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When I state that this same Mitchell became afterward a hireling helot in the Yankee Army, every intelligent reader will appreciate the prophetic discrimination of this true son of the South. I was eight years old when I struck the first blow for Southern freedom against the Northern Tyrant.
Of these Sparta supplied five thousand hoplites and thirty-five thousand light-armed Helots, the greatest army that warlike city had ever brought into action. The remainder of Laconia furnished five thousand hoplites and five thousand Helot attendants. Athens sent eight thousand hoplites, and the remainder of the army came from various states of Greece.
Thus the motives that render power most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to the Helot viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb were ever relaxed 2dly, consummate contempt for the individual he debased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When the slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a moment he rebels.
Among the important contributing factors was the unity of the industrial laboring class, a unity broken by no rifts between highly paid skilled groups and an inferior unskilled class, or between a well-organized labor aristocracy and an unorganized helot class.
Their habitations, visages, dress, and despondency, exhibited the deep distress of a people ruled with the iron sceptre of conquest. The lot of the negro slave, compared with that of the Irish helot, was happiness itself. Both were subject to the capricious cruelty of mercenary task-masters and unfeeling proprietors; but the negro slave was well-fed, well clothed, and comfortably lodged.
"At that instant I heard the crashing of the leaves in the wood, for the air was exceedingly still. I knew that my companions were at hand. 'Fly, I cried; 'fly. If they come I cannot save thee, royal though I be. Fly. "'And wouldest thou save me! said the Helot in surprise. "'Ay, with my own life. Canst thou doubt it? Lose not a moment. Fly.
I felt gratitude, too, for him who had saved me. I could have embraced my sable companion, black and fierce as he was, like a brother. We sat side by side upon the log, and chatted gaily; gaily as men may whose future is dark and unsettled. Alas! it was so with both of us. Mine had been dark for days past; and his what was his, poor helot?
I said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We have done with them. If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic?
Still the Helot had in him the common sentiments of our nature. His state was servile and mean. It was not to be expected he would always remain content in his subjection to his superiors in social and civil life. More and more his discontent would menace the stability of the community.
The Regent turned with a frown to his foster-brother, as if surprised and irritated by his presumption in advising; and indeed of late, since Pausanias had admitted the son of the Helot into his guilty intrigues, Alcman had assumed a bearing and tone of equality which Pausanias, wrapped in his dark schemes, did not always notice, but at which from time to time he chafed angrily, yet again permitted it, and the custom gained ground; for in guilt conventional distinctions rapidly vanish, and mind speaks freely out to mind.
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