A Spartan army marching to war was the visible face of Sparta. Behind it stood a society of many groups, most of whom were not citizens. To understand Sparta, we must look at the people the legend usually leaves out.

The helots

The helots were the foundation of Spartan life. They lived in Laconia and Messenia and farmed the land assigned to Spartan citizens, handing over a fixed share of the produce, often said to be half. They were not owned by individual Spartans in the way enslaved people in Athens were; they belonged, in a sense, to the Spartan state, which could free or kill them. They had families and communities, and the Messenian helots kept a strong sense of identity as a conquered people.

The helots were far more numerous than the citizens. Herodotus reports that at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, seven helots accompanied each Spartan soldier, serving as attendants and light troops. Whatever the exact number, the imbalance was huge.

Spartans treated helots with deliberate contempt. Ancient writers report that helots were forced to wear dog-skin caps, were beaten regularly regardless of wrongdoing, and were sometimes made drunk and displayed to young Spartans as a lesson in the shame of drunkenness. Thucydides tells a chilling story: during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans invited helots who claimed to have served bravely to come forward to be freed. About two thousand were selected, crowned with garlands and paraded around the temples, and then secretly killed, because the Spartans feared that the boldest helots were the most likely to revolt.

Revolts

The helots did revolt. After a great earthquake struck Sparta around 464 BCE, killing many, the Messenian helots rose in a revolt that lasted years. The rebels held out on Mount Ithome. Sparta even asked Athens for help, then sent the Athenian troops home, apparently fearing their democratic ideas. The revolt ended with the rebels allowed to leave the Peloponnese under a truce.

Spartan women

Spartan women were among the most unusual in the ancient Greek world. Other Greeks, especially Athenians, were shocked by them. Spartan girls received physical training, running, wrestling and throwing the javelin, because Spartans believed that strong mothers would bear strong sons. Girls ate well, unlike many girls in Athens, and married later, often around eighteen.

Spartan women had considerable economic power. Because men spent their lives in training and war, women managed households and estates. They could inherit and own property, and Aristotle claimed that by his time, women owned around two fifths of the land in Spartan territory, which he blamed for Sparta's decline. Aristotle disapproved; to modern readers, the figure shows that Spartan women had economic independence unusual for the time.

Spartan women were also famous for their fierce patriotism. Plutarch collected sayings attributed to them. A mother, handing her son his shield as he left for war, is said to have told him to come back “with it or on it,” meaning victorious or dead, since a soldier who fled would drop his heavy shield, and the dead were carried home on theirs. When a foreign woman remarked to Queen Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas, that only Spartan women ruled their men, Gorgo is said to have replied that only Spartan women gave birth to men.

Women's limits

Spartan women's freedoms existed within strict limits. They had no political rights, and their lives were organized around producing soldiers. Marriage and childbearing were treated as civic duties. Plutarch reports practices, such as husbands allowing other men to father children with their wives, that served the state's aims more than the women's own. Their relative freedom was real, but it was freedom in service of the state, not equality.

Perioikoi and outsiders

The perioikoi handled most of the trade and crafts that Spartiates were forbidden or discouraged from pursuing. They made the weapons and armor, built ships and served in the army. Sparta was also suspicious of foreigners and occasionally expelled them in what were called xenelasiai, to keep out foreign influences.

Worked example: whose freedom?

Imagine three people living in Spartan territory in 450 BCE: a Spartan citizen, his wife and a helot who farms their land. Ask what freedom means for each.

• The citizen. He votes in the assembly and may be elected ephor. But his life is controlled from age seven: he lives in barracks, eats in a mess, cannot pursue trade, and must fight until sixty.
• His wife. She manages the estate and may own land. She is strong, educated in some respects and outspoken. But she cannot vote, and her life is shaped by the state's need for soldiers.
• The helot. He has a family and a home, but no rights. He can be beaten, humiliated or killed without trial. He hands over half his harvest.

Each enjoys a different mix of freedom and constraint, but the helot's situation is in a different category. The Spartan way of life depended on denying him the basic dignity of a person. Any honest admiration for Spartan courage must reckon with this. A society whose freedoms rest on the enslavement of most of the people living in it cannot be a model of liberty.