HELOTS

(Gr. %lxuTcti.) In Ancient History, the slaves of the Spartans, who consisted originally of the Achaean inhabitants of Laconia, who were subdued by force of arms by the Dorian invaders. The name was derived from Helos, a town of Laconia, of which the inhabitants were thus reduced to servitude; but to this cla were afterwards added the Me enians, who still clung to their native soil after its subjugation by the Spartans, They were employed either as domestic slaves, cultivators of the land, or in the public w orks; and though they do not appear to have been treated ordinarily with much severity, yet the recollection of their former state urged them frequently to revolt, while their numbers rendered them so formidable to their masters as to drive the latter to schemes of the most abominable treachery for their repre ion. (See particularly Miilier's Hist, uf the Dorians; Wachsmuth, Hist. Ant. oj the Greeks (transl.) i.323.) [s. 561]