Spartan

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Category: Literature

Published on Friday, 30 October 2015 16:56

Today, in our Cultural article we will talk about the book SPARTAN.

The setting is in ancient Greece, as it’s easy to imagine, in the city of Sparta.

The writer is Valerio Massimo Manfredi, a famous Italian historian, writer and archeologist.

The novel has in its background many historical events, but is a fictional novel.

It tells the story of Talos, a young boy who was the son an important Spartan family but was abandoned just after his birthday for a feet-deformity.

Because of the rigorous Spartan laws, Talos must be sacrificed to the wolves of Mount Taygetus as his physical weakness would not permit him to help the military city of Sparta during its many wars.

Luckily, his life is saved by a shepherd, from the people of Helots, the slaves of Spartans which raises him as his own child and teaches him everything he could need.

Talos will become a brave and strong young man and during the novel he will find himself fighting together with his older brother in the legendary battle of the Thermopylae (480 BC, Persian wars).

He will be recognized as a Spartan, but he has seen the brutality of that people and in the end he will help the Helots to find their freedom again.

This book takes us to the ancient Greece and shows us the beauty, the brutality, the honour and the cruelty of that civilization, which gave birth to ours.