These accounts are sufficient to give a tolerably correct notion of the relation of the Helots to the Doric citizens of Sparta. Although it does not fall within the scope of the present work to enter upon a moral or political examination of the condition of Helotism, I may be allowed to subjoin a few observations. The Grecian states then either contained a class of bondsmen, which can be traced in nearly all the Doric states, or they had slaves, who had been brought either by plunder or commerce from barbarous countries; or a class of slaves was altogether wanting. The last was the case among the Phoceans, Locrians, and other Greeks.(134) But these nations, through the scantiness of their resources, never attained to such power as Sparta and Athens. Slavery was the basis of the prosperity of all commercial states, and was intimately connected with foreign trade; but (besides being a continued violation of justice) it was upon the whole of little advantage to the public, especially in time of war; and, according to the doctrine of the ancient politicians, it was both fraught with danger, and prejudicial to morality and good order. It must also be remembered, that nearly all the ties of family were broken among the slaves of Athens, with which the institution of bondage did not at all interfere;(135) and that in the latter the condition of the bondmen was rather determined by general custom; in the former, by the arbitrary will of individuals. Sparta had, indeed, some foreign slaves, but their number was very inconsiderable. Thus Alcman, the slave of Agesidas,(136) was the son of a slave from Sardis,(137) who had perhaps been brought by Cretan traders to the coast of Laconia.