Jeanmaire on the Krypteia

Henri Jeanmaire, “La cryptie lacédémonienne,” Revue des études grecques 26, no. 117 (1913): 121-150.

A rough translation by Ryan Patrick Crisp

“The Lakedemonian Krypteia”

by H. Jeanmaire

The most explicit information on the Lakedemonian custom of the krypteia is provided by Plutarch (Lyc. 28), who is not surprised himself about what he relates. At certain times designated by the magistrates, he tells us, young Lakedemonians spread about the countryside, carefully hiding themselves during the day and, at nighttime, falling upon the helots that they encounter and mercilessly killing them. A passage attributed to Heraclides Ponticus (Müller, Fr. Hist. Gr., Didot, II, 210), some allusions in the Laws of Plato (I, 633B), and an important commentary on one of these passages allows us to affirm that the krypteia was a regular institution to which all young Spartiates were called.

    If one consults the modern historians who have looked at the question, we can see a certain hesitation on their part to admit to the authenticity of these, at the very least, striking facts. Previously, Otfried Müller had presented the krypteia as a simple preparation for military life; a similar argument was undertaken in Koechly’s monograph on the subject:1 the krypteia has nothing to do with hunting helots; the young men who undertake it are charged with a public service for the development and fortification of the country; they fulfil the same functions as the αγρονομοι [agronomoi] of [122] Plato’s ideal city. M. P. Girard adopted this interpretation in his article in Saglio’s Dictionary [Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines]. H. Wallon, in a specially dedicated work,1 had proposed to salvage part of Plutarch’s description, by reducing the krypteia to a simple curfew law.

    What jumps out the most to me from these possible explanations is that the source material for the krypteia has appeared little intelligible and it seems that none of the proposed descriptions has really helped to clarify things. It is undoubtedly the case, however, that Plutarch’s account should be given the most weight, since it seems to originate with Aristotle. Furthermore, if you refuse to see what amounts to an ambush in the krypteia, then the etymological origin of the word becomes awkward. M. P. Girard’s hypothesis (κρυπτοι [kryptoi] = αγρονομοι [agronomoi]), presented without any other evidence, has all the appearance of a stopgap. If historians have often been undone by the krypteia, it is simply for the lack of being able to clearly connect the practice to the spirit of Lacedemonian institutions; it is also because, bothered by the barbarity of a custom for which the motive is not clearly apparent, they have been led to question the authenticity of source material which does in fact appear genuine. Here we propose to demonstrate how the institution of the krypteia, far from being an anomaly, is closely attached to the Lacedemonian way of life. In our view, it boils down to nothing more than one particular type of a universally-widespread phenomenon, in which nothing appears that does not conform to our general understanding of the nature and psychology of human society.

    Except that the psychology we are talking about here cannot be that of the modern European. We must round out our too-short experience with help from the study of peoples [123] situated in varying degrees on the scale of civilization: let us see what the comparative method applied to Sparta can supply.

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    We know that a determined/specific society resolves, under analysis, itself into a set of the most elementary social groups and often endowed with a collective life more intense than that of the whole group, which is not the only result of it. Various principles can govern the formation of these elementary groups. The population can divide itself into separate social classes by rank or by economic status⎯which is the most obvious manner in our modern societies. Another organizing principle is rooted in the family and groups more or less extended and infinitely varied which derive from the idea of a kinship, real or invented. These two ordering practices are well known with respect to ancient peoples; the study of social classes based on birth and census status (eupatrids [nobles], patricians and plebeians, knights, etc.) or on that of common descent and analogous groups (genos, gens [clan], phratry, tribe) has provided material for several works whose conclusions can be counted among the best received works of philology. The philologists have not often had the opportunity to ask themselves whether on might find in classical antiquity traces of another system of population distribution, founded on some other principle than birth and kinship ties, or even on a principle essentially different and often antagonistic towards that of the family. What we mean here is dividing up the population into social groups defined by sex and age. Two relatively recent works, looking at the question from the perspective of comparative ethnology, have brought together into one convenient and comprehensive volume a stockpile of facts well known by those who are familiar with all the [124] usual theories concerning societies that are labeled primitive. Conceived independently from one another and conducted according to the different methods of the American school and the German school, these two works come to the same conclusions and present a roughly analogous description of the phenomenon and its features. Let us review here some of their views by illustrating them with some typical facts.

    Among a great number of peoples belonging to very diverse races, one can find a group or a part of the male, adult population who form a unit with its own practices and hidden traditions, and who, through a very active and collective existence, clearly distinguish themselves from the rest of the population, which is to say from the women, children, and any non-initiates. The most common sign of such social organization is the existence of one⎯or several⎯communal residences where men spend their day,     attending to the business which custom has reserved to their sex, cooking, and taking their meals. The communal residence often serves as a dormitory for the masculine part of the population, who are, as a general rule, young men not yet having established their own households, but sometimes it even includes married men. It is nearly always strictly forbidden to women. If young boys are allowed in, it is to take care of any domestic chores and to be instructed by listening respectfully to the teachings of their elders. ⎯ A second aspect is regularly associated with the first: since the men form a closed association, when young men reach the age of adulthood they are only admitted into it after a period of initiation. This initiation almost always presumes a common educational system for the young men, a period of training after which they submit to tests of a generally tough and terrifying nature, while at the same time being initiated into the traditions, secrets, and maxims which make up the intellectual patrimony of the tribe, to whose way of life they are now associated. This initiation can be done all at once, usually at the time of puberty; but often it is done [125] by degrees, sometimes even spaced out over twenty years or more. In such a case, the association takes on the character of a secret society where the initiation is performed via successive steps.

