The Spartans apparently maintained a trustful relationship with the perioikoi by allowing them most freedoms and basically autonomous rule, only limiting them through controlling their foreign policy and requesting military service. The helots however, were a continuous threat to the security of Sparta, despite their importance to the economic system. .
The helots were very rebellious and resented their Spartan masters. It is often stated that the one of main reasons for Sparta's transformation into a military state after the savage second Messenian War in the 6th century was to create a state of soldiers to effectively control the helots, who vastly outnumbered the Spartiates. This represented a weakness in the state and economic structure that hindered its power, and Aristotle (from The Politics, quoted in Hennessy, 1991, 69) is critical of Sparta's brutal methods employed to control them as he states "results of this kind go to show that the state has yet to learn the right method of handling its subject population", in reference to Sparta's annual war against the Helots and use of the Krypteia. Yet Roebuck (1966, 201) argues that the Helots "economic position was not desperate paying a fixed portion of their production was an inducement to work hard and use the surplus for themselves". This would thus fuel the economy and appease the resentful Helot population, however, not to an extent that excuses such aggressive methods or sufficiently dampens Helot resentment. .
As Sparta proceeded to dominate Greece, Hammond (1975, 198) states that "she needed more manpower that she possessed", to not only conquer but to maintain control of the large helot population, and that "the qualifications for citizenship could have been altered so as to yield a much larger number of Spartiate troops", in relation to the "great numbers of able-bodied men (in) Laconia and Messenia".