalamai, Leuktra and Kardamyle. Finally, poros, which was used for monumental carving in Sparta, occurs in the plain of Molaoi.
Iron ores are widely distributed throughout Lakonia. Apart from the important deposits at Neapolis (Chapter 7), we might cite those at Kollinai in the Skiritis and Porto Kayio (ancient Psamathous) in south Mani. The quantity of small, mould-made lead figurines dedicated at Spartan sanctuaries in Lakonia (over 100,000 at Orthia alone) and exported, probably by Spartan pilgrims for the most part, to sanctuaries elsewhere in Lakonia (Anthochorion, Analipsis, Tyros) and the Peloponnese suggests an extensive local supply of the ore; there were certainly ancient workings in the Kardamyli district. Finally, O. Davies in 1935 made a tantalizing reference to the known location of copper ore at Alagonia, at the western end of the Langadha pass over Taygetos; but the localities in question have been shown to contain ‘very small, low-grade sulfide deposits with little or no copper mineralization’ (MME 232).
Lakonia, then, was remarkably self-sufficient in useful rocks and minerals as well as agricultural potential, and overseas trade in essentials was relatively unimportant. From one standpoint this was fortunate. For although the borders of Lakonia and Messenia are washed on three sides by the Mediterranean, communications inland are generally poor (below), and the number of harbours offering both protection from winds and heavy seas and a holding anchorage is small compared to the extent of coastal frontage. The only harbours of any practical significance on the long eastern coastline of Lakonia were, north to south, Astros (ancient Thyrea), Tyros, Leonidhion (ancient Prasiai), Kyparissi (ancient Kyphanta), and Palaia Monemvasia (ancient Epidauros Limera). On the Lakonian Gulf Gytheion was the chief port of Sparta; the next best anchorages were Neapolis (ancient Boiai) and Skoutari Bay (ancient Asine). In the Messenian Gulf Kardamyle served as Sparta’s port after Gytheion had become independent in the second century; Kalamata (ancient Pharai) did not become important until the modern breakwater was built. On the west coast of Messenia the best natural harbour was of course Navarino Bay (ancient Pylos), but the Spartans made little or no effort to develop its strategic or commercial potential.
However, despite this dearth of good harbours, there were still of course Perioikoi who engaged in fishing and trade. The economic significance of fishing in the Mediterranean world generally is often grossly inflated (cf. Braudel 1972, 140, 145); and we should regard it as of secondary importance even for most coastal settlements. There is, however, one marine resource, the murex mollusc (trunculus or brandaris), which merits special mention. As Edward Gibbon remarked, ‘by the discovery of cochineal, etc. we far surpass the colours of antiquity.’ But of the latter ‘royal purple’, obtained by processing the milky secretions of the murex, exercises a certain fascination (Reinhold 1970). Its production in antiquity was primarily associated with the Phoenicians of Tyre, but among the Greeks the Lakonians and Tarentines were leading producers. Murex shells have been excavated in prehistoric contexts at Kastri on Kythera and Ay. Stephanos, and the waters off Kythera and Gytheion are still major sources of the mollusc. I suspect, however, that it was the Phoenicians calling at Kythera in the eighth century or earlier who firmly established the production of the dye, which in historical times was used to colour the phoinikis or short cloak worn by all members of the Spartan hoplite army (Cartledge 1977, 15 and n. 38).
The problem of Perioikic trade and traders is more complex. As already remarked, overseas trade will have been relatively restricted. Apart from the copper and tin needed for bronze artefacts, it will have been concerned mainly with the import and export of fine ceramic tableware or bronzes for display or votive dedication. This trade will undoubtedly have been in Perioikic hands to some extent, but, when it more or less disappeared in the course of the fifth century, we should not imagine that this precipitated an economic crisis in the Perioikic communities, of which Gytheion was the most important in this regard. For even if Gytheion had acted as a sort of ‘port of trade’ linking the closed and archaic Spartan system with the more open and developed economic systems of the Greek world, most Perioikic communities were no doubt dominated by the same land-oriented values as the Spartans themselves. A possible index of this is the fact that, although Perioikoi were presumably not forbidden to handle coined money, preHellenistic coins have been found on only two Perioikic sites (Prasiai and Kythera). On the other hand, trade within Lakonia between Spartans and Perioikoi was crucial, not merely for the procurement of chariots for horseracing but for the very maintenance of the military machine. This leads us naturally, and finally, to consider the role of Perioikoi in Lakonian craftsmanship.
World History
