weird-ass units

[Shigawire]

and last but not least:Krypteia....
these where young men recruited by the temple of Nike (.....) and where a step up from Thureophoroi. they were in smaller number and masters in stealth and ambushing.

What Teleklos has said about this is true. First of all, the Krypteia were Spartans. Second of all, the Krypteia were not some elite commando units. They were simply the secret police. The Gestapo, the StaSi, the Homeland Security, the.. you name it. "Krypteia" means "hidden". Much like the Japanese Shinobi, they kept an eye on potential troublemakers. The purpose was to quell any helot uprising before it could even start to grow. So most of their activities revolved around observation and monitoring. They would go to the suspected helots during the night, drag them out - which interrupted their sleep - and simply kill them.

The Krypteia were also used as a strategic intelligence service, and as couriers carrying secret documents. The Spartans had a staff-shaped device for decoding encrypted messages. The device was called the "skytale." It was a stick wrapped with narrow strips of papyrus, leather, or parchment. The message was written on the wrapping; then the strip was removed and passed to the messenger. Only when it was rewound around a stick with the exact same diameter as the skytale could the message be deciphered.




Here is an example from Diodorus:
'The skuta/lh was a staff used for writing in code. The Lacedaemonians had two round staves of identical size, the one kept at Sparta, the other in possession of commanders abroad. A strip of paper was rolled slantwise around the staff and the dispatch written lengthwise on it; when unrolled the dispatch was unintelligible, but rolled slantwise round the commander's skytale it could be read. Even if Gylippus had found the dispatch he could not have read it.'

-you may consider it a primitive "enigma" machine.


The Krypteia was also a period in the learning experience that kids of -proper- Spartan citizens would have to go through. At the age of 7, you began training for military service. At the age of 10, you would go through a period of "krypteia" where you were temporarily banned from the city and forced to live in the forest alone. The purpose of this was to teach the children to become self-sufficient in the wild, and to become devious and clever thieves. Because the only way for them to get food was to steal from the city - or to hunt prey - which you were unlikely to do at 10. And so, you had to steal, but if you got caught, you would get a nasty lashing or some other form of punishment. The point was that you WOULD steal, but you should not be caught stealing..

And so the 'Krypteia' was 3 things:
1) A secret police murdering people who gave the faintest hint of dissention.
2) Military intelligence service.
3) A hardcore "boy scout" period at the age of 10.

They were most certainly not battlefield ninjas.