The Ancient Spartans Had a Murderous Secret Police

If 300 taught us anything, its that the Spartans were a hardy and courageous group. But they werent the nicest to their own people, punishing young people brutally for infractions, and even utilizing the youth as a secret service! Meet the krypteia, a sort of Hitler Youth of Sparta. When a Training Procedure Goes Really,  Really Wrong According to ancient sources, the krypteia were as vicious as they came. Its members were chosen for their discretion and probably their hardiness, intelligence, and resourcefulness. As Plato has Megillus recount in his  Laws,  Spartan youths underwent training, widely prevalent amongst us, in hardy endurance of pain in the form of beatings, but it was the krypteia that was the most brutal of all. That kind of work was a wonderfully severe training. So what was their deal? Apparently, the idea for the krypteia mightve come from the  laws of Lycurgus,  the king of Spartan legalese; his reforms were, according to  Plutarch,  efficacious in producing valour, but defective in producing righteousness.   Writes Plutarch: I certainly cannot ascribe to Lycurgus so abominable a measure as the ‘krypteia,’ judging of his character from his mildness and justice in all other instances. Over time, the krypteia  evolved  from a form of uber-advanced fitness training to a sort-of-secret  guerrilla  force. The group appears to have had some representation in the mainstream Spartan army, as well; in Plutarchs  Cleomenes, a fellow named Damocles is given the title of commander of the secret service contingent. But  Damoteles doesnt get  the greatest rep - he was bribed to betray his own people to  the enemy - and the people he represented seem to have been even worse. The organization of the krypteia seems to have been in direct opposition to the regular hoplites in  the Spartan army, as if the very way it was set up made it different of special. The hoplites were organized, fought in a phalanx, and worked as a team; in contrast, the krypteia fought in secret, went out in  irregular groups and missions, and stayed away from Sparta proper, working and living on  the frontier. The Bad,  the Worst, and the  Really Ugly As Plutarch tells it, the Spartan leaders would periodically send the young men of the krypteia out into the country at large. What for, you might ask? The young soldiers would hide themselves until they came across groups of people called helots.  At night, they came down into the highways and killed every Helot whom they caught. Even during the day, the krypteia massacred  the helots working in the fields. The  Ephors, the leaders of Sparta, made formal declaration of war upon the helots, in order that there might be no impiety in slaying them. Perhaps, as some scholars have theorized, serving in the krypteia allows soldiers to practice stealth and cunning .But what the krypteia did was basically state-sanctioned massacre! Who were the helots? Why did the Spartan magistrates commission their young warriors to kill them? The helots were serfs owned by the Spartan state, basically slaves; the Roman historian Livy claims that they were a race of rustics, who have been feudal vassals even from the earliest times.  The krypteia was a force the government utilized to keep the helots in their place,  according  to Brandon D. Ross.  Aristotle discusses the helots in his  Politics, saying that the mere necessity of policing a serf class is an irksome burden. What freedoms do you give them? How much leeway  should  they get? he asks. The relationship between the Spartans and the helots was fractious at best. Once upon a time, the people of Spartan-ruled Messenia and the helots revolted against the Lacedaemonian lords. They took  advantage of the chaos that ensued after the earthquakes of 464 B.C., but that didnt work, and the Spartans kept up their cruel treatment.   How else did the Spartans torture the helots? Heres our pal Plutarch: For instance, they would force them to drink too much strong wine, and then introduce them into their public messes, to show the young men what a thing drunkenness was. They also ordered them to sing songs and dance dances that were low and ridiculous, but to let the nobler kind alone. The Spartan torture of the Helots wasnt a one-time thing. On one occasion, Livy recounts how, being charged with an intention to desert, they were driven with stripes through all the streets, and put to death. Another time, two thousand helots mysteriously disappeared in a possible act of genocide; then, on a different occasion, a bunch of helots were suppliants at the minor Temple of Poseidon Taenarius, but were seized from that sacred spot. That kind of sacrilege - violating the sanctuary of a temple - was as awful as it got; the right of asylum was a truly valued one. Shame on Sparta!