Sons of Sparta

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As he drove alone down the highway the tune kept running through his head. An old Greek ballad. He couldn’t shake it. Not since early morning, when his father’s brother called to say, “Come home at once,” offering no more of an explanation than “It’s a family matter.”

Everyone in his family knew the words that went with the tune, lyrics that spoke of family honor and all that was expected of those duty-bound to protect it. The song told the story of his father’s father and what his family had demanded of him a hundred years before:

In the early 1900s a young medical student studying in Athens received a message from his father to return home at once. The trip from Athens to the Mani, in the southernmost part of Greece’s Peloponnese, took several days. When the student arrived home he learned that his younger sister had humiliated their father by becoming pregnant by a young man in their village. Her lover had proposed to marry his sister, but their father refused. Instead, in front of his sister and her lover he told his son to shoot and kill them both.

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