Sparta: Money, Guns and Mothers

“War is the last of all things to go according to schedule.”
— Thucydides (460 BC – 395 BC) in The History of the Peloponnesian War.


Image: Spartan Woman Giving a Shield to Her Son, 1805, Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier. In the lore and legend of Sparta, when a son left home for the armed forces, his mother said: “Fight well and fairly. Return with your shield or on it.”