The idea that "Sparta" was close to "80% enslaved people" is confused and I hold
the author of the linked article responsible for not clarifying the confusion.
"Sparta" is the name of the principal city of the city-state of Lacedaemon,
which comprised the regions of Laconia and Messinia in the Peloponnese. The
inhabitants of the city of Sparta are in ancient sources referred to as
Lacedaemones ("Λακεδαίμονες") and are the people we, in the modern day, know as as
Spartans or Spartiates ("Σπαρτιάται").
The people inhabiting the greater area of the Lacedeamonian city-state, the
inhabitants of the settlements in Laconia and Messinia, were never referred to
in any ancient text as "Spartans" or "Lacedaemones" and they were only referred
to, to the extent they were ever mentioned, as "helots" ("είλωται") or, simply,
as the Spartans' slaves. Any reference to those people as "Spartans", let alone
"Lacedaemones" is a modern invention and only serves to deepen the confusion I
highlight here. In fact, I am only aware of a single modern "source" that
commits this confusing error: the blog post linked above. If we were to give
those people a modern name devoid of political connotations, that would be
"Lacones" ("Λάκωναι") or "Messinians" ("Μεσσηνοί"), the inhabitants of the
regions of Laconia and Messinia.
So it makes no sense to say that "Sparta" was "80% enslaved people" or the other
errors committed in the linked article. It might make sense to say that "Laconia
and Messinia (resp. Lacedaemon) was 80% enslaved people", although that would
greatly weaken the intended invective against Spartans. It would certainly
make sense to point out that Spartans, i.e. the inhabitants of the city of
Sparta, had a huge number of slaves in proportion both to their own numbers and
in comparison to the number of slaves of other Greek city-states of the same
historical period(s), but again that would not be a proper attack on the myth of
Sparta, which is what is intended. Of course it makes every sense to point out
the cruelty of Spartans, but in that case, if we call the helots "Spartans",
also, the confusion only deepens.
All such nuance is left out of the article linked above which makes it very,
very misleading and confuses people who are used to getting their knowledge of
history from second- third- and further- hand accounts, like the one in the
linked article, or the movie 300, etc. Unfortunately once something is elevated
to mythical status there is nothing more profitable than to tear it down, even
if this tearing down is based on the same poor knowledge of history that allowed
it to be elevated in the first place.
