| The military structure of Spartan society was shaped by the necessity of holding down the helot class that did all the actual work. |
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| Plato, for example, remarked that the helot system was the most controversial example of servitude in Greece. |
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| One effect of the helot phenomenon was the brutalization of the Spartan elite itself. |
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| Before the wolves can get him, however, he is rescued by a wise old shepherd and brought up as a helot, one of the aboriginal population the Spartans have enslaved. |
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| The Messenian helots were lost to Sparta when Epaminondas liberated Messenia c. 370, but the helot system continued in Laconia until the 2nd century bc. |
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| Those scholars claim that, in order to prevent another helot revolt, Lycurgus devised the highly militarized communal system that made Sparta unique among the city-states of Greece. |
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| The Spartans had sent their king Leonidas to Thermopylae with a force of 4,000 Peloponnesians, including 300 full Spartan citizens and perhaps a helot contingent as well. |
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| These tensions were exacerbated in 462, when Athens sent a force to aid Sparta in overcoming a helot revolt, but their aid was rejected by the Spartans. |
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| His cheeks bright red, his chin wet with spittle, the Helot would weave and stagger and totter until he passed out in the dirt. |
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