Tinker Tailor Soldier Spartan: Spies and Spycraft in Ancient Greece

Jan 15, 2026

Ancient Greek warfare involved more than just battle; espionage played a crucial role. Stories of secret messages hidden in tattoos and earrings reveal a rich history of spycraft. The challenges of communication under Persian surveillance are discussed, alongside the clever tactics of figures like Gorgo, the first known female cryptanalyst. The podcast links Homeric ruses to modern intelligence, exploring the anxiety surrounding early writing as a powerful and potentially dangerous technology. Ultimately, the narratives uncover deeper truths about knowledge and power.

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ANECDOTE

Tattooed Message Starts A Rebellion

Histiaeus tattoos a message on a slave's shaved head and waits for the hair to grow before sending him to Aristagoras.
The slave tells Aristagoras to 'shave my head' so the hidden message is revealed and signals rebellion.

ANECDOTE

Blank Wax Tablets Hide A Warning

Demaratus sends apparently blank wax tablets to Sparta that hide writing on the wood beneath the wax.
Gorgo, Leonidas' wife, tells the Spartans to scrape off the wax and reveals the crucial warning about the Persian invasion.

ANECDOTE

Dolon: Spy Interrogated In The Iliad

In the Iliad, the Trojan spy Dolon is captured by Odysseus and Diomedes, interrogated, and then killed after revealing information.
The episode shows classical literature already using spy narratives and interrogation tactics.

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We may think of Ancient Greek warfare as scantily dressed musclemen thrashing it out on the desert plain (and there may have been an element of that), but there was a whole other side of spy work too. Much of this was the result of its fraught relationship with the vast Persian empire to the east - a centuries long rivalry which makes the Cold War look like a hot skirmish.

Mary and Charlotte share some of the surviving stories of Ancient Greek espionage, including secret messages concealed in women’s earrings and even tattooed onto an enslaved person’s head. Most of these stories focus on writing and it’s a reminder that in the Ancient World, writing was as innovative and inherently suspicious as drones are to us today. Societies with advanced written culture had the technological upperhand on their rivals, so it’s little surprise that the surviving stories about spies reveal an anxiety about this new form of communication.

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Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

The story of Bellerophon is told in Book 6 of the Iliad (the “dangerous signs” line 165)

The stories of Gorgo can be found in Herodotus, Histories Book 5, 49 and Book 7, 239 (she is described as one of the first cryptanalysts by David Kahn in The Codebreakers (Scribners, 1996)). She is one of the women who features in Sarah B Pomeroy, Spartan Women (OUP, pb, 2002).

Herodotus Histories Book 5 (chaps 35 ff) describes the message tattooed into the slaves head.

Aeneas Tacticus: the relevant passage is at section 31.20

The revolutionary effects in general of early literacy (and different technologies of writing) are discussed by Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy (Routledge pb, new ed. 2012). For Greece, in particular, Oswyn Murray’s Early Greece (Fontana pb, 2nd ed, 2010) stresses the importance of the beginnings of writing.

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Producer: Jonty Claypole

Executive Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford

Video Editor: Jak Ford

Theme music: Casey Gibson

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