molliaregna

[duckduckngoose]

Thinking ab EP 27: long way down of taz grad again and godddds I wish they made the whole 'Argo being cursed thing' last longer bc I LOVED THAT SHIT SO MUCH

[sciencespies]

Sparta Was Much More Than an Army of Super Warriors

https://sciencespies.com/history/sparta-was-much-more-than-an-army-of-super-warriors/

Sparta Was Much More Than an Army of Super Warriors

A monument in Thermopylae to King Leonidas. Bridgeman Images

Ancient Sparta has been held up for the last two and a half millennia as the unmatched warrior city-state, where every male was raised from infancy to fight to the death. This view, as ingrained as it is alluring, is almost entirely false.

The myth of Sparta’s martial prowess owes much of its power to a storied feat of heroism accomplished by Leonidas, king of Sparta and hero of the celebrated Battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.). In the battle, the Persian Army crushed more than 7,000 Greeks—including 300 Spartans, who are widely and falsely believed to have been the only Greeks fighting in that battle—and went on to capture and burn Athens. Outflanked and hopelessly outnumbered, Leonidas and his men fought to the death, epitomizing Herodotus’ pronouncement that all Spartan soldiers would “abide at their posts and there conquer or die.” This singular episode of self-sacrificing bravery has long obscured our understanding of the real Sparta.

A scene from Thermopylae by the Italian novelist, painter and poet Dino Buzzati. The 300 or so Spartans helped hold off an enormous Persian Army for three days.

Luisa Ricciarini / Bridgeman Images

Actually, Spartans could be as cowardly and corrupt, as likely to surrender or flee, as any other ancient Greeks. The super-warrior myth—most recently bolstered in the special effects extravaganza 300, a movie in which Leonidas, 60 at the time of the battle, was portrayed as a hunky 36—blinds us to the real ancient Spartans. They were fallible men of flesh and bone whose biographies offer important lessons for modern people about heroism and military cunning as well as all-too-human blundering.

There is King Agis II, who bungled various maneuvers against the forces of Argos, Athens and Mantinea at the Battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) but still managed to pull off a victory. There is the famous Admiral Lysander, whose glorious military career ended with a rash decision to rush into battle against Thebes, probably to deny glory to a domestic rival—a move that cost him his life at the Battle of Haliartus (395 B.C.). There is Callicratidas, whose pragmatism secured critical funding for the Spartan Navy in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), but who foolishly ordered his ship to ram the Athenians’ during the Battle of Arginusae (406 B.C.), a move that saw him killed. Perhaps the clearest rebuttal of the super-warrior myth is found in the 120 elite Spartans who fought at the Battle of Sphacteria (425 B.C.); when their Athenian enemies surrounded them, they opted to surrender rather than “conquer or die.”

These Spartans, not particularly better or worse than any other ancient warriors, are just a handful of many examples that paint the real, and utterly average, picture of Spartan arms.

But it is this human reality that makes the actual Spartan warrior relatable, even sympathetic, in a way Leonidas can never be. Take the mostly forgotten general, Brasidas, who, instead of embracing death on the battlefield, was careful to survive and learn from his mistakes. Homer may have hailed Odysseus as the cleverest of the Greeks, but Brasidas was a close second.

Almost no one has heard of Brasidas. He’s not a figure immortalized in Hollywood to prop up fantasies, but a human being whose mistakes form a much more instructive arc.

He burst onto the scene in 425 B.C. during Sparta’s struggle against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, breaking through a large cordon with just 100 men to relieve the beleaguered city of Methone (modern Methoni) in southwest Greece. These heroics might have put him on track for mythic fame, but his next campaign would make that prospect far more complicated.

Storming the beach at Pylos that same year, Brasidas ordered his ship to wreck itself on the rocks so he could assault the Athenians. He then barreled down the gangplank straight into the teeth of the enemy.

It was incredibly brave. It was also incredibly stupid.

Charging packed troops, Brasidas went down in a storm of missiles before he’d made it three feet. Thucydides tells us that Brasidas “received many wounds, fainted; and falling back into the ship, his shield tumbled into the sea.” Many of us are familiar with the famous admonition of a Spartan mother to her son: “Come back with your shield or on it.” While this line is almost certainly apocryphal, losing one’s shield was nevertheless a signal dishonor. One might expect a Spartan warrior who had both lost his shield and fainted in battle to prefer death to dishonor. That’s certainly the kind of choice Leonidas is celebrated for supposedly making.