    Australian tribal societies provide us with the earliest rudiments of a similar organization. Spencer and Gillen describe for us in minute detail the long ceremonies of gradual initiation among the Arunta, one of the best known tribes of central Australia.1 The first ceremonies begin around the age of ten or twelve years. The children are thrown into the air several times, and their male parents warn them that they will no longer be allowed to play with the women and little girls as they did before. They live in the male encampment, and, instead of participating as before in the traditional work reserved to women, the gathering of plants and the hunting of small animals like rats or lizards, which make up a notable supplement to the diet of these miserable tribes, they learn from men the art of hunting a more noble prey. They have entered into a new phase of their life and into a new social class;2 a new designation marks the passage from childhood into this second social category. When he has reached the age of puberty, the young man, after a series of various instructions during which one is designated by a particular name, submits to the operation of circumcision. He is strictly warned not to reveal to the women or children the secrets which have been revealed to him; otherwise the devil who speaks with the voice of a bull-roarer (the rhombus instrument which plays an important role in all these ceremonies) will carry him off. After this training, he enters into the class of the Arakurtas and must withdraw with other Arakurta into a special camp where they live in common; he will only take part again in the life of the tribe and will only have the right to marry once he has passed through [126] new rituals, where he will be subject to a new operation of a similar nature to circumcision.

    The people of central and southern Africa supply some examples of analogous classification and in keeping with a social organization already well developed. The Massaï are a pastoral people who inhabit, along the borders of the English and German territories in East Africa, the steppes at the foot of Kilimanjaro. The language connects them to the family of Hamitic speakers. Some fairly detailed monographs preserve the memory of this ancient warlike people, who, however, since their herds suffer terribly from an epizootic disease, seem destined for a quick extinction. The English traveler Thomson has already informed us that the young Massaï is circumcised around the age of sixteen.1 Until the wound heals, he lives hidden in the bush. Then he rejoins the young men of his age to live a common life of war and adventure in the ‘kraal’ [village] of the Elmorane [warrior class]; it is forbidden for him to eat anything other than meat, which he must procure for himself; the young warriors choose for themselves a leader who commands several kraals and has the power of life and death; if custom permits free intercourse between the young men and the young women of their age, marriage⎯and the procreation of children⎯is forbidden them. After marriage, the young Massaï enters into the Elmorua class, which no longer goes to war. Other sources allow us to add that Thomson’s description is too simplistic and that the classes are more numerous than it appears.2 One particularity of Massaï marriage is that at the first, the young spouses exchange their clothing: the new husband wears feminine clothing and vice-versa.3 [127] ⎯ In the Wadai the ethnographic conditions are particularly complicated, and we can still pick out some Hamitic affinities there. At any rate, we are concerned with clearly primitive customs under a Muslim veneer. Our main source of information remains, until something new appears, the account of Nachtigal. We will extract the following passages:1 “The men have a particular place to stay only at night; they consider it shameful to take their meal privately; even the young married men do not want to spend the night in their house; at the meal, the elders are served by members of the younger classes. The individual houses belong to women.” The meeting of the elders is called the Dschemmâa (as in Berber country). It has its own location: “They stay there, from morning to evening, to talk religion, politics (both internal and external), to pray under the direction of their imam; they take their meals there together. . . The company of young men, the Sibjàn, gathers together at the Dschemmâa to undertake public works, the organization of the army and the discussion of military affairs. . . . The third class of the population is that of the Nurti, those from infancy up to the age of eighteen. They live together at the school and are not allowed into the house of the elders except at mealtime.”⎯ The Massaï have brought us to the borders of the of the Bantu peoples; it is well understood by the rest that the linguistic limits do not correspond to the borders of civilization in Africa; in the midst of a Bantu population, among the Zulus, we find a completely analogous social classification system: the population is divided up into young people (Amabutu), young warriors (Insinsima), veterans (Umpagati).  The young warriors have very free relations with young girls; but the children who are born of these unions are put to death. I offer a literal translation of the summary offered by S. Passarge on the educational practices in this ethnographic [128] region: 

The novices live under the direction of an older man, in the bush, without any other shelter than the huts made of grass that they build themselves, even during the cold season; it is forbidden for them to make a fire, and they must live on what they find in the countryside. They are clothed with an apron made of plants, are covered in white paint, and carry a spade; they resemble the spirits of the dead and, consequently, rove around people’s houses at night, being permitted to roam all over thrashing, pillaging, and ransoming anyone who falls into their hands; at the sound of the rattles that they carry, everyone runs away. After a few months of this, they are then admitted into the tribe via a great ceremony.1

