From what classes were these school-companions drawn? Sometimes they were foreigners, sons either of distinguished guest-friends of leading Spartans, or of refugee-settlers in Laconia. Thus Xenophon’s two sons were educated at Sparta. These foreign boys were called τρόφιμοι [tróphimoi] or Foster-children. Xenophon mentions “foreigners from among the τρόφιμοι [tróphimoi].”[12] If these Foster-children, when grown up, remained in Sparta they possessed no civic rights. A passage in Plato refers to the difficulty which was experienced in getting these Foster-children to accept this humble position.[13] It is interesting to note that Sparta thus precedes Athens as an educational centre to which boys from foreign cities came to receive their schooling.
More often Spartan parents chose Helots to be school-companions of their sons. Thus Plutarch speaks of “two of the foster-brothers of Kleomenes, whom they call Mothakes.”[14] The name Mothax was applied to these educated Helots. They seem to have been notorious for the way in which they presumed upon their position, if we may assume a connection between Mothax and Mothon, a term which is used for the patron deity of impudence in Aristophanes, and elsewhere is the name of a vulgar dance.[15] They were not enfranchised when their school-days were over, and had to settle down to slavish duties, unless they showed peculiar merit. But several of the most distinguished Spartans, including Lusandros, were enfranchised Mothakes.
Xenophon, in a passage which has already been quoted, mentions “gentlemen-volunteers of the Perioikoi and certain foreigners of the so-called Foster-children and bastards of the Spartiatai, very goodly men and not without share in the honourable things in the State.”[16] If most of the authorities are right in regarding “the honourable things”[17] as a Spartan phrase for their educational system――and there is good ground for this view――then this passage shows that illegitimate sons, and perhaps eminent Perioikoi, passed through the public schools at Sparta although, however, neither were called Foster-children, a name reserved for distinguished foreigners. The Helots who shared the education were known as Mothakes, and sometimes as σύντροφοι [syntrophoi], school-companions; but they do not seem to have been called τρόφιμοι [trophimoi], “Foster-children.”