An 1888 illustration shows a bust of the ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides, known as “the father of scientific history.”

Science Photo Library

Herodotus tells us the two Spartan survivors of Thermopylae received such scorn from their city-state for having lived through a defeat that they took their own lives. But Brasidas, though surely shamed by his survival, did not commit suicide. Instead, he learned.

The following year, we see a recovered Brasidas marching north to conquer Athenian-allied cities at the head of 700 helots, members of Sparta’s reviled slave-caste, who the Spartans constantly feared would revolt. Forming this army of Brasideioi (“Brasidas’ men”) was an innovative idea, and quite possibly a dangerous one. As a solution to the city’s manpower crisis, Sparta had promised them freedom in exchange for military service. And arming and training slaves always threatened to backfire on the slavers.

This revolutionary move was matched by a revolution in Brasidas’ own personality. Far from rushing in, as he once had done, he now captured city after city from the Athenians through cunning—and without a single battle. Thucydides writes that Brasidas, “by showing himself…just and moderate toward the cities, caused most of them to revolt; and some of them he took by treason.” Brasidas let the slaves and citizens of Athenian-held cities do the dirty work for him. After one particularly tense standoff, he won the central Greek city of Megara to Sparta’s cause, then marched north, cleverly outmaneuvering the Athenian-allied Thessalians deliberately to avoid combat.

Brasidas’ foolhardy crash-landing at Pylos, in a 1913 illustration.

Bridgeman Images

Arriving at his destination in northeastern Greece, he used diplomacy, threats, showmanship and outright lies to convince the city of Akanthos to revolt from Athens and join Sparta, deftly playing on their fear of losing a harvest that had not yet been gathered. The nearby city of Stagiros came over immediately after.

But his greatest prize was Amphipolis (modern Amfipoli), a powerful city that controlled the critical crossing of the Strymon River (the modern Struma, stretching from northern Greece into Bulgaria). Launching a surprise attack, he put the city under siege—and then offered concessions that were shocking by the standards of the ancient world: free passage for any who wished to leave and a promise not to pillage the wealth of any who remained.

This incredibly risky move could have tarnished Brasidas’ reputation, making him look weak. It certainly runs counter to the myth of the Spartan super-warrior who scoffed at soft power and prized victory in battle above all else.

But it worked. The city came over to Sparta, and the refugees who fled under Brasidas’ offer of free passage took shelter with Thucydides himself in the nearby city of Eion.

Thucydides describes what happened next: “The cities subject to the Athenians, hearing of the capture of Amphipolis, and what assurance [Brasidas] brought with him, and of his gentleness besides, strongly desired innovation, and sent messengers privately inviting him to come.”

Three more cities came over to Sparta. Brasidas then took Torone (modern Toroni, just south of Thessaloniki) with the help of pro-Spartan traitors who opened the city gates for him.

The mythic Leonidas, failing in battle, consigned himself to death. The very real Brasidas, failing in battle, licked his wounds and tried something different. Charging down the gangplank at Pylos had earned him a face full of javelins. He had been lucky to survive, and the lesson he took from the experience was clear: Battle is uncertain, and bravery a mixed commodity at best. War is, at its heart, not a stage for glory but a means to advance policy and impose one’s will. Brasidas had even discovered that victory could be accomplished best without fighting.

Brasidas would make many more mistakes in his campaigns, including the one that would cost him his life outside Amphipolis, where he successfully fought off the Athenians’ attempt to recapture the greatest triumph of his career. Brasidas daringly took advantage of the enemy’s bungled retreat, attacking them and turning their withdrawal into a rout, but at the cost of his life. His funeral was held inside Amphipolis, where today you can visit his funeral box in the archaeological museum.

That he died after renouncing the caution that had marked most of his career seems fitting, a human end for a man who is the best example of the sympathetic fallibility of his city-state’s true military tradition. He is valuable to historians not just for his individual story, but moreover because he illustrates the humanity of real Spartan warriors, in direct contrast to their overblown legend.

Fallible human beings who learn from their errors can achieve great things, and that is the most inspiring lesson the true history of Sparta can teach us.

