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The oldest and most prestigious families of Thebes traced their ancestry back to the Spartoi, men who had grown fully armed from the earth like crops when Cadmus sowed dragon’s teeth in the land of Boiotia. The word itself means literally ‘those who have been sown' and is cognate with English words like disperse.
Very likely some such myth also lies behind the national name of the Spartans of Laconia, though the story is not well attested. A quick Google search suggests that the first king of Sparta, Lelex (hence Laconia), some generations before Menelaus sprang from the soil. At the moment I have no idea of the source for this, but in any case the myth was not as importnat in Classical times in Sparta as it was in Thebes or Athens (where there was a whole series of earth-born kings, including Cecrops who had snakes for feet).
Last winter when the Chinese Restaurant at the foot of our driveway closed they hauled away its guardian dragon back to the dragon-barn, but A. found one of its teeth broken and fallen to the ground (either that or it was a stone that looked like a dragon's tooth). Not wishing to go too deeply with him into Greek philology and comparative mythology, I simply told him that if we planted the dragon’s tooth in the flower bed, it might well grow into a Spartan.
This is indeed what happened over the weekend when Mme. Malkhos planted some flowers—the tooth must have germinated in response to her watering the seedlings:
Naturally A. was thrilled to harvest his new playmate. Today the little Spartan single handedly slaughtered a half-dozen Japanese movie monsters.
Very likely some such myth also lies behind the national name of the Spartans of Laconia, though the story is not well attested. A quick Google search suggests that the first king of Sparta, Lelex (hence Laconia), some generations before Menelaus sprang from the soil. At the moment I have no idea of the source for this, but in any case the myth was not as importnat in Classical times in Sparta as it was in Thebes or Athens (where there was a whole series of earth-born kings, including Cecrops who had snakes for feet).
Last winter when the Chinese Restaurant at the foot of our driveway closed they hauled away its guardian dragon back to the dragon-barn, but A. found one of its teeth broken and fallen to the ground (either that or it was a stone that looked like a dragon's tooth). Not wishing to go too deeply with him into Greek philology and comparative mythology, I simply told him that if we planted the dragon’s tooth in the flower bed, it might well grow into a Spartan.
This is indeed what happened over the weekend when Mme. Malkhos planted some flowers—the tooth must have germinated in response to her watering the seedlings:
Naturally A. was thrilled to harvest his new playmate. Today the little Spartan single handedly slaughtered a half-dozen Japanese movie monsters.
