In this article Paul Cartledge is trying to answer the question “what have the Spartans done for us”. One of the reasons he gives is Sparta’s “spirit of self sacrifice”. He connects the Spartans “ideologically motivated suicide” to that of the suicide hijackers who caused 9/11 for the sake of their religion. The Spartans were very patriotic and obedient to their laws. In 480 during the battle of Thermopylae they continued to stand against Persians even though their army was significantly smaller. King Xerxes was puzzled by their actions was told that the Spartans “fear the law more even than Xerxes’ subjects fear him”. Because of this statement in class I think we should discuss how does a person’s actions differ when they fear the law and
