The main end of life for Sparta had been to keep the serfs in their place, in particular the non-Dorians and Messenians in the Eurotas valley. This outlook shaped the whole internal life of Sparta and materially helped to determine foreign policy. Undoubtedly, the Dorian migration had laid the foundation of a number of similar power structures elsewhere. Many powerful poleis had reduced to servitude the people living around them-subjugated Greeks or half-barbarians-but no other polis was able, as Sparta was, to orient its whole national and international life with a view to perpetuating this system. None of them lacked severity toward their serfs, but all of them lacked persistence and drive for the indispensable harmony and equalitarianism within the leading caste.

Documents about these matters for the periods in question are very meager. Still, the erstwhile master-serf relations were well-nigh or completely forgotten and already scarcely understood. They persisted with some clarity only on Crete and in Thessaly, and one can only conjecture to what extent the subjugated people elsewhere were half-free or still serf, part owners, hereditary tenants, bond servants or day laborers on the lands attached to the manors. Without civil rights and governed at the discretion of the polis, they apparently were not in a position to attract the attention of the chroniclers.

As to Crete, the designations transmitted to us give some clue to the different gradations of servitude. At any rate, when the island was Dorianized, it took on modes of life bearing much resemblance to those of Lacedaemon, and even though a political pluralism arose and the Cretan cities fought with each other, none of them called upon the serfs of the other cities to revolt. For, in general, the obedience of the serfs on the island seemed assured by the absence of any immediate neighbors.

In Thessaly, the so-called penestes were the ancient native Perrhabic and Magnesian people who yielded themselves as servants to the invading Thessalians so as to remain on the old accustomed clod of soil. In exchange for stipulated produce of the land, the Thessalians promised they would neither kill nor remove them. Some of these penestes were wealthier than their overlords, as now and then serfs were in recent Russian history because the ruling caste had lived in riot and revelry. Anyway, the lords of Thessaly and Crete exerted no pressure, as did Sparta, in seeking to force all the countries around to adopt the Spartan army system and oligarchical government in order to keep the subjugated peoples from getting restive. Also, neither Thessaly nor Crete aspired to be the teachers of Hellas.

Since the eighth century, the colonies owed their rise in part to the desire of the subjugated and oppressed people to flee from their poleis. But, having landed on some foreign coast, they acted no differently than their homeland oppressors, though to be sure toward barbarians or half-barbarians, who in turn became subject peoples without civil rights, though retaining the privilege of owning property.

Now and then this relationship is said to have come about in a friendly manner. When Heraclea was established in Pontus, the Mariandyni living in that area voluntarily accepted the rule of the Heracleotes in exchange for the guarantees of shelter and of not being sold abroad. Byzantium, on the other hand, treated the Bithynians as Sparta did the helots, and around Syracuse the Callicyrians or Cillicyrians were in similar servitude.

Aristotle rejects the whole system: A state relying on subjugated people cannot maintain an even keel. When treated gently these people become insolent and want equality with their masters; treated harshly they become malicious, treasonable, and upon occasion join with the underprivileged groups in the city itself. The Callicyrians did this when they made common cause with the Syracusan demos and were driving out the landholders until Gelon came to their aid and overthrew the Callicyrians, using the occasion to make himself master of Syracuse.

In spite of their moderate treatment, the penestes repeatedly rose in revolt when their Thessalian masters were at war with their neighbors. Aristotle finds it at least desirable that the enslaved people should be barbarians and not of the Greek race. In addition, he also indicates what changes were being brought about: More and more non-Greeks were bought as slaves and put out to farm land around a city-state.

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