The Helots inevitably knew at the time that at a certain point of the year, the most outspoken and prominent members of their population would disappear and that this was due to the actions and decisions of their Spartan masters. By getting rid of the strongest and most courageous helots, Sparta hoped to ensure their internal safety by removing the aspects of the helot population that posed the greatest potential threat to their security.Īs well as this, it also functioned as a preventative tactic against rebellion. Not only this, but on top of just surviving in the wilderness on their own, they also had to survey the surrounding countryside and identify, target and kill those individuals who they believed were the most threatening to themselves and their city.Īnother important aspect of the krypteia was that it controlled a resentful slave population. It sent the best recruits of the Spartan agoge into physically testing autumn conditions, isolated from their friends and fellow recruits and the comfort of the hoplite fighting formation, where cooperation and co-dependence was paramount, these trainees were placed completely on their own in a harsh and unforgiving environment without shelter and only a knife and minimal clothing and food supplies. Firstly, it was a military exercise and a rite-of-passage. There are multiple explanations of why the Spartans decided to install such an institution into their culture. They also would often make excursions into the fields where they found the strongest and most independently-minded helots and murder them also. The Helots seem to be the original inhabitants of Laconia and the Spartans, once known as Dorians, had migrated into this region from Macedonia, subjugated this local population and from this time there seems to have been a clear master-slave relationship between Spartan citizens and their Helot slaves.Ĭontinuing with the main point of this post, with only a knife, their cloak and minimal food supplies they would have to survive in the countryside, completely isolated from their fellow countrymen, resting by day and then, at nightfall, descending onto the roads surrounding Sparta where they were to slit the throat of any helot they encountered. In essence, the Helots were the Spartan’s slaves who lived in Laconia and Messenia (the region in which the city of Sparta was established) and whose main function was to work the farms of the Spartans so that they could devote their full energies to military practice. I would like to quickly digress to explain who the Helots were in Spartan society. txt file is free by clicking on the export iconĬite as source (bibliography): Scytale Cipher on dCode.The krypteia was an ancient Spartan institution in which the ablest and most intelligent young men were extracted from their training unit within the agoge (the brutal military school which Spartan males would enter at the age of 7 and leave once they had achieved citizenship around the age of 21) and sent to survive alone into the wilderness around Sparta to kill members of Sparta’s slave population, the Helots. The copy-paste of the page "Scytale Cipher" or any of its results, is allowed (even for commercial purposes) as long as you cite dCode!Įxporting results as a. Except explicit open source licence (indicated Creative Commons / free), the "Scytale Cipher" algorithm, the applet or snippet (converter, solver, encryption / decryption, encoding / decoding, ciphering / deciphering, breaker, translator), or the "Scytale Cipher" functions (calculate, convert, solve, decrypt / encrypt, decipher / cipher, decode / encode, translate) written in any informatic language (Python, Java, PHP, C#, Javascript, Matlab, etc.) and all data download, script, or API access for "Scytale Cipher" are not public, same for offline use on PC, mobile, tablet, iPhone or Android app! 8 to 6 centuries BC even if Plutarch describes it only 1 century BC Ask a new question Source codeĭCode retains ownership of the "Scytale Cipher" source code.
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