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

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.”
