King Leonidas of Sparta, who led his warriors to defend the mountain pass into Greece from the Persian king Xerxes, tried very hard. He really did. In a way, I hated even starting to watch this movie because, like Titanic? I already knew how it was going to end. Which is to say, the ground littered with bodies that were all stuck full of arrows. Badly.
Only this time, I didn't have to endure Kate Winslet's Rose leaning off that door she was balanced on, out there among the ice floes in the northern Atlantic, saying, "Jack? Jack? Oh, Jack!" as Leonardo DiCaprio, as frozen as a halibut, gently sank down to the bottom of the deep blue sea.
So anyway, I found this picture, painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David in 1814, and I think I understand why the Greeks fell to the last man at Thermopylae.
They are wearing no pants. Which is either a reflection on the inadequacies of the Spartan armor, or on the humors of M. David, I just don't know. But I do know that it would be just about impossible for anyone to win at horseshoes, much less in hand-to-hand combat, if your opponent is all up in your business, swinging a sword around.
I mean, really.
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1 comment:
You know, those Greeks always did gym stuff in the nude...women were not allowed at the Olympics because all the games were men in the nude...I have always thought, "How smart is this...to have everything just hanging about waiting for a slip of something or other?" Maybe that's why it is no longer a tradition...maybe they caught on eventually...sometimes women have a much clearer view of a situation and the fact that they were not allowed at the games put that oh-so-excellent-vision-and-input back a bit but when they caught on...well, let's just say the rest is history. LOL.
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