WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -About 715 B.C., Sparta conquered a neighboring area to gain land. This conquest changed Sparta. The Spartans forced the defeated people to become slaves called helots (HEHL•uhtz). They worked mostly on farms and had to give the Spartans half their crops.

Detailed explanation-2: -The helots were in a sense state slaves, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters could neither free them nor sell them, and the helots had a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.

Detailed explanation-3: -According to the Greek geographer Pausanias, the Helots hailed from a city called Helos. This city is said to have been conquered by the Spartans, and its inhabitants became their first slaves. Subsequent peoples enslaved by the Spartans were also called Helots.

Detailed explanation-4: -Helots were Peloponnesian Greeks enslaved under the Spartan rule. The first Helots were Laconians whom Sparta defeated and conquered. It is possible that the name Helot comes from Helos, the main city in Laconia. Sparta conquered Messenia around 640 BC 620 BC.