#helots

mfs after ending up as a spartan Helot:

Three takes place in Ancient Sparta in the year 364 BC.  It follows three helots names Klaros, Damar and Trepander.  They manage to survive as well as three helots can; each day's being its own small blessing.  One night, after their master Eurytos forces them and their fellow helots to get drunk and dance for his amusement, they kill their master and his Spartiates in revenge for massacring their fellow helots.  Now the three helots are on the run.  Danger lurks around every corner as they are pursued by their master's son, Nestos, and a band of 300 Spartan warriors.

So yeah, this comic is, in many ways, intended to be the antithesis to Frank Miller's (in)famous comic-turned-movie 300.  Kieron Gillen said that he was inspired to write this comic because he found 300 to be hypocritical, with how the Spartans bragged about fighting for freedom, and yet kept slaves.  From the very first pages we get a sense of this.  We begin with some helots picking olives, but then they're massacred by Spartans as part of the Krypteia.  Krypteia was an annual festival where Spartans were allowed to kill helots just for fun.  The Spartans did this to cull the helots, and prevent and slave revolts or other uprisings.  It also did a lovely job of keeping the helots in constant fear.

I suppose I ought to explain what helots are.  Helots were slaves who did all of the agricultural work, and other undesirable jobs, in Sparta.  To say that it sucked to be a helot would be a massive understatement.  Besides the Krypteia, there were several other ways to be killed.  For example, when young Spartans trained to be warriors they had a final exam to take.  However, if they successfully murdered a helot they automatically passed the final exam.

You don't really see many historical fiction comics, at least in America; it's a different story in France and Japan.  So, this comic was quite a treat, and there's a very strong commitment to historical accuracy.  At the end of the comic there are several pages devoted to explaining the reasoning behind different panels of the comic, and the historical research behind them.  There's also an extended conversation with a professor of Classical Antiquity who specializes in the study of Sparta.  

Even without all of that you can just feel that there was a lot of time, love and research put into this comic.  For example, at one point our trio of helots stop by a statue of Aphrodite, who is carrying a spear, and Trepander remarks that even the gods follow the insane way of life in Sparta.  The Spartans did indeed worship Aphrodite.  Ares was, unsurprisingly, Sparta's favorite god, but they did worship other gods.  Aphrodite is often depicted as Ares' lover, and you could make an argument that love and war spring from the same sorts of passions and emotions.  Also, all of the statues are depicted as fully painted in full color, just as they would have been in Ancient Greece. 

Another point of note is when we met Nestos' mother Gyrtias.  She's shown to clearly be the one in charge of the family plantation, especially after Eurytos is killed. Women in Sparta enjoyed quite a bit more freedom than most of the other city-states of Ancient Greece.  They managed the farms and estates while the men were off fighting wars and waging battles.  

Then there's the armor the Spartans wear.  Nine times out of ten, when you see Ancient Greek helmets they tend to be Corinthian helmets.  Corinthian helmets were the ones that covered almost all of the face, and often had plumes on the top.  Those appear here, but they're always shown to be older, more antiqued armor inherited from previous generations.  The overwhelming majority of the Spartan warriors wear opened-face conical pilos helmets; which is what most Spartans wore at the time of the story.  

Overall, the way that Sparta feels in this comic is a nation past its prime.  It's been almost 100 years since the famous Battle of Thermopylae.  Sparta's glory days are behind it, and everyone in positions of power are keenly aware of this.  That's why 300 warriors are sent after the three helots.  Even a rebellion that small could have major ramifications for Sparta's waning way of life.   

Have you read Three? If so, what did you think?

Historia Civilis did a video on it and I love his videos, so go watch it, but I’m going to write about it anyway.

Spartan citizens were forbidden by law from trade and manufacture. Manual labour was done by the helots, an enslaved population, and the Perioikoi who were subjects of a higher level than the Helots.

The helots were ritually abused and mistreated by the Spartans which lived in a constant state of anxiety that their slaves would rebel. According to Plutarch, the helots had war declared on them every autumn so that members of the Spartan Krypteia, a sort of security force or secret police, could murder helots at any moment without any legal or spiritual repercussions. Killing helots was the go-to method for population control.

Spartan society was largely designed around viewing themselves as foreign invaders that need to keep a hold of their slaves at all costs. The Spartans were massively outnumbered by their slaves. By some accounts 3 to 1, by others 7 to 1, or even more. With that kind of demographic, spartan lifestyle was subsidized to the point that Spartans almost never had to work for a living. Their chief concerns were warfare, politics, management and how to break the spirit of their helot slaves.

Depending on what historian you ask, the treatment of the helots ranges from being in line with how Greeks treated slaves in general to outright waging constant ideological warfare on them to keep them docile and subjugated. Not that they’re mutually exclusive.

So yeah, the Spartans were really shitty to their slaves and their culture was kind of demented. One of the most horrific stories comes from Thucydides, a Greek general and historian. I’m mentioning that he was a Greek general because that should give cause for taking his story with a bit more NaCl than usual, but yes, here it goes:

The helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished.

Made up a Floaty Spooky Spell Boi and a little floaty Chaos Familiar for Necromunda