Editing Helots (section)

=== A special case: ''mothakes'' and ''mothones'' ===
[[Phylarchus]] mentions a class of men who were at the same time free and non-citizens: the {{lang|grc|μόθακες}} / ''mothakes'', who had undergone the '''agoge'<nowiki/>'', the Spartan educational system.<ref>Apud Athenaeus, 6, 271e.</ref> Classical historiography recognizes that the helots comprised a large portion of these ''mothakes''. Nevertheless, this category poses a number of problems, firstly that of vocabulary.

The classical authors used a number of terms which appear to evoke similar concepts:
* {{lang|grc|μόθακες}} / ''mothakes'': a connotation of freedom, Phylarchos affirmed that they were free (''[[eleutheroi]]''), [[Claudius Aelianus]] (''Varia Historia'', 12, 43) that they could be citizens;
* {{lang|grc|μόθωνες}} / ''mothōnes'': a connotation of servility, the word designates slaves born to the home;
* {{lang|grc|τρόφιμοι}} / ''trophimoi'': pupils, adopted children, whom Plutarch classified among the ''xenoi'' (strangers);
* {{lang|grc|σύντροφοι}} / ''syntrophoi'': literally, "they who were raised with", that is to say, milk-siblings, given by Phylarchus as equivalent to ''mothakes'';
* {{lang|grc|παρατρέφονοι}} / ''paratrephonoi'' : literally, "those who were fed near you", signification rather different from the preceding (this word also applied to domestic animals).

The situation is somewhat complicated by a gloss of [[Hesychios of Alexandria]] which attests that ''mothakes'' were slave children ({{lang|grc|δοῦλοι}} / ''doũloi'') raised at the same time as the children of citizens. Philologists resolve this quandary in two ways:

* they insist on reading {{lang|grc|μoθᾶνες}} / ''mothãnes'', as a [[hapax]] for {{lang|grc|μόθωνες}} (Arnold J. Toynbee);
* the hypothesis that ''douloi'' has been interpolated by a copyist who confounded ''mothakes'' and ''mothônes''.

In any case, the conclusion needs to be treated carefully:

* the ''mothônes'' were young servants charged with domestic tasks for young Spartans during their education ([[Aristotle]], I, 633c); they remained slaves on reaching adulthood;
* the ''mothakes'' were an independent freeborn group of helots.