My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. One day I decided to have a butchers at Sparta and I arranged to have a chat with a Lacedaimonian called Brasidas about some hooky pinewood.
I got rabbiting to a bloke called Antimachos in the pub - The Erupting Taygetos. He told me Laconia was all part of Argos once ( you could get a decent lawnmower in the latest catalogue. Only joking.) One day old King Agis wanted more income so he took away a lot of privileges and imposed new taxes on his subjects and most of them reluctantly complied apart from a bunch of rebels in Helos. They lost during the War of the Helots and those captured became the official state slaves of the Spartans. They got a pretty bloody raw deal until the Romans took over Sparta and set them free
Sparta is surrounded by mountains, dominated by Taygetos, a volcano which is now mined by the Romans. They sometimes call it Hollow Sparta because of this location. The suburb of Limnai, where I bought some decent wood, was once a right old marsh but that was long ago and it's now as dry as a nun's flange. Limnai actually means marshy.
They reckon just down the old frog and toad there's a cave near the sea where Hercules dragged that big old three headed dog Cerberus up from Hades. That's the myth anyway. A dog with three heads would get through a fuck load of Pedigree Chum!
Eurykles is the guv'nor of Sparta these days and he decided he wanted the island of Kythera. He apparently does things like that occasionally. Can't blame him, I popped over to Kythera for a drop of vino and it's a bloody nice manor.
I had a little trot to Onougnathos along the coast via Helos - which used to be a city but now it's only a bloody village. As in most places round here it gets a mention by Homer. The Greek poet Homer, not bloody Homer Simpson you berk! I had to jump over the Eurotas that flows into the gulf of Laconia. They reckon the people of Helos are descendants of bloody Perseus. Had a quick sherbert in Kyparissia in a nice pub called The Peninsula.
Had a chat with Epicharmos who always cuts his words short for some reason. Instead of saying lion he says li, which is apparently quite a common thing amongst some of these highbrow philosophical types. Well everyone to their own. He probably says fac instead of factory. Could just be typos as it happens to me all the time with my dodgy phone keys. That'll teach me to buy an hooky dog n bone from a fucking Persian. I knew a bloke called Simmias who kept texting dodo until I realised he meant Dodona, a manor up north where there's an oracle, second in importance to the one in Delphi.
Back in the pub in Sparta I met Ephoros and he's a clever bastard. He told me two Herakleidai heavies called Eurysthenes and Prokles came and ran Laconia. They gave a city called Amyklai to an insider, who advised their leader and his subjects to fuck off to Ionia. All very amicable in those days. They accepted a fair wack of immigrants to fill up the region and designated some as kings of cities. Las was used as a navy port. It was the son of Eurysthenes, Agis who started on the Helots after his 'all in this together' crap and austerity measures. He made sure he still got his luxuries I bet!
Eurykles caused a bit of bother with the Romans recently wanting more grapes but it was all nipped in the bud and I think he was either exiled or executed. Don't fuck with Caesar mate! What would old Pelops be thinking? Not a lot, as he died fucking yonks ago. They say he was the founder of the whole peninsula they now call the Peloponnesos, of which Laconia is a small part, but because of Sparta being the capital, it's a bit more larger than life. Lycourgos was a bit of a player too - they erected a sanctuary to the bloke and people come and pay their respects every year. I bet they do! Pausanius was banished for some reason but he got to write some good books about the laws of Lycourgos and his panegyrics ( good moral speeches basically.) Anyway here's my panegyric - fuck off I'm going home for a cup of tea!
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