[fishtoaster]

Iirc that series addresses this critique in some depth, pointing out that sparta was particularly awful even by the standards of other greek states. Another interesting bit was how it's historically rare for slave-owning societies to have more than 50% of their population enslaved. Since sparta was closer to 80% enslaved people, they relied on particularly brutal methods to keep down the regular slave revolts, making them considerably crueler than their contemporaries.

[throwaway20371]

> Another interesting bit was how it's historically rare for slave-owning societies to have more than 50% of their population enslaved

Probably worth noting, then, that in 1860, South Carolina and Mississippi had over 50% population enslaved, and four more states over 40% population enslaved.

Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations, I'm curious whether Spartans were more or less like Americans in this regard. A glorious empire built on brutality and moral superiority.

[chuckee]

> Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations

Not as cruelly as Arab-owned slaves (the trans-Saharan slave trade started in 650 AD, which is pretty close to ancient). Despite importing as much or more slaves than both Americas, there is barely any Black presence in North Africa. Try to imagine why.

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-tcc-worldciv2/chapter/...

[CyanBird]

> Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations

I'd recommend you to actually read on the absolute horror the Helots had to go through

Only French Haití or Congo Free State can come to mind as being similar, the Helots were very different even from other Greek states, let alone Rome, Egypt or Cartage

[suifbwish]

I thought we were talking about Sparta. Why not bring up other unrelated stuff while you are at it.

[thaumasiotes]

> Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations

What?

[cmrdporcupine]

Roman slaves at least had a path to freedom. Or a good portion of them did. Many (not majority) became citizens eventually (or their children did) and many in fact became quite prosperous. Their slavery wasn't based on racial status, but on class, and slavery wasn't considered genetically predetermined, but a product of status and conquest. "Graduation" out of slavery was actually possible.

American slavery being built on "race" and white supremacy offered no such path. Even "mixed race" descendants suffered. Even after slavery was abolished, former slaves were (and often are) still treated abhorrently.

[ALittleLight]

I recall a single incident from Roman history where Crassus crucified 6,000 slaves on the Appian Way. Things like this make me think you can't easily quantify which slavery was the worst. Perhaps it was easier, in some contexts in Rome, to earn freedom, but perhaps you were more likely to be crucified too.

[thaumasiotes]

> "Graduation" out of slavery was actually possible.

This is also true of American slaves.

> Their slavery wasn't based on racial status, but on class, and slavery wasn't considered genetically predetermined, but a product of status and conquest.

So is this. You think the child of a free black was enslaved?

[Hizonner]

> This is also true of American slaves.

Bullshit. By the 19th century (which is the century everybody talks about) it was almost legally impossible to free a slave in the American south (things like, say, a $200 tax in Florida... which was more money than most people saw in a year).

Even when possible it was essentially never done.

> So is this. You think the child of a free black was enslaved?

In many of the US slave states, if you were a free black person, regardless of who your parents were, you had to either leave the state within a fixed time, or you would be enslaved. So, yes.

[metalliqaz]

enslaved to whom?

[thaumasiotes]

> By the 19th century (which is the century everybody talks about) it was almost legally impossible to free a slave in the American south (things like, say, a $200 tax in Florida... which was more money than most people saw in a year).

Believe it or not, most slaves were owned by fairly wealthy people.

[barry-cotter]

Slavery has always meant a kind of subjugationa and social death but slavery in continental North America was probably among the best ever in terms of material living conditions. Most slaves in agricultural societies were always agricultural, and were worked to death, like in the Caribbean. That's how plantation agriculture worked, from Roman latifundia onward. Black slaves in wht's now the US had enormous natural increase in their population, which is if not historically unprecedented, damn close. They were also taller and better nourished than all but the upper echeloons of European society. Obviously people prefer to be free but there are multiple axes of comparison and American and Roman slavery each look "better" on different axes.

[rileyphone]

In Sparta slaves were hunted as a rite of passage

[stickyricky]

Rome lasted for 2,100 years. I'm not sure you can generalize the quality of life of a free person, let alone a slave.

> Roman slaves at least had a path to freedom

You need to be specific. Are we comparing Connecticut in 1784 AD to Gaul in 50 BC? Or Connecticut in 1783 AD to Gaul in 59 BC? Because the two comparisons are very different.

[TimTheTinker]

OP speaks the truth. At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

In the Roman empire, selling oneself as a slave was even seen as a last resort when capital was urgently needed (like when a debt repayment was ordered by a magistrate and a person didn't have enough money and fungible possessions to pay it). Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

American racism was fueled in part by the abhorrent belief that Africans were of a separate race (i.e. subspecies) that was inferior in a Darwinian sense, thus dehumanizing them in people's minds. This sentiment appears sometimes in 1800s American literature. (And if I may say so, I think it bears a remarkable resemblance to some Nazi antisemitic propaganda.)

