The One Percent

Xenophon tells the story of the Conspiracy of Kinadon in Sparta at the peak of its power.  Kinadon was a brilliant military leader, a highly positioned citizen of the Spartan State. The ruling elite, the Spartiates, were called homoioi (the Equals). An Equal could lose his privileged status through cowardice in battle or by poverty, for example, the loss of his plot and the consequent inability to pay his dues to the syssitia,and would join the "Inferiors" (hypomeiones).

In one public meeting, Kinadon counted the number of Spartiates and they were found to be forty among the four thousand. "The privileged One Percent! They are our enemies!" he said. Apparently, two thousand five hundred years ago the Greeks had the same problem of the 1%. Kinadon's motive for the conspiracy was, as he stated in the course of his trial, "to be a Lacedaemonian inferior to no one". There was no currency in Sparta, the Spartiates's food was disgusting - pork boiled in its blood and vinegar -, they spent their lives in dangerous military missions, so the privilege of the 1% was not economic but social.