remainder was to the helot and his family. The helots lived a miserable life for they were laboring hard and treated poorly. The helots, whose marriages and children were not so strictly controlled by the state, were the largest class and hated their masters. The only reason that the helots stayed under the control of the Spartans was due to their strong military government that discouraged any rebellion.The Spartan government was an odd type of government, but it overwhelmingly was one of stability. The Spartans, in fact, had the most stable government in the history of ancient Greece. Two kings who ruled jointly as a dual monarchy headed the Spartan government. They serve as high priests and leaders in war. Each king acted as a check on the other. There was something comparable to a cabinet composed of five Ephors, or overseers, who exercised general guardianship over law and custom and in later times came to have an even greater power. The legislative power was established in the assembly of Spartan citizens and in a senate, or counsel, of thirty elders consisting of the two kings and twenty-eight other men chosen from the citizens who had passed the age of sixty. Because the Spartan land system was another equally unconventional system. The Spartan homoios devoted themselves to the military, in return the government gave pay and rations a certain amount of land and enough helots to cultivate the land. The government also provided a lord that was allotted a sufficient amount of natural products to support him and his family and to make the monthly contributions back to the government. It was the right of a citizen to obtain this land although he was not the absolute owner of the land, but he and the government owned the land.The Spartan government was founded on the principle that the life of every individual, from the moment of birth, belonged absolutely to the state. Due to the new government the society of ...
