T shaped staff

[Invictus_Thrax]

I often see depictions of spartans having a t-shaped walking cane. But somehow I lack the correct keywords in google to find more information over these. I also tried searching on the forum but nothing shows up. Can someone please give me more information about these walking canes.

Does it have the same meaning as the centurio vine stick, the 'vitis' and who carried it?
Spartan officers, Ephors,...

Thank you very much for enlightening the matter

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

It's called "vaktiria" "βακτηρία" and all Spartans seem to have had it next to them when they wanted to hit someone for not agreeing with them ;-)
I don't know what is the evidence that it was always T shaped, although this was a popular shape in all the city states.
Khaire
Giannis

[The Dioskouri]

It's more commonly called a Sketale. It seems to have been used as a military cypher or encryption device as well as a staff. Sketale means baton and the term is still used today to mean a block or short rod used to read a coded message. It seems the Sketales would have been fairly uniform in size so that military orders could coded and passed to commanders who would then wind the message around the 'T' to read it correctly. It is not frequently mentioned but appears to be, or started out as a uniquely Spartan device and took some time for their enemies to catch on that it was a cypher device.

Cleomenes famously bashed people in the face with his but it wasn't intended as a weapon. It is likely it was not a rank-and-file device but carried by command staff as a symbol of office and to use for messages.

[hoplite14gr]

The spartan staff and other stories... :mrgreen:

The source is a plaque from Sparta museum. But it depicts only one type of staff.
Then a historian proclaimed a "mantra" that this was the "Spartan staff".
There was also an illustration showing a Laconian office based on the "Cleveland statue" (that has his hand in a tight fist by the way) holding a t-shaped staff.

There are various types of staff in Greek art.
Yes "Vactiria" is the walking staff usually associated with the elderly people.
And YES Bacteria were named after this word because the first discovered looked like mini staffs :!:

Skytalle is a rod. Correct. Yes the Spartans did use an encryption method base on the length of the skytale. The fact the Non Spartan write about it means that the code was eventually broken

This rod was not confined to Sparta! In the forth century Argos a big number of people were murdered in political riots and the the ancient authors called the day of "SKYTALLISMOS"

The "SKIPTRO" sceptre (symbol of power or authority) that is usually considered a rod but in ancient times was occasionally a staff:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8qFQe2oHlJA/Tq...aranto.jpg

Sometimes the sources either talk clearly of a rod or staff used in action and some times two different sources say different item used in the same action.

To summarize. The Laconian staff is a coined term like the Laconian sword

We are totally in the dark what type of stick the Spartans carried.
There is room for many interpretations.

Kind regards