MacTheWolf (imported) wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2010 3:23 am
At the height of its power in 400 BCE, the Greek city-state of Sparta 25,000 citizens and 500,000 slaves. In any other society, the slaves might have revolted but the Spartans were a warrior state which believed a warrior must either come with his shield on be carried home dead upon it.
While I enjoy a little S&M as much as the next Tranny, I have to nitpick a bit on your history. The numbers you refer to are for the Spartan Citizens vs the helots, a group corresponding to the serfs and peasants of medeival England and Europe (and which persisted in Eastern Europe and Russia well into the 19th century.) While bound to the land and certainly not free in the modern sense, they were definately considered a class above chattel slaves. In terms of chattel slave, those owned and subject to individuals, the Spartans are believed to have had far fewer than Athens and nowhere near the wholesale numbers the Romans owned. And the ratio between helots and citizens in Sparta is not as high as the corresponding ratio between serfs and aristocracy in medieval Europe or Russia.
Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece
Spartan slaves
Spartan citizens used helots, a dependent group collectively owned by the state. It is uncertain whether they had chattel slaves as well. There are mentions of people manumitted by Spartans, which was supposedly forbidden for helots, or sold outside of Lakonia: the poet Alcman;[127] a Philoxenos from Cytherea, reputedly enslaved with all his fellow citizens when his city was conquered, later sold to an Athenian;[128] a Spartan cook bought by Dionysius the Elder or by a king of Pontus, both versions being mentioned by Plutarch;[129] and the famous Spartan nurses, much appreciated by Athenian parents.[130]
Some texts mention both slaves and helots, which seems to indicate that they were not the same thing. Pseudo-Plato in Alcibiades I cites "the ownership of slaves, and notably helots" amongst the Spartan riches,[131] and Plutarch writes about "slaves and helots".[132] Finally, according to Thucydides, the agreement that ended the 464 BC revolt of helots stated that any Messenian rebel who might hereafter be found within the Peloponnese was "to be the slave of his captor", which means that the ownership of chattel slaves was not illegal at that time.
Most historians thus concur that chattel slaves were indeed used in Sparta, at least after the Lacedemonian victory of 404 BC against Athens, but not in great numbers and only amongst the upper classes.[133] As was in the other Greek cities, chattel slaves could be purchased at the market or taken in war.
However, as a sexual fantasy, the Spartan Master is right up there with the Nazi. I can see Bernie Ecclestone caught in a sex tape with a couple of hookers dressed up as Spartans.
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