When we choose a myth over reality, we commit two crimes. The first is against the past, for truth matters. But the second, more egregious, is against ourselves: Denied the chance to see how Spartans struggled and failed and recovered and overcame, we forget that, if they did it, then maybe we can too.

Ancient Civilizations

Ancient Greece

Arts

Myth

Poetry

Warfare

#History

[urwelcomeforthis]

out of the ash, i rise

also posted on AO3

Alex doesn’t notice it, at least not at first.

In her defense, she – everyone, really – was exhausted.

It had taken a lot of time and effort and energy to figure out what Lex Luthor was up to in this new world, and then they had to stop him and it was a whole ass group effort, and it was one of the most draining things she had ever done.

But in the end, they had done it, and a lot of things were explained along the way.

Brainy’s sudden break up with Nia in order to protect her, so he could pretend to be a double agent while actually being a triple agent.

If she tries to think about that one too hard, her brain starts to hurt a little, but in the end, he was on their side, was obviously and desperately in love with Nia, and they were working it out, so whatever, that’s a nice ending.

Andrea Rojas being a weird shadow thing and enforcing arm for Leviathan? Wholly unexpected but apparently being shady as shit came with being a CEO in National City.

Although if Alex cares to admit it to herself the other female CEO of National City had been the one who really won it for them all.

She was glad, that in the end, Lena Luthor had been a force for good.

The surprise on Lex’s face when Lena had shown her hand was maybe one of the best things Alex had ever seen.

The look on Kara’s face when Lena, brain hooked up to the same machine as Lex, had fallen to her knees, lasting only moments longer than Lex himself, was decidedly one of the worst.

The newspapers had all heralded Lena as a hero, and they were right, she was.

Her sacrifice wouldn’t be forgotten, not by anyone.

Particularly not by Supergirl, who had shown more raw emotion in that moment, projected on screens around the world, than anyone had ever seen displayed by her or her cousin.

The picture of Kara on her knees reaching for Lena as a blood curdling scream of agony fell from her lips accompanied every single article.

It had been weeks now, and Kara was still sullen and desolate at the loss of her best friend, but she still showed up to work, still performed her duties.

Alex was just too tired to realize that it was more than just the loss of a friend, and that something in Kara’s behavior was…... off.

So, when Kelly, one night at dinner carefully asks Alex where it is that Kara has been disappearing to every night, she could honestly kick herself.

She sat, fork loaded with food frozen halfway to her open mouth, as her brain ran over every time she had seen Kara in the past few weeks.

Kelly, to her credit, sat and patiently let Alex work her way to the dawning realization that she hadn’t seen Kara once at night since the Lex ordeal, receiving mumbled excuses about articles when sister nights or game nights were cancelled on.

She lowered her fork down to her plate.

Kelly just reached over and grabbed her hand, giving it a solid squeeze.

For the next three nights she does everything she can think of to try and get Kara to come over to watch a movie, or have dinner, but all she receives are halfhearted excuses and quick “I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?’ replies, but she never presses her sister.

Something about the look in Kara’s eyes stops her from asking.

Instead, she does something far dumber, ducking her eyes from her girlfriend’s when she reveals her plan, not wanting to see the way they roll.

It’s how she finds herself in a lead lined van at 8 p.m. every night, following the dot on the screen that is Kara, the tracker in her glasses lit up in green.

Kara always goes to the DEO’s desert facility. Alex isn’t entirely sure what happens there, to make the green dot disappear every single night, but she has an idea.

It takes her a week to work up the courage to follow her sister to the facility, waiting until the tracker goes dormant to walk down into the most secure reaches of the building.

Placing her palm on the coded security panel, she walks into the room that houses one of the two portals to Argo.

It isn’t shimmering with energy when she enters, but she can feel the warmth that radiates off of the coils and she finally knows where it is her sister disappears to every single night.

She tries to fight the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that for the first time she’s not enough for Kara, that this life and their family isn’t where she’s been going to seek comfort, but still.

It would be a lie to say it doesn’t twinge, a little.

She turns on her heel and heads home, chews the inside of her cheek raw trying to formulate the next part of her plan.

Like all Danvers Sister plans however, it falls apart the moment she sees Kara and decides to just wing it.

“I know you’ve been going to Argo.” She blurts the moment the two are alone together in a room in J’onn’s Tower.

