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by bivargen 1645 days ago
Apologies for seemingly misunderstanding your post and in turn not making my point very clear! But, surely “spartiate” (or rather Σπαρτιάτης) isn't a made up word? Also, as I understand your reply the classical sources exclusively use that word for the “homoioi”? If so I understand your original point and have learned something new today.

And a small edit: It was your last parenthesis that confused me, I would have written it as:

“or even "Spartiate", a term distinguished by the author of the blog as distinct from "Spartan"…”

1 comments

Apology accepted. I'm not a native English speaker as you are not a native Greek speaker. Which btw should give you pause before trying to teach me a lesson about my language. I've deleted a comment that made that point more forcefully and I'll now leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out how I know you're not a native Greek speaker.

"Homoioi" (όμοιοι) means "equals" or "peers". That's what Spartans considered each other and they'd use that word in context, but used the demonym "Spartan" to refer to their fellow free citizens of Sparta as did everybody else. The helots were called either helots or ..."the Spartans' slaves".