{"id":69270,"date":"2022-06-22T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69270"},"modified":"2022-06-21T09:34:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T13:34:04","slug":"qotd-sparta-without-the-helots-could-not-have-existed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/06\/22\/qotd-sparta-without-the-helots-could-not-have-existed\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Sparta without the helots<\/em> could not have existed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Burns essentially asks, “can’t we just draw a box around the spartiates<\/a><\/em> and assess them on their own?” And what I hope the proceeding analysis has shown is that the answer is: no, you can’t<\/strong>. The helots<\/a><\/em> and the brutality the Spartan state inflicts on them are integral to the system \u2013 they can’t be removed. Without helot<\/em> labor, there is effectively no Spartan economy and no agricultural production to support the spartiate<\/em> class’s leisure. The brutality is the vital tool of maintaining those laborers in a state of slavery, without it, the system cannot “function” in its abominable way. Without the helots<\/em>, Sparta’s military power collapses \u2013 not only because of the loss to the spartiates<\/em>, but also because the helots<\/em> seem to make up large forces of light infantry screens.<\/p>\n

And in sheer numerical terms, the helots<\/em> were Sparta<\/strong>. If we want to talk about drawing boxes, the box we ought to draw is not around the spartiates<\/em>, but around the helots<\/em>. The helots<\/em> so decisively outnumber the spartiates<\/em> that any assessment of this society has to be about the quality of helot<\/em> life (which is terrible). To draw boxes as Burns wants would be like putting a box around Jeff Bezos and declaring that America was the first all-billionaire society. In actual fact, American millionaires<\/em> represent roughly the same percentage of America as the spartiates<\/em> represent of Sparta<\/strong>, roughly six percent.<\/p>\n

This is a fundamental flaw in how we teach<\/em> Sparta \u2013 in high schools and in college. We teach Sparta like it was a free citizen society with a regrettable slave population that, while horrific, was typical for its time \u2013 something more like Rome. But it wasn’t: Sparta was a society that consisted almost entirely of slaves<\/em>, with a tiny<\/strong> elite aristocracy. The spartiates<\/em> were not the common citizens of Sparta, but rather the hereditary nobility<\/strong> \u2013 the knights, counts and dukes, as it were. We should as soon judge 17th century France by the first two estates as judge Sparta only by the spartiates<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-08-23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burns essentially asks, “can’t we just draw a box around the spartiates and assess them on their own?” And what I hope the proceeding analysis has shown is that the answer is: no, you can’t. The helots and the brutality the Spartan state inflicts on them are integral to the system \u2013 they can’t be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,5,41],"tags":[1457,319,912,605,1151],"class_list":["post-69270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-demographics","tag-privilege","tag-slavery","tag-sparta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i1g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69270"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74472,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69270\/revisions\/74472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}