Note 866 — Chapter LXXXI · SICILIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ATHENIAN ARMAMENT BEFORE SYRACUSE.
Reading edition
Colonel Leake observes, with respect to the modern Greeks, who work on the plains of Turkey, upon the landed property of Turkish proprietors—“The Helots seem to have resembled the Greeks, who labor on the Turkish farms in the plains of Turkey, and who are bound to account to their masters for one-half of the produce of the soil, as Tyrtæus says of the Messenians of his time—
Ὥσπερ ὄνοι μεγάλοις ἄχθεσι τειρόμενοι Δεσποσύνοισι φέροντες, ἀναγκαίης ὑπὸ λυγρῆς, Ἥμισυ πᾶν, ὅσσον κάρπον ἄρουρα φέροι. (Tyrtæus, Frag. 5, ed. Schneid.)
The condition of the Greeks in the mountainous regions is not so hard” (Leake, Peloponnesiaca, p. 168).