Let us stop and, in the light of these foregoing examples, to which it would be pointless to add further, let us see if the Spartan institutions don’t preserve the principles of an analogous social organization. Immediately, in the religious ceremonies, where the city gives itself over to some kind of spectacle, we see people organized into age classes: “In their ceremonies there were three choruses corresponding to the three ages of men, that of the old men . . . , that of the young men . . . and that of the young boys.”2 Women also had their own collectivity; the young girls at least appear as a body alongside the young boys, a fact that is always astonishing, or being mocked, or being admired by observers used to the restraint and sequestration of Ionian women. let us be clear: we see them alongside the young boys, not mixed in with them. Even so, the antagonism between the sexes is found in the traditional and no doubt ritual joking that they exchanged during the symmetrical development of these two rival troupes.3 The women also had their own collective role to play in certain public cultic acts: [129]

Georg Kaibel, the most diligent historian of Spartan religious practices, clearly recognized that the Marriage Song of Helen is an etiological poem related to the cult of Helen δενδριτις [Dendritis = of the tree] at Sparta (G. Kaibel, “Theokrits ‘Ελενης ‘Επιθαλαμιον,” Hermes 27 (1892): 249-59). We can conclude that the twelve chosen young girls that the poet shows us singing the hymn of Helen were, in effect, the custodians of the cult of Helen. One might also allow that the young girls’ δρομοσ [dromos = tree] mentioned in the poem was connected to the cult of Helen.1

Among the men, Plutarch only mentions three classes distinguished by age. But, this conception is certainly more simplistic than reality, just like the incomplete classification chart for the Massaï that Thomson provides us. A more attentive examination of the documents allows us to discern in the life of the Spartiate numerous phases, all distinguished by specific names. I borrow from Busolt’s concise chart,2 which was clearly not ‘seeking out’ texts simply to furnish a parallel to the African and Australian facts which we have just mentioned. Children (over 7 years old), he tells us in essence, are organized into companies (βουαι [bouai], αγελαι [agelai] [= herds, flocks]), subdivided into ιλαι [ilai = bands, troops]. Young men of twenty years are called ιρανες [iranes], from eighteen to twenty years μελλιρανεσ [melliranes = young, pre- iranes]; πρωτιρανεσ [protiranes = earlier, prior iranes] when they are still younger; σϕαιρεις [sphaireis = boxers?] when a little older (Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, vol. I (1877), 379, #2; August Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1828-1877): 1386, 1432). Such men are the ομοιοι (homoioi = the equals, similars). We have here the table of the various degrees of Spartiate initiation. And note that not everyone necessarily passes through the various degrees of this initiation. Tribal society easily develops into a more or less exclusive secret society in the higher ranks. Thus, at Sparta, the number of people considered ατιμια (atimia = without honor, of low class), even for reasons other than birth, was considerable.3

    Other parallels also appear. [130] It is a well known fact that, from the age of seven years, the little boys were raised and were living together in common. Fustel de Coulanges tried in vain to decrease the focus on this fact by asserting that the children, even if raised all together, were still sleeping under their father’s roof. The sources he offered as proof proved nothing of the sort and show us on the contrary that the little Spartiates slept roughly, which was part of the training to which they submitted.1 Other facts put us in the presence of a phenomenon analogous to that of the male residence, namely the famous institution of the common meal.2  Of course this isn’t a single house but several buildings, no doubt grouped in the same area. The essential fact of the separation of the sexes at mealtime is no less marked than in the examples which we have set forth above. The syssition is essentially a male affair, and the old name of ανδρεια [andreia = the manly thing] by which this meal was designated is enough to confirm this point. We know that children were only admitted in the role of listeners and that only full citizens were allowed to participate. It is possible, moreover, that next to these more or less lightly-built buildings which functioned as dining rooms, we will find traces of another edifice which functioned as a meeting place for at least part of the male population. I certainly see an indication of this in this passage from Plutarch: “When a child was born, the father carried him into a lesché where the elders of the tribe were assembled.”3 This lesché , probably to be understood as some sort of loggia, is no doubt analogous with the [131] Djemmâa where we have seen the old Ouaddaïans attending to their various occupations. Finally, remember that access to the marketplace [agora] was forbidden to citizens under thirty years old.1 We know that common meals were not unique to Lacedaemon and that we find them in Crete, where the institutions seem to belong to the same ethnographic category as those of Lacedaemon.2 Women and children perhaps also shared a common table; but at any rate the men ate apart, as the term ανδρεια, which reappears here, proves. the separation of the sexes was strongly marked and appeared to respond to a purpose of the lawgiver.3

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    Naturalists know that diverse organisms have close connections among them and undergo naturally occurring changes. In some sense, institutions are like organisms. The development noted above of such a group of [132] institutions allows us to predict a corresponding development of some social phenomena, and the atrophy of some others. To strengthen our earlier deduction, we will turn our attention towards two sets of facts.

