Bonus Episode - Helots, Spartan Women, and Historical Fiction

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Spartan slaves, Spartan women, and the role of historical fiction in our society.

All that and more on this bonus episode of Our Fake History.

Hit the bonus theme.

Hello, and welcome to a very special bonus episode of Our Fake History.

You know me, my name is Sebastian Major, and normally this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story that it simply must be told.

But this week we are trying out a little something new.

Over the years, I have been experimenting with different ways to get more Our Fake History goodness out to you.

For a while, we were doing the throwback episodes.

I would record a special new introduction to a classic episode of Our Fake History and I'd put those out between series.

Now that was fun and I'm definitely still going to be using throwback episodes during our season break at the end of August.

But it was time to try something new and something I've always enjoyed doing is engaging with the listeners.

You folks often have really great questions for me.

I have done QA episodes in the past, but I thought it would be fun to do smaller series-specific feedback episodes in between our series.

So I'm calling them bonus episodes.

This is the first one.

I hope you dig what we are doing here.

Now, if you're listening to this, you're like, oh, how can I get in on the next one?

No problem.

After the end of any Our Fake History episode, just send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Email is the best way to get my attention.

I also pay very close attention to anything sent to me by the patrons.

In fact, many of the questions you are going to hear today came from our patrons chat feed that was specific to the Sparta series.

So you can become a patron at patreon.com/slash our fake history, and all levels of support will get you access to that chat.

Or you can just send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Now, if you are new to Our Fake History, I just want to let you know that this is not a typical episode.

Normally, what I do is a long-form scripted storytelling style show where I bust historical myths.

So, if you like a narrative style podcast, that's what Our Fake History normally is.

This Q ⁇ A style that we're doing today is just a little something extra.

So don't get the impression that this is what we are doing all of the time.

All right, let's get into our listener questions.

Our very first question comes from Nicole on Patreon.

She writes, so excited for this new series on Sparta.

I have a question that came up, although this may be beyond the scope of your research.

I remember an American historian once saying that American slavery was particularly insidious because, unlike slavery in the ancient world, A, it was the enslavement of a particular race/slash class of people, and B, one's descendants would also be slaves in perpetuity.

I hadn't realized until your episode that those were the key hallmarks of the Spartans' enslavement of the helots.

Do you know if the Spartan slave-state model inspired, and that word is in quotes, or influenced other institutions of slavery in the modern era?

Thank you for your question, Nicole.

So this gives me an opportunity to speak more on the helots.

I was hoping to really dive deep into this very specific Spartan institution in the main series, but I just ran out of time.

And as you know, that part three got pretty hefty.

So I'm happy to talk more about it right now.

Did the Spartan model of helitage inspire later forms of chattel slavery?

The short answer is no.

The Atlantic slave trade evolved over time and does not seem to have been influenced by any one particular ancient form of slavery.

However, We do know that when abolitionism started to gain support in Britain around the turn of the 19th century, Sparta and the helots were often brought up in debates about the morality of slavery.

Some abolitionists would use the helots as an example of how modern slavery was a recreation of one of the most terrible forms of slavery in the ancient world.

To your point.

But there are also examples of slavery apologists using the example of the helots to make modern slavery seem not so bad.

Their argument boiled down to, sure, people are enslaved, but it's not like they're the helots.

So, this raises the question: how bad did the helots actually have it in ancient Sparta?

Now, perhaps this goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway.

There is no form of slavery that is a good good form of slavery.

Justifying slavery in your own time because it's slightly less horrific than slavery from another time is an incredibly poor argument and ignores basic human rights and the dignity of human beings.

That should go without saying, but I said it.

Okay, with those caveats out of the way, what did Helot-style slavery look like in practice?

Well, it's not exactly clear, as our ancient sources are fairly inconsistent on that point.

Some sources tell us that the helots were all owned by the Spartan state and were allocated to the Spartiates to work their plots of land.

As such, some scholars have proposed that helotage may have been more like medieval serfdom than chattel slavery.

They were people who were bound to the land and could not be removed from it, much like medieval peasants.

They owed their lords a certain percentage of everything they harvested, but they could not be bought and sold willy-nilly.

This version of the helot experience is supported by evidence of helot villages, helot homesteads, and tightly knit helot families.

