The Ghost of Bronze and Scarlet

If the ghosts of ancient Sparta were to walk among us today, I don’t think they would be found on a movie set, muscles glistening under fake oil. I think they would be utterly horrified. Their entire identity was forged in the crucible of a single, brutal idea: total dedication to the state. To transplant that soul into the body of the 21st century would be to watch it convulse and…