Your music. How much of it there was, not alone the martial odes or war songs you sing as you advance upon the foe, but in the dances and the choruses, the festivals and the sacrifices. Why do these consummate warriors honor music so, when they forbid all theater and art? I believe they sense that the virtues are like music. They vibrate at a

“Habit is a mighty ally, my young friend. The habit of fear and anger, or the habit of self-composure and courage.”

There is a force beyond fear. More powerful than self-preservation. You glimpsed it today, in a crude and unself-aware form, yes. But it was there and it was genuine.

Someone told the story of the Spartiate whose shield bore no crest at all, but only a common housefly painted life-size. When his rankmates made sport of him for this, the Spartan declared that in line of battle he would get so close to his enemy that the housefly would look as big as a lion.

“Nothing fancy, brothers,” the king guided the construction. “For a wall of stone will not preserve Hellas, but a wall of men.”

I have never experienced under other circumstances anything like the relentless hilarity that proceeds during these otherwise grueling field exercises.

“Fly to the ends of the earth,”

Dienekes would not be among them. He had no male issue. He could not be selected.

“Good,” he said. “Then we’ll have our battle in the shade.”