BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE:

HISTORY vs HOLLYWOOD

Every August we should take time to remember the anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae; ancient Sparta.s finest hour. The success of the recent film, 300, has thrust Thermopylae into the American public's conscious as never before. It is well to recall what actually happened at "The Hot Gates"; contrast this with what was seen in the film; and reflect upon the legacy of this amazing battle.

The date for this three-day long battle, called by some .the Alamo of Greece., is disputed. Some scholars date it on the 1st through the 3rd of August, 480 B.C.; while other.s put it as late as mid-September of that year. A convincing argument can be made for the 18th through the 20th of August.

The battle was the opening class between Greek forces defending their country, and the invading army of the Persian Great King, Xerxes.

The Persian Empire had been founded by Cyrus the Great in the 6th Century B.C. Under Cyrus and his successors, this empire had devoured all the other states of the Middle East. By the dawn of the 5th century, the Persian Empire covered an expanse of land that stretched from Libya in the west, to India in the East. Its northern borders rested on the edge of the vast Eurasian steppes; its southern on the Indian Ocean.

In the west, the Persian Empire bordered on the Aegean Sea; across which it eyed the turbulent, independent city-states of Greece with suspicion and disdain. In 546 B.C., Cyrus the Great had incorporated the Greek cities along the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) into his empire. But under his successors, these Greek cities had rebelled in 500 . 499 B.C., aided by small contributions in men and ships by Athens and the city of Eretria. The revolt was short lived; but Persian memory was long.

Darius I (called .The Great.), the father of Xerxes, dispatched an expeditionary force to punish Athens and Eretria in 490 B.C. The size of the force has been exaggerated at times, but was likely around 50,000 men; transported across the Aegean by a substantial fleet of warships.

Landing on the island of Euboea, the Persians quickly overcame and destroyed the town of Eretria. Its inhabitants were enslaved, and deported to Mesopotamia; where they continued to maintain their Greek heritage till the coming of Alexander the Great a century-and-a-half later.

The Persian punitive expedition then crossed the Euboean Straits, and landed at the beach of Marathon of the Greek mainland; only 25 miles from Athens.

In the face of this dire and existential threat, the Athenians appealed to Sparta for aid. Though fully willing to come to the aid of their fellow Greeks, at that moment the Spartans were in the midst of a religious festival; and religion was something the Spartans took very seriously, indeed. They would come; but not till the festivals completion, many days later.

So with only the 10,000 hoplites of their own city (plus a minor contingent from the nearby town of Plataea), the Athenians engaged the Persians on their own at Marathon.

The Battle of Marathon showed the world for the first time the inherent superiority at close-quarters fighting of Greek hoplites over the lighter armed archers of Asia. The Persian army, despite its numerical advantage, was routed and thrown (literally!) back into the sea.

Ten years later, Darius. son, Xerxes, launched a second invasion. This one was far, far larger in size and scope than his father.s.

Xerxes was not sexually ambiguous giant consumed with delusions of god-hood depicted in the film, 300. He was likely tall and handsome, as were most of the scions of the royal Achaemenid House of Persia. And, as with all Persian males (with the exception of eunuchs), he was bearded. He would have been fully clothed publicly at all times, in sumptuous Persian robes; the Persians were a modest people, with none of the Greeks acceptance of public nudity. Upon his head would have sat the upright miter of the Persian King, called the Tiara.

Though Greek propaganda has always painted Xerxes as a tyrant, he was likely no better or worse than any Persian despot before or after him. And when compared to the Assyrians kings who had once ruled the Middle East, the Persians were benign and merciful conquerors, indeed. Had Eretria fallen to the Assyrians instead of the Persians, its people would not have been deported and resettled in other lands; they would have been flayed alive, burned, or impaled!

Darius had sent a punitive expedition; a mere wave compared to the virtual sea of men that Xerxes now hurled at Greece! The purpose of which was nothing less than the subjugation of the whole of Greece; to bring the free (but in the Persian view) petty city-states of Greece into .the fold. of the Great King.s power.