[ta1631233034]

Roman slavery is one of the most romanticised things on the internet. The number of slaves who could buy their way free was miniscule. Most slaves were worked to death on the farms and mines, and had about a 5-year life expectancy after capture. Sure, life was better for a handful of slaves, particularly well-educated Greek slaves, but for most slaves life was brutal and short.

People seem obsessed with declaring the US south as having some sort of so-much-worse slavery, but they view the past with pretty rose-coloured glasses. 'But it's not racism!' is a meaningless moral alteration to the act of raiding other lands, dragging people back to your lands, and working them to death in under a decade.

As for Roman opinions on racism, no, they weren't racists in the sense of the modern term, but they were still intensely bigoted and committed more than a few genocides. Our friend Jules came home bragging of killing a million Gauls and enslaving a million more and got social cachet for that. They didn't see Gauls as a difference 'race' (that's a modern construct) but they definitely saw them as an outgroup that needed to be dominated.

[OrvalWintermute]

> ...At least since the Roman empire, there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery. (not to exclude the East or the Arab world, I just don't know enough to comment on them)

So, you launch a massive generalization, and attempt to walk it back by opting out most of the world (Asia, the middle east/Arab World, but making no mention of Africa, or Oceania). While we broadly view slavery as a despicable practice, please don't practice selective historical revisionism to minimize the barbaric suffering experienced to this day in some countries, and the astronomical death rates in the sugar plantations.

Examples from Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective [1]

"Death rates among slaves in the Caribbean were one-third higher than in the South, and suicide appears to have been much more common. Unlike slaves in the South, West Indian slaves were expected to produce their own food in their "free time," and care for the elderly and the infirm."(

"The largest difference between slavery in the South and in Latin America was demographic. The slave population in Brazil and the West Indies had a lower proportion of female slaves, a much lower birthrate, and a higher proportion of recent arrivals from Africa. In striking contrast, southern slaves had an equal sex ratio, a high birthrate, and a predominantly American-born population".

"Slavery in the United States was especially distinctive in the ability of the slave population to increase its numbers by natural reproduction. In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, and Brazil, the slave death rate was so high and the birthrate so low that slaves could not sustain their population without imports from Africa. The average number of children born to an early nineteenth-century southern slave woman was 9.2—twice as many as in the West Indies."

Additionally, you have ignored that slavery is still active in a number of countries [2], [3], [4], [5]

Slavery is a practice worthy of contempt, still practiced, and modern.

[1] Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...

[2] https://www.mic.com/articles/82347/the-world-s-worst-countri...

[3] https://face2faceafrica.com/article/slavery-africa-today/3

[4] https://www.theclever.com/15-countries-where-slavery-is-stil...

[5] https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-oct-17-la-fg-wn-sl...

[TimTheTinker]

I have no disagreement with any of your points, though I don't think our statements otherwise conflict.

My knowledge of world history outside the West is scant. That's why I restricted my statements to the Western world.

[thaumasiotes]

Spain, Portugal, and Holland are all part of the Western world.

[thaumasiotes]

> Slaves could also buy their freedom, and were sometimes even given their freedom as a gift.

Again, this is not a difference between ancient slavery and American slavery. Why do you mention it?

> Of course, there were cruel masters as well as kind ones. But prior to the African slave trade, the institution itself wasn't remotely as brutal or morally abhorrent, because it wasn't built on a social commitment to racism.

Now it seems like you're specifically trying not to respond to the claim that American slaves received crueler treatment than ancient slaves did.

[Larrikin]

You're arguing that exceptions and rare occurrences in American slavery are equivalent to the norms in Rome and for some reason trying to make American slavery seem like it really wasn't all that bad.

Your style of responding also makes it seem like you're arguing the point that slavery wasn't all that bad in the US from a very specific view point

[thaumasiotes]

They're rare occurrences in American slavery and they're also rare occurrences in Rome.

As some other people have pointed out, if you look at objective indices of quality of life, the United States generally comes out as possibly the best place in all of history you could have been enslaved.

[wavefunction]

>there has been no form of slavery in the Western world anywhere near as brutal as American slavery

Absolutist statements like this rarely seem to hold true.[0] American slavery is European slavery as well. Europeans (both countries and individuals) benefited extremely handsomely from enslaving people in Africa and bringing them to their colonies in America. And even after they had finally outlawed slavery for themselves just a few scant decades before the US did, they kept buying that affordable slave-produced cotton and sugar and coffee and etc. from the Americas.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe

[throwaway20371]

Speaking specifically of Greeks and Romans. And in general, Ancient peoples did not consider slaves to be as animals, but American slave-owners often held the belief that they were sub-human and not more than talking beasts.

