Leaving neither monuments nor epics, Sparta’s enduring legacy is a military ideal, embodied in Leonidas, hero of Thermopylae, commemorated here in a statue in the modern city of Sparta in Greece.

Add to that the SR-18 Roadblock heavy armor, consisting of a Spartan-style crested helmet and beefy pauldrons, and you can kit yourself out like a tanky, hellenic super-soldier of the future.

Aerial reconnaissance of the Spartan Brigade has recorded how the Russians send their wounded soldiers limping on homemade ...