6. The number of the Helots may be determined with sufficient accuracy from the account of the army at Platæa. We find that there were present in this battle 5000 Spartans, 35,000 Helots, and 10,000 Periœci.(169) The whole number of Spartans that bore arms, amounted on another occasion to 8000, which, according to the same proportion, would give 56,000 for the number of Helots capable of bearing arms, and for the whole population about 224,000. If then the state of Sparta possessed 9000 lots there were twenty male Helots to each (although, as we saw above, a single lot could probably maintain a larger number), and there remained 44,000 for the service of the state and of individuals. The account of Thucydides, that the Chians had the greatest number of slaves of any one state after the Lacedæmonians,(170) does not compel us to set the amount higher, because the great number of slaves in Ægina disappeared when that island lost its freedom, and Athens during the Peloponnesian war certainly did not possess 200,000 slaves. The number of Periœci able to bear arms would, according to the above proportion, only amount to 16,000; but we must suppose that a larger portion of them remained behind in Peloponnesus: for since the Periœci were possessed of 30,000 lots (though of less extent), there must have been about the same number of families, and we thus get at least 120,000 men; and upon the whole, for the 3800 square miles of Laconia, a suitable population of 380,000 souls. From this calculation it also results, that, according to the population to be maintained, the estates of the Spartans (πολιτικὴ χώρα)(171) must have amounted to two-thirds of all the tillage-land in the country. This arrangement could not have been attended with any difficulty after the conquest of the fertile territory of Messenia, when the number of lots was doubled,(172) and the area of each was perhaps increased in a still greater proportion. For when the Spartans had (as it appears) dislodged the Doric Messenians, and conquered their country, a few maritime and inland towns (Asine, Mothone, Thuria, and Æthæa) were indeed suffered to remain in the possession of Periœci; but the best part of a country so rich in tillage-land, plantations, and pastures,(173) passed into the hands of Spartan proprietors, and the husbandmen who remained behind became Helots.(174) It was these last in particular who, during the great earthquake in 465 B.C., took possession of the towns of Thuria and Æthæa, fortified the strong hold of Ithome, and afterwards partially emigrated.(175) If however this insurrection had been common to all the Helots, as Diodorus relates, how could the Spartans have afterwards allowed the insurgents to withdraw from the country, without entirely depriving the land of its cultivators? After the battle of Leuctra also, it was not the Laconian, but the Messenian Helots who revolted,(176) and were without doubt the chief promoters of the re-establishment of