Two thousand of the bravest Helots were entrapped, as if especial honors were to be bestowed upon them, and barbarously slain.
But these Helots were probably the descendants of the old Messenians whom Sparta had conquered.
Their treatment of the helots was frequently cruel and oppressive.
They had constantly to guard against a revolt on the part of the helots or slave population, who were bound to the soil and cultivated the lands of their Spartan masters.
The Mosquito Indians were the helots of the Buccaneers; they employed them to catch fish, and their vessels had generally a small canoe, kept for their use, in which they might strike tortoise or manitee.
But their manoeuvre was unsuccessful, and the Athenians retorted by bidding the Spartans drive out the curse of Taenarus, in allusion to the murder of certain Helots who had taken sanctuary in the temple of Poseidon at Taenarus.
Their coasts were exposed to continual ravage by the Athenian fleets, and Pylos was still occupied by their bitter enemies, the Messenians, attracting all the discontented elements in Sparta, and keeping the Helots in a continual ferment.
On the gratitude of Sparta we have a special claim, for in the day of her direst extremity, after the earthquake, when the Helots were in arms against her, we sent a third part of our citizens to her aid.
Most Of the Helots were descendants of the ancient Messenians, then reduced to slavery, and on this account all of them in general were called Messenians.
The Spartans who had so rudely sent away their Athenian allies manfully resolved to help themselves, and set about it so vigorously that they soon brought the Helots back to order, and rebuilt their city.
They sent for one of the meanest Helots or slaves, and purposely gave him plenty of wine.
And I add in the name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the XIXth century: We will not be helots in the midst of a free people.
The slavery of the Helots is approved by some and condemned by others; and there is some doubt even about the slavery of the Mariandynians at Heraclea and of the Thessalian Penestae.
Plato is more consistent than either the Athenians or the Spartans; for at Sparta too the Helots were treated in a manner almost unintelligible to us.
A man who conceives and writes a great book, my friend, has done more work than all the helots that laboured on these pyramidal futilities.
Indeed, many helots are there, who come from Philistia to spy out the Land.
But between the helots who built the pyramids and the freemen who built this massive citadel, what a contrast!
It is a kind of Serapeum where lies buried the kings and princes with the helots and underlings of literature.
The Spartans were cruel in disposition, as was shown in their bearing toward thehelots or slaves, as they greatly oppressed them and often put them to death; while the Athenians treated their slaves kindly.
If any of the helots or perioeci should find the child and take it they were permitted to keep it, but the child could never become a citizen of Sparta.
They tilled the ground to raise food for the citizens, who were all soldiers, and whose whole life and thought were given to keeping the Helots in slavery and to warlike activity.
They were to be soldiers only, and the Helots were to supply them with food.
In fact, many of the Helots and country people joined the Theban army, while others refused to come to the aid of the imperilled city.
Even six thousand of the Helots were armed as hoplites, though to see such a body of their slaves in heavy armor alarmed the Spartans almost as much as to behold their foes so near at hand.
He afterwards conspired with some of the states of Asia Minor, and when again brought home formed a plot with the Helotsto overthrow the government.
Penestse have very often attacked the Thessalians, and the Helots the Lacedaemonians, for they in a manner continually watch an opportunity for some misfortune befalling them.
There is this analogy between the customs of the Lacedaemonians and the Cretans, the Helots cultivate the grounds [1272a] for the one, the domestic slaves for the other.
The observer then understood that with such a superiority of intelligence these helots might, in reality, wear the chains of servitude very lightly, and perhaps govern their masters.
Nor are they even at liberty to go out in a body, if their wise little helots do not think the weather favourable, if they fear a storm, or if the day is far advanced.
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.
The Helots dwelt in the cottages scattered in the plain and cultivated the soil.
Helots and Periœci despised the Spartiates, their masters.
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.
A Spartiate poet compares the Helots to "loaded asses stumbling under their burdens and the blows inflicted.
These Spartans, with their helots or slaves, made up his own share of the numbers, but all the army was under his generalship.
This mighty mob of famished, diseased, and filthy helots is getting dangerous, physically, morally, politically dangerous.
In any other land but ours, the mighty mass of helots would long ago have broken their bonds and swept over the land in vast revolutionary hordes.
It was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian War, after the Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts in various ways, .
Perioikoi and Helotsincurring the displeasure or suspicion of the authorities were secretly put to death, without even the form of a trial.
If we take now what at Plataea was the actual ratio of the helots as compared with the Spartans, i.
At first the ephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal, causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the Helots and Perioeci, over the public market, and the public revenue.
As a considerable number of helots had joined their Spartan lords and perished with them, the bodies of the slain amounted to four thousand [75], while those of the Persians were only one thousand.
That very night they privately despatched a body of five thousand Spartans and thirty-five thousand helots (seven to each Spartan), under the command of Pausanias.
To posterity neither the cause nor the achievements of Marathon or Plataea, seem the one more holy, the other more heroic, than this long defiance of Messenians and helots against the prowess of Sparta and the aid of her allies.
Pausanias forbade the booty to be touched [114], and directed the helots to collect the treasure in one spot.
The objection to this hypothesis--that the Helots could scarcely have so hated the Spartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to me very cogent.
Spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through the country, and by night murdered whomsoever of the Helotsthey could meet.
Perhaps no class of men in ancient times excite a more painful and profound interest than the helots of Sparta.
We must not imagine that all the helots had joined in the revolt.
We have seen that a considerable number of these helots had fought as light-armed troops at Plataea; and the common danger and the common glory had united the slaves of the army with the chief.
And pyramidal wall of rock Are battle-grounds for waging lust: A clashing lance spun vypers round The gyrus rind wherehelots clad Each Thaumaturgist in a frock, The sign of which spake added trust Unto each ghoul-king's able hound.
Such incidents are, of course, but samples of hundreds of similar atrocities perpetrated by the Turks upon their Christian helots during the recent war.
And he was far from feeling reassured by the startling tidings that now reached him; for all knew the sort of justice that the Ottoman reserved for his helots whenever the eyes of Europe might chance to be diverted elsewhere.
Kleomenes, who was confined to the territory of Lacedaemon, proceeded to emancipate all helots who could pay a sum of five Attic minae for their freedom, by which means he raised a sum of five hundred talents.
Greek: mothakes] seem to have been children ofHelots brought up as foster-brothers of young Spartans, and eventually emancipated, yet without acquiring full civic rights.
The ancient Spartans at their feasts used to compel their helots to drink a large quantity of wine, and then brought them into the banqueting-hall, in order to show the young Spartans what drunkenness was like.
A great many of the Helots joined them, and they made their fortified hill of Ithome very strong.
The first great Spartan war that we know of was with their neighbours of Messenia, who stood out bravely, but were beaten, and brought down to the state of Helots in the year 723 B.
The Helots were sent to collect the spoil, and put it all together.
Protestants, and as such, superior to the Helots over whom they tyrannized!
The Helots were ousting their lords and masters, were daring to be successful; even presumed to follow the example of the squireens, who had set the fashion of practical jokes.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "helots" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
