www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/15/europe/letter.php
Share Article Text Size SPARTA, Greece: There's a shortage of swords in Sparta. Greek merchants from Athens to Thermopylae are also concerned about a scarcity of spears as they prepare for summer visitors obsessed with the hit film "300," the gory story of the 480 BC clash between King Leonidas of Sparta and his archenemy, King Xerxes of Persia. "My Spartan sword maker died a few weeks before the movie opened," laments Theodoros Tzamalas, whose shop, Greek Souvenirs, has been the main retail outlet for Spartan battle gear in Athens since 1940. "Until '300' there was no rush for Spartan swords," Tzamalas says from behind a counter cluttered with strap-on sandals and miniature-soap Parthenons. "Our Leonidas sword was lightweight steel, cost EUR15 and was archaeologically correct," he adds. "Now hundreds of people are specifically asking for them and I don't have any." The Greek deputy finance minister, Petros Doukas, the highest-ranking Spartan in the government of Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis, says he's aware of the "300" weaponry crisis and its cascade effect on Greece's economy. "The movie's lesson is: Fight for your country, even if it's a losing battle, and have enough swords and hotel rooms on hand for tourists," says Doukas, squeezing lemon on a clearly un-Spartan lunch of broccoli spears in his office.
Erdogan urges Sarkozy to drop 'prejudices' Diplomacy dictates that Doukas remain a noncombatant in the war of words between "300" fans - who so far have spent more than $435 million on tickets - and Iranian hard-liners who argue that the film is part of a wider Western agitprop campaign that smears their country's Persian heritage. The Iranian poet Bahram Bahrami, who translated Samuel Beckett's play "Happy Days" into Farsi, has called the film an exercise in "blood libel." The British historian Tom Holland, whose book "Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West" recounts the events that led to Thermopylae, described the battle as "the model of a martyrdom for liberty." "The Greek government takes no position and offers no official criticisms of the film," Doukas says, picking up a photo of his father, a World War II fighter pilot in North Africa. "Until the late 1950s, Spartans acted exactly like the ancients: laconic, aristocratic, with a class structure that didn't care about money. "That's now gone, too," frets the historian Despoina Stratigis, owner of Synergies, a Sparta-based cultural tour company. "Last season, I put visitors in touch with Spartan cheese makers," she says between slicing wild asparagus in her home and fielding calls from US and European families seeking to retrace Leonidas's march from Sparta to Thermopylae. We don't even have an original sword in our museum, and there's only one sword maker left in Sparta." That would be Costas Menegakis, a 42-year-old Greek-Canadian blacksmith who specializes in horseshoes and hasn't made a sword since 2005. "It was a Viking sword," Menegakis says, sitting atop an anvil alongside his charcoal-fired forge and brandishing a homemade French rapier. "I pound swords and spear tips from steel, but if someone wants an original poured in bronze, I can do that." No matter the model, Menegakis guarantees that his hilts are the real deal. Global interest in Spartan swords has also caught the eye of a local police inspector, Panayiotis Skaras. He has spent the past eight months trying to discover who hacked off the 11-kilogram, or 25-pound, sword measuring 15 meters, or 5 feet, from Sparta's towering bronze 20th-century statue of King Leonidas. There are no leads, though Menegakis says he suspects a "band of Gypsies." Caf gumshoes suggest that the robber was an Athenian envious of Sparta going to Hollywood or Persian pranksters out for revenge. Whoever the culprit was, Sparta's deputy mayor, Metaxia Papapostolou, recently had a replacement sword fitted in Leonidas's hand - before the onslaught of tourist buses reaches the southern Greek city. She says the perpetrator won't be shoved into a pit, unlike in the movie. "Sparta doesn't plan on launching any invasions over this," Papapostolou promises. "Our big attractions are the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia and the olive-oil museum," Papapostolou says. "We're staging ancient Greek plays in the ruins of the outdoor theater.
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