Chapter 7. Freedom for the Messenians? A note on the impact of slavery and helotage on the Greek concept of freedom Kurt A. Raaflaub 1 In 371 the Thebans defeated a Spartan army at Leuctra and destroyed the myth of Spartan invincibility. [1] In the winter of 370/69 Epameinondas led an army of Thebans and allies into Lakonia, devastated parts… Read more
Chapter 8. The Demography of the Spartan Helots Thomas J. Figueira The size of the Helot population under Spartan control in the classical period has not often been the focus of separate studies, although it has been an issue very often addressed in general appreciations of Spartan society and political history. Until recently, the estimates of Helot numbers have had an impressionistic coloration, serving to… Read more
Chapter 9. Helot Numbers: A Simplified Model Walter Scheidel The actual size of the Helot population at any particular point of Spartan history will forever remain unknown. The best we can hope for is a rough estimate of the number of Helots the klêroi of Lakonia and Messenia could have supported alongside a given number of Spartiates and their families. In the absence of ancient statistics,… Read more
Chapter 10. Spartiates, helots and the direction of the agrarian economy: towards an understanding of helotage in comparative perspective Stephen Hodkinson This paper is a first step in a project designed to study Sparta in comparative historical perspective, ancient to modern. [1] Modern thought has often followed ancient Greek and Roman sources in portraying Sparta as an exceptional society, somewhat different… Read more
Chapter 11. Reflections on helotic slavery and freedom Orlando Patterson This rich collection of essays tackles many vexing questions in the study of Spartan helotry and it would be rash of me—a professional interloper—to attempt a comprehensive commentary. I will, instead, focus on three issues which, as the specialists themselves here acknowledge, may benefit from a comparative perspective. These are: the problem of the nature of… Read more
The original printed version of this book was published in 2002 by the Center for Hellenic Studies. That printed version is to be replaced by the corrected online version that I present here. The page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (for example, “{3|4}” indicates the break between pages 3 and 4). There is now also a second edition of the online version, Nagy 2020. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Platos_Rhapsody_and_Homers_Music.2020… Read more
Chapter 1. Homer and Plato at the Panathenaia [1] By studying both direct and indirect references to the Panathenaia in the works of Plato, supplemented by occasional references in various other literary sources and in the attested epigraphical and iconographical evidence, we find opportunities for reconstructing what might be described as synchronic cross-sections or even “snapshots” of seasonally recurring occasions for the… Read more
Chapter 2. Epic as Music: Rhapsodic Models of Homer in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias [1] Plato’s Timaeus and Critias contain valuable references to the performative techniques of rhapsōidoi or ‘rhapsodes’ and to the compositional techniques of Homeric poetry. These techniques belong to the tekhnē ‘art’ known to Plato and his contemporaries as mousikē. [2] The word’s… Read more
Chapter 3 Humnos in Homer and Plato: Weaving the Robe of the Goddess [1] Pursuing an evolutionary model for the making of Homeric poetry, I have argued that this “making” needs to be seen diachronically as well as synchronically. An unexplored aspect of this “making” is “textualizing.” To develop the idea of textualization, let us turn to the metaphorical world of the… Read more
Appendix: Rhapsodes and Actors As argued in Ch. 1, there are parallelisms in the evolution of rhapsôidoi ‘rhapsodes’ and hupokritai ‘actors’. Even the terminology referring to rhapsodes and actors is parallel: for example, theatai ‘theater-spectators’ in Plato Ion 535d8 refers to the audiences who attend the performances of the rhapsodes. I disagree with Boyd 1994:112, who argues that Ion 535d1-5 refers not to epic rhapsodes but exclusively… Read more
