This article argues for a more diverse approach to the appearance of enslaved persons in Greek historiography through an analysis of the Persian navy's battlefield tour of Thermopylae in Book 8 of Herodotus’ Histories. Previous approaches to slavery in Greek historiography have rightly commented on the cultural awkwardness to Greek authors of slaves’ extensive involvement in ancient warfare. However, this is only one aspect of how slaves featured in historiographical narrative. Herodotus continually problematizes the methods of enquiry and many characters within his work engage in enquiry-like activities. Book 8 itself is no different, with much of the action involving errors in human perception. The appearance of helots amongst the heroic dead at Thermopylae is intended both as a narrative reveal, since their presence has not previously been known to the reader, and as a comment on the contestation of Greek identity, which is framed at the start of Book 8 with a series of direct addresses to different groups of Greeks, all of whom take a different approach to their participation in the Persian Wars. Hence what appears to be an incidental detail can in fact be understood in the wider, thematic context of the Histories and especially that of the books concerning the Persian Wars.

As against the abiding popular image of the ever-dauntless Spartans, serious commentators have long recognized what a central part fear played in Lacedaemonian life: fear of the helots, fear of the laws, fear of defeat and dishonour and disgrace, without hope of respite this side of the grave. Yet the full implications of such a life, forever suspended most precariously ‘between shame and glory’ as Jean-Pierre Vernant put it, have not been drawn out, especially with respect to its supposed beneficiaries, the Spartiates, who were sacrificed to its merciless logic no less than those they were keeping under such brutal subjugation. This essay proposes to close the gap by fitting together the dispersed pieces and presenting a more comprehensive picture of the silent anxieties and hidden miseries of the vaunted masters of Sparta who purchased their dominion at so frightful a price, not only to others, but also to themselves.

The ancient Greek city-states were slave societies, but the institutions of slavery differed across them. The slaves of democratic Athens were foreigners bought as chattels labouring in agriculture, craftsmanship, banking, mining, and domestic services and were often given some limited freedoms and extra pay. On the contrary, the helots, the slaves of oligarchic Sparta, were indigenous of the lands they cultivated for their masters and were treated harshly. The study offers an economic explanation of the different slavery systems. Modelling the slaveholder as a profit maximiser, it attributes the different systems to differences in the probabilities of the slaves running away or revolting, the dependence of output on effort-intensive or care-intensive production technology, which depends on the fertility of the soil and affects whether the slave is treated kindly instead of harshly, and the cost of guarding slaves under different regimes.