Crypteia
The Crypteia, also referred to as Krypteia or Krupteia (Greek: κρυπτεία krupteía from κρυπτός kruptós, "hidden, secret"; members were κρύπται kryptai), was an ancient Spartan state institution.
Plutarch and Heraclides Lembus (both of whom may be using a lost work by Aristotle as a source),[citation needed] and some scholars, (such as Henri-Alexandre Wallon (1812–1904)), saw the Crypteia as a kind of secret police – a state security force organised by the ruling class of Sparta to patrol the Laconian countryside and terrorise the helots, by carrying out secret killings.
[5][6] The ranks of the Crypteia comprised young upper-class Spartan men, probably between the ages of 21 and 30,[2] possibly selected as "those judged to have the most intelligence.
"[2][need quotation to verify] The men were known as hêbôntes, one of the many social categories that preceded full Spartiate citizenship, and had completed their rearing at the agoge with such success that Spartan officials marked them out as potential future leaders.
[13] The chosen kryptai were then sent out into the countryside armed with daggers with the instructions to kill any helot they encountered travelling the roads and tending to fields they deemed too plentiful.
Plutarch, who provides much of what is known of Aristotle's account, was not convinced that Lykourgos would have included such harsh customs within the Spartan constitution and instead thought that the Crypteia had been introduced, if at all, only after the helot revolt, brought on by an earthquake in Sparta in the mid-460s BC.
[2] During the Battle of Sellasia, the Spartan king Cleomenes III "called Damoteles, the commander of the Crypteia, and ordered him to observe and find out how matters stood in the rear and on the flanks of his army.
[22] Again, that differs from Aristotle and Plato's interpretation in the fact that the Crypteia's mandate was not to observe or provide intelligence but to seek out purposely and kill helots.
[26] The French historian Henri Jeanmaire points out that the unstructured and covert activities of the Crypteia are unlike the disciplined and well-ordered communal life of the Spartan hoplites (see Homonoia).
Jeanmaire suggests that the Crypteia was a rite of passage, possibly predating the classical military organization, and may have been preserved through Sparta's legendary religious conservatism.
"[28] Thucydides is also thought by some to be referring to the Crypteia when he writes, in his account of the eighth year of the Peloponnesian War, The Lacedaemonians were also glad to have an excuse for sending some of the Helots out of the country, for fear that the present aspect of affairs and the occupation of Pylos might encourage them to move.
Indeed fear of their numbers and obstinacy even persuaded the Lacedaemonians to the action which I shall now relate, their policy at all times having been governed by the necessity of taking precautions against them.
[citation in translation reads:] 1 Or “Secret Service.” Young Spartans policed the country to suppress risings among the Helots.There is also a scholion on this text.
By this ordinance, the magistrates despatched privately some of the ablest of the young men [ νέων, néon ] into the country, from time to time, armed only with their daggers, and taking a little necessary provision with them; in the daytime, they hid themselves in out-of-the-way places, and there lay close, but, in the night, issued out into the highways, and killed all the Helots they could light upon; sometimes they set upon them by day, as they were at work in the fields, and murdered them.
It is confessed, on all hands, that the Spartans dealt with them very hardlyThere is another possible reference to the Crypteia, or at least to a man who was commander of it at the time of the Battle of Sellasia, in Plutarch's Lives:[32][20][21] He [the Spartan king Cleomenes III] therefore called Damoteles, the commander of the secret service contingent,1[καλέσας δὲ Δαμοτέλη τὸνἐπὶ τῆς κρυπτείας τεταγμένον] and ordered him to observe and find out how matters stood in the rear and on the flanks of his array.
They make their first appearance in issue one of Three and are depicted naked, armed with only daggers, attacking a group of unsuspecting helots as they tend to their crops.
Hodkinson describes Gillien's depiction of the Crypteia as a "perfect amalgam" of the information available in the two source traditions; those being Plato's Laws and Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
[35] Maniot leaders of the far-right Greek political party, Golden Dawn, reinstituted the Crypteia as a part of their adoption of Spartan ideologies.
