be desired that our information were more diffuse.

VI. Perhaps no class of men in ancient times excite a more painful
and profound interest than the helots of Sparta. Though, as we have
before seen, we must reject all rhetorical exaggerations of the savage
cruelty to which they were subjected, we know, at least, that their
servitude was the hardest imposed by any of the Grecian states upon
their slaves [160], and that the iron soldiery of Sparta were exposed
to constant and imminent peril from their revolts--a proof that the
curse of their bondage had passed beyond the degree which subdues the
spirit to that which arouses, and that neither the habit of years, nor
the swords of the fiercest warriors, nor the spies of the keenest
government of Greece had been able utterly to extirpate from human
hearts that law of nature which, when injury passes an allotted, yet
rarely visible, extreme, converts suffering to resistance.

Scattered in large numbers throughout the rugged territories of
Laconia--separated from the presence, but not the watch, of their
master, these singular serfs never abandoned the hope of liberty.
Often pressed into battle to aid their masters, they acquired the
courage to oppose them. Fierce, sullen, and vindictive, they were as
droves of wild cattle, left to range at will, till wanted for the
burden or the knife--not difficult to butcher, but impossible to tame.

We have seen that a considerable number of these helots had fought as
light-armed troops at Plataea; and the common danger and the common
glory had united the slaves of the army with the chief. Entering into
somewhat of the desperate and revengeful ambition that, under a
similar constitution, animated Marino Faliero, Pausanias sought, by
means of the enslaved multitude, to deliver himself from the thraldom