"This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of the violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free."
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Sources
William Golding, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965), p. 20
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leonidas_I
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Leonidas I
Leonidas (Λεωνίδας) (c. 489 BC – 480 BC) was a king of Sparta, the seventeenth of the Agiad line.
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