wind, to double, to leap on the prey, and to taste of blood. See, the
sword is bright; show me the stains at thy return,'"

"Is it then true, as the Greeks generally declare," interrupted
Gongylus, "that in these campaigns, or crypteias, the sole aim and
object is the massacre of Helots?"

"Not so," replied Pausanias; "savage though the custom, it smells not
so foully of the shambles. The avowed object is to harden the nerves
of our youth. Barefooted, unattended, through cold and storm,
performing ourselves the most menial offices necessary to life, we
wander for a certain season daily and nightly through the rugged
territories of Laconia.[11] We go as boys--we come back as men.[12]
The avowed object, I say, is increment to hardship, but with this is
connected the secret end of keeping watch on these half-tamed and
bull-like herds of men whom we call the Helots. If any be dangerous,
we mark him for the knife. One of them had thrice been a ringleader
in revolt. He was wary as well as fierce. He had escaped in three
succeeding crypteias. To me, as one of the Heraclidae, was assigned
the honour of tracking and destroying him. For three days and three
nights I dogged his footsteps, (for he had caught the scent of the
pursuers and fled,) through forest and defile, through valley and crag,
stealthily and relentlessly. I followed him close. At last, one evening,
having lost sight of all my comrades, I came suddenly upon him as I
emerged from a wood. It was a broad patch of waste land, through which
rushed a stream swollen by the rains, and plunging with a sullen roar
down a deep and gloomy precipice, that to the right and left bounded the
waste, the stream in front, the wood in the rear. He was reclining by
the stream, at which, with the hollow of his hand, he quenched his
thirst. I paused to gaze upon him, and as I did so he turned and saw