Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/392

 37G HISTORY OF GREECE. and yet were forced to employ them as an essential portion of the state army. The Helots commonly served as light-armed, in which capacity the Spartan hoplites could not dispense with their attendance. At the battle of Plataea, every Spartan hoplite had seven Helots, 1 and every Perirekic hoplite one Helot, to attend him: 2 but, even in camp, the Spartan arrangements were framed to guard against any sudden mutiny of these light-armed compan- ions, while, at home, the citizen habitually kept his shield dis- joined from its holding-ring, to prevent the possibility of its being snatched for the like purpose. Sometimes, select Helots were clothed in heavy armor, and thus served in the ranks, receiving manumission from the state as the reward of distinguished bravery. 3 But Sparta, even at the maximum of her power, was more than once endangered by the reality, and always beset with the apprehension, of Helotic revolt. To prevent or suppress it, the ephors submitted to insert express stipulations for aid in their treaties with Athens, to invite Athenian troops into the heart of Laconia, and to practice combinations of cunning and atrocity which even yet stand without parallel in the long list of precau- tions for fortifying unjust dominion. It was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war, after the Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts in various ways, and when the Athen- ians and Messenians were in possession of Pylus, that the ephors felt especially apprehensive of an outbreak. Anxious to single 1 Herod, ix. 29. The Spartans, at Thermopylae, seem to have been attended each by only one Helot (vii. 229). O. MUller seems to consider that the light-armed, who attended the Peri- cekic hoplites at Plataea, were not Helots (Dor. iii. 3, 6). Herodotus does noi distinctly say that they were so, but I see no reason for admitting two differ ent classes of light-armed in the Spartan military force. The calculation which Miiller gives of the number of Periceki and Helots altogether, proceeds upon very untrustworthy data. Among them is to be noticed his supposition that iroAm/ci) %upa means the district of Sparta as distinguished from Laconia. which is contrary to the passage in Polybiua (vi. 45) : iroXiTiKri x&pa, in Polybius, means the territory of the state gene- rally. 3 Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 12, 4; Kritias, De Lacedaem. Repub. ap. Liba- nium, Orat. de Servitute, L ii. p. 85, Reisk. wf u7r.<m'af elvena rijg Trpdf ro)f EZAurof i^aipel [lev S^apriar^f OIKOI TJIC u<T7ncJo$ rf/v room k' a, etc. ' 3 Thucyd. i. 101 ; iv. 80 ; v. 14-23.