Top Highlights

• 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.
• His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example.
• it useful for the instruction of youth, to single out one lad, or even another Peer, and abuse him verbally in the most stern and pitiless fashion. This is called arosis, harrowing. Its purpose, much like the physical beatings, is to inure the senses to insult, to harden the will against responding with rage and fear, the twin unmanning evils of wh...
• think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.”
• Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.”