There was a class of Mycenaean slave that was close to a free man, who could own land and have status.

Greek slaves could be involved in every economic activity except politics. Slaves were bankers, craftsmen and tradespeople. Male slaves might be personal assistants, shield makers, cutlers, bedmakers, while female slaves would be textile weavers and bakers. Not only were slaves not seen as denegerate inferiors, they were expected to be able to take over their masters' business when needed. Some of the most famous and respected philosophers were slaves.

Slaves could earn wages, and use those wages to pay a fee to live and work alone, and even use their savings (or loans/gifts) to buy their freedom. Cretian slaves could own a house and livestock and pass it down to their family, which was also granted the same familial laws as freedmen.

Debt slavery was common until it was abolished; people basically could become serfs until they paid off their debts, and then become free again. Some slavery was limited to a period of time, and slaves had rights / could be involved in legal disputes, and so win freedom or other rewards.

Roman slaves perhaps were treated worse than Greek originally, and many more of them were used for agricultural labor, probably putting their experiences on par with American slaves. But as the Roman empire progressed, slaves gained many more rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome

Worth nothing also that a lot of Spartan "historical information" is more myth and bullshit than evidence-based. Spartans were masters of propaganda. Helots may have been treated like shit, but apparently a lot of the reputation was inflated or made up by later historical writers.

Helots could also be craftspeople, own land, raise crops, keep money, buy their freedom. They maintained family units and were less often dispersed than Greek slaves. Helot children born of Spartan citizen fathers would become members of the army as an intermediate rank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots

[hutzlibu]

The implications of 80% enslaved people are indeed very harsh.

Which makes this

"painting a portrait of a grim, evil empire."

quite accurate.

I cannot find much noble ideals in the "glorious" spartans.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

The idea that "Sparta" was close to "80% enslaved people" is confused and I hold the author of the linked article responsible for not clarifying the confusion.

"Sparta" is the name of the principal city of the city-state of Lacedaemon, which comprised the regions of Laconia and Messinia in the Peloponnese. The inhabitants of the city of Sparta are in ancient sources referred to as Lacedaemones ("Λακεδαίμονες") and are the people we, in the modern day, know as as Spartans or Spartiates ("Σπαρτιάται").

The people inhabiting the greater area of the Lacedeamonian city-state, the inhabitants of the settlements in Laconia and Messinia, were never referred to in any ancient text as "Spartans" or "Lacedaemones" and they were only referred to, to the extent they were ever mentioned, as "helots" ("είλωται") or, simply, as the Spartans' slaves. Any reference to those people as "Spartans", let alone "Lacedaemones" is a modern invention and only serves to deepen the confusion I highlight here. In fact, I am only aware of a single modern "source" that commits this confusing error: the blog post linked above. If we were to give those people a modern name devoid of political connotations, that would be "Lacones" ("Λάκωναι") or "Messinians" ("Μεσσηνοί"), the inhabitants of the regions of Laconia and Messinia.

So it makes no sense to say that "Sparta" was "80% enslaved people" or the other errors committed in the linked article. It might make sense to say that "Laconia and Messinia (resp. Lacedaemon) was 80% enslaved people", although that would greatly weaken the intended invective against Spartans. It would certainly make sense to point out that Spartans, i.e. the inhabitants of the city of Sparta, had a huge number of slaves in proportion both to their own numbers and in comparison to the number of slaves of other Greek city-states of the same historical period(s), but again that would not be a proper attack on the myth of Sparta, which is what is intended. Of course it makes every sense to point out the cruelty of Spartans, but in that case, if we call the helots "Spartans", also, the confusion only deepens.

All such nuance is left out of the article linked above which makes it very, very misleading and confuses people who are used to getting their knowledge of history from second- third- and further- hand accounts, like the one in the linked article, or the movie 300, etc. Unfortunately once something is elevated to mythical status there is nothing more profitable than to tear it down, even if this tearing down is based on the same poor knowledge of history that allowed it to be elevated in the first place.

[spaced-out]

>The idea that "Sparta" was close to "80% enslaved people" is confused and I hold the author of the linked article responsible for not clarifying the confusion.

...

>The people inhabiting the greater area of the Lacedeamonian city-state, the inhabitants of the settlements in Laconia and Messinia, were never referred to in any ancient text as "Spartans" or "Lacedaemones" and they were only referred to, to the extent they were ever mentioned, as "helots" ("είλωται") or, simply, as the Spartans' slaves.