    H. Webster has shown, rightly, that the system of classification by age and gradual initiation have the effect of significantly increasing the social prestige of the elders and, as a result of this prestige, the veneration of tradition.1 The system basically corresponds to the stage of political development where authority still lies in the hands of the elders. The Australian aborigines give us a perfectly typical example of such a constitution. If authority comes to be concentrated in the hands of a chieftain, or if power becomes monopolized within a few families, then the system declines or changes. It would be superfluous to belabor the fact that here again we are brought into the conditions of Spartan life. The ancients themselves wondered what political category the Spartan constitution and similar constitutions belonged to.2 It certainly wasn’t a democracy; but neither was it an aristocracy or an oligarchy, since we have no sign of the predominance of a few families; only one term would fit: it was, we might say, a gérousie [gerontocracy], a government by the elders, and we should not be surprised to find that respect for the older generation was an essential aspect of a Spartan education. It is in the nature of things that the older generation, the holders and guardians of tradition, should purposely turn things to their advantage. Webster rightly observes that, as a general rule, the numerous food prohibitions, to which the young men submitted during their novitiate, often reserved the most desirable foods for the elders.3 Plutarch clearly and [133] precisely knew that the rules of the Spartan code of ethics set aside for the elders’ stomachs the precious black broth.1  

    We have already alluded to the condition of women in the Lacedemonian city. Influenced as we are by the laudatory tradition of which Plutarch and the writers of the eighteenth century have made an echo, we are almost blindly forced to accord to the Lacedemonian woman all the virtues of the ancient matron. The impression that remains after a reading of the most genuine documents is completely different. Aristotle is especially struck by the extreme independence, indeed the license, of Spartan women: ζῶσι γὰρ ἀκολάστως πρὸς ἅπασαν ἀκολασίαν καὶ τρυφερῶς [they live dissolutely in respect of every sort of dissoluteness, and luxuriously].2 All the sources are in agreement in indicating to us that there was there a social state which seemed absolutely abnormal to most Greeks.  Here again several things become clear, if we consider the consequences of the classificatory system that we have described. At an initial glance, one perhaps expects a completely different experience. It is obvious that the masculine community is grounded in the idea of the inferiority of women; in certain peoples, the ceremonies of the men’s club are especially an opportunity to fool or to bully the feminine half of society. The negroes of the Guinea coast talk generally about a bogeyman which appears periodically to the great dam of unfaithful spouses.3 Young Australian initiates have nothing more significant to do than to terrorize their mother and their sisters with the horrifying sounds of the ‘bull-roar’, the secret of which has just been revealed to them.4 But there is yet another way that the system pertains to the condition of the women. Schurtz has very convincingly shown that it rests on a principle [134] which essentially takes away from that of the family, and that the development of one of these two institutions only appears in an inverse ratio to the development of the other.1 The distribution of the population into distinct age classes often, if not regularly, leads to, as a practical consequence, some kind of community of women and a relative condition of sexual promiscuity. If the youth, before a certain age, don’t have the right to contract a regular union, custom grants them at least a sort of collective right over the young women of their age. We have already seen the situation for the young Zulu and Massaï warriors; traces of a similar situation can be found in the ruggedness among the rural populations of northern and eastern Europe.2 In the almost infinite variety of forms into which the men’s house can evolve, if sometimes it becomes a school, temple, hotel, seat of a city council, leaders’ house, prytany, or hangar for warships, there are cases where it becomes a public house, in the usual sense of that word [i.e. a pub]. Even amongst the oldest part of the population, if we don’t find absolute promiscuity with respect to sexual relations anymore, all traces of the communal ownership of women have not disappeared, and we often find typical forms of marriage, like group marriage. Finally, the marked separation of the sexes, the practice of removing the children from their mother early in life to raise them communally, leaves little room for the development of home life. Indeed, it is possible that the development of a familial spirit raises the moral condition of the woman, but only at the expense of her social emancipation. There where the family is strongly founded, the woman has hardly any direct contact with the society as a whole; she is perpetually subordinate; Roman law made her a perpetual minor. On the contrary, develop the kinds of social groups we have been describing, at the expense [135] of the family group, and the isolation of the woman ceases along with sequestering her in the family home. The women constitute a society which will copy that of the men, which will imitate its educational, initiation practices—including circumcision—, and which will have a place alongside that of the men in certain religious and social rituals. We have already seen an indication of such things at Sparta. I believe that these are what the ancient sources are talking about when they inform us that in no other country do women take up such a role in public affairs. And that is particularly because the family is so weakly constituted in Sparta. Fustel de Coulanges went to great lengths to avoid proving that the Lacedemonian family was constituted according to the same model as the family in the other regions of Greece.1 Sources too precise to ignore allow us, on the contrary, to consider as proven the following facts: the right of life and death over the child at his birth, elsewhere exercised by the father of the family, belongs here to the collective;2 custom dictates that it is perfectly natural that a wife be lent for awhile to a third party, and the exchange can be proposed either by the husband or by the interested third party.3 Polybius even adds the fact that three brothers often had the same wife in common.4 From an anecdote reported by Plutarch, we maintain only that the old Lacedemonian custom did not consider adultery to be an offense.5 Finally, we cannot fail to be struck by the peculiarities of the Lacedemonian marriage rites. There is nothing that resembles less the joyous and loud procession which, in the midst of torches, of fruit baskets, and of nuptial shouts, accompanies the Athenian fiancée to the home of her spouse. Lacedemonian marriage has something furtive [136] and shameful about it:1 “marriage was preceded by the abduction of the fiancée; this girl must not be too young but rather have attained a specific age. The matron who oversaw the ceremony shaved her head, dressed her as a man, prepared a mattress for a bed and left her in the dark. The fiancé who was debilitated neither by wine nor by debauchery, and who had soberly dined at the common mess came secretly, undid her belt, and carried her off to another bed. He stayed with her for a short time before retiring composedly to sleep as usual with the young men, and he maintained the same restraint for some time, spending the days with his companions, sleeping with them and not visiting his wife except in secret and without her family knowing. . . . That lasted some time, and many had children before they ever had the opportunity to see their wife in daylight.” One will have recognized a course with several features already discussed. It is not even the young couple’s curious disguise of which we have seen an example earlier.2

