Author’s Note and Acknowledgments 197
gent pólıs of the archaic age. As the notes to the third chapter of this volume
should make clear, I have attended to the criticism recently directed at Han-
son’s account of hoplite warfare, and, for the most part, I have found it uncon-
vincing. I am persuaded, however, by those among his critics who assert that
gentleman farmers of middling wealth, not rich enough to own horses, came
to be predominant within Hellas in the period covered by this book. What
these scholars forget, however, is that, in a world dominated by aristocrats of
great wealth, the political interests of gentleman farmers who are not similarly
well-born and those of the smallholders singled out for attention by Hanson
largely coincide.
Eugene D. Genovese also served as an inspiration. I first met him in the
late 1970s when I was a beginning assistant professor. Over the years, we be-
came good friends; and, when opportunity knocked, he and his wife Betsey
agreed to be the godparents of my firstborn child. As I have pondered the
helots and the role they played in the history of archaic Sparta, I have returned
again and again to his books—especially, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves
Made and From Rebellion to Revolution: AfroAmerican Slave Revolts in the
Making of the Modern World—and to the innumerable conversations that we
had in days gone by concerning slave societies and the regime imperatives
they are driven to embrace.
I would also like to record my debt to Patrick Leigh Fermor. Long ago,
when Peter Green learned that I was interested in the manner in which the
rugged terrain in certain parts of Messenia might have facilitated banditry
and resistance on the part of Lacedaemon’s helots, he suggested that I contact
Paddy, who had learned a thing or two about this sort of resistance while
serving on Crete during the Second World War. In the summer of 1983, I
followed up on this recommendation. Our meeting over a lunch at Paddy’s
home in Kardamyli paved the way for a series of visits, often lasting a week or
more, which took place at irregular intervals over the twenty-three years fol-
lowing that largely liquid repast. On nearly every occasion, our conversations
returned to ancient Sparta; and in 1992, when Republics Ancient and Modern
appeared, Paddy wrote a generous appraisal of it for the Spectator.
I drafted the third and fourth chapters of this book in the summer of
2009, when I was a visiting fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center
at Bowling Green State University, and I am grateful to Ellen Frankel Paul,
Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul for hosting me there. On 23 November
2009, thanks to the kind invitation of Heinrich Meier, I was able to test my