So I’ve been reading a series of great articles about Sparta and one of the underclasses discussed is the mothake, children resulting from sexual violence by spartiate men against enslaved helot women (the whole thing is a woozy). It says that those children were commonly in the military and sometimes sponsored for the agoge, but they’re obviously talking about boys.
If anyone can shed some light on it, I’d like to know what happened with the girls. Killed? Spartiate domestic servant? Stays with helot mother?
The article speaks about boys, because, to my knowledge, all the information we have about mothakes pertains to boys, suggesting it may have been a male status group. Aelian Var. Hist. 12.43 mentions three famous Spartan generals who were mothakes, showing that they were part of the upper tiers of Spartan society and could potentially rise up in status (Plut. Cleomenes 8). The most extensive source is Phylarchus (FGrH 81 F43 = Athen 6.271e-f): „But the mothakes are foster-brothers of Lacedaemonian citizens. For each of the sons of the citizens has one or two, or even more foster-brothers, according as their circumstances admit. The mothakes are freemen then, but still not Lacedaemonian citizens; but they share all the education which is given to the free citizens; and they say that Lysander, who defeated the Athenians in the naval battle, was one of that class, having been made a citizen on account of his pre-eminent valour.“ It does not, to my mind, describe offspring born of rape, nor even exclusively of helot mothers, but offspring that required sponsorship in the agoge and was thus „step-brother to the son of“ or „fostered into“ another family. Phylarchus’ statement that this was a common phenomenon (at least in his time, i.e. the time of social reform at Sparta) makes the former impossible or at least very unlikely. The lexical sources, such as Hesychios, Harpokration (s.v.), and the Scholia (on Aristoph. Plut. 279, Equ. 634) all agree in highlighting this aspect of co-raising as well.
If this is accurate, your question really becomes, "What was the life of poor, but free girls like in Sparta?" To my knowledge, the sources don’t tell us any details. They were part of their father’s household and I doubt there was anything particularly special about their fate. I see no reason why they would have been killed or enslaved any more than other children of poorer families. Their fate was probably comparable to that of the daughters of other poorer families and I am not aware of a specific status group they would have belonged to.
My sources:
Lotze, Detlef, "MΟΘΑΚΕΣ", in: Historia 11:4 (1962), 427-435.
Ogden, Daniel, Greek Bastardy in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods, Oxford 1996.
Ehrenberg, Victor, s.v. “Mothakes”, RE XVI,1 (1933), 382-384.