Spartan Krypteia
Spearmen Infantry(0.6.7)Side / Back
Short description
Even Spartan teenagers are a deadly threat in battle.
Description
Even Spartan teenagers are a deadly threat in battle. Armed in the style of the Ekdromoi Hoplites, and carrying the knives with which they were to survive during the hard winter spent among the Helots of Messenia, these youngsters have to prove their worth as true Spartiate. In case of an emergency, however, they too will be called upon to face the enemy!
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Krypteia is one of the most enigmatic institutions of antiquity. Any serious discussion of them must start from the source, and there are two principal descriptions by ancient authors: In his Laws (Nomoi) Plato describes how young Spartans spent a year in the wilderness, going barefoot and sleeping without cover (Plat. Nom. I; 633b-c). Plutarch then extends this description, also citing a now lost mention by Aristotle: "The magistrates from time to time sent out into the country at large the most discreet of the young warriors, equipped only with daggers and such supplies as were necessary. In the day time they scattered into obscure and out of the way places, where they hid themselves and lay quiet; but in the night they came down into the highways and killed every Helot whom they caught" (Plutarch, Life of Lykurgos 28, 2).
Plutarch then goes on to attribute the mysterious disappearance of 2000 Helots told by Thucydides to the Krypteia. The story went as follows: "The Helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished" (Thucydides IV, 80, 3-4). Thus, while Plutarch states that the young men only spent a winter in the Krypteia, not the whole year, he certainly created the myth that they went round Messenia and terrorised the Helots, making sure they remained in fear of Sparta and thus obedient.
Plutarch is also our sole source for the Krypteia as an actual military unit, this time quoting Phylarchos of Athens (flourished around 200 BC). At the battle of Sellasia in 222 BC, where the Spartan king Kleomenes III faced a coalition of the Achaian League and Macedon, the Krypteia were present. Their commander Damoteles, however, was bribed by the enemies and according to Phylarchos it was his intentionally poor advice that brought about the defeat of the Lakedaimonians and thus the end of Kleomenes' power (Plutarch, Life of Kleomenes 28, 3-4). These few sentences reveal little on the equipment of the Krypteia, but they do show that even on the battlefield they fulfilled the role of reconnaissance and stealth units. Their equipment must have consisted of more than the daggers they wore when on service in Messenia and it seems most likely they fought in the way of Ekdromoi Hoplites.