Shelag which, running parallel to the northern course of the Helmund in the opposite direction, finally loses its waters in the Gaod-i-Zirreh swamp, which thus becomes the final bourne of the river. Throughout its course from its confluence with the Arghandab to the ford of Chahar Burjak, where it bends northward, the Helmund valley is a narrow green belt of fertility sunk in the midst of a wide alluvial desert, with many thriving villages interspersed amongst the remains of ancient cities, relics of Kaiani rule. The recent political mission to Seistan under Sir Henry McMahon (1904–1905) added much information respecting the ancient and modern channels of the lower Helmund, proving that river to have been constantly shifting its bed over a vast area, changing the level of the country by silt deposits, and in conjunction with the terrific action of Seistan winds actually altering its configuration. (T. H. H.*)
HELM WIND, a wind that under certain conditions blows
over the escarpment of the Pennines, near Cross Fell from the
eastward, when a helm (helmet) cloud covers the summit. The
helm bar is a roll of cloud that forms in front of it, to leeward.
See “Report on the Helm Wind Inquiry,” by W. Marriott, Quart. Journ. Roy. Met. Soc. xv. 103.
HELOTS (Gr. εἵλωτες or εἱλῶται), the serfs of the ancient
Spartans. The word was derived in antiquity from the town
of Helos in Laconia, but is more probably connected with ἕλος,
a fen, or with the root of ἑλεῖν, to capture. Some scholars
suppose them to have been of Achaean race, but they were
more probably the aborigines of Laconia who had been enslaved
by the Achaeans before the Dorian conquest. After the second
Messenian war (see Sparta) the conquered Messenians were
reduced to the status of helots, from which Epaminondas
liberated them three centuries later after the battle of Leuctra
(371 B.C.). The helots were state slaves bound to the soil—adscripti
glebae—and assigned to individual Spartiates to till
their holdings (κλῆροι); their masters could neither emancipate
them nor sell them off the land, and they were under an oath
not to raise the rent payable yearly in kind by the helots. In
time of war they served as light-armed troops or as rowers in
the fleet; from the Peloponnesian War onwards they were
occasionally employed as heavy infantry (ὁπλῖται), distinguished
bravery being rewarded by emancipation. That the general
attitude of the Spartans towards them was one of distrust and
cruelty cannot be doubted. Aristotle says that the ephors of
each year on entering office declared war on the helots so that
they might be put to death at any time without violating religious
scruple (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28), and we have a well-attested
record of 2000 helots being freed for service in war and then
secretly assassinated (Thuc. iv. 80). But when we remember
the value of the helots from a military and agricultural point
of view we shall not readily believe that the crypteia was really,
as some authors represent it, an organized system of massacre;
we shall see in it “a good police training, inculcating hardihood
and vigour in the young,” while at the same time getting rid
of any helots who were found to be plotting against the state
(see further Crypteia).
Intermediate between Helots and Spartiates were the two classes of Neodamodes and Mothones. The former were emancipated helots, or possibly their descendants, and were much used in war from the end of the 5th century; they served especially on foreign campaigns, as those of Thibron (400–399 B.C.) and Agesilaus (396–394 B.C.) in Asia Minor. The mothones or mothakes were usually the sons of Spartiates and helot mothers; they were free men sharing the Spartan training, but were not full citizens, though they might become such in recognition of special merit.
See C. O. Müller, History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (Eng. trans.), bk. iii. ch. 3.; G. Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities (Eng. trans.), pp. 30-35; A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History, pp. 83-85; G. Busolt, Die griech. Staats- u. Rechtsaltertümer, § 84; Griechische Geschichte, i.2 525-528; G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State (Eng. trans.) pp. 194 ff. (M. N. T.)
HELPS, SIR ARTHUR (1813–1875), English writer and clerk
of the Privy Council, youngest son of Thomas Helps, a London
merchant, was born near London on the 10th of July 1813. He
was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge,
coming out 31st wrangler in the mathematical tripos in 1835. He
was recognized by the ablest of his contemporaries there as a
man of superior gifts, and likely to make his mark in after life.
As a member of the Conversazione Society, better known as the
“Apostles,” a society established in 1820 for the purposes of
discussion on social and literary questions by a few young men
attracted to each other by a common taste for literature and
speculation, he was associated with Charles Buller, Frederick
Maurice, Richard Chenevix Trench, Monckton Milnes, Arthur
Hallam and Alfred Tennyson. His first literary effort, Thoughts
in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835), was a series of aphorisms
upon life, character, politics and manners. Soon after leaving
the university Arthur Helps became private secretary to Spring
Rice (afterwards Lord Monteagle), then chancellor of the exchequer.
This appointment he filled till 1839, when he went
to Ireland as private secretary to Lord Morpeth (afterwards
earl of Carlisle), chief secretary for Ireland. In the meanwhile
(28th October 1836) Helps had married Bessy, daughter of
Captain Edward Fuller. He was one of the commissioners
for the settlement of certain Danish claims which dated so far
back as the siege of Copenhagen; but with the fall of the
Melbourne administration (1841) his official experience closed
for a period of nearly twenty years. He was not, however,
forgotten by his political friends. He possessed admirable
tact and sagacity; his fitness for official life was unmistakable,
and in 1860 he was appointed clerk of the Privy Council, on the
recommendation of Lord Granville.
His Essays written in the Intervals of Business had appeared in 1841, and his Claims of Labour, an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, in 1844. Two plays, King Henry the Second, an Historical Drama, and Catherine Douglas, a Tragedy, published in 1843, have no particular merit. Neither in these, nor in his only other dramatic effort, Oulita the Serf (1858) did he show any real qualifications as a playwright.
Helps possessed, however, enough dramatic power to give life and individuality to the dialogues with which he enlivened many of his other books. In his Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon (1847–1859), Helps varied his presentment of social and moral problems by dialogues between imaginary personages, who, under the names of Milverton, Ellesmere and Dunsford, grew to be almost as real to Helps’s readers as they certainly became to himself. The book was very popular, and the same expedient was resorted to in Conversations on War and General Culture, published in 1871. The familiar speakers, with others added, also appeared in his Realmah (1868) and in the best of its author’s later works, Talk about Animals and their Masters (1873).
A long essay on slavery in the first series of Friends in Council was subsequently elaborated into a work in two volumes published in 1848 and 1852, called The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen. Helps went to Spain in 1847 to examine the numerous MSS. bearing upon his subject at Madrid. The fruits of these researches were embodied in an historical work based upon his Conquerors of the New World, and called The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and the Government of Colonies (4 vols., 1855–1857–1861). But in spite of his scrupulous efforts after accuracy, the success of the book was marred by its obtrusively moral purpose and its discursive character.
The Life of Las Casas, the Apostle of the Indians (1868), The Life of Columbus (1869), The Life of Pizarro (1869), and The Life of Hernando Cortes (1871), when extracted from the work and published separately, proved successful. Besides the books which have been already mentioned he wrote: Organization in Daily Life, an Essay (1862), Casimir Maremma (1870), Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871), Thoughts upon Government (1872), Life and Labours of Mr Thomas Brassey (1872), Ivan de Biron (1874), Social Pressure (1875).
His appointment as clerk of the Council brought him into personal communication with Queen Victoria and the Prince