Kara just blinks slowly at her, not denying it, not confirming it, not saying a damn thing.

The silence is thick, and Alex fidgets, chastising herself for her impulsiveness.

“Do you know why?” Kara asks, voice low when she finally breaks the silence and Alex lifts both shoulders in a desolate shrug.

“I – is it because you need your mom? I know I haven’t been the best sister lately, or maybe ever, but-” she shuts up the moment Kara holds a single hand in the air to stop her, eyes blazing.

“You have always been the best sister so please never say that again. And I did need my mom, but not for what you think.”

Alex tries to not ask more, tries to ignore the relief flooding through her that it’s not because Kara has finally done the one thing Alex has always feared most, that she hasn’t decided to leave Earth behind to go back to her first home.

Kara studies Alex for a long moment before nodding once, obviously having decided something.

“Meet me tonight at the portal at 8.”

Alex nods, her eyes staying on Kara’s retreating form before she’s out of sight.

She doesn’t tell anyone where she and Kara are going. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t but something in Kara’s reticence to even tell her makes her stop short, telling Kelly instead they’re finally having a long-needed sister’s night.

Kelly, always intuitive beyond what anyone else realizes, hugs Alex hard before she goes, requests that she be careful.

It doesn’t escape either of them that she’s not wearing the weapon J’onn gave her when she promises she will be and walks out the door.

She and Kara don’t speak as they wait for the portal to hum to life, but Alex casts small sideways glances at her sister as they stand there, shoulder to shoulder.

Her sister’s jaw is set, shoulders thrown back, entire body tense.

Alex can’t help but be nervous at whatever is awaiting them on the other side but still she remains silent.

The pink waves of the portal flicker into being and they step through together, the heat and light from the red sun invading every bit of Alex’s senses.

“Follow me.” Kara directs as they step down onto the gravel path in front of them.

She trudges behind Kara, dully noting that this side of the portal had been moved from its previous location.

Instead of opening on the out skirts of Argo City it’s now placed in what seems to be a back yard. The house in front of them is a few stories high, the stone fencing around it is at least 10 feet tall and a few feet thick.

It reminds Alex of a castle or a barricade, meant to keep invaders out. Or more likely, prying eyes.

Kara reaches a set of steps on the outside of the house that lead down into a basement and Alex continues to follow behind silently, taking in the colors and the strange plants surrounding them that were once a part of Kara’s past life on Krypton.

When they reach a metal door Kara stops and turns towards her.

“You can’t tell anyone. Not even Kelly. Not yet.” There’s a glaze over Kara’s blue eyes and Alex can’t help herself when she reaches out and places a hand on her sister’s arm.

“Kara what is it? What has got you this upset?” Her eyes are moving so fast across the planes of Kara’s face as she tries to communicate that whatever it is, Alex is on her side, always, always, always.

“It’s – you’ll see. It’s better if you see.” Kara swallows thickly before she pushes the door open and steps inside.

Alex follows, her eyes working to adjust to the manufactured lighting in the space.

The door swings shut sealing them in, and Alex looks around the room.

It looks almost like an Earth laboratory, benches and worktables pushed around to line the walls, alien equipment humming and littering every crevice.

In the middle of the room there sits what looks like an enclosed, glass coffin filled with a blue, glowing liquid.

It vaguely reminds Alex of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Kara, seemingly haven forgotten that Alex is with her, makes her way towards the Snow-White coffin, and Alex watches from her spot in the shadows as she places a careful, reverent hand on top.

She can hear Kara murmuring words to whatever is in the box, and she’s thankful that on Krypton there is no super hearing that can detect the way her heart has begun to pound in her chest.

She doesn’t have to move any closer to know who is in the coffin.

In her entire life there is only one person Kara has ever looked at in that way.

“Kara.” She croaks from her spot.

It feels like she’s stuck in a pit of thick molasses.

When Kara looks up her hand doesn’t move from its place on the glass, her tear stained cheeks and wide eyes silently begging Alex to understand.

“Kara what have you done?” She finally forces out, lifting her foot like it’s a dead weight to make her way across the room.

She comes to stand across from Kara on the other side of the glass. She doesn’t look down.

She can’t.

“I brought her to the one place I could save her.” Kara is no longer looking at Alex and is instead locked onto the woman laying locked in glass below.

