latro's manumission
The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 30 May 2003
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4012

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maa32 — 30 May 2003, 17:30

Crush asked me to post this on Wednesday (sorry for the delay, everyone)
Marc Aramini

> -----------------------------------------------
> As Wolfe says in his interview:
> "Then they held a ceremony which I described in detail, exactly as it was
> and they gave each Helot who was to be awarded his freedom as a climax of
> the ceremony a young Spartan as his companion to lead him through the
> ceremony. And at a given signal each companion killed that Helot that he was
> responsible for. And they were all killed except Latros who they did not
> intend to kill because he was not really a Helot. And he survived and all of
> the rest of them who had gone in the ceremony were butchered.  And they
> really were, this took place."
> 
> The identification of Latro's manumission with the event described by
> Thucydides (4:80) has always bothered me. Wolfe says the ceremony occurred
> exactly as he described. But this is what Thucydides says:
> 
> "In fact [the Spartans] were so frightened of [the helots] unyielding
> character and of their numbers that they had had recourse to the following
> plan. (Spartan policy with regard to the helots had always been based almost
> entirely on the idea of security.) They made a proclamation to the effect
> that the helots should choose out of their own number those who claimed to
> have done the best service to Sparta on the battlefield, implying that they
> would be given their freedom. This was, however, a test conducted in the
> belief that the ones who showed most spirit and came forward first to claim
> their freedom would be the ones most likely to turn against Sparta. So about
> 2,000 were selected, who put garlands on their heads and went round the
> temples under the impression that they were being made free men. Soon
> afterwards, however, the Spartans did away with them, and no one ever knew
> exactly how each one of them was killed." (translation by Rex Warner)
> 
> First of all, Thucydides tells this tale without saying when it happened and
> under what circumstances. He is merely using it to emphasize that the
> Spartans were glad to send a lot of the helots to war in Thessaly to get
> them out of Sparta during the Peloponesian War. Also, this story is
> significant because the Spartan commander Brasidas is about to make the same
> offer to the helots, which he will this time fulfill. But while the story
> probably rings true to Spartan's attitude and sense of honor toward the
> helots, the story smells like an urban legend. After all, the Spartan's
> essentially declared war on the helots every year as it was -- with an
> emphasis on eliminating any helot that was outstanding in anyway. Would such
> a public elimination be necessary? This is beside the point of course except
> that there is no evidence that this murder occurred in connection to the
> Persian war -- but none that it didn't.
> 
> Second, the event described by Thucydides did not occur "just as Wolfe
> described it". Other than the garlands, there are no real "details" of the
> murders except that they seem to have occurred some time after the ceremony
> and they seem to have occurred surreptitiously, not in one go. There is no
> mention of Spartans paired with each helot (each Spartan had seven helots
> after all -- so how could there have been enough to pair off?).
> 
> So, has Wolfe drawn from a different source here? or a second source?
> Perhaps one that Thucydides himself drew from?
> 
> -- Crush

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