Heracles lesson

Latro has very selective amnesia - note that he is able to perform the wrestling moves with perfection once he is reminded of basic strategy. He needs a reminder - he doesn't know the full extent of his capabilities. Your average soldier, no matter how he is coached, won't be able to beat a master from verbal advice. Latro didn't need to learn the moves through repetition - they were already in his muscle memory. This is one aspect of realism that I think we've ignored - no matter how much you tell the average man on the street how to punch, or what kind of advice you give him, he can't outbox Roy Jones or Lennox Lewis. Unless the advice reawakens old or natural abilities. Note that Latro defeats the trainer of the Spartans with ease. He has problems with wrestling Pausanias because ... Hermes likes him? So Latro remembers how to use a sword but not to wrestle ... why? Perhaps because the knowledge of wrestling was from a different, more remote lifetime. Remember that he only loses because Heracles tells him to throw the fight. Marc Aramini

Marc writes:

And almost immediately, in the same post, answers himself:

Which is also quite sufficient answer to this question:

In short: The injury to Latro's head seems to have created an inability to recall informaiton from long-term stores at some cognitive levels -- some fairly abstract cognitive levels; this is clearly an injury in the "higher" centers of the brain. One thing that I find interesting is that it is quite possible that he's still actually able to form long-term abstract memories. He'd never know (nor, presumably, would we), because until/unless he's cured, he still can't recall them. It's been a while since I've read the existing-so-far Soldier books. Can any of you tell me, offhand: Does Latro recount any dreams at all?