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[137] Let us return now to the krypteia. In a society founded upon the classification principles described, we would expect to see the practices for the initiation of the young man take on a certain pattern. We know that, in a lot of societies, initiation rites lead to complicated and often barbaric ceremonies. Not only is the young man, at this moment in his life, subjected to generally painful experiences: teeth pulling, circumcision, subincision, hair removal, diverse scarifications; but he is even the object of real abuse, which can reach a degree of extreme cruelty. There is something else here besides the product of a bullying  instinct that is without doubt natural to man, and also something else besides the oft-given  reason that they must test the moral steadfastness of the future warrior; an idea that reappears quite regularly is that the initiation is a death followed by a kind of resurrection.1 There is no doubt that analogous rites have marked one of the phases of the Lacedemonian initiation. No one forgets that young Spartans were struck with canes before the altar of Artemis Orthia, and that some of them perished following such treatment.2 The lashing of novices is perhaps one of the most commonly found forms of trial inflicted upon initiates.3

Another episode of the cycle of initiation which reappears quite regularly is a sometimes lengthy, sometimes short period of isolation through which the young men must pass. This isolation can take place in a building set apart for this practice; but, more often, the novices are cast from inhabited regions out to the borders of the lands that are controlled by the tribe: they [138] must take to the bush. There is nothing more natural: doesn’t this period of their life, where their personality frees itself, put them into more or less direct contact with the dead spirits of the tribe that they are supposed to reincarnate? and the bush is the place that these spirits haunt. Then, following a notion that is both childish and profound, restoring the ancestors, shouldn’t they in some manner repeat the experience of the people who are naturally flowering, one day, naked on the naked earth? This is why our young men live like little Robinson Crusoes, forced to get by using the resources of the woods and the land for their food and clothing. We have seen the Zulu youth wander about in such a crew, frightening those peacefully walking about with the noise of his rattles. The young Arunta is also put into a special camp and held strictly separated from the rest of the tribe during a period of his apprenticeship. Here is, among many others that might be supplied, the summary description of some analogous situations: in the Admiralty Isles, “children [at the time of puberty] go through ceremonies during which they are strictly ‘taboo’, which is to say completely separated from society. . . On the reef, far from inhabited areas, they have built a large house. The boys live there under the supervision of an elder…” They must not let themselves be seen by women nor by their kinsmen. “If their father or the chief approaches, they hide themselves in their room and stay there until those men have departed.”1 Among the Indians of Virginia, “young people must go away alone into the forest or the mountain, stay there for a reasonably long time, and sometimes take certain drugs by means of which they can perceive their guardian angel.”2 “In the tribes on the coast of the north Pacific, at the moment of being received into a secret society, the young man disappears into the woods, and they say that he is communicating with the spirits of the society in [139] complete solitude. Anyone who discovers the young kwakiutl in this period can kill him without punishment and take his place in society.”1 Commander Lenfant, in his exploration to the great river sources of equatorial Africa, discovered, not without some surprise, the curious educational practices of the Labis. Here the initiation, instead of being open to all young males, is reserved for an elite group drawn from a circle of neighboring tribes (Bayas, Talas, Lakkas, M’bakkas, M’boun, etc.). One of the particularities of this initiation is the teaching of a secret language, the ‘labi’, which serves as an international tongue in this ethnographic region of Africa:2 “the term labi… designates a very specific time during which the young black man completely undergoes a special education, a total moral and physical training, hardening him to fatigue, to work, to the fight against danger and suffering…. Only the head ‘labi’—the school master if you will—has the right to speak to the students…. All the young boys chosen for the labi are thus in a living group separated out in the bush with their teacher, who follows them step by step…. Each labi must hide himself under a basket, under a sort of basket-hut, a kind of large hamper that hides him from prying eyes. We thus see them move about the steppe like great anteaters. Neither parents, chiefs, nor friends gives him anything to wear, anything to eat, anything to shelter in: the young labi must provide for himself. He hunts, he fishes, he takes on the wild…. While deep in sleep, the shaman wakes him up brusquely: ‘Arise and dance.’ With an admirable obedience the young cadre get themselves in place; then at the sound of the tam-tam made of antelope or goat skin, he begins the indicated show or the counter-dance… But this is no longer the ridiculous tam-tam of men of a low condition, who stomp about in place shaking their head in a disgraceful way…” 

