Battle of Leuktra 371 BC

[PMBardunias]

Theopompus was in little doubt though (FGrHist 115):

Quote:
They are those who have been enslaved (katadedoulomenoi]) for a very long time by the Spartiates, some of them being from Messenia, while the Heleatai formerly inhabited Helos in Lakonike.

Or was he...

Theopompus F122: The Chians were the first Greeks after the Thessalians and Spartans to make use of slaves (douloi), but they did not aquire them in the same wasy as these. For the Spartans and Thessalians…recruited their slave populations from the Greeks who had previously inhabited the country they now control, the Spartans from the Acheans, the Thessalians from the Perrhaiboi and Magnetes: and they called these whom they enslaved respectively Helots and Penestai.

And as Pollux points out:

3.83 Between free men and slaves (douloi) are the Lakonian Helots, the Thessalian Penestai, the Mariandynian Dorophoroi, the Argive Gymnetes, and the Sikyonian Korynephoroi.

Thus something less than free and more than slaves- serfs. The concept is not all that foreign to greece, merely the degree and the amount of negative attention paid to it by Sparta's foes.

[quote]FgrHist 348F4: They called the Marianynoi (of Herakleia Pontica) Drorphoroi (gift-bearers) to take away the sting of the word “slavesâ€