Sciritae

The Skiritai ( ancient Greek: Σκιρῖται ) is the free inhabitants of a landscape in the mountainous north of the Spartan political system, on the border with Arcadia. Because of its strategic importance for Sparta - the Skiritis the road runs north - the Skiritai were early subjected by the Spartans and were given the status of Perioeci.

According to Stephen of Byzantium were the Skiritai Arcadian origin, in Xenophon's "state nature of the Lacedaemonians " they play a prominent role: it may as only the king marching into the field and were doing the spyware and security services for the Spartan army. According to Thucydides, the (67 and 68) describes in the book V the structure of the Spartan army, and the battle of Mantinea, fight the Skiritai on vulnerable left wing of the phalanx. In Book IV, Section 2 of the " Kyropädie " ( Education of Cyrus ) Xenophon compares it with the Hyrcanian cavalry, who were spared by the Assyrians, neither in dangerous situations even in strenuous things, like the Lacedaemonians used their Skiriten.

Swell

  • Edmond Lévy Category: Histoire politique et sociale jusqu'à la conquête romaine, Seuil, coll Points Histoire, Paris, 2003 ISBN 2-02-032453-9
  • Welwei, Karl- Wilhelm: Sparta, Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, p 244 ISBN 3-608-94016-2
  • Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Artemis & Winkler, 2002, pp. 354-355 ISBN 3-7608-4103-1
  • Xenophon: Kyropädie, Artemis & Winkler, 1992, p 247 ISBN 3-7608-1670-3
  • Andrey Zaykov. Skiritai and the issue of citizenship Spartan, in: Issedon - ΙΣΣΕΔΩΝ: Almanac of Ancient History and Culture. Ekaterinburg: . The Ural State University Press, 2007 Vol 4 P. 26-58. (in Russian English summary. )
Spartiate History of the Assyrian people Karl-Wilhelm Welwei
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