But the helot-as-serf model clashes with other descriptions we have from the ancient world that tell us of the Spartiates using the helots as household staff, military slaves, messengers, and butlers.

This means that unlike serfs, the helots could be forced to do whatever labor their masters deemed necessary.

Scholars like Nino Laragi have also argued that while it was probably true that the helots were not allowed to be sold beyond the borders of Sparta, they were likely traded domestically between the Spartiates.

Some Spartiates seem to have owned larger groups of helots than others.

In this way, the helots were more like chattel slaves than agricultural serfs.

I think you're getting a sense of how tricky all of this can be.

The one thing the experts do seem to agree on is that being a helot meant living in a constant state of fear.

Well, actually, this state of fear was a bit of a two-way street.

The Spartiates lived in constant fear of a helot revolt, and this was a completely justified anxiety as violent helot revolts were known to happen.

The most serious occurred around 464 BC, when the helots and some allied Peloponnesian neighbors used the chaos unleashed by an earthquake to rise up and attack their Spartan oppressors.

In that instance, the Spartiates were only able to reimpose their dominance with the help of armies from a number of allied Greek cities.

But even after the helots were subjugated, the threat of a helot rising was never far from the minds of the ruling elites.

So we're told that the Spartiates dealt with this by terrorizing the helots both physically and psychologically.

or as historian nino laraghi puts it the elite spartans used quote a set of practices of ritualized contempt by which the spartiates produced a despicable collective identity for the helots end quote

in other words the helots were dehumanized Plutarch tells us that one of these humiliating rituals involved forcing the helots to drink huge amounts of unmixed wine.

You see, the Greeks always mixed their wine with water to dilute it a bit.

Drinking straight wine was considered barbaric.

Well, the helots were made to get embarrassingly drunk off strong wine, and when they got good and loopy, they were then paraded in front of a group of pre-teen boys training to be Spartan warriors.

This was done, apparently, to both teach the boys the virtues of sobriety and and hopefully hammer home the message that the helots were disgusting and contemptible.

Don't get drunk, boys, or else you'll look like a slobbering helot.

But this story comes to us from Plutarch, which if you listened to that Sparta series, you know, it was recorded around 500 years after the fact.

So that makes that particular anecdote a little suspicious.

But amazingly, that is actually one of the milder stories concerning the treatment of the helots.

A more contemporary Greek source, Myron of Prienne, recorded that the helots were subjected to an annual flogging ritual, simply so they would not forget that they were slaves.

He also tells us that a Spartiate could be fined if one of his helots became a little too healthy and physically developed.

Not only was the Spartiate fined, the unfortunate healthy helot would also be executed.

Now, some experts doubt the testimony of Myron, but it is consistent with other reports we have about the Spartans systematically identifying and murdering any helot they believed might one day become a leader in a revolt.

This included any helot that was particularly strong, intelligent, well-spoken, or simply well-liked.

So, if you were a helot who just happened to be a good dude, that might mark you for death.

The philosopher Aristotle tells us that in the classical period, the newly elected Spartan ephors, that was the council of five administrators who more or less ran the Spartan state, would declare a war on the helots as their first order of business.

This yearly declaration would give legal and religious cover to any Spartiate who wished to kill a helot.

These killings were largely undertaken by a group of young Spartiates known as the Cryptea.

These were men in their late teens and early 20s who had just completed the Spartan education system, known as the Agoge.

One of the final rites of passage was to spend some time in the Kryptea.

This group would travel incognito into the Peloponnesian countryside where they would carefully observe the work of the helots.

They would then identify individuals who were potential troublemakers, that is, strong, talented, or otherwise popular helots.

The cryptea would then abduct these people, usually under the cover of night, murder them, and then dispose of their bodies in some unknown place.

Now, this obviously sounds outrageous, and I tried to see if there were dissenting voices arguing that the cryptaia was a myth.

It seems like most modern scholars accept that the cryptaea existed in some form in ancient Sparta.

So there you go.

But perhaps the most outrageous example of the abuse of the helots is documented by the classical Greek historian Thucydides.

Now, Thucydides is generally considered as reliable as you get when it comes to an ancient Greek source.

