290 Alexander Thein
rebellion, that a Messenian ethnic identity became a requirement. The ethnic claims of
the rebels gave legitimacy to an uprising that could otherwise only be categorized as a
servile revolt (noted by Luraghi 2002a: 60, 2008: 199–200). In my view, it is there-
fore best to assume a helot revolt that evolved into an ethnic uprising. It tends to be
assumed by scholars that the rebel identity of Messenian ethnicity emerged in a period
of unrest before the Spartan earthquake, and some ancient writers took a similar view.
Plato, for example, states thatMessenianunrest was constant (Leg. 777c, cf. 692d, 698e
for a supposed revolt in the 490s, with Luraghi 2008: 173–82), while Aristotle speaks
of endemichelotunrest (Pol. 1269a, 1272b, cf. Thuc. 4.80.3). However, case studies
from modern history have shown that social, religious, or ethnic polarization is often the
outcome rather than the cause of civil war (Kalyvas 2006: 74–81).
The Spartan narrative of the Ithome revolt as a helot uprising was accepted by the
Greek states that sent military assistance (e.g. Thuc. 3.54.5 on the Plataeans), but at
the end of the war the Delphic oracle adopted a rather less committed position when it
pronounced that the rebels were “suppliants of Ithomaean Zeus” (Thuc. 1.103.2, Paus.
4.24.7). There is also a subtle shift in the terminology used by Thucydides. He opens
his narrative of the revolt with a statement on the helot identity of the majority of the
rebels. He also acknowledges the ethnic claims of the rebel helots (1.101.2). However,
in the rest of his treatment of the revolt, he avoids the polarized labels “Messenians” and
“helots” in favor of the neutral formula “those on Ithome” (1.101.3, 1.102.1, 1.103.2).
This indicates his opinion that the rebels were no longer truly helots but not yet fully
Messenians. It is not until the rebels leave Ithome for Naupactus that they appear in his
narrative as true Messenians (2.9.4). Thucydides seems to describe a servile revolt that
became an ethnic uprising, and on two later occasions he focuses on its origins and refers
simply to the “helot revolt” at the time of the Spartan earthquake (2.27.2, 4.56.2).
In the tenth year of the Ithome revolt (probably 456/55), the rebels agreed to a truce
with the Spartans, which stipulated that they leave the Peloponnese with their wives
and children and never return; anyone found to have violated these terms was liable to
become the personal slave of his captor (a fate worse than helotry). Thus, the “suppliants
of Ithomaean Zeus” were spared but defined by the Spartans as helots (Thuc. 1.103.2).
This definition denied the ethnic dimension that had become a reality of the revolt by its
end. At the start of the revolt, Mount Ithome had perhaps been no more than an asylum
for runaway helots with no group identity or unity of action (Figueira 1999: 234–5; cf.
Ducat 1990: 137–40). However, once they were established on the mountain, the rebels
could look to the past, to the Messenians whose expulsion from Ithome was recorded in
a poem of Tyrtaeus (fr. 5). Potentially, it was by evoking the memory of this 20-year war
against Sparta, during their own 10-year siege, that the Ithome rebels were able to reject
their status as suppliant helots to become Messenians.
The Messenians of Naupactus
The Ithome rebels departed with their lives from the Peloponnese and were settled at
Naupactus, a town on the northern side of the Gulf of Corinth recently acquired by
the Athenians (Thuc. 1.103.3, cf. Diod. 12.44.3, Paus. 4.24.7). Here, they became the
“Messenians in Naupactus.” The label is attested in contemporary and later sources, and