They were sailors,
they engaged in commerce, and manufactured the objects necessary to
life. They were free and administered the business of their village,
but they paid tribute to the magistrates of Sparta and obeyed them.

=Condition of the Spartiates.=--Helots and Perioeci despised the
Spartiates, their masters. "Whenever one speaks to them of the
Spartiates," says Xenophon,[62] "there isn't one of them who can
conceal the pleasure he would feel in eating them alive." Once an
earthquake nearly destroyed Sparta: the Helots at once rushed from all
sides of the plain to massacre those of the Spartiates who had escaped
the catastrophe. At the same time the Perioeci rose and refused
obedience. The Spartiates' bearing toward the Perioeci was certain to
exasperate them. At the end of a war in which many of the Helots had
fought in their army, they bade them choose those who had especially
distinguished themselves for bravery, with the promise of freeing
them. It was a ruse to discover the most energetic and those most
capable of revolting. Two thousand were chosen; they were conducted
about the temples with heads crowned as an evidence of their
manumission; then the Spartiates put them out of the way, but how it
was done no one ever knew.[63]

And yet the oppressed classes were ten times more, numerous than their
masters. While there were more than 200,000 Helots and 120,000
Perioeci, there were never more than 9,000 Spartiate heads of families.
In a matter of life and death, then, it was necessary that a Spartiate
be as good as ten Helots. As the form of battle was hand-to-hand, they
needed agile and robust men. Sparta was like a camp without walls; its
people was an army always in readiness.

EDUCATION

=The Children.=--They began to make soldiers of them at birth. The
newly-born infant was brought before a council; if it was found
deformed, it was exposed on the mountain to die; for an army has use
only for strong men. The children who were permitted to grow up were
taken from their parents at the age of seven years and were trained
together as members of a group. Both summer and winter they went
bare-foot and had but a single mantle. They lay on a heap of reeds and
bathed in the cold waters of the Eurotas. They ate little and that
quickly and had a rude diet. This was to teach them not to satiate the
stomach. They were grouped by hundreds, each under a chief. Often they
had to contend together with blows of feet