[140] Let us now discuss those texts which supplement the information on the krypteia found in Plutarch. One comes from Justin1: “Lykurgus ordained that children, from the age of puberty, should live not in the city but in the countryside…; they should sleep rough; any kind of stew was forbidden to them;2 and they would only reappear in the city after they had become men.” The scholiast [commentator] of Plato provides even more precise information: “This was the krypteia: the young man was sent away from the city, and, during this whole period, the rule was that he should not be seen; he would wander in the mountains, only sleep while on alert, so he could not be surprised; he had no servant and carried no provisions with him (all this is a type of preparation for war). Thus they are sent out naked, each on his own, and they are told to spend an entire year living this way, to wander in the mountains, to live on whatever they can procure through theft or otherwise and thus to show themselves to no one (from which comes the name krypteia). Those who were seen were punished.”3 Any commentary would be superfluous. There is not a detail in this text (isolation in the mountains, strict taboos, food restrictions, the requirement to be self-sufficient, danger, real or imagined, that threatens the novice) which the previously related ethnographic facts don’t explain. And at the same time, the sense of the word krytpeia which had embarrassed the commentators is made crystal clear. The χρυπτος [chryptos] is the young man who, as we might say about the Sangha [the people of the Congo], “lives as a labi”; he is the Melanesian [the people of New Guinea] during his period of taboo. [141] As in all these rites of passage, the essential fact is that the young man must hide himself. Let us set aside, therefore, the etymology drawn by the hairs which makes of krypteia a synonym for ambush, and admit the first and most natural sense of the word. We would not then hesitate to conclude that the krypteia is the last phase of Lacedemonian initiation, that in which the young man, after the methodical training of his early years, is committed to a period of retreat which must precede the fulfillment of the final rites.   

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Before going any further, it would not be without interest to open a parenthesis and ask what exactly was included in the education that a young Spartan received during his initiation period. It is naturally in the diversity of the traditional instruction instilled in its young men that the diversity of spirit between different societies is best noticed. At this moment—a decisive moment where the appearance of the first signs of puberty denotes, in general, among the primitive a remarkable halt to the young man’s intellectual development—the collective mentality will indelibly impress itself upon him. The Australian initiation is above all a monotone and fastidious array of innumerable totemic ceremonies that take up such a large space in the world of this race’s intellectual outlook; the initiation in the negro societies appears to be especially, just like the apprenticeship in the traditional dances, an initiation to sexual life. There are strong reasons for presuming that at Sparta the education of the novice included, beyond the rules of propriety, so rigidly codified, music and a military apprenticeship.1 Except that when one speaks of this apprenticeship, one intends, I [142] believe, to propagate a false idea, which presents itself naturally enough. The authors who have made connections between the krypteia and military education, unconquerably attracted to the misinterpretation that krypteia = ambush, have been led to make of this apprenticeship something like what we would call “the little war” or “the large maneuvers”. When they describe to us the young kryptos rushing about the countryside, they repeat that this was without a doubt in order to teach him what is known in military parlance as the usage of the terrain and in order to develop in him the spirit of initiative. Nothing seems to me more incorrect than such a conception of the preparation for the warrior life at Lacedaemon. All of Spartan military history speaks against the idea of making a Spartan hoplite a bush crawler, or a rock and wall climber. If he had been trained thus, should we imagine him halted for years before a little house like Platea? If the ‘countryside service’, in the sense that one means the word today, really had the principal purpose of a military education for the companions of Leonidas, the path of Ephialtes would have been found and occupied, and the traditional story of the defense of Thermopylae would become almost unintelligible. In reality, the great military innovation of Sparta is the total opposite in nature. What Sparta taught to the Greek world and the European world, is what Asia, from Marathon to Plassey, never could teach to its hordes of infantry, the military power of coordinated movements, the art of advancing, retreating, and charging as one, and individual valor increased tenfold through the unity of the whole.1 For the Homeric line of battle, a long floating ribbon of duels and body-to-body fighting which oscillates and wraps around heroes of a grand stature, Sparta substituted the ‘phalanx’ which, imitated by all of Greece, reinforced by [143] Philip, dislocated and loosened up by the Romans, never ceased to rule ancient battlefields.  Sparta thus opened a chapter in military history of which the last episode would be the European fashion in the eighteenth century of the exercise ‘in the Prussian mold’ and which only came to an end when the development of offensive weaponry obliged the line of skirmishers to scatter. And now a little reflection suffices to see the favorable ground that Spartan institutions furnished at the birth of this tactical conception. We can see the Lacedemonian barracked from the age of seven, subject to an intense collective life which would not end even when he reached the age of his majority; the rhythm soon becomes the essential thing as in every agglomeration of individuals performing a job in common.1 Sparta is the country of music, the country of Tyrtaean hymns and of the paean: the first thing that a child certainly learned was to stamp his feet in cadence with his little comrades; the choir of dancers transforms itself imperceptibly into a military formation. The Pyrrhic, which along with music formed the essence of the education of a young Cretan, was not the picture of war, it was the model.2

