Читать книгу Greek and Roman Slaveries - Eftychia Bathrellou - Страница 19

Literature: Luraghi 2002; Luraghi and Alcock 2003.

In other respects, too, the Spartans used to treat the helots harshly and cruelly, to the point that they would force them to drink great amounts of unmixed wine and introduce them to the communal messes, thus demonstrating to the young what it meant to be drunk. And they would order them to sing songs and dance dances ignoble and ridiculous and abstain from the songs and dances of the free. This is why they say that later, during the invasion of Laconia by the Thebans,¹⁶ when the Thebans would order the helots they captured to sing the songs of Terpander, Alcman, and Spendon the Spartan, they used to refuse, saying that their masters would not wish it. So those who say that in Lacedaemon the free man is freest, while the slave is most a slave, have correctly gauged the difference.

 How did the Spartans try to humiliate the helots?

 Why did the Spartans enforce such practices on the helots?

 What example does Plutarch cite to show the effects of such practices on slaves?

 Does Plutarch think that helots were “between slave and free”? Cf. 1.3.

 What do you think?