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by spaced-out 1745 days ago
>"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"

Except, as the author points out, the Spartan system that he's criticizing requires the Spartiates to have a plantation of helots to support them so they can spend all their time training for battle. A man in ancient Sparta could only be a Spartiate if they had a plantation of helots (if they lose their plantation they lose their status as a citizen), so the helots were just as much a part of Spartan society as they were.