To this end Xerxes spent several years amassing an army of immense size, drawn from the farthest regions of his vast empire. The Greek historian Herodotus, who lived through and wrote shortly after the Persian Wars (as the Greeks came to call them), claimed that the Persian host numbered at 1 million fighting men. However, most modern scholars believe the number to be only about a quarter to a half as much as Herodotus assumed. Even so, it was an army so large that it is reputed to have drunk whole rivers dry as it passed into Greece!

The Greeks cities now took council at Corinth, to decide how best to meet this deadly threat. After much debate, it was decided that the Spartans would lead in this war; and that an advance force would march to Thermopylae (.The Hot Gates.), a spot along the coast where the mountains come down to the sea, creating a narrow passage.

Though Thermopylae was not the only way the Persians could enter central Greece, it was the only way practical. The vast host Xerxes had levied was too large to sustain on what it could carry, drag along, or steal from the surrounding country as it passed. It relied on the fleet to carry enough stores to supply it as it marched south into Greece. Therefore, the army must hug the coast, maintaining close contact with the equally vast armada Xerxes had levied from his subject-states throughout the eastern Mediterranean. And the coast road ran through Thermopylae!

Before embarking upon a course of action that would dispatch to Thermopylae one of their two kings at the head of an expeditionary force; the Spartan Ephors and the kings consulted the famed Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

The Ephors were five annually elected magistrates, who decided upon matters of policy in Sparta. Under her unique constitution, Sparta.s two Kings were really only warlords; dynastic generals who commanded the Spartan army on campaign. Though they could wield great influence when they chose to, the real power in Sparta lay with the elected Ephors.

These were not pustule-ridden, diseased and depraved creatures dwelling apart atop a mountain; as Frank Miller envisioned them in 300. They were merely elected officials, who stepped down and were replaced annually when their term of office expired!

Nor was The Oracle an nearly-nude adolescent girl, writhing in the grips of drug-induced hallucinations! She was not preyed upon by the Ephors; her temple was not at Sparta at all, but in far away Delphi!

The Pythoness, as she was refered to, was a priestess of Apollo; the god to whom the temple precinct at Delphi was dedicated. In a cave beneath the main temple at Delphi, she received supplicants. Inhaling what may have been the drugged-laced fumes off of a small hot spring that ran under the temple, she would go into a trance-like state. From which the God supposedly delivered a prophesy, through her in answer to the supplicants question.

The Oracle this time returned a disturbing prophecy: either Sparta, or a Spartan king, must perish! (For Athens, the Oracle.s prophecy was even more terrifying: .Flee, doomed men, to the ends of the earth!. However, upon .further review., the Oracle modified the prophecy, adding that Athens would find salvation in her .wooden walls.. The meaning of the ladder was taken by some leading Athenians, particularly her statesman, Themistocles, as meaning that Athens fleet, made of wood, would provide the wall of salvation between her and the Persians!)

At last it was agreed that King Leonidas, of the Agiad branch of the Royal House, would lead a picked band of 300 Spartans, to the pass of Thermopylae; to spearhead and command a relatively small Greek advance guard of some 7,000 hoplites to be posted there.

In the recent film, the decision to occupy and hold Thermopylae was taken by King Leonidas of Sparta completely on his own. This, of course, is merely .Hollywood., not history. The decision was reached by consensus: first proposed at the Council of Corinth; then finally upon reflection at Sparta.

Unlike Gerald Butler, a man in his thirties, Leonidas was likely closer to sixty years old at this time of his life. He had come to the throne at the death of his half brother, King Cleomenes, who died leaving only a daughter to succeed him. Leonidas married this daughter, his niece, Gorgo. Though there is no record of their passionate love for each other as depicted in 300, there was certainly respect and affection between them. She bore him a son, who would later be a Spartan king. When he left for Thermopylae, she knew he would not return; and she asked him what would he have her do when he was gone.

He answered, .Marry a good man!.

Religious festivals and the coming Olympic Games kept the Greek states from immediately mobilizing their strength. The forces sent to aid Leonidas at the Hot Gates were small; a mere token. But more was to follow in time.

