There appear to have been instances of Helots becoming comparatively wealthy in spite of the oppressions they endured: but so we have known peasants growing rich in the worst despotisms of the East, and such too was in the middle ages the case with the Jews, notwithstanding the terrible persecutions and cruelties they endured. This fact, therefore, only proves that no pressure of hardship or ill-usage can entirely destroy the elasticity of the spirit; and no doubt, like all slaves, the Helots sought to soften their miseries by the gratification which a sense of property procures even in bondage to the sordid mind.[172] “By means of the rich produce of the land, and in part by plunder obtained in war, they collected a considerable property, to the attainment of which almost every access was closed to the Spartans.”[173] But of what value is property to a man who is himself the property of another? Besides, the expression of the historian in this place seems calculated to lead to erroneous conclusions respecting the Spartans, who, so far from being debarred the means of amassing wealth,[174] rose frequently to extraordinary opulence, insomuch that this self-denying community came at length to be the richest in Greece.[175] To assume that the Helots, like the Thessalian Penestæ,[176] enjoyed means of augmenting their possessions superior to those permitted themselves by their masters, is to propagate an error which must vitiate our whole conception of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth. ----- Footnote 172: Herod. ix. 80. Plut. Cleom. § 23. Footnote 173: Dorians, ii. 32. Footnote 174: Cf. Herm. Polit. Antiq. § 47. Footnote 175: Χρυσίον δὲ καὶ ἀργύριον οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν πᾶσιν Ἕλλησιν ὅσον ἐν Λακεδαίμονι ἰδία. Plut. Alcib. i. t. v. p. 342. Footnote 176: Καὶ ἐκλήθησαν τότε μὲν, μενέσται ὕστερον δὲ πενέσται. καὶ πολλοὶ δὲ τῶν κυρίων αὐτῶν εἰσὶν εὐπορώτεροι. Eustath. ad Il. ν. t. ii. p. 933. 48. -----