And he tells us that after a battle around 425 BC, where a large contingent of helots had served alongside the Spartiates, the helots were invited to nominate themselves or a comrade for a reward if they had fought with distinction in the battle.

This group of distinguished helot fighters were promised their freedom for their good service.

But this turned out to be a trap, at least according to Thucydides.

The elite Spartiates did this to identify potential problem slaves, because, according to the historian, quote, it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high spirited and the most apt to rebel, end quote.

In the end, two thousand helots came forward and were feted as war heroes.

They were crowned with laurels and given a parade around one of the temples.

But not long after,

all two thousand of those helots disappeared.

Thucydides writes chillingly that, quote, the Spartans soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished.

End quote.

Now, of course, with all ancient sources, we need to treat them carefully, especially when an ancient source gives us a number.

You should never take a number in an ancient source seriously.

And Thucydides certainly had his biases.

But when a preponderance of ancient sources tells us more or less the same thing,

that thing being that the helots were treated incredibly badly, then we need to take that seriously.

While individual stories of cruelty may have been exaggerated, there seems to be a consensus that the Spartan treatment of the helots was, to quote yet another classical Greek source, quote, cruel and bitter in every way, end quote.

So, how does that then compare to the plight of African people who were trafficked during the Atlantic slave trade?

Well, it depends when and where you are talking about.

The conditions for slaves across North and South America varied greatly depending on the colony, the particular Caribbean island they may have been on, the time period.

There is no denying that the form of slavery that existed from the 1500s through to the 19th century was incredibly horrific.

Was it better or worse than being a helot?

Well, for that, I'm going to have to ask you to go do your own research on the specific place you want to compare to ancient Sparta.

So, I've just given you the baseline for how bad the helots had it.

If you are interested in, say, what happened in Haiti, learn about the horrific conditions in Haiti and see how it compares.

If you're interested in the American South, learn about the specific conditions in the American South and compare it to Sparta.

If you are interested in Brazil, you get the idea, right?

It is beyond the scope of this humble Q ⁇ A episode for me to go into the specific...

terrible conditions that people faced across the new world during the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade.

I leave that dark work to you, and you can compare it off of that little summary of the helots I just gave you.

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Our next question today also comes from the Patreon chat, this time from patron Elemeno P.

Clever name.

Elemeno P writes, I'm wondering if you could give some more detail on the sources that refer to Spartan women dressing in masculine attire because that's what their new husbands were used to.

It sounds kind of like a historical myth, in the same sense as the Amazons cutting off one of their breasts.

Essentially, other Greeks trying to make the Spartans sound abnormal.

Speaking of which, what were Spartiate women and girls even doing most of the time besides occasionally inheriting property and switching outfits to put their husbands at ease?

And were commoners also expected to fight during wartime?

Another excellent question.

Now, you're right that it does sort of sound like a historical myth that Spartan women dressed themselves as men on their wedding nights.

Was this something that was a bit of slander that came from other Greeks?

Well,

I should have pointed this out in the episode, and apologies for not doing so.

Our main source for that story is Plutarch.

I know, I know, I should have said that.

It was wrong of me not to make that absolutely clear.

Plutarch gives us a long description of the entire Spartan marriage ritual.

And as always, Plutarch is one of the least reliable sources we have when it comes to all things Spartan.

However, I did not find many modern experts taking issue with that particular part of Plutarch.

It's also more or less consistent with other descriptions we have of Spartan courtship and the dynamic between Spartan men and women.

That doesn't mean that it absolutely happened the way Plutarch says, but it just doesn't often get flagged as an obvious myth.

But Elemenop makes a good point because other Greeks were often scandalized by the role of women in Spartan society.

So with that in mind, it's not out of the question that a bit of slander about Spartan wedding nights may have been cooked up by other Greeks.

Now, why were the other Greeks so scandalized by Spartan women?

Well, Spartan women had considerably more freedom in ancient Sparta than they did in other ancient Greek city-states, especially Athens.

Now, here are all the caveats.

When I say Spartan women, I'm referring specifically to elite Spartiate-class women, the top of the chain.

And when I say freedom, we're really grading on a curve here.

So, we do know that Spartan girls were given more education than women in other parts of Greece.

During the Archaic and early classical period, there seems to have been a form of the agoge for young women.

Girls were certainly encouraged to exercise and be involved in athletics.

