The history of classical Sparta is infamous for being shrouded in secrecy; with our non-Spartan sources often contradicting one another as they attempted to make sense of its culture and customs. Perhaps the most elusive part of Spartan culture, for which we have so little evidence, but which has made a very large impression on the modern public imagination, is an institution known as the Krypteia (a word that derives, rather appropriately, from the Greek verb krypteuo meaning to hide or conceal yourself). We have only a small number of sources of direct evidence, and they offer very different impressions of what the Krypteia actually was.

A Training Exercise

It is important to stress that not a single piece of evidence about the Krypteia comes from a Spartan writer. There is also no archaeological or epigraphic evidence (inscriptions) to support any argument for what the Spartan Krypteia may have been.

Our earliest evidence comes from the Athenian philosopher Plato, writing in the mid-4th century BCE. In one of his dialogues, a Spartan by the name of Megillus is listing elements of Spartan training and describes the Krypteia (Plato, Laws 633b-c):

moreover, the “Krypteia,” as it is called, affords a wonderfully severe training in hardihood, as [they] go bare-foot in winter and sleep without coverlets and have no attendants, but wait on themselves and rove through the whole countryside both by night and by day.

A literal reading of Plato’s description in isolation suggests that the Krypteia was some sort of training exercise in which the Spartan was subjected to very difficult circumstances that were not normally endured: isolation, physical hardship, discomfort, and no support from their slaves. Notably, Plato does not mention the age of the men doing this, nor does he offer any explanation as to why this is called the Krypteia.

There exists a scholion to this passage, a critical note recorded by a later writer, which draws together more information to offer context to Plato’s text. It is not an ideal source as it most likely dates from the 9th century CE and does not declare where it gets the extra information from, but it is still worth considering (quoted from Ducat 2006):

A young man would be sent out of the city, with orders to avoid detection for a certain length of time. He was therefore forced to live wandering the mountains, sleeping with one eye open so as not to be caught, and without being able to use slaves or carry provisions. This was also a form of training for war, since each young man was sent out naked, having been ordered to spend an entire year wandering outside the city, up in the mountains, and to keep himself alive by stealing and other shifts of that kind, and to do it in such a way as to avoid being seen by anybody. This is why it was called the Krypteia: because those who had been seen, wherever that might occur, would be punished.

For the most part, this reaffirms what Plato writes. But importantly it includes two details not in the Laws: first, the young men were sent out individually, so this is not a communal training exercise; second, they were supposed to avoid detection, hence the name krypteia.

There is a third source which does not name the krypteia specifically, but draws upon this same tradition. In Justin’s epitome (2nd century CE) of the Philippica by Pompeius Trogus (1st century BCE), he describes this exact form of training as something specifically associated with Sparta (23.1.79, Psoma 2024, 130):

The Lucanians were accustomed to raise their children with the same kind of laws as the Spartans; for, from their earliest boyhood, they were kept in the wilds among the shepherds, without any slaves to attend them, and even without clothes to wear or to sleep upon, that, from their first years, they might be accustomed to hardiness and spare diet; having no intercourse with the city. Their food was what they caught by hunting, and their drink fresh milk or spring water. Thus were they prepared for the toils of war.

A Secret Police

The rest of our evidence comes from a very suspect historical tradition. Many scholars believed that the stories of a secret police force roaming the countryside and killing Helots, an enslaved population of Greeks living on Spartan controlled land, derived from the works of Aristotle and his students (late 4th century BCE). Aristotle’s school set out to compile as many political constitutions as they could, including those of Athens and Sparta, but most of them do not survive today. There is no known copy of their Spartan constitution, so we are left with the paraphrasing of Herakleides of Lembos (2nd century BCE) and then a more extensive version given by the Greco-Roman biographer Plutarch (1st-2nd century CE).

