(anc. geog.), a maritime town of Laconia, situated between Trinacria and Acrae, in Pausanias's time in ruins. The district was called Helotea, and the people Helotes, Helota, Heloi, and Helotes, by Stephanus; and Helota, by Livy. Being subdued by the Lacedemonians, they were all reduced to a state of public slavery, or made the slaves of the public, on these conditions, viz. that they neither could recover their liberty nor be sold out of the territory of Sparta. Hence the term helotism, in Harpocration, for being in a state of slavery; and hence also the Lacedemonians called the slaves of all nations whatever helotes. Heloticus is the epithet.