0,78 HISTORY OF GREECE. from Thucydides, though they do not carry with them the same certain attestation. It was a part of the institutions of L/ykurgus (according to a statement which Plutarch professes to have bor- rowed from Aristotle) that the ephors should every year declare war against the Helots, in order that the murder of them mighi be rendered innocent ; and that active young Spartans should be armed with daggers and sent about Laconia, in order that they might, either in solitude or at night, assassinate such of the Helots as were considered formidable. 1 This last measure passes by the name of the Krypteia, yet we find some difficulty in deter- mining to what extent it was ever realized. That the ephors, indeed, would not be restrained by any scruples of justice or humanity, is plainly shown by the murder of the two thousand Helots above noticed ; but this latter incident really answered its purpose, while a standing practice, such as that of the Krypteia, and a formal notice of war given beforehand, would provoke the reaction of despair rather than enforce tranquillity. There seems, indeed, good evidence that the Krypteia was a real practice, 2 that the ephors kept up a system of police or espionage through- out Laconia, by the employment of active young citizens, who lived a hard and solitary life, and suffered their motions to be as little detected as possible. The ephors might naturally enough take this method of keeping watch both over the Perioekic town- ships and the Helot villages, and the assassination of individual Helots by these police-men, or Krypts, would probably pass un- noticed. But it is impossible to believe in any standing murder- ous order, or deliberate annual assassination of Helots, for the purpose of intimidation, as Aristotle is alleged to have represent- ed, for we may well doubt whether he really did make such a representation, when we see that he takes no notice of this mea- sure in his Politics, where he speaks at some length both of the Spartan constitution and of the Helots. The well-known hatred and fear, entertained by the Spartans towards their Helots, has probably colored Plutarch's description of the Krypteia, so as to 1 Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 28; Heraclides Pontic. p. 504, ed. Crag 4 Plato, Lcgg. i. p. 633 : the words of the Lacedaemonian Megillns desig- nate an existing Spartan custom. Compare the same treatise, vi. p. 763, wherfl Ast suspects, without reason, the genuineness of the word Kpvxroi.