Herakleides wrote very short summaries of the various constitutions described by Aristotle and his students. But how well he succeeded in this task is the subject of recent scholarly debate. Indeed, Psoma (2024) argues that he may not have used the original constitutions at all, but used earlier epitomes instead. So what we thought was a paraphrasing of Aristotle was actually second-hand: an epitome of an epitome. What is clear under closer scrutiny is that Herakleides is an unreliable writer who often makes errors and has a particular interest in describing brutal action. In his section On the Spartans, he offers this brief description of the Krypteia (Herakleides, fr. 10, quoted from Ducat 2006):

It is said that he [the Spartan law-give Lycurgus] also set up the Krypteia, whereby, even to this day, men go out of the city to hide by day, and by night in arms … and slaughter helots as they think necessary.

Interestingly, Aristotle’s own work Politics,which uses much of the same information that informed his schools’ constitutions, makes mention of the Helots, but does not once discuss the Krypteia. So, it is unlikely that Herakleides is actually paraphrasing Aristotle here (Psoma 2024, 144).

Plutarch writes a longer explanation which draws on both the Aristotelian constitution of Sparta, and Herakleides’ epitome, but may well include other evidence from later periods as well (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28.2)

This [Krypteia] was of the following nature. 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 daytime 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.

According to Plutarch, the Krypteia was specifically focused on the killing of Helots. This was not an endurance training exercise but a specially selected death-squad. The characterisation of being a secret-police force is reinforced by how Plutarch describes how they selected their victims (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28.3):

Oftentimes, too, they actually traversed the fields where Helots were working and slew the sturdiest and best of them.

This is clearly very different to what Plato describes. While historians have tried to reconcile the two descriptions, especially with the use of the Scholion to fill in a few gaps, there are still a few issues with trying to understand the Krypteia and its purpose.

Points of Concern

The first and most problematic issue is that our best source of Spartan culture, Xenophon of Athens - who was contemporary to Plato, but had the added benefit of actually spending time in Sparta – does not mention the Krypteia at all. Maybe he saw no reason to discuss it. Maybe he did not like what it was for and therefore did not want to mention it. These are plausible explanations; however it is still a question mark hanging over the Krypteia. Nobody who spent time in Sparta ever mentions it, so can we be sure it existed? Or can we be sure that it existed in the way it is portrayed?

A second issue comes from the dating of our evidence. Even if we accept Aristotle, rather than the much later Herakleides of Lembos, as the main source for the later traditions (which we do not), then our window into the Krypteia comes from the mid-to-late 4th century BCE and no earlier. Aristotle’s claim that this was established by Lycurgus, the legendary law-giver of Sparta, is actually dismissed by Plutarch as rather unlikely (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28.6). And while scholars have tried to claim the Krypteia is alluded to by earlier writers such as Herodotus and Thucydides, it is never clear and the term Krypteia never used. Even with the most positive of interpretations, we can only see the Krypteia described in our sources as a 4th century institution.

A third issue is that the term Krypteia appears a few centuries later in 222 BCE, described as a military unit in the Spartan army of the king Cleomenes III. A Spartan called Damoteles is named as the commander of the Krypteia troops, who appear to be some sort of scouting detachment of the army (Plutarch, Cleomenes 28.3). Interestingly, we have inscriptions in Athens dating as early as 267 BCE, which suggest that other Greek armies used their own kryptoi: select troops used to keep watch over the countryside and protect the harvest from attack. So perhaps the Spartan military tradition had begun to spread.

The Krypteia being a training exercise for a specific type of unit or group of warriors makes more sense with the evidence we have and it may have been used by the Spartans as early as 379 BCE if a recent emendation to a passage in Plutarch’s De genio Socratis 34 is to be accepted (Knoepfler 2020). Whether the Krypteia started out with this intention or evolved over time is impossible to gauge with our limited evidence.

Conclusion

The evidence for the Krypteia is very poor and not clear cut. The focus on killing Helots and creating, in essence, a secret-police is not present in our earliest sources. Indeed, the only firm dates we have for the Krypteia existing at all, are after many of the Helots had been freed by the Thebans following their victory over Sparta in 371 BCE, or maybe a little earlier in 379 BCE if we accept Knoepfler’s emendation. The lack of comment from Xenophon is a concern when it comes to verifying these stories of other non-Spartan contemporaries. But the Krypteia cannot be dismissed as mere rumour either.

It seems the Krypteia, true to its name, continues to hide itself from view and, as such, we rate this claim as False until further evidence comes to light.