Drost
Shared on Thu, 03/22/2007 - 14:25Among the Spartans the work of war is demystified and depersonalized through its vocabulary, which is studded with references both agrarian and obscene. Their word which I translated earlier as "fuck," as in the youths' tree-fucking, bears the connotation not so much of penetration as of grinding, like a miller's stone. The front three ranks "fuck" or "mill" the enemy. The verb "to kill," in Doric theros, is the same as "to harvest." The warriors in the fourth through sixth ranks are sometimes called "harvesters," both for the work they do on the trampled enemy with the butt-spike "lizard-stickers" of their eight-footers and for that pitiless threshing stroke they make with the short xiphos sword, which itself is often called a "reaper." To decapitate a man is to "top him off" or "give him a haircut." Chopping off a hand or arm is called "limbing."
-- Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire
-- Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire
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