Helots initially came in two main varieties: those who were natives of Laconia, and the Messenians. The Messenian Helots, residents of the westernmost finger of the Peloponnese, had once been free citizens of their own polis; they were conquered by Sparta in colonial wars of the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. It was in the course of these hard-fought wars that Sparta’s military machine came into being. Despite centuries of subjugation, the Messenian Helots remembered their free origins; they told tales of their brave resistance in ancient conflicts with the Spartans. These folk memories stimulated the will to resist whenever the chance arose, the Messenian Helots rose up against their masters and fled to the steep slopes of Mount Ithome, which looms over the fertile Messenian plain. The best documented of the Messenian uprisings occurred in 463 B.C., in the aftermath of an earthquake that killed a number of Spartan Similars and disrupted Peloponnesian communications. A generation later, during the Peloponnesian War, Helots flocked to the fortified Athenian camp at Pylos–it was Spartan panic at the specter of Athenian support for armed Helot insurgency that precipitated the rash action that led to the Sphakteria debacle.

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Spartan society was completely dependent on the systematic exploitation of the Helots, both as agricultural laborers and as porters during military expeditions: at Plataea, during the Persian Wars, each Spartan hoplite was attended by seven Helots. But since the Helots, especially those of Messenia, were far from willing accomplices, the Spartans were forced to expend enormous energies in attempting to keep their serf caste in its place. Sparta, as a society, was necessarily turned inward on and against itself. The Similars spent their lives nervously policing the Helots for signs of revolt and obsessively watching each other for signs of non-conformity–because only an unbroken front would keep the much more numerous Helots at bay.

To remind everyone of the real state of affairs in Spartan territory, the Spartan Assembly formally declared war on the Helot population each year. Individual Helots were ritually humiliated–for example, by forcing them to drink massive quantities of alcohol as object lessons for young Spartans in the virtues of moderation. But more serious was the dreaded Krypteia–’The Secret Matter.’ Although, like so much in Sparta, the Krypteia was deliberately shrouded in mystery and misinformation, it appears that before being inducted into a mess unit, the would-be Similar was required to serve as a member of a highly secretive team of state-sponsored assassins. The youthful members of the Krypteia snuck about Spartan territory, especially at night, and assassinated those Helots thought to be outstanding in any way–it could be fatally dangerous for a Helot to be regarded as handsome, intelligent, or ambitious. How many Helots actually died under the knives or garrotes of the members of the Krypteia each year is unknown, but there is little doubt that the Spartans intended the Helot’s life to be spent in permanent insecurity and sheer terror–never knowing when the blow would fall, or why.

On some occasions, the individualized, random violence of the Krypteia was not regarded as enough. Thucydides notes that Spartans had once become’so afraid of [the Helots'] unyielding character and their numbers’ that they devised the following plan: they proclaimed that the Helots themselves should make a list of those Helots who had done the finest service for Sparta during military operations, implying that these men would be rewarded with their freedom. Thucydides continues: ‘This was, however, a test conducted in the belief that the ones who showed most spirit and came forward first to claim their freedom would be the very ones most likely to rise up against Sparta.’ Some 2,000 men were duly selected; they put on festive garlands and made thanks offerings to the gods. ‘Soon, however, the Spartans did away with them, and no one ever knew exactly how each one of them was killed.’

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