Citizen-Slaves

In ancient Greece (Sparta to be exact), what class of people were neither citizens nor slaves?

Give up? The answer is below.

Anyway, I came across this word while reading Niebuhr, _Moral Man and Immoral Society_. (Why anyone would want to read this is almost beyond me.) Of course, I had to look up this word (among many others) using Google, and as soon as I saw the definition, I immediately thought back to a discussion at our poor friends' dinner table.

The husband, Jon, has been working three jobs lately. Two of them are blue collar jobs. One of them is a job as tutor. His wife, Sara, also works as a tutor, mostly in Spanish. Most of the kids are home schooled and many of them are incredibly wealthy. It struck me while we were eating together that they were essentially like slaves. They are barely able to keep making their humble house payment and keep diapers on their two little ones. Their struggles, for the most part, are unrelated to irresponsibility on their part. Tutors, like teachers, just don't get paid much. They're almost like slaves (although apparently it's not so tough that it drives them to write wonderful spirituals). And yet, who contributes more to the good of our communities than teachers and tudors? We entrust our children to them whether our children have an allowance of $3,000 per week or $1.00 per month, yet their pay is closer to the latter.

Well, here is the answer . . . the class in ancient Sparta that were neither citizens nor slaves were/are called *helots*. Certainly not an exact correlate to "tutor", but the definition of helots reminded me of teachers just the same. By the way, Jon and Sara laughed when I said they were almost like slaves!