CRYPTEIA
CRYPTEIA (
κρυπτεία, called also
κρυπτία or
κρυπτή) was a system of secret police adopted by the Spartans in
order to maintain their control over the Helots; perhaps, as Grote thinks,
over the Perioeci also. As to the main features of this system there is no
doubt. We learn that a number of active young Spartans were despatched every
year by the Ephors, immediately upon their entry into office, to the
different parts of the country. They were to post themselves as secretly as
possible in convenient places from which to explore the neighbourhood and to
make observations. If they found anything suspicious, they were either to
report it or to suppress it themselves on the
[p. 1.570]spot
(Schömann,
Antiq. 1.195, E. T.). The institution
served not merely to break up organisation and to check the possibility of
an outbreak among their oppressed subjects, but as a useful military
training in habits of endurance suited to a dominant race. On the latter
ground it is proposed by Plato for his ideal Cretan colony in the
Laws, and his way of expressing himself shows that he is
referring to a Spartan custom really existing (1.633 B ; 6.763 B; cf. Grote,
2.144, n.). The
crypteia may thus be considered as
to a certain extent a species of armed police force, and the young men who
were ordered to undertake it appear also to have formed a special corps in
the army; at least we read of a commander of the
crypteia in the battle of Sellasia (
Plut.
Cleom. 28). To these undoubted facts later authors added some
curious statements, which have been much criticised in recent times.
According to Plutarch, who quotes Aristotle as his authority, the Ephors
every year declared war formally against the Helots, in order that they
might be killed without scruple; and they further, not every year as
sometimes stated, but at intervals (
διὰ
χρόνου), sent young Spartans armed with daggers to assassinate
such of the Helots as were thought formidable (
Plut.
Lyc. 28). The language of Plutarch is somewhat loose. In one
sentence he states that the young men went out into the roads by night and
slew all whom they caught (
τοὺς
ἁλισκομένους), implying that the Helots lived under a sort of
“curfew” law, which confined them to their houses at night
to prevent conspiracies; in the next sentence that they often ranged over
the fields (? in the daytime) and despatched the strongest and bravest of
them. The latter phrase, however, agrees with the account of Heraclides
Ponticus, that they killed
ὅσους ἂν ἐπιτήδειον
ᾖ (
Fragm. 2.4 ap. C. Müller,
2.210). Otfried Müller, whose criticism habitually tends to soften
the harsher features of the Spartan institutions, combats the notion that
the Helots were annually hunted down and destroyed (
Dorians,
3.3.4); and Schömann calls it “an exaggeration which is
really too absurd to deserve serious confutation”
(
Antiq. l.c.). Grote, no friend to Sparta, rejects the annual
or periodical massacre of the Helots, and the formal declaration of war
against them, which, he justly observes, “would provoke the reaction
of despair rather than enforce tranquillity” ; and even suggests
a doubt as to the fact of Aristotle's having really made the statement
ascribed to him by Plutarch, on the ground that he does not mention the
subject in his
Politics, where he speaks at some length both
of the Spartan constitution and of the Helots. Grote admits, however, that
the government would not be restrained by any scruples of justice or
humanity. It is a well-known fact that, on at least one occasion, 2000 of
the bravest of the Helots were massacred with the sanction of the Ephors,
the manner of their death remaining an untold mystery (B.C. 424,
Thuc. 4.80). And such an order would naturally be
carried out with the aid of the
crypteia or secret
commission. (Müller,
Dorians, 3.3.4; Thirlwall,
Hist. Gr. 1.311 ; Grote,
Hist. Gr. ch.
vi., 2.142 ff.; Schömann,
Antiq. 1.195, E. T.)
[
W.W]
