Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray, your host.

I'm here to answer a question on the skilletai in a second, which I'll get to you in just a moment from Samuel.

But before that, of course, you can ask us a question

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Now, Samuel asks, Xenophon makes reference to the Skittitai as part of the Spartan army.

I think one of these is during Agiselaus' for a into Boeotia in the 370s AD.

BC, Murray, wrong, wrong, wrong period.

A quick Google search reveals that the ancient sources are a bit patchy.

That's a very good summary.

Do we know or can we infer anything about the

Skirotai? How do they fit into Spartan society as a whole? What roles do they perform

within the Spartan army on and off the battlefield? How are they armed? Any answers? Educated

guesses, welcome. Well, many of those, we don't know. So that's going to get me back down to

almost 10 minutes anyway. However, when we start to go through the evidence for the skittitai,

we get the idea that we're told in Thucydides that the skittitai are from Skittis,

...