Alex is dumbstruck, a thousand thoughts fighting in her mind to be vocalized as she watches her sister, a modern-day Frankenstein, fight to bring the dead back to life.

She must take too long to say anything because Kara speaks up again, her voice cracking as she talks.

“It’s working. I – it’s illegal. Even here. But my Dad, he knew how. It was in his books. My mom knows, she’s been helping me.”

Alex fights against her roaring in her ears and works to stamp down the panic building in her chest.

“Kara, will she even be…. Will it be her? When she wakes up?” She’s whispering, she can hear the fear in her own voice, but god, what the actual fuck was Kara thinking.

“Yeah, yeah it will be her.” Kara sounds sure but not sure enough, and rage licks its way up Alex’s spine.

“What if it isn’t, Kar? And even if it is, how are you going to explain this?” She’s gone from whispering to shouting in five seconds flat, but it’s justified, she’s justified in this, in her anger.

She can’t fathom it, what Kara’s done.

Robbed a grave, stolen a body, taken it off world and worked to fucking reanimate it, ripping a soul from whatever place it ended landing to rest for eternity.

Kara looks up at her now, eyes hardened but tears still flowing freely.

“I don’t know Alex, ok? I don’t know! All I know is I can’t be in a world where she doesn’t exist. I can’t. I can be in a world where Krypton exploded, and I lost everyone – twice. I can be in a world where Jeremiah is dead, where Kenny is dead, fuck, where even I’ve died! But I cannot be in a world where she isn’t alive.”

Alex is dumbstruck again, watching as Kara’s chest heaves after her outburst, after she admitted that a single soul is worth more to her than an entire planet of her own people, more to her than maybe anyone.

She feels the tug of an invisible string under her chin urging her to look down, but still she doesn’t, can’t. The moment she does this is real, and she can’t let it be real.

She watches Kara turn around and fiddle with the machines hooked up to the glass device, her shoulders shuddering as she sobs silently.

She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

When it doesn’t work, she takes another one.

She swallows heavily, ignoring the way every sense of self-preservation in her body is screaming at her to turn and run back into that portal and never come back.

She looks down.

The body is suspended in the liquid, floating a good five inches from the bottom. Bare feet are spread apart, toenails painted what looks like a dark red. Her eyes trace up pale, bare legs until she’s mid-thigh, a cream-colored gown covering the skin. Hands rest folded together on a stomach, a white petaled flower held between them. The crest of El sits on the shoulder of the gown.

Alex swallows thickly, realizes Kara changed her. Kara placed the flower there.

She shakes herself and forces herself to continue.

Her eyes trace up the pale neck, the familiar freckle taunting her from its spot there. Dark hair floats in the liquid, wavy and undone in death. She sees lips painted devastating red and finally allows herself to look at the closed eyelids, the sharp eyebrows above for once looking peaceful and relaxed.

She can hear Kara say something in Kryptonian, but she ignores it, still trying to process what her sister has done.

She’s not sure how long she stands there staring at the body of her former friend when the blue liquid flashes a bright purple color and begins to lower.

She watches it for only a moment before her gaze flits back towards the woman’s face.

When she meets the green and white of open and panicked eyes, her knees give out.

She stumbles back, falling hard on her ass as she watches the coffin click open, the liquid fully drained.

When a fully alive and reanimated Lena Luthor slowly sits up, hair heavy and dripping wet, Alex reaches for her wrist, forgetting she left her weapon back on Earth.

She doesn’t move as Lena turns her head slowly to face where Kara is standing, still as a statue, not even daring to breathe.

Lena’s voice is cracked and scratchy from disuse in death. She only says one word, her fingers clutched tightly around the flower in her hands.

“Kara.”

Kara falls to her knees, hands reaching out towards Lena, landing on either side of her face.

“i n̩.ʒa͡ʊ, i kɹuvuʒ.”

(My love, my miracle.)

When Lena’s forehead comes forward to rest against Kara’s, Alex lets go of the air she had been holding in her lungs.

Quietly she stands on shaking legs and walks back towards the edge of the room, uninterested in being a voyeur of the reunion happening between the two women.

With a last look over her shoulder at Kara and Lena who remain huddled together, gripping each other tightly, she opens the steel door and steps back out under the red sun.