Earn these shields boys

Is it strange to cheer for men long dead, and battles long ago fought?
Larger-than-life characters drawn in the massive brush strokes of time?

Pheidippides making his final run to Athens.

and collapsing into death.

"This day the common cause of all demands your valour!" cheers Aeschylus at the battle at Salamis.
Empires built and collapsing on the weight of ideas. New dawns and blood-red settings of old ways.

The age of heroes looks far different now.

"Good, then we will fight in the shade."