Did Sparta really treat helots and slaves extremely cruelly,

>>3163613
Only when they were forced to.

>>3163613

IT WAS ENEMY PROPAGANDA —MOSTLY BY THE ATHENIANS.

THE HELOTS WERE NOT SLAVES; THEY WERE A RACIOLABOURAL CASTE; SPARTAN SOCIETY WAS CONSTITUTED BY THREE DIFFERENT CASTES: HELOTS (FARMERS, AND WORKERS IN GENERAL), PERIOIKOI (MERCHANTS, AND ARTISANS), SPARTIATES (SPARTAN CITIZENS).

>>3163613

If you want to know how others treated conquered populations, look at Melos and what the Athenians did to its inhabitants.

It was the norm of the era to kill all men and sold all women and children into chattel slavery. The fact that Spartans left the Helots alone as a subordinate caste was by the standards of the day an extremely lenient treatment.

The Helots were essentially Serfs. Granted, every year the Spartans went berserk on them to keep them in line, but that's just their culture.

>>3163677
>every year the Spartans went berserk on them to keep them in line

NO.

>>3163613
It was cruel. They were maligned as being the only Greeks to full-on subject and virtually enslave another group of Greeks.

Look up the Krypteia.

>>3163613
>rebel at first opportunity
>scheme all the time
>flee en mass to Athenians during The Peloponessian War
>Xenophont explicitly says every helot wanted to eat Spartans alive
>Spartans recruit 2000 strongest helots ostensibly to give them freedom after the war, only to murder them all
>All that stories about Sparta declaring war on them every year so they can kill them anytime
Gee, I wonder if it's just an anti-Spartan propaganda.

>>3163623
Helots were enslaved you dumb cunt

>>3163653
Are you fucking retarded?

The point of the Melos story is it was brutal by Thucydides' standards, thus the dialogue. Nothing implies it was typical.

>>3163677

When it's said they formally declared war on the Helots every year, it does not mean that they went out and actually attacked them. It was just a formality and observance of religious protocol. A reminder that yes, you're still our bitch this year, too.

>>3163677
>but that's just their culture
Really makes you think.

>have to dedicate your entire society to military training just to keep your slaves from murdering you

Yeah, they were assholes.

>>3163613
>Did Sparta really treat helots and slaves extremely cruelly
Yes.
>enemy propaganda?
Why would anyone even care about how Spartans treated their slaves back then?

>>3164321

This.

The krypteia did not involve indiscriminate slaughter. It's first mentioned by Plato, and it sounds like some sort of intense survival test which involved using stealth. Aristotle and Xenophon also mention Spartan training.

None of the 4th century sources mention indiscriminate helot slaughter. Thucydides and Herodotus fail to mention indiscriminate slaughter in their histories. Actually, Thucydides' account of the possible execution of 2000 helots sounds like the result of careful surveillance and strategy.

Further, whenever there's some intrigue in Sparta, it usually involves conspiring with the Helots. As examples, see Pausanias, Lysander, and Cinadon.

Anyway, Plutarch does mention indiscriminate slaughter. Plutarch is also the source for the idea that Spartans declared war on the Helots; he cites Aristotle, but Aristotle does not make such a claim in any of the texts we have available today.

>>3164251
It's you who is retarded. Melos is famous because if was a neutral island that had nothing to do with the ongoing war. In the whole history of Greece there are scores of cities that got destroyed in war by fellow Greeks with inhabitants killed and/or sold into slavery. Starting with Kirrha and ending with Thebes.

>>3165069

To lend credence to this, murdering a bunch of Helots for funsies would have been idiotic. They're your economic base and the entire reason the Spartans could devote themselves to war full-time. If they were getting uppity or conspiring with your enemies they might need a little culling, but there's no reason to think it was some kind of yearly ritual slaughter, any more than a Feudal lord would get the boys together and go murder a bunch of his own peasants.

didn't spartan children have to kill a helot with out being caught?

>>3165163

No, I am not aware of any source that makes such a claim.

Maybe you're thinking of the agoge. Spartan children were required to go through that system.

>>3163972
But Xenophont was a massive spartaboo.