Word: spartanized
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Like Georges Clemenceau, who was buried with rites of spartan simplicity in the Vendée 41 years ago, De Gaulle sternly prohibited any trace of pomp. Wrote De Gaulle: "I want no national funeral. Neither President nor Ministers nor Assembly committees nor public authorities." But, he added, "the men and women of France and of other countries may, if they wish, do my memory the honor of accompanying my body to its last resting place...
Dying in a Spartan jail in the year 500-and-something B.C., the hero of this sharp and provoking little antihistorical novel finds no difficulty in giving verbatim quotations from the Dryden translation (17th century A.D.) of Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus (2nd century A.D.). It is true that he is a certified Seer of Apollo, and the future drifts before his eyes as effortlessly as the past or the present. So the reader need not be really surprised to find Lycurgus (spelled Ly-kourgos, in the barbarous tradition of contemporary university classics departments), a dim semi-mythological figure...
...disciple named Demodokos, who being only an apprentice seer is called Peeker. In alternated monologues, Seer and Peeker describe the cycles of personal passion and international politics that brought them to their stinking dungeon, lit at night by government buildings burned at the hands of revolting Helots, the Spartan slaves...
...When he takes on a candidate, he sends two advance men (in this case, women), who take a preliminary political reading before he takes his own. His camera crews are freelancers but work regularly for him. At the end, he will take his reels of film back to his spartan headquarters in Washington, where, with the help of a staff that numbers about 30 at campaign time, he does his editing. He also does his own writing. A recurring theme is the candidate who "cares...
...other men who served under John Kennedy left Washington years ago, iridescent with the celebrity of Camelot, and found a measure of fortune. Dean Rusk stayed on to work for Lyndon Johnson. Rusk was never exactly part of the New Frontier's clan anyway; he was taciturn, stubborn, spartan, undeniably intelligent, distrustful of personal publicity, given to seven-day work weeks at the State Department...