He's referring to the entire Spartan state, which at that time included Messinia. It's accurate to say it was composed of ~80% enslaved people. That's clear if you read the article. The fact that most helots were from other ethnic groups doesn't change the fact that they were living under the rule of the Spartan state.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

There is no such thing as "The entire Spartan state". There is (well, was) the city-state of Lacedaemon and the city of Sparta. The two are confused because Lacedaemon is often synechdochically called "Sparta" and the people of the city of Sparta are usually called "Lacedaemones" in ancient sources. But the people in Laconia and Messinia (not just Messinia) were "helots", not "Spartans", not "Lacedeaemones" and not anything else.

So if you want to say that the people who lived in Laconia and Messinia were the slaves of the Spartans, which we call the helots, and that there many more times more helots than there were Spartans, then you're welcome, because that is accurate. But to say that "Sparta was closer to 80% enslaved people" as the OP says, is false.

[int_19h]

In modern parlance, "Sparta" refers to the entire polity, not just the city.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Yes, synecdochically and when it's clear from the context which one is meant. But when you say something like "Sparta was 80% slaves" it's not clear from the context and you have to clarify which one you mean, the city or the city-state. Otherwise you are only spreading confusion, just like the series of blog posts above.

And it is still the case that the helots were the slaves of the Spartans, that nobody called the helots "Spartans", and that nobody thought that "helots" were Spartans, not in any ancient source and not in any modern source I'm aware of outside the linked series of blog posts.

If you (or, you know, others) think this is wrong, you're welcome to show me where, in modern or ancient texts it says that "helots were spartans" and "sparta was mostly populated by slaves", or something similar -except of course for the scandalously revisionist blog posts we're discussing.

[int_19h]

It's still the case that 80% of the population of the Spartan state was slaves. That's what's relevant to this conversation; the rest is just sophistry.

[cwyers]

"Spartans can't be 80% slaves because the Spartans didn't consider their slaves to be Spartans" is perhaps a linguistic truth, but it requires an absurd literalism to keep banging that drum instead of understanding that he's talking about the society the Spartans built, which includes the helots. The Spartans owned the helots!

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> "Spartans can't be 80% slaves because the Spartans didn't consider their slaves to be Spartans"

That is not what I said. Why do you misquote me? This is what I said:

>> The people inhabiting the greater area of the Lacedeamonian city-state, the inhabitants of the settlements in Laconia and Messinia, were never referred to in any ancient text as "Spartans" or "Lacedaemones" and they were only referred to, to the extent they were ever mentioned, as "helots" ("είλωται") or, simply, as the Spartans' slaves.

Nobody in ancient times considered the helots to be "Spartans". This is in the same way that nobody in ancient times considered the slaves of the Athenians to be "Athenians" or the slaves of the Romans to be "Romans". And no historian in modern times does so, either. When speaking of the Gauls, subjugated by the Romans [1], no author, ancient or modern, cals them "Romans". For any ancient or modern culture that had slaves, the distinction is always there: the People of X on the one hand, and their slaves on the other.

Yet the author is deliberately muddying the waters playing on the confusion between "Sparta" the city-state and "Sparta" its capital city, and even invents new terms to refer to them: he calls "Spartiates" the free citizens of the capital city, and "Spartans" everyone else, a distinction impossible in the Greek language and unused by anyone except the author as far as I can tell.

All these deliberate confusions are the result of a perverse reading of history, clearly aimed at making an impression to people who are not familiar with the history of Sparta outside its depiction in popular media and it is clearly calculated to draw internet attention to the author's blog by riding on the coattails of the success of such popular media, and not to inform about history.

The only antitode I know against fudging and misdirection like this is to make language precise and clear.

>> The Spartans owned the helots!

Who said they didn't?

___________

[1] OK, not all of them.

[nsajko]

Sparta can also refer to the entire state. I think you're making a fuss out of nothing.

Also, Sparta wasn't just Spartiates and helots, you're forgetting about mothakes and perioikoi.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I thought so at first. I think poster got so caught up in explaining the Greek that he forgot to make his point.

For a while, it seemed like poster was arguing semantics vs actually informing the reader on why author could be wrong.

I'm not sure how to present it better, but I'd posit:

"Sparta, the city, was not 80% slaves. That stat only true about the state. This distinction only matters because the author is critizing sparta society on the basis that Sparta's seat of power was slave-cornucopia. But this is false. Sparta the city is mostly spartan citizens, making the author's criticism-by-sleight-of-hand dishonest"