The longer, therefore, the Spartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of the Helots.

Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank which exist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties of mutual sympathy and dependance--so that Poverty itself may be a benefactor to Destitution.

Even among the poor the Helot had no brotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highest Spartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth.

We cannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartans treated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excuse for a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation.
Revolt and massacre were perpetually before a Spartan's eyes; and what man will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the moment to murder him?
XII.

The origin of the Helot race is not clearly ascertained: the popular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants of Helos, a maritime town subdued by the Spartans, and that they were degraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusive account.