It can also be speculated that there were many in positions of influence in every Greek polis who were secretly convinced that the Persian juggernaut could not be stopped, and that resistance was suicidal. Who were hedging their bets, unwilling to commit too much of their manpower resources to trying to stop the seemingly unstoppable; and held back their forces from Thermopylae until it was too late.

Still others were no doubt hoping, even at this late date, to find accommodation with the Persians.

Thebes, in particular, was suspected of preparing to .Medize.; the derogatory term the Greeks gave for any Greek who submitted to the Persians.

Each of Leonidas. 300 were chosen for two attributes: first, that they were men of proven valor; and second, that they all had living sons to take their place, should they fall!

The summer of 490 B.C., Leonidas and the 300 marched north to the pass, taking their station at the head of the allied force.

Though only 300 of a force of 7,000, the Spartans and their king took command over the whole. One of the allied commanders, a Phocian, questioned the Spartan.s right to leadership; when their force was so tiny.

Much as depicted in the film, Leonidas asked the Phocian officer and other assembled allies, .How many soldiers did you bring, friend?.

The other replied, .We came with 1,000., he replied proudly!

Leonidas asked him, then, what he did for a living in time of peace.

The Phocian, replied, .Why, I am a potter..

Leonidas turned to another Greek officer standing nearly. .What do you do, friend.? I am a farmer, this one answered.

Leonidas asked each of the Greeks standing nearby, and each gave a similar answer to the first: they each had some .civilian. occupation.

Finally, Leonidas gestured towards the Spartans; busy oiling their armor and sharpening their weapons.

.Well. I brought 300 soldiers., Leonidas pointed out. His men were professional soldiers, every day of the year, in war or peace!

When Xerxes and the Persian horde arrived at Thermopylae, he had his tent set up on a hilltop; from which he could sit his throne and observe his warriors when they advanced into the narrow neck of the pass.

Looking down, he saw what he thought, in the distance, were women sitting on stones, combing their hair. Standing beside Darius was a Spartan traitor: their exiled former king, Demaratus.

.Those are no Amazons., warned Demaratus; .they are the Lacedaemonians (Spartans), your majesty. My own people, they are the bravest warriors in the world. They wear their hair long by law; for in Sparta long hair is considered to make a handsome man look even handsomer; and an ugly one look fierce!

.They oil and comb their hair before going into battle. For Spartans go into battle as joyfully as other men go to a feast!.

Xerxes sent a herald forth to demand that the Spartans surrender. Coming before the Spartan lines, the herald warned the Greeks that resistance was futile; that the Great King.s army was so vast, their arrows would blot out the sun!

As seen in 300, Dienekes, a Spartan officer; who would later be esteemed by the Spartans as the most valiant man to fight in the battle to come, quipped back to the Persian herald, .All the better. Then we shall fight in the shade!.

The herald, astonished at this insolence, demanded of the Spartans, one last time that they lay down their arms!

Now Leonidas responded, as again depicted in the film: .Molon Labe!.

This, in Greek, meant: .Come and take them!.

The Great King watched from his high throne the fighting in the pass all throughout that long first day at The Hot Gates.

First to enter and engage the Spartans were the Medes.

The second people of the Empire, this division of the army gave pride-of-place only to Xerxes own Imperial Guard, the Immortals. The Medes entered in their Battle Splendor, stepping proudly in their long flowing, embroidered robes and trousers; cuirasses of bronze scale girding their bodies, shields of wicker and short spears competing their panoply.

Supporting the Medes in this initial assault were the Cissians, another proud people of the empire; differing from the Medes only in that they wore turbans instead of the bullet shaped, Assyrian-style helmets of the Medes. These two divisions together numbers 20,000 troops.

But Xerxes was to discover that though he had untold number of troops, he had few men!

The Spartans, formed in their customary phalanx, 12 men deep, allowed the Medes to enter through the narrowest section of the pass, between cliff and sea; onto the slightly broader plain in the middle of the pass. But once their vanguard had entered, the Spartans fell upon them like wolves upon a flock of sheep!

Closing with the Medes before their arrows could have much effect, the Spartans reaped the dead like ripe corn before the scythe!

