Helot

Serfs in ancient Sparta. Attached to the estates of the so-called "Spartiates," they had to share their harvest with the aforesaid landowners.

"The Spartan constitution depended upon social relations established once and for all: the 'Equals' each received an allotment of land cultivated by helots belonging to the community. These allotments were inalienable and nothing, in theory, could alter the original distribution made by the legendary Lycurgus. In actual fact, Spartan 'communism' was theoretical rather than real. The city would have had to cut itself off from the rest of the Greek world in order to maintain it. This was hardly possible, and from the fourth century B.C. onwards Sparta was the scene of disturbances caused by an increasingly unequal distribution of the land; in the third century attempts at 'revolution' even involved the helots. Needless to say, these proved abortive, and the Roman conquest of Greece in the second century ensured that they would remain impossible in the future."

Claude Mossé, The Ancient World of Work

[translated by Janet Lloyd] (1969).