Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

or sawing wood, or making pans. Such activities were best left to the citizens of other communities in Lacedaemon, the “perioikoi,” or “about-dwellers,” as they were dismissively labeled, second-rate men denied the rights of a full and tested Spartan. Only one source of wealth, to the true soldier, could be counted worthy of his rank. Gratifyingly, for a people once haunted by land-hunger, the conquest of Messenia had provided ample scope for the aristocracy to be generous with their spoils. Hazy though the precise details are, it appears likely that one of the key policies of the Lycurgan reform program had been the partitioning of much of Messenia into allotments for the poor.18 Not that any member of the master race ever farmed these grants in person: it was out of the question for a Spartan warrior to toil and sweat in a field. That was the function of the conquered Messenians. The Spartans, even prior to the crossing of Taygetos, had displayed a peculiar genius for the exploitation of vanquished foes. Their whole history bore witness to it. Learned scholars, curious about the name—“helots”—that the Spartans gave their wretched underclass, derived it from Helos, a town in Lacedaemon, conquered in the very earliest days of their expansion.19 What had first been practiced on one side of the Taygetos range was refined and perfected on the other: a whole population was reduced to serfdom. The Messenians, laboring “like asses suffering under heavy loads,”20 found themselves...