have been to them an encouragement to industry and good husbandry; a motive which would have been wanting, if the profit and loss had merely affected the landlords. And thus (as is proved by the accounts respecting the Spartan agriculture),(113) a careful management of the cultivation of the soil was kept up. By means of the rich produce of the land, and in part by plunder obtained in war,(114) they collected a considerable property,(115) to the attainment of which almost every access was closed to the Spartans. Now the annual rent paid for each lot was eighty-two medimni of barley, and a proportionate quantity of oil and wine.(116) It may therefore be asked how much remained to the Helots themselves, after paying this amount of corn from each lot. Tyrtæus appears to give some information, where he describes the Messenian bondmen(117) “as groaning like asses under heavy burdens, and compelled by force to pay to their masters a half of the entire produce of the land.”(118) According to this account, the families of the Helots (of which many resided on one lot) would have retained only eighty-two medimni on an average, and the whole amount would have been one hundred and sixty-four. But this cannot be the institution of which Plutarch speaks; and Tyrtæus doubtless describes some oppression much aggravated by particular circumstances. For, assuming that the property of the Spartans amounted to two-thirds of the whole Laconian territory, which may be rated at three thousand eight hundred and forty square miles English, and three-fourths being deducted for hill, wood, pasture-land, vineyards, and plantations, we have two thousand eight hundred and eighty square miles for the nine thousand lots of the Spartans; each of which accordingly amounted to 72/225 of a square mile, or one hundred and ninety-two plethra; a space amply sufficient to have produced four hundred medimni,(119) which, after the deduction of the eighty-two medimni, would have supplied twenty-one men with double the common daily allowance, viz., one chœnix of bread. It is at least manifest that each lot would have been quite sufficient to maintain six or seven families of Helots. It must not, however, be supposed that the rent was precisely the same for all the lots of the Spartan territory. The different quality of the land made such a strict equalization impossible; not to mention that it would have entirely destroyed all interest in the possession. We even know that many Spartans were possessed of herds and flocks, from which they provided young animals for the public meals.(120) The proprietors, besides their share of the harvest, received from their lands, at particular periods, the fruits of the season.(121)