And this is something you do not see in other parts of Greece, athletic young women.

There's also some evidence that some elite Spartan women may have been literate.

There are references to Spartan mothers writing letters to their sons.

If these women were literate, that too would have been notable in ancient Greece, where most women were not allowed to learn how to read and write.

It was also unique in Sparta that young women were not married until they were 18 years old.

In many other parts of ancient Greece, like Athens, most girls were married at the age of 14, usually to much older partners.

In classical and archaic Sparta, girls were married at the age of 18 to young men who were usually around 25 years old, so not as egregious an age gap.

Now, Our ancient sources tell us that all of this was done because it was considered better for procreation.

Women in their late teens and early 20s tended to have healthier pregnancies than girls in their earlier teens.

God, that sentence felt terrible coming out of my mouth, but that's what it was.

That's why they did it.

I mean, one of many important reasons why people under the age of 18 should not be married to weird old men.

I bring this up because I don't want to give you the impression that the Spartans believed in gender equality.

They did not.

They just wanted to have the healthiest babies possible and this system seemed to help ensure that.

Now, as I also mentioned in the main series, Spartan women were able to inherit property.

Now, usually, they inherited about half of what a male sibling would would inherit, at least according to the expert on the topic, Professor Stephen Hodkinson.

And this is why the estates of some Spartiates got smaller and smaller and smaller over the generations, unless they were making clever marriage alliances.

If a Spartan man married the right Spartiate woman, he could combine their two inheritances and create a bigger estate.

Now, interestingly, the women often ended up running those estates.

As you might remember, Spartiate men were expected to be part of a sistia.

This is the common mess hall where every Spartiate contributed food, they ate together, they socialized together, they trained together.

While the men were off doing that, the elite women were back running the home.

Now, this is very common in many cultures but was unusual in ancient Greece.

In Athens for instance the father was considered the head of the household and was the last word on what happened in the house.

Now in Sparta, the father was also considered the head of the family, but because he lived away from the estate most of the time, the woman of the house had more practical power in that space.

Now, as I already mentioned, this scandalized many contemporary Greeks, in particular, the philosopher Aristotle.

Aristotle's opinions on women have been particularly damaging because for centuries after his time, many people cited Aristotle to justify the continued oppression of female people.

So, Aristotle, not looking good on this one.

And sure enough, when it came to the Spartans, he said the Spartans were weak because they were, quote, ruled by their women.

He thought this was completely upside down and was a deficiency in Spartan society.

But this is more evidence that Spartan women had a better situation in Sparta than women did in other parts of ancient Greece.

As for your question about commoners fighting in the army, yes, we know that the perio koi, who were the butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers in Spartan society, also fought alongside the Spartiates, usually in the form of lightly armored auxiliary troops.

We also know that the helots were also forced to fight.

Our next question also comes from the Patreon chat, this time from Matt.

Matt writes, less a question and more an opportunity for you to pontificate.

Ooh, you know I love those opportunities.

What do you see as the role of historical fiction?

Examples, Boardwalk Empire for Al Capone, 300 for the Spartans, in perpetuating myths about history, which isn't fiction's intent, but may be a byproduct.

Unlike, for instance, those who perpetuate unfactual history that isn't framed as fiction.

Matt, this is a fascinating question.

And yes, I would like to pontificate on this point.

So, first off, like a lot of history lovers, I really dig historical fiction.

I love it.

I love a period piece.

I like going back in time and seeing how artists recreate our past, both in films and TV.

In principle, there's absolutely nothing wrong with an artist taking liberties with the historical record to tell a story.

But it's very important that it is labeled as fiction and people know what they are getting.

Now, in your question, you brought up the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which recreates the Prohibition 20s in the United States.

I absolutely loved that show.

It was so cool.

And what it did well was recreate the spirit of the times, recreate the vibe of the 20s.

Now, you shouldn't watch that show and go, oh, Steve Buscemi's character ran all of Atlantic City during the 1920s.

What you will discover is that the character he played, Nucky Thompson, is a composite character.

He's kind of like a figure from Atlantic City and kind of like a few other folks who were crime bosses during the 1920s.

That show is not a documentary, but it gives you a vibe.

Another great example of that is the HBO series Rome, which aired in sort of the mid-2000s.

