D:/3-PAGINATION/DLK/2-PROOFS/3B2/9780521881838C11.3D 285 [285–320] 29.8.2007 7:36PM CHAPTER 11 Spartiates, helots and the direction of the agrarian economy: towards an understanding of helotage in comparative perspective Stephen Hodkinson The subject of my study is the system of helotage within the ancient Greek polis of Sparta. 1 A fundamental feature of Spartan society was that the Spartiate citizens lived as rentier landowners supported economically by a servile population, the helots, who worked their estates. The Spartiates inhabited a cluster of villages within the region of Lakonia, towards the northern end of the Eurotas valley. 2 Their landholdings, in contrast, were much more extensive. At the peak of their power, from c. 600 BC to 370 BC, when Spartan territory covered the entire southern Peloponnese, the Spartiates’ estates farmed by helot cultivators were spread across both its main regions: their ‘home’ region of Lakonia and the neighbouring region of Messenia to the west, occupying overall perhaps some 1,400 km 2 out of a total geographical area of 8,500 km 2 . After Sparta’s loss of Messenia in 370 BC, the helots of Lakonia continued to be the predominant labour force on citizen estates in the region until at least the second century BC. 3 Modern thought has often followed ancient Greek and Roman sources in portraying Sparta as an exceptional society, somewhat different from other Greek poleis, and indeed from most other civilized human societies. In recent years my work has increasingly been concerned with 1 I am grateful to Sue Alcock, Richard Catling, and Nino Luraghi for allowing me to read their important forthcoming work in advance of publication, to Peter Gatrell for advice on comparative reading on Russian serfdom, and to the participants in the Harvard conference on Helots and their Masters in March 2001 for their supportive reception of the original version of this chapter. This chapter was written during my tenure of an award under the Research Leave scheme of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board and was originally published as Hodkinson 2003. It is re-published here with light modifications. 2 The geographical term ‘Lakonia’ is not contemporary, but (as the name of the modern administrative unit based on Sparta) is commonly used in modern scholarship to denote the eastern part of Spartan territory. 3 The figure of 1,400 km 2 derives from the calculations in Hodkinson 2000: 131–45. On the end of helotage, Ducat 1990: 193–9. 285