See also epsiloniota 133, epsiloniota 134, epsiloniota 135.
[1] This is probably incorrect. Another lexicographer, Pollux, famously defines the helots as ‘between free and slave’, and it is generally agreed nowadays that they were not chattel slaves (to be bought and sold, as at Athens and elsewhere), but a serf population attached to farms and living a reasonably normal, Greek-style existence with a family structure.
[2] Ethnikon: an adjective denoting ethnicity or nationality, usually membership of a polis, e.g. Athenaios = citizen of Athens.
[3] In fact, even if this statement were true, they would not be descendants of captives in war in general, but only of the original Helots, supposedly the previous inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia whom the Lakedaimonians (including the Spartans) reduced to serfdom, perhaps in the 8th century BC.
[4] More precisely in southern Laconia: see Strabo 8.5.2, etc. The derivation of 'heilos' is still a matter of debate, as to whether it is from the place-name or from the root hel-, 'take', found in ei(=lon, the aorist of ai(re/w.
[5] From the scholia to Thucydides 1.101.2, where helots are mentioned.
[6] (For 'has been noted' see under nu 249.) Shortening: sunalifh/, also spelled sunaloifh/, means the running of two syllables into one through synaeresis, crasis, or elision (LSJ s.v.). The shortening in kateilwtisme/nos, the perfect passive participle of an otherwise unattested verb, kateilwti/zw (which can only mean 'I reduce to helot status' or serfdom), is in the omega (crasis of two omicrons), as is regular in verbs with vowel stems ending in omicron. At kappa 1033 kateilwtisme/nos is defined as katededoulwme/nos, 'enslaved'.