A distinction was certainly made between free citizens of Sparta and their slaves! Just to be perfectly clear, I don't disagree with that.
What I point out is that this distinction was not made by using different words that both meant "inhabitant of Sparta", in particular not "Spartiate" and "Spartan". As far as I can tell, the slaves of Sparta were only known as "helots".
The general point is that the ancients didn't think of the slaves living in a city as "citi-z-ens" of that city, probably because they were not actually citizens, in the legal sense, according to the laws of the era. For example, you will find no ancient source, and I believe no modern source either, calling the slaves living in Athens, "Athenians". They were the Athenians' slaves, they lived and worked in Athens, but they were not "Athenians".
This is not completely unlike modern times. For example, I live and work in the UK, but I'm by no means "British" and nobody would refer to me and others like me as "British", simply because we live and work in Britain. Rather, "British" is reserved for, well, citizens of the United Kingdom. The rest of us that have the malfortune to be domiciled on the British Isles are "immigrants" (or "bloody foreigners"), in any case there are different words, with different roots, to describe us.
I'm happy to clarify this further if there is still confusion. I blame the author of the blog posts for the confusion, btw.
What I point out is that this distinction was not made by using different words that both meant "inhabitant of Sparta", in particular not "Spartiate" and "Spartan". As far as I can tell, the slaves of Sparta were only known as "helots".
The general point is that the ancients didn't think of the slaves living in a city as "citi-z-ens" of that city, probably because they were not actually citizens, in the legal sense, according to the laws of the era. For example, you will find no ancient source, and I believe no modern source either, calling the slaves living in Athens, "Athenians". They were the Athenians' slaves, they lived and worked in Athens, but they were not "Athenians".
This is not completely unlike modern times. For example, I live and work in the UK, but I'm by no means "British" and nobody would refer to me and others like me as "British", simply because we live and work in Britain. Rather, "British" is reserved for, well, citizens of the United Kingdom. The rest of us that have the malfortune to be domiciled on the British Isles are "immigrants" (or "bloody foreigners"), in any case there are different words, with different roots, to describe us.
I'm happy to clarify this further if there is still confusion. I blame the author of the blog posts for the confusion, btw.