Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Spartans An Epic History > Status Update

"the Christian apologist Origen appealed to pagan precedent in his war of words with the pagan Celsus. He did not scruple to suggest that the central Christian mystery of Christ's passion & death might be illuminated by a comparison with the self-chosen & avoidable death of Leonidas"

First church of Jesus the Spartan?

"If the husband was under 30 when he married, as he perhaps normally would be, he was required still to live in barracks under full military discipline & could visit his wife only by sneaking away at night under cover of darkness. It was said that a Spartan husband might father several children before he saw his wife in daylight"

"it is reasonable for us to suspect that sometimes divine commands came to the Spartans at suspiciously opportune moments"

"In all Spartan marriages, simulated or symbolic rape was part of the normal proceedings, but [king] Demaratus seems to have been unusual in carrying out the rape literally"

"an attempt was made to murder Hippias. This went wrong, in that it was his brother Hipparchus who was assassinated, & Hippias thereafter became considerably less affable"

curious how the assassination of one's brother leaves you less affable than before!

"In myth Hyacinthus was a beautiful adolescent boy, whom Apollo loved but whom he unfortunately killed by an accidental cast of a discus"

As I say, sport is dangerous.