That the males also were not exported like cattle, than which they were far worse treated, was owing simply to the calculation, that it would be more profitable to retain them. For, as the Spartans possessed estates, which personally they never cultivated, the Helots, who equally belonged to them, were stationed throughout the country upon those estates, which it was their business to till for the owners. To live it was of course necessary that they should eat, and therefore a portion of the produce was abandoned to them, according to Tyrtæos,[168] the half, a division which must have borne very hard upon them, since their numbers were five times greater than those of the Spartans.[169] However, even in this arrangement, the learned historian discovers something to praise “as this quantity had been definitively settled at a very early period (to raise the amount being forbidden under very heavy imprecations) the Helots were the persons who profited by a good and lost by a bad harvest, which must 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.”[170] But on the _res rusticæ_ the notions of this writer are somewhat confused. For in another place he remarks that, owing to the “usurpations of the successive conquerors of Peloponnesos, agriculture was kept in a constant state of dependence and obscurity, so that we seldom hear of the improvement of the country, which is a necessary part of the husbandman’s business.” It therefore did _not_ flourish in Laconia. No, says the historian, that is not the conclusion we must come to, for, notwithstanding that we never hear of any improvements in it, “agriculture was always followed with great energy and success!”[171] ----- Footnote 168: Franck. Callin. et Tyrt. p. 193. In Attica the θῆτες, paid a sixth of the produce to the Eupatridæ, whose land they rented. Plut. in Sol. § 13. But this it should be remarked was considered one of the oppressive acts of the aristocracy. Ælian gives precisely the same account as Tyrtæos, (Var. Hist. vi. 1,) where see the note of Perizonius. Cf. Crag. De Rep. Laced. l. i. c. 11. p. 71. Footnote 169: Herod. ix. 28. They were in fact far more numerous in proportion to the citizens than anywhere else in Greece, and next to them in number were the slaves of the Chians. Thucyd. viii. 40. Cf. Clint. Fast. Hellen. t. ii. p, 411. Footnote 170: Dorians, i. 32. Footnote 171: Dorians, i. 86. -----