This Is Sparta?
Conflicted: A History Podcast
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The Spartans and the Helots
The spartans had a massive slave population. The helots were made up of the populations of neighboring greek states that the spartans defeated in war and then brought back home for the purpose of forced labor. Just as the wealth of the antibellum south was built on the backs of kidnapped africans, the wealth and power of sparta was made possible by the subjugation and enslavement of their neighbors. This is something i think a lot of us forget about when talking about ancient cultures. Slavery was very, very common."
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