End of the Spear

End of the Spear is one of my favorite movies. It is viscerally exciting with its fighting, as well as being one of the clearest expositions of the Gospel presented in any movie. Highly recommended inspirational film.

Currently I am reading Derek Thomas' Serving the King. This is a small book, just over 100 pages, but is chock full of great info about making yourself useful in God's work. It seems that it is along the same lines as Warren's Purpose Driven books, only much more concise. I'm enjoying it immensely, and hope to be able to put it directly into action.

Pressed but not crushed

How's this for a great paraphrase of 2 Cor 4:8...

We are pressed but not crushed,
perplexed but don't despair.
We are persecuted but not abandoned.

This is from Sara Groves' song, Word off her album Conversations. Fantastic music. Fantastic message. I highly recommend it.

It reminds me of another great quote that I love...

I am tired. My arm aches. My head boils. My feet are cold. But I am not aware of any weakness. (Zane Grey)

The difference is in the source of hope - God or self. While self-reliance is a great human virtue, much to be desired, surrender is the source of power in 2 Cor 4:8.

Today in Church we sang I Surrender All.

Peltasts in Sparta

Falco asked a question about my last post, and in response...

Sparta was a city-state within pre-Greece Hellenica. They were actually a wide-spread confederation with Sparta as a main city of sorts. These were the famous Peloponesians who were such badass warriors because of their 'Spartan' values and lifestyle. Pretty much whenever you read about tough Greek warriors you can think Peloponesians/Spartans such as the legendary Agamamnon, Achiles, and Odysseus of the Trojan war or Leonidas and his 300 expendables at Thermopylae, though there are notable counter-examples. For instance, Phidippides was an Athenian (Sparta's rival city-state known for philosophers rather than warriors) whose fatal 176+ mile run during the Peloponesian Persian war inspired the modern marathon. Pericles was also a famous general of Athens during parts of the Persian and Peloponesian wars. Philip and Alexander were Macedonians - and the Macedonians before these two men were not known for anything in particular so far as I know, except maybe being rednecks.

But anyway, back to the peltasts. The proto-Greek city states (i.e. Sparta, Athens, etc...) all gathered troops, both hoplite and peltast, from their allied villages in time of war. One can see this demonstrated in Herodotus' Histories as well as Thycydides' Peloponnesian War and Xenophon's Anabasis. Their use of peltasts as bait while the hoplites got the glory is my generalization that I can't really come up with specific references for right now, but it seems right to me. I hope that sorta answered your question (somewhat accurately) about peltasts in Sparta.

You've inspired me to add Herodotus and Thucydides to the top of my short list of things to read and blog about...

The infantry as peltast in Vietnam

One of my faithful readers (perhaps the only faithful reader of this blog) asked me the other day why I devote so much more energy to my other blog, www.mokurendojo.blogspot.com. I have a couple of what i consider to be pretty good reasons. First, it's a matter of personal preference. I simply enjoy thinking and writing about about martial arts more than I enjoy reading books and writing about what I think of them. That doesn't mean that this blog is worse or anything - Mokuren Dojo is just what I do. Secondly, and this is really a better reason, it takes me much longer to read a book and come up with something thoughtful to write about - especially when I get to read for about 15 minutes before bedtime each night.

Anyway, I've been reading Ebert's A Life in a Year and something interesting occurred to me. Ebert says that a commonly used tactic was to run swarms of little patrols through the jungle until they encountered the enemy. Then the patrols, who were unequiped to apply necessary force to destroy the enemy, would fall back and hold while they called in air support to blow up the enemy. Basically the infantry was used as bait to draw the enemy out so the air support could kill them.

Interestingly, the same tactic was used in ancient Greece. The ancients had two classes of soldiers - essentially lightand heavy infantry. The heavy infantry were well armored and well armed and were known as Hoplites. The light infantry were called peltasts and were virtually naked but for wicker shields and several javelins each. Xenophon mentions peltasts throughout the Anabasis, such as...

So, too, Xenias arrived at Sardis with the contingent from the cities, four thousand hoplites; Proxenus,also, with fifteen hundred hoplites and five hundred light-armed troops; Sophaenetus the Stymphalian, with one thousand hoplites; Socrates the Achaean, with five hundred hoplites; while the Megarion, Pasion came with three hundred hoplites and three hundred peltasts.

And, though I can't come up with a concrete example from the literature right now, the peltasts were pretty much used in the same way as the infantry in Vietnam. They were there to engage and delay and steer the enemy such that the hoplites could smite them properly.

And who got the glory? Sure wasn't the dudes with the paper shields. Hoplites like Achiles, Agamemnon, and Hector (though Hector was actually cavalry not hoplite).