noted antonis "the long wars" and "the greco-persian wars"!
the perioikoi were seen as a bit second class citizens, but by no means slaves.
they were free but not free enough to express an opinion of their own in a very serious
state matter. the perioikoi were made from greek citizens, but i think that the difference is that
they were born in the larger area of Lakonia, which is the place that the city of sparta is located.
they were ussaly blacksmiths, clothiers and generally founded the absolute necessary things that
the spartan elites needed. the strange thing is that the spartans refused anything made by heilots
(because heilots had no taste
), except of course if the production of such materials
where the passed to perioikoi, like bronze or iron from the mines that were pretty rich minerals.
the problem with sparta was that the city was very big and the pure spartans were
in the best of times only abut 8 or 9 thousand, that made a very small percentage of the
overall population so they had to be constantly prepered for any event of uprising.
the way that they usually grew in power was by submitting a city fear or war
and then allying itself with them.. they formed something of a coallision. in ancient greece the theme of
war was more complicated than the more "modern" term of total war. it was very unusual
to exterminate completelly an opponent and burn his city to the ground thus giving him
no opportunity to recover. it was ussualy just a battle between armies that was off course very violent,
but then the matter was settled, there were no attrocities in common people and cities were
left to recover. this was changed when the pelopponesian war started, which was a
civil conflict between athens coalition, and the spartan coalition. then attrocities were commited from
both sides making it a kind of "total war".
i didn't know the heilots were typed in english helots. i'm such an idiot.
