262 1 HE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



by the Greeks everywhere as a different order of 

 beings from themselves. Those taken by them in 

 v^ar were regularly reduced to slavery. The slave 

 population created in this way was increased by 

 the slave traffic carried on w^ith the East until the 

 slave population of Greece was several times as 

 great as the free population. The whole Hellenic 

 world, in fact, even in the days of its greatest 

 magnificence, was one vast pen of slaves. Almost 

 every freeman of Attica was a slave-owner. Out 

 of a population of about five hundred thousand, 

 four hundred thousand were slaves. It was con- 

 sidered a real hardship by the Greeks to be com- 

 pelled to get along with less than a half-dozen 

 slaves. In Corinth and ^Egina there were ten 

 slaves to one freeman. In Sparta the slaves were 

 the vanquished Helots, the original inhabitants 

 of the Peloponnesus, whom the Spartans had 

 conquered and reduced to chains in early times. 

 Their lot was particularly horrible. They were 

 the property of the state, and were distributed to 

 the Spartan lords by lot. ' They practically had 

 no rights v^hich their masters felt bound to re- 

 spect. If one of their number displayed unusual 

 powers of either body or mind, he was secretly 

 assassinated, as it was deemed unsafe to allow 

 such qualities to be fostered in the servile class. 

 It is affirmed [by Thucydides] that, when the Helots 

 grew too numerous for the supposed safety of the 

 state, their numbers were thinned by deliberate 

 massacre of the surplus population ' (4). The 

 conception of human slavery entertained by the 



