 Ephraim Lytle , assistant professor of Hellenistic history at the University of Toronto , commented : " Ephialtes , who betrays the Greeks , is likewise changed from a local Malian of sound body into a Spartan outcast , a grotesquely disfigured troll who by Spartan custom should have been left exposed as an infant to die . Leonidas points out that his hunched back means Ephialtes cannot lift his shield high enough to fight in the phalanx . This is a transparent defence of Spartan eugenics , and convenient given that infanticide could as easily have been precipitated by an ill @-@ omened birthmark . " 