In this initial impact, when Spartan phalanx met rank-after-rank of lighter armed Medes, the film seemed to have captured the moment well! Though brave men, the Medes. lighter shields and shorter spears were no match for the great bronze-covered aspis and long thrusting spears of the Spartans!

While the armor and shields of the Spartans would turn or blunt their enemy.s blows, Greek spears pierced both wicker shields and scale cuirass of the Easterners!

Never before had these men of the Empire faced a foe so heavily armed; nor so trained in close-quarter combat! All of their experience was against foes who fought like themselves: at a distance, with barrage of arrow or javelin; only using the spear as a last resort, or to close and finish an enemy weakened by the arrow storm!

But the Greek style of war proved its superiority that day, again confirming the verdict of Marathon: that the Greek method of war by far the deadlier. It was one which distilled warfare down to its essence, to close with the enemy and butcher him where he stood!

The Spartans showed that day what a life-times training in arms could do for a warrior! Though the battle raged all throughout that morning and into the afternoon, the Spartans never fatigued; nor did their courage flag. Several times Leonidas gave the command to fall back, and the Spartans would feign flight, as though finally panicked into fleeing. The Medes and Cissians would break ranks and give chase, falling for the ruse; only to have the Spartans turn about upon them, reforming instantly their bristling phalanx of spears and shields. The carnage would then be especially terrible for the Mede!

Seeing his first efforts come to naught, Xerxes recalled the bloodied Medes late in the day. At Hydarnes, their commander, he now ordered into the pass his corps de elite: the 10,000 strong Immortals!

As the first day wore on, Xerxes, supposing that after so many hours of combat the Spartans would be worn down and vulnerable, ordered his Immortals into the pass! Their orders were to push through, bringing back only a few Spartan survivors to be displayed in cages, as one does captured lions, throughout Asia!

Instead, to the Great King.s shock and horror, the Immortals received the same rough handling the Medes had been dealt! Three times Xerxes leapt up from his throne in terror for the fate of his Guardsmen; as they fell in droves beneath the Spartan.s spears. While others were driven upon the ranks behind them, bumping these in turn back towards the narrowest section of the pass, where the shear press caused many to fall into the sea and perish!

The sun set that first day with the elated Spartans still in possession of the pass; and the Persian host completely demoralized!

The second day at Thermopylae went much like the first, with division-after-division of the Persian horde entering the pass; only to meet the same fate as those the day before!

The Spartans were spelled from time-to-time by the other Greek contingents. Many a Greek succumbed to wounds or fatigue, and casualties were high. Not a single Spartan alive at the end of the second day.s fighting was free of wounds. But they held the pass still! And for every Greek that fell, twenty of Xerxes. subjects fell first!

That evening, however, as the Great King sat in despair of ever budging the Spartans from the pass; a Greek herdsman entered the Persian camp with information to sell. This traitor, named Ephialtes, was a goat-herd from the surrounding hills. He offered (for a price!) to show the Great King.s troops a way around Thermopylae; into the rear of the Spartan position!

Little is known of Ephialtes, the traitor who betrayed the Greeks at Thermopylae to the Persians. It is safe to state, however, that he was not a humpbacked Spartan renegade; a sort of Quasimodo in crimson! He was a Phocian, likely; as these were their lands. That he tended goats in the hills above the pass is all that we know of him.

That evening Hydarnes and the remaining Immortals followed the traitor along a narrow goat path. Up and over the girding mountains above the Hot Gates; till dawn found them descending again toward the sea. But now they were to the East and behind the Greek position!

Word of Hydarnes. force reached Leonidas at the pass. The Immortals were still in the hills, winding their way down; the retreat road back south not yet blocked. Realizing that the defense of Thermopylae was no longer tenable, Leonidas dismissed the other Greek contingents, sending them home. Greece would need them alive to fight another day!

For the Spartans, there could be no retreat.

Their pride and reputation would not allow it. Further, they had been ordered to hold the pass at all costs; till reinforced or dead. And it was against Spartan law to ever retreat from a position once assigned! As no reinforcements had arrived, nor a change of orders from the Ephors; Leonidas and the survivors of the original 300 were prepared to obey their orders, and die defending the Hot Gates!

