Spartans, who were outnumbered by the Helots, often treated them brutally and oppressively in an effort to prevent uprisings. Spartans would humiliate the Helots by doing such things as forcing them to get debilitatingly drunk on wine and then make fools of themselves in public.
Slaves in ancient Greece did not have any human or civil rights. They were tortured for different reasons; their owner could beat them whenever he wanted; when their testimony was needed for a lawsuit, they were tortured into confessing to their own guilt or incriminate someone else.
At the bottom were the helots: a slave class descended from those peoples who had resisted subjugation by Sparta. Because the helots were constantly rebelling, the Spartans attempted to control them by forming a secret society that annually murdered any helot suspected of encouraging subversion.
Though Sparta absorbed this population, it did not integrate the conquered people into society. Spartan society was separated into social classes, and conquered people were not given political rights or citizenship. Even lower than the conquered population was a group called the helots.
The slaves shared the gods of their masters and could keep their own religious customs if any. Slaves could not own property, but their masters often let them save up to purchase their freedom, and records survive of slaves operating businesses by themselves, making only a fixed tax-payment to their masters.
While most enslaved people remained in servitude until death, it was possible to be freed by a master – the process of manumission, or enfranchisement.
Basic garment of female slaves consisted of a one-piece frock or slip of coarse "Negro Cloth." Cotton dresses, sunbonnets, and undergarments were made from handwoven cloth for summer and winter. Annual clothing distributions included brogan shoes, palmetto hats, turbans, and handkerchiefs.
The female Spartan was honored as the equal of the male in her own sphere of power and authority and, even in the accounts of detractors, performed admirably. It could be argued, in fact, that the strength of the Spartan women allowed for the formidable reputation of the same in the Spartan men.
Spartan youths were ritualistically beaten and flogged.
One of Sparta's most brutal practices involved a so-called “contest of endurance” in which adolescents were flogged—sometimes to the death—in front of an altar at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.
Sparta's entire culture centered on war. A lifelong dedication to military discipline, service, and precision gave this kingdom a strong advantage over other Greek civilizations, allowing Sparta to dominate Greece in the fifth century B.C.
What made the Spartans paranoid was that the helots were ethnically homogeneous, had a collective identity, and worshiped their own gods. Their fear was further increased by the fact that their way of life was more dependent on slaves than any other Greek community of the time.
The helots were in a sense state slaves, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters could neither free them nor sell them, and the helots had a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.
HUNTING: Hunting was one of the most popular leisure activities for Spartans à the foothills of Mt Taygetos was an area known as 'Therai' meaning hunting grounds. ATHLETICS: the Spartans were renowned for their athletic abilities both men and women.
As we have seen, in most places, throughout the classical, the Hellenistic, and probably the Roman period, the punishment for a slave amounted to whipping with a set number of lashes (usually fifty but sometimes left to the magistrates to decide).
Athenian slave society was finally destroyed by Philip II of Macedonia at the battle of Chaeronea (338 bce), when, on the motion of Lycurgus, many (but not all) slaves were freed.
According to the Greek geographer Pausanias, the Helots hailed from a city called Helos. This city is said to have been conquered by the Spartans, and its inhabitants became their first slaves. Subsequent peoples enslaved by the Spartans were also called Helots.
The actual training of the Spartan youth was brutal, focusing on cultivating skills such as fighting, stealth, pain tolerance, as well as dancing, singing, and developing loyalty to the Spartan state.
Spartan warriors known for their professionalism were the best and most feared soldiers of Greece in the fifth century B.C. Their formidable military strength and commitment to guard their land helped Sparta dominate Greece in the fifth century.
The site hosted Sparta's brutal initiation ritual in which young boys were beaten to prepare them for military service, but there was more to it than warfare.
While Athenian women might have expected to marry for the first time around the age of fourteen to men much older than them, Spartan women normally married between the ages of eighteen and twenty to men close to them in age.
While they played no role in the military, female Spartans often received a formal education, although separate from boys and not at boarding schools. In part to attract mates, females engaged in athletic competitions, including javelin-throwing and wrestling, and also sang and danced competitively.
Spartan girls participated in the same physical fitness routines as the boys when young, even training with them at first, and were then educated in reading, writing, and mousike ("music") a term which included singing, dance, playing a musical instrument, and composing poetry.
Whipping, a common form of slave punishment, demanded the removal of clothing. For the female slave, this generally meant disrobing down to the waist. Although her state of half dress allowed the woman some modesty, it also exposed her naked breasts to all eyes.
“A lot of slave babies died during slavery because they weren't breast-fed. They were fed concoctions of dirty water and cows milk,” she said. Meanwhile, those children's mothers were giving white children their milk. And women reported that oral histories have been reinforced by modern technology.
The history and culture of black hair dates back to the 1400s, when the first documented slave trade occurred. Slaves wore elaborate hairstyles, but were soon forced to shave and cut off their hair, stripping them of the last piece of their identity as a way to control them.