The Krypteia and Ancient Sparta

The article has been written for Easy History by D. S. Foster

Introduction:

The term “secret police” does not have a legal definition as such. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “a police organization operating for the most part in secrecy and especially for the political purposes of its government, often with terroristic methods.” Meanwhile, Wikipedia (the source no one ever wants to admit to consulting!) provides the following: “police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government’s political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents.” The advantage of operating in relative secrecy allows members of the organization to investigate activities which are themselves clandestine, as well as to conduct actions which might meet with legal and social censure if done openly (if this sounds like a sinister euphemism, I am afraid they are a built-in feature of the subject matter). The definitions used here still leave a certain amount of wriggle-room in terms of the structure, composition, and precise tactics of any organization to which the name could be applied–there is no reason, for example, that a state only maintain a single secret police force, or that such a force operate only on the behalf of a nation state and not in the interests of commercial, religious, or transnational entities. Also, as we will see soon, it is not uncommon for an organization to assume several different functions when operating over the course of centuries. For the purposes of this article, it is most helpful to think of secret police organizations in terms of their intended effect on the civilian population under their supervision. Their purpose is largely to act as a deterrent to perceived subversive threats from within the population, to identify and remove the sources of those threats, and to do this at least partially through covert means.

A note on sources and an introduction to the Krypteia:

To be honest with the reader, I want to clarify that ancient history is often patchily documented and thick with academic controversy.  Compared to more recent centuries, the amount of reliable first-hand material is scarce. Something more recent, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, might have rooms full of documentation, multiple books written, and several solid competing theories among historians. By contrast, entire institutions of the ancient world sometimes have to be reconstructed from a few brief references in fragmentary texts, some of them based on the work of previous writers who were themselves writing several generations after the events in question. This is also the best time to point out that most of the primary sources were written with the blatant intention of Proving a Point, and should be considered some degree of biased. For these reasons, ancient sources come with more than a few grains of salt by their very nature. This is very much the case for the krypteia (since it comes from the same root word as the English cryptic, I suppose it should really come as no great shock that information about it is hard to come by). There are at least three modern ideas as to what the krypteia was and what it did, which we will explore shortly. It’s not even clear if “it” or “they” is the appropriate pronoun when referring to the krypteia, so I will use both depending on context. All of these things being said, there remains some evidence that it functioned in a way analogous to a modern-day secret police force, at least in regards to Sparta’s slave population – a group referred to as the helots.

The Place of the Krypteia in Spartan Culture:

Before discussing the krypteia and the helots, we need some background on Spartan culture and government as a whole. Recently, I heard this quote from Philip Matyszak’s Sparta: Rise of a Warrior Nation: “The only way that Sparta could survive, let alone thrive, was for the Spartans to become very, very good at being Spartans.” A blanket statement, to be sure, but one that is worth keeping in mind. While social mobility was not impossible in Spartan society, roles were rigidly defined in terms of what the people filling it were and were not expected to do. Like some other ancient city states, Sparta had dual royal lines, being ruled by two kings at any one time. Several other consular groups occupied the highest levels of government, including a five-man body called the ephors. Each ephor only served for one year, and none of them could serve again after that year ended. The ephors had multiple functions, but one of the most interesting was to make an annual declaration of war against the helots, essentially meaning they could be murdered without fear of consequences. The ephors also appear to have had charge of the krypteia.

The krypteia has been variously interpreted as a rite of passage for young Spartan men, as a state-sponsored organization charged with suppressing unrest among the helots, and as guerilla fighters attached to the Spartan military. This article is primarily focusing on the second interpretation, but all three have evidence in their favour, as does the possibility that the institution had multiple functions or changed roles over the course of its existence. Plutarch discussed the krypteia in the The Life of Lycurgus, referring back to the writings of both Aristotle and Thucydides.

“The magistrates from time to time sent out into the countryside at large the most discreet of the young men, equipped only with daggers and necessary supplies. During the day they scattered into obscure and out of the way places, where they hid themselves and lay quiet. But in the night, they came down to the roads and killed every Helot whom they caught. Often, too, they actually made their way across fields where the Helots were working and killed the sturdiest and best of them. So, too, Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War [IV.80], states that the Helots who had been judged by the Spartans to be superior in bravery, set wreathes upon their heads in token of their emancipation, and visited the temples of the gods in procession, but in a little while afterwards all disappeared, more than two thousand of them, in such a way that no man was able to say, either then or afterwards, how they came to their deaths. And Aristotle in particular says also that the Ephors, as soon as they came into office, made formal declaration of war upon the Helots, so that there might be no impiety in slaying them.“

There are also references to the sanctioned murder of helots who seemed “too well fed,” as well as legal repercussions for the Spartan citizen charged with overseeing those helots. Exactly when the krypteia entered the scene is a matter of some dispute. Aristotle wrote that they originated early in the formation of the Spartan state, while Plutarch, writing four centuries later, believed that they only appeared after an especially large-scale helot revolt in 465 BCE.

One aspect of the krypteia is clear, to both ancient and modern historians: they unleashed just about every conceivable brand of misery on the helot population. While the precise details may be vague and/or difficult to verify, there are allusions to what can only be called covert assassinations, blatantly overt assassinations, and the implied mass murder of liberated helots, possibly after some kind of set-up or staged scenario. While some of the means of helot suppression may have been clandestine, there was nothing secretive about the relationship between helots and Spartan citizens: they were effectively in a perpetual state of war, as formalized by the ephors on a yearly basis.

