Besides the political necessity of a strict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to the sufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as he despised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would he despise the wretch that exercised them.

Thus the motives that render power most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to the Helot--viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb were ever relaxed--2dly, consummate contempt for the individual he debased.

The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary.

When the slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a moment he rebels.

He has become your deadliest foe, and self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke to vengeance you should crush to impotence.