And, by the time he was eighteen, had been hammered into proper helotry.

He freed many slaves and made them citizens, but left the institution of helotry in place as part of the Lycurgan system which he was claiming to restore.

During the 8th and the 7th centuries BC, in the course of the two Messenian Wars the Spartans reduced an entire population to a pseudo-slavery called helotry.

Where the foreign supplier allows de facto exploitation of labor, domestic free-labor is unfairly forced to compete with the foreign exploited labor, and thus the domestic "working class would gradually be forced down to the level of helotry."