I loved that show.

That's maybe one of my favorite historical fiction pieces maybe ever.

At least my favorite historical TV shows.

Now, that show does not accurately tell the tale of the fall of the Roman Republic.

It does not accurately tell the story of Julius Caesar and Augustus and Mark Antony.

You should not cite the HBO series Rome in your term paper.

But what it did excellently was give you a feel for what ancient Rome was probably like.

I loved how it captured the gossipy dynamic of upper crust Roman culture.

I loved how it captured Roman street life.

I also really liked how it represented Roman religion.

Ancient religion is often left out of depictions of the ancient past, and it was such a huge part of people's lives.

HBO's Rome totally got that and I think represented that excellently.

Another period piece I really enjoyed was the film The Favorite with Olivia Coleman and Emma Stone, which came out about six years ago.

It takes place in the court of Queen Anne at the turn of the 18th century in Britain.

Now, that movie is not at all accurate, but man, it's fun.

It's so fun.

And it's a reminder that human beings are the people that animated our history.

We can sometimes think of historical figures as these, you know, mannequins frozen in amber in the past, people, you know, operating in ways so different from ourselves that they seem kind of like aliens.

A good piece of historical fiction reminds you that people in the past were people.

And the favorite does that in spades.

But Matt makes a great point here.

Often people watch these films, read these books, watch these TV shows, and assume that they are 100% historically accurate.

Audiences should know that something labeled as fiction should be treated as fiction.

But you're right, they don't often know that, or don't often treat these works of art like works of art.

So the question here is: who has the responsibility to make sure that people do not take historical fiction literally?

I would say that the creators have a tiny bit of responsibility in that they must make it clear that what they are doing is historical fiction.

They gotta wave that flag a little bit.

But beyond that, it's then on the audience.

So, it's now up to us as a society to make sure that we have savvy audiences.

And how do we do that?

Education, my friends.

The teacher in me is coming out right now.

Media literacy is a part of the curriculum where I am from in Ontario.

It should be a part of the curriculum everywhere.

History teachers, English teachers, media teachers, teachers of all sorts should be teaching their students how to discern what is a good source and what is not, what is being presented as fiction and what is being presented as documentary.

This not only makes people better audiences, it also makes them better citizens.

So this is why we need robust public education systems with reasonable class sizes where teachers have the resources to properly teach their students.

When education is being done right, people should grow up with these skills.

We can do it.

You just got to support the educators wherever you may live.

Shout out to all the teachers out there doing that good work.

It's a hard job, and I love you.

All right, our last question today comes to us from Homegrown Rosie, who emailed me at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Homegrown Rosie says, hi, I've been listening to you for a while, and I was wondering if you've ever considered giving Herodotus his own jingle like Heinrich Schliemann.

Rosie, I like the way that you think.

Actually, a friend of mine years ago suggested that I have a little musical sting for all of my rogues gallery, my returning characters on the podcast because he enjoyed the Schliemann thing so much.

I tried to do something with Graham Hancock, but it didn't quite stick.

But Herodotus comes up so much that, you know, maybe he needs one.

Okay, I'm going to try something.

I grab my guitar.

Let's see.

I'm just going to riff on this.

Maybe it's

Father of History, father of lies.

What do you think?

I don't know.

I don't know.

We'll see if that sticks.

We'll see if that sticks.

God, I was getting my full jack black on there.

All right, that's all for this very special bonus episode of Our Fake History.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you want me to do it again.

I'm going to try a few more of these.

The next one should be in about a month.

But of course, join us in one week when we will get an all-new full episode of Our Fake History out to you.

If you like this show and want to support us on Patreon, go to patreon.com slash our fake history and find a level of support that works for you.

You can find me on social media at Ourfake History.

I'm talking Instagram, I'm talking blue sky, I'm talking TikTok.

You can also head to our website, that's ourfakehistory.com, and check out our archives.

Check out the bibliography that I have up for every single show if you're curious about my sources.

Follow the link to our TeaPublic store and get yourself some awesome Our Fake History merch with art provided by the great Frank Fiorantino of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The theme music for this bonus episode was once again brought to you by Dirty Church, albeit a different song from Dirty Church.

To check out more from Dirty Church, go to dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

All the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major, and remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

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