Friday, February 22, 2013

Spartan Myths

On 26 July 2008, at the Golden Dawn’s annual gathering at Thermopylae, one of the speakers said:
We look forward to the moment of great counter-attack, walking on the footsteps of ancient krypteia, which involved silent strikes, in the darkness and quietness of the night, against the city’s internal enemies.
Krypteia was the ancient Spartan rite of passage that supposedly involved going out at night armed with nothing but a knife and killing helots. The perceived militarism of ancient Spartan society has an obvious appeal for the Golden Dawn, as it did for the Third Reich and for Ioannis Metaxas, one of their heroes. . . .Read more of this piece by Yannis Hamilakis on the LRB Blog