Leonidas must also have been keenly aware of the Delphic Oracle.s prophecy: that either Sparta, or a Spartan king must die! To save Sparta, he was prepared to sacrifice himself as had kings of old; to propitiate the gods with their own royal blood!

With the Spartans remained two other Greek contingents: those of the city of Thebes, held perhaps against their will as suspect of planning to .Medize. at the first opportunity (which in fact is what happened); and that of another Boeotian town, the brave Thespians, who would not abandon their Spartan allies!

Leonidas bid all remaining at the pass to eat a hardy breakfast that morning; for by evening, they would all be dining in Hades!

At mid-morning, Xerxes ordered a frontal attack on the Spartan position. Leonidas, knowing that Hydarnes and the Immortals would soon be coming up from behind them, ordered the Greeks forward to meet them and find death bravely!

Herodotus says that here, during these final hours of the three days of battle, the carnage was at its worst, and the dead beyond counting! For the Persian soldiers, intimidated by the terrible casualties these dreadful Spartans had inflicted on their comrades the past two days, were perforce driven forward with whips by their officers! While the Spartans fought with the reckless courage of men who knew naught but death awaits, and have resigned themselves to taking as many of their foes with them as possible!

Spears were sundered, swords were broken, till the Spartans had nothing left to fight with but rocks picked-up from the ground; or their mere teeth and nails, like wild beasts! Yet still they fought on!!

At some point, fighting in the foremost rank, Leonidas fell. A great struggle began over his body. Four times it switched hands; a scene like that told in the Iliad, as the Greeks and Trojans battled for the bodies of fallen heroes! The Spartans finally recovered Leonidas body, just in time for the arrival of Hydarnes and the Immortals, appearing in their rear!

Drawing off to a small hillock (where now stands their grave stone), the Spartans and remaining other Greeks formed a circle, around the body of Leonidas. There they stood their ground, dying in place as the Persians pelted them from all sides with arrows; till not a man remained alive.

The Persians had forced the pass, and Greece lay before them. But at the Hot Gates they had paid a ghastly price for the real estate they had captured.

Their casualties were never fully counted, but not less than 50,000 Persian troops likely fell there. Among the dead were two sons and an equal number of brothers of Xerxes himself! Worst, the entire Persian army was demoralized. They had met the Greeks in a place where numbers counted for little, and only courage and skill at arms lent victory. In these qualities they had clearly met their betters! There was little doubt in the minds of every man in the Great King.s host, that had not the traitor shown them a way around the pass, they would have had no option but to retreat! It is likely that the memory of Spartan fury lingered in the minds of the Persian rank-and-file, when a year later they faced the combined army of the southern Greek states, led not by a mere 300 Spartans; but by the full Spartan army in all its wrath, over 5,000 red-cloaked Spartiates!

In Sparta, the news from Thermopylae was greeted with no outward sadness. Mourning robes were nowhere in evidence; nor was their wailing and lamentations. The Spartans who had died were martyrs to Greek freedom, and were honored above all men as heroes of Sparta.

No such scene depicted in the film, in which the Spartan queen (Gorgo) had to plead her husband.s case to encourage the Spartan Council to support this war; all the while reviled by a politician in the employ of the Persians, took place. Sparta was committed to defying the Persians and avenging Leonidas!

No Spartan would ever have reviled Gorgo, the daughter of one king and wife to another, and counselor to both; in any case! This scene, perhaps, strays the furthest from the facts of any in the film. It is unimaginable that such an exchange would have taken place before the Gerousia, the Spartan Council of Elders; or that Gorgo or any other Spartan lady should be spoken to in such vile fashion! Spartan women were respected, famously assertive, strong willed, and for the most part accepted as equals by their men.

Gorgo was the only Spartan women whose wit and wisdom is remembered to history. Once, when chided by a Greek woman visiting from another city, that .only in Sparta did women rule the men.; Gorgo replied, perhaps smugly, that it was .only in Sparta that women gave birth to (real) men.! This exchange is depicted, though erroneously, in the film as taking place between Gorgo and the Persian ambassador, prior to the war.

Incidentally, the follow up to this scene, in which the Persian envoys are cast into a well, is indeed the response the Spