An iconic Spartan warrior helmet that had been stolen on Tuesday night from a monument in the historic city was recovered and reinstalled on Wednesday.
The imposing helmet, symbolizing Sparta’s glorious past, had adorned the city until Tuesday when it disappeared.
The mayor of the city, Petros Doukas, has promised a reward of 1,000 euros “to anyone who gives confidential and completely anonymous information that will lead to the discovery of the helmet and the arrest of the perpetrators,” he told the press.
Twenty-four hours later it was discovered abandoned in a nearby field. There was no damage reported and the helmet was reinstalled in its place at the main entrance to the city.
The motive of the perpetrators is still unclear. The police chief of Sparta, Panagiotis Lymperis, told notospress.gr, that “investigations are continuing, both to reveal the perpetrators and to determine their motives, and will last as long as necessary for both of these objectives to be achieved.”
The gigantic Sparta warrior helmet is synonymous with the history of the Greek city which twenty-five hundred years ago was the indisputable military power in Greece.
Sparta: where bravery and courage were mandatory
No other city had warriors as fierce, disciplined and proud. Unlike other Greeks, they did not live as individuals, but as parts of a hive — or in the Spartans’ case, a war machine.
The entirety of Spartan society was structured to support the professional army — the only one in the ancient Greek world. From the age of 7, all Spartan boys began their military training.
As novelist and writer Patrick Garner explained, bravery and courage were mandatory in Sparta. A boy who showed the slightest sign of fear was shunned. Any aversion to combat caused him to be ostracized.
By the time they fought their first battle, the men were as hard as the bronze armor they wore for protection. And so the Spartan system created courageous soldiers who gladly gave their lives in battle. The much more worldly Athenians even joked about it, saying that living conditions in Sparta were so bad that naturally they’d be only too happy to sacrifice themselves!
In other Greek cities, individualism was celebrated. In Sparta, the individual was completely obliterated.
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