If, however, the relation of Plutarch stood alone, its force would be less, though with no face could we reject it while admitting in other respects his favourable testimony. But from many authors, besides him, it is clear, that to demoralise the Helots was the constant policy of Sparta. Thus when the Thasians brought a number of useless dainties to Agesilaos and his army: “Give them,” said he, “to those Helots, whom it is better to corrupt than ourselves.”[194] Consistently with the same system, and the more completely to debase their minds, they were commanded to sing obscene songs and perform indecent jigs, while the Pyrrhic dance and every warlike lay was forbidden them. In proof of this, it is related, that when the Thebans, under Epaminondas, invaded Laconia, and made prisoners a number of the Helots, they commanded them to sing them some of the songs of Sparta, of Spendon, for example, or Alcman, or Terpander. But the Helots[195] professed their inability, observing, that the acquisition of those lays was forbidden them. In short, to adopt the words of Theopompos, they were at all times cruelly and bitterly treated;[196] deluded, sometimes, from the protection of sanctuary by perjury, and then coolly assassinated in contempt of religion and oaths, as in the case of those suppliants who took refuge in the temple of Poseidon at Tænaros.[197] ----- Footnote 194: Theopomp. ap. Athen. xiv. 74. Footnote 195: Plut. Vit. Lycurg. § 28. On their cruelty and perfidy towards the same unhappy men see Ælian. Var. Hist. vi. 1. Polyæn. i. 41. 3. Footnote 196: Critias, in fact, observes, that, as the freemen of Sparta were of all men the most free, so were the serfs of Sparta of all slaves the most slavish. Liban. Declam. xxiv. t. ii. p. 83, seq. Reiske. Footnote 197: Theopomp. ap. Athen. vi. 102 Ὅτε οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τοὺς ἐκ Ταινάρου ἱκέτας παρασπονδήσαντες ἀνέστησαν καὶ ἀπέκτειναν, (ἦσαν δὲ οἰκέται τῶν Εἱλώτων) κατὰ μῆνιν τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος σεισμὸς ἐπιπεσὼν τῇ Σπάρτη, τὴν πόλιν ἀνδρειότατα κατέσεισεν, ὡς πέντε μόνας ἀπολειφθῆναι οἰκίας ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς πόλεως. Æl. Var. Hist. vi. 7. Thucyd. i. 128. Suid. v. Ταινάριον. t. ii. p. 874, F. Pausanias, however, relates, that the suppliants in question were not Helots but Lacedæmonians. iv. 24. 5. vii. 25. 3. Cf. Capperonier, Recherches sur les Hilotes, Mem. de l’Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiii. p. 275. -----