Word: sparta
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...plan, no itinerary. He visits Helen of Troy and her husband Menelaus in Sparta. Helen is still beautiful, but the King has become a fat and greedy landlord whose subjects are on the edge of revolt. Helen and Odysseus are, up to a point, two of a kind. When he suggests that they run off, she agrees, and they slip away to Crete. There the King is old and sterile; there, too, the people talk revolution and the blond barbarians from the north are muscling in. The old King marries Helen, and Odysseus, after adventures of fierce brutality, leaves Crete...
...already made herself a big hit on her first trip to the U.S. five years ago. Sure enough, the lively Frederika danced into the capital with smiling, informal grace and two French poodles (Topsy and Toodles). With her were two of her three children: Crown Prince Constantine, Duke of Sparta, 18, and Princess Sophia, 20. Explained Frederika: King Paul stayed home to look after the country, and Princess Irene, 16, stayed home to look after the King...
...life that faces Red China's peasantry in the communes is regimented beyond the dreams of ancient Sparta. Each commune, averaging about 21,000 inhabitants, is ruled by a party committee that controls everything from food distribution to funerals. Organized into work brigades, the inhabitants of the communes mostly have no set jobs, can be shunted on a day-to-day basis from farm work to military or industrial duties. Ultimately, private property is to be utterly abolished and already the most "advanced" communes have compelled the peasants to surrender the personal garden plots they were allowed to keep...
During high school days Stagg read about the youths of Sparta-"particularly the boy who hid a fox in his shirt and never batted an eye when the animal bit into his vitals. That book put Spartan stuff in me." For lack of foxes, Stagg decided that he had to deny himself, to give up something that he cherished. The something was coffee. He has never tasted it since. It was at this time, too-and Stagg remembers the date: May 23, 1877 -that this son of a devout Presbyterian family formally joined the church and decided...
...VENUS IN SPARTA, by Louis Auchincloss (280 pp.; Houghfon Mifflin; $3.50), is about a kind of hidebound Dr. Jekyll whose double life eventually destroys him. At 45, Michael Parish is a member of all the right New York clubs, a trustee of his Grotonesque prep school, and in line for the presidency of a Wall Street bank. He has always tried to measure up to the principles he learned at his mother's knee -live on the right side of the park, and never attend matinees. But a series of rude intrusions disrupt his neat, parklike existence. First...