On Helots and the Krypteia:

Just who were the helots and why would the krypteia devote so much time and effort to making sure they never got too comfortable? Although their origins are subject to some debate, they can be generally described as the original inhabitants of the regions surrounding Sparta, absorbed into the city-state as it expanded in power and influence. They lived under the Spartans in what has been described both as slavery and serfdom, performing agricultural and domestic labor. Crucially, they were not tied to individuals, but were considered property of the Spartan state. Helots were evidently able to maintain some form of cultural identity, and in some ways resembled a geopolitical unit within the broader one of Sparta. In terms of sheer numbers, the helots had a considerable advantage over their Spartan rulers. Estimates of the helot population range from 65 to 85% of the total population of Sparta, and that ratio increased over time. There were documented helot rebellions, often coinciding with natural disasters or Spartan military defeats. There is maddeningly little evidence remaining of how these rebellions were led, coordinated, or conducted, but they were taken seriously enough that Sparta was even willing to make an alliance with their arch-rival, Athens, to suppress one of them. As it seems somewhat implausible that widely dispersed laborers would spontaneously launch a serious revolt after such an unforeseen event, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the basic groundwork for these rebellions was already in place. In other words, helots may have frequently engaged in planning and preparing for acts of resistance.

Parsing through the scant ancient references brings up some fascinating hints as to how and why the krypteia operated the way it did. One intriguing possibility is that some of the state-sanctioned brutality towards the helots was motivated by fear of how individual Spartan landowners might utilize helots under their control. While speculative, this provides some rational for the odd reference to punishments directed towards those helots who seemed “too well fed” as well as the Spartan guilty of feeding them too well. If a Spartan citizen wanted, for whatever reason, to act contrary to the interests of the Spartan state, co-opting large numbers of helots for their own purposes may well have been an important first step in that direction.

While reading through the sources, I questioned why the nocturnal stealth attacks on helots were necessary. The open targeting of the “sturdiest” helots could be interpreted as being for the purposes of eliminating potential leaders among the helot population, but why spend an apparently significant amount of time skulking by the roadsides under the cover of darkness and hoping a wayward helot happened to wander by? Certainly, it would instill general fear among the helots and make sure they never felt safe (although I suspect they had gotten the message by this point), but did these attacks serve a more specific purpose? After all, the ephors had made sure to remove any potential consequences stemming from helot murders, so it was not as if being witnessed posed much of a problem. One possibility is that the krypteia was attempting to discourage the helots from engaging in any nighttime activities outside their homes. Perhaps there was concern that, freed from direct observation and from the demands of their work, helots would take advantage of the night to meet and make plans for acts of rebellion. By making the helots reluctant to leave their homes after dark, the krypteia could interrupt any conspiracies before they started. Another possibility is that by keeping the perpetrators of the attacks vague, the krypteia could sow distrust among helot communities. If the helots suspected that at least some of the murders were being committed by other helots, they would be less likely to cooperate with one another enough to pose a threat. This, again, is all highly speculative, but given what we do know, I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable speculation

If, as some sources imply, the krypteia was under the control of the ephors, then there would have been a remarkable amount of instability in leadership, as an entirely different group of ephors would have taken office every year. That’s an incredibly high rate of turnover for the highest positions within any organization, so it would be far from surprising if the exact role of the krypteia was flexible, with different roles being given more or less emphasis depending on the precise needs of the state at any given moment. Despite its mercurial composition, the ephors were far from politically weak. They had the power veto decisions made by Spartan kings and were also able to overrule Sparta’s other assemblies, meaning they could dictate a significant portion of government policy and thus how to best use the krypteia to suite their interests.

Conclusions:

Many of the skills adopted by the krypteia for use in domestic suppression of the helots could also be put to use when engaged in war with other city-states. Much has been written, elsewhere, about the traditional hoplite warfare practiced in Ancient Greece, and while effective in flat and open areas, it had limits. While most battles were fought in the lowland regions where most of the cities and agricultural centers were located, a quick glance at any map of Greece shows that this is not typical of what is on the whole a mountainous landscape. Having a force able to take advantage of rougher terrain could have been useful to Sparta, and the krypteia may have been able to serve such a function. One of the earliest references to the krypteia comes from Plato, who describes them as traveling into the wilderness with minimal protection, provisions, or support–the exact attributes that would be beneficial for mountain scouting rather than traditional hoplite warfare. There is some support for this from Plutarch. In Cleomenes, he writes, while describing a battle: “For Antigonus ordered his Illyrians and Acarnanians to go round by a secret way and envelope the other wing…and then led out the rest of his forces to battle; and when Cleomenes, from his post of observation, could nowhere see the arms of the Illyrians and Acarnanians, he was afraid that Antigonus was using them for such purpose. He therefore called Damoteles, the commander of the secret service contingent, and ordered him to observe and find out how matters stood in the rear and on the flanks of his array…”. For clarity, Damoteles was the krypteia commander, and by ordering him to spy on the approach of enemy force, Cleomenes was employing the krypteia for this purpose.

The function of the krypteia within ancient Sparta may be summarized as follows. For all practical as well as legal purposes, the Spartans existed in a perpetual state of war with their own labor class, the helots, and this strained relationship was a factor in shaping the overall structure of their society. A key component in enforcing helot subservience was the krypteia, who employed a variety of covert and overt tactics to observe and suppress signs of helot rebellion. The krypteia was able to deploy the same skills used in monitoring and suppressing helot activity for use in guerilla warfare, and the volatile structure of the ephors may have resulted in varied and changing roles for the krypteia over time.

Sources:

About the Author

I am D. S. Foster; I grew up in Michigan, where I still live to this day. My primary academic background is in biology, but I have always nurtured a broad range of interests, especially for anything mysterious, secretive, and/or ancient. I write fiction, and recently completed my second novel. Needless to say, I spend a lot of my spare time reading and writing, but I also enjoy crocheting, hiking, trying to learn new languages, and spending time with my family. For my day job, I help design and run recreational activities for residents at a retirement home.

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