Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 20:11:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Straight 
Subject: RE: (urth) Reading the Soldier books

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, James Jordan wrote:
> >Rostrum said:
> >I found the one of the major events of
> >Arete totally incomprehensible until someone clued me in to the historical
> >event it is based on.
> >Crush urges:
> >The links were nice. Thanks. But as for the Arete event in question, tell
> >us! Tell us!
> I, Nutria, will tell you. It's the scene at the end of the book, which
> hints that the helots were massacred by their Spartan owners, immediately
> after the Spartans freed them for helping fight in the battle. Which they
> were. But it's far from clear in the book what is going on. There are even
> missing pages!

Nutria is right, except the scene in question is in the middle of Arete,
at the end of the Part 1.

Supposedly true history: Spartan slaves were forbidden from touching
weapons under penalty of death, but the Spartans armed them for the war
with the Persians.  After the war, to address this contradiction, the
Spartans pretended they were going to free said slaves, but instead killed
them all.

--Rostrum


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