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HELOS

Volume 5 · 109 words · 1810 Edition

in Ancient Geography, a maritime town of Laconia, situated between Trinaus and Acrae, in Pausanias's time in ruins. The district was called Helotea, and the people Helotes, Helote, Helei, and Heleate, by Stephanus; and Iloite, 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 *Helots*, in Harpocration, for being in a state of slavery; and hence also the Lacedaemonians called the slaves of all nations whatever *helotes*. *Heloticus* is the epithet.