Nabis and helots
Abstract
The paper deals with the policy of the Spartan king Nabis towards the helots. The significant differences between the social policy of Nabis and that of his predecessors, the kings-reformers Agis IV and Cleomenes III, are shown. The author comes to the conclusion that Nabis used an entirely new principle of replenishment of the citizen body. He freed some helots and made them full-fledge citizens. However, Nabis did not manage to destroy helotage completely, although he sought to do this. Accepting the helots and foreigners as full-fledge members of the citizen body, Nabis has created an entirely new type of citizen-subject who was devoted not so much to the state as to the king personally. Nabis’ radical social reforms have abolished the archaic principles of forming the citizen body, and at the same time Lycurgian Sparta has finally come to an end, transformed, to a greater extent, into a monarchy of already the Hellenistic pattern.
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