[144] And it just so happens that an invention analogous to the military invention of Sparta has been repeated, nearly under our eyes, in the plain historical light of the nineteenth century, and in societies of which the conditions of existence have already furnished us the opportunity of numerous parallels with those of Sparta. It relates once again to the people of southern Africa. The Zulus, at the time of the famous Shaka, reinvented something akin to the phalanx and created a military organization which allowed them to play a role in southern Africa analogous to that of Sparta in the Peloponnese, up to the day where they had to throw themselves up against the advanced arms of the Europeans. Yet, the tactical tool with which the reformer had endowed them, and which had been more or less perfectly emulated by neighboring peoples (Matabeles, Herreros, Hottentots), sufficed to give the colonial wars of southern Africa a totally different appearance than those of our conflicts in Morocco or Algeria where the eternal fantasy of Arab and Berber battles is found: “The army of Shaka,” a specialist tells us, “numbered about 100,000 men, shared out in regiments of 800 to 1000 men who garrisoned different parts of the country and for half the time were always on a war-footing. Only the oldest warriors had the right to marry and to have servants. these regiments ordinarily formed the reserve, armed with white shields. They held themselves in echelons, one behind the other, at a specified distance, turning their back to the battle, until the moment when an observer, from the top of a hill gave them the order to enter in line to charge. The young troops (composed of the unmarried ‘ebuto’ class), with their black or multi-colored shields, had the honor of the first clash. A kind of transportation unit, made up of large boys… brought the [145] cattle.”1 Passarge has very judiciously brought out the essential character of this Zulu military organization: “It is easy to understand the organization of the Zulus under Shaka. It is nothing more than a return to the age classification system, at the expense of the family organization. The result was the reinforcement of the military valor of the tribe and the predominance over other peoples; authority was centralized and the power of the army created.”2 At Sparta also, and in the same sense, military power was the consequence of its institutions. but the period of military education corresponded to the period of communal exercise of the Spartan youth. and not to the phase of his life when he was isolated and almost a fugitive in the scrub. This is not to say, it should be understood, that the young kryptoi, freshly emerged from their period of instruction, were not very likely, for example in the case of a threat to their country, to supply a force of auxiliaries or scouts. That the fact might be established, it pertains, contrarily, to a passage from Plutarch where we see the denomination of the krypteia applied to a unit which has its own leader.3  The same geographer from whom we have already borrowed various pieces of information on the ethnography of South Africa furnishes us again here an interesting link: “All the boys who have undergone these ceremonies [of puberty] among the Bechuana, the Amakosah, and the Zulus form a military organization, which is to say a closed troop which fights on its own account.”4 And again Passarge adds: “The Bechuana call such a band Mopato, which means ‘Geheimniss’ [secret, mystery]. I am reluctant to translate into French the sense that the word Geheimniss can have, and I might waver between the neighboring translations of ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’. But imagine that we had to [146] translate this passage into Greek; one sole expression fits: κρυπτεια [krypteia].

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    If now the krypteia is essentially something besides just an ambush, we can ask what we should think of what Plutarch tells us about the conduct of the young Lacedemonians in the location of the helots. it is necessary to see it as just a fable, born perhaps from a false etymology? We have said the reasons why we should consider his information seriously, and our way of interpreting the krypteia is going to provide us with a confirmation and an explanation. We will observe, first of all, that, if according to some views the novices during their period of withdrawal are submitted to a very harsh discipline, another view also reveals their strangely indulgent situation permitting them all sorts of acts of violence and brigandage which in other circumstance would be severely reprimanded. We have seen the exploits of the small Zulus. At Fouta-Djalon, the newly circumcised can, for one month long, steal and eat whatever pleases them; at Darfour, they go marauding against the neighboring villages and steal the chickens.1 The terrible reputation of animal thieves that the Massaï have attracted to themselves has as its main origin the brigandage of the kraal by the “El Morane.” There are various explanations for this remarkable tolerance with respect to the indiscipline of these adolescents. The leading idea is apparently that they are at that moment in some way outside of  society, in which the usual rules cease to apply to them; they live in the country of the spirits, more or less completely possessed by them; they benefit from the wealth of indulgence that man always exhibits for the crimes of his gods. No one can doubt that the tradition which shows us a public opinion tolerating the larcenies of the young Spartiates has any other origin.2  But the hunt for [147] helots presents something rather systematic which the preceding examples do not really suffice to account for and which force us to look elsewhere.

    The krytpeia, we have said, is the last phase of the initiation, that which precedes the moment where the boy is going to be counted among the men: “neque prius in urbem redire quam viri facti essent [and forbidding them to return into the city till they arrived at manhood],” says Justin most excellently. In a military society, the act which makes one a man is the shedding of blood; and it is natural, it is proven by numerous examples that such a deed often marks the end the of the period of childhood. Among the Gallas, where the classification system appears well developed, “one only considers as a man someone who has killed an enemy, and the number of ivory rings that each one carries corresponds to the number of enemies killed.”1 Among the Wanika (East Africa), “the young folk having arrived at the age of manhood withdraw into the forest and live there until they have had the opportunity to kill a man.”2 It is here, especially, that we must guard ourselves from our own ideas about what it means to be civilized and to not imagine that this lofty deed must be essentially an act of bravery, an exploit which marks the daring of the young warrior on the field of battle. In reality, all blood spilled counts equally, whether in battle or by assassination, if lacking that of a man then that of a woman or child. Without seeking to delve into the obscure ideas which enter into play here in order to explain the meaning of this first sacrificed life, let us examine the deeds in an ethnographic province where they are almost characteristic. It is found in the region of Melanesia and especially in the Malay Peninsula. In the interior of an extended area which stretched approximately from the Philippines to the Torres Strait, from the Malay Peninsula to Fiji, and of which the center is essentially [148] Borneo and New Guinea⎯consequently in the classic region of the male house and the masculine club—the custom of head hunting runs rampant.1  Every visitor of these ethnographic collections has noticed these skull trophies, which have been carefully preserved and often barbarically decorated, to the possession of which the natives of this region attach great importance and for the carrying of which they make curious baskets. The Dayaks of Borneo are still marked by their obstinacy with which, despite the efforts of the Dutch administration, they remain attached to this custom, which has not ceased to frighten their neighbors. The freshly cut heads are, among themselves, welcome in all their ceremonies, but there can be no doubt that headhunting is especially associated with the initiation practices of puberty: “When a Dayak,” reports one traveler, “wishes to marry, he must undertake an heroic act (in Malay, Orang-Brani) before he is able to obtain the facvor of the young woman he desires; the more heads he acquires, the greater the respect in which he is held by his fiancée and by the whole tribe…. If a raja [ruler] has a son…, he must acquire heads before he can receive a name. In all the tribes, there is a rule that a young man cannot carry the ‘mandan’ [the short sword of the Dayaks], marry, or even visit women, if he has not participated in one or several head hunts; they give him the ‘mandan’ from his birth, or on the day when he receives his name, but it is only when he has dipped it in blood that he has the right to carry it every day..”2 Skulls are the consecrated decoration of the house of young folk.3 

    A recent observer admirably informs us about the character  of these head-hunting expeditions: “Although [149] among the pacific Bahau [a tribe of the Dayaks], bravery and strength are not the object of a very special respect…, it is, however, useful, if not obligatory, that the sons of the chiefs provide a proof of their valor. From this comes the custom which is preserved for them, to undertake a dangerous expedition in order to have the opportunity to kill a man. Even the  murder of an old captive who was purchased is allowed, and so the young chiefs thus seek to acquit themselves without the danger of their sacrifice.“4 Thus we have, as an example, a fact which has passed almost right under the eyes of the author; it pertains to the murder of a slave, and behold what the inquiry reveals: “A few days before, Lasa, the son of Tekwan, chief of the Ma-suling, in the course of visiting his aunt, Lirang, had drawn the slave outside, took him on to a boat with two young Kayan and carried him on the river; about half-way to his father’s house, they stopped on the sandy bank to take a bath, when Lasa threw himself onto the old man and killed him…. As the son of the chief, Lasa felt himself obliged, in order to enhance his reputation, to sacrifice a human life. And, as there was no slave for sale among the Bahau, and he had neither the opportunity nor the desire to join a head-hunting expedition, he resorted to this method for satisfying the demands of his masculine honor.”1 It seems to me that, just like the ‘labi’ above, carrying his basket like a large snail carries his shell, gives us the plain sense of the word kryptos, the young Malay prince, who draws the old servant from his aunt into an ambush in order to fulfill the rites of his adolescence, conveys the mentality that the young Spartan carries into the hunt for helots. I would not hesitate, while maintaining the authenticity of Plutarch’s testimony, to conclude that the Lacedemonian kryptos, who, when the night comes, watches the helot who has lingered in his field, (in taking up the old and picturesque Canadian expression which, derived from the stories of the Redskins, [150] has passed into the international vocabulary of ethnography) seeks to “count coup.”1

    This conception of the krypteia does not naturally impede us from admitting that the old custom could, at certain times, be used for political policing purposes.2 But we have without a doubt established that such was not its origin. I would be inclined even to believe that, without perhaps making it disappear, its development tempered primitive barbarism. One is astonished at the affirmation borrowed by Plutarch from Aristotle, according to which, at the beginning of the year, the ephors declared war on the helots. It would be possible to see in this information, no doubt incomplete, proof that apart from one certain period, this monstrous right of the kryptos was not recognized except during a specific time of the year, fixed no doubt by the magistrate, who was warning at the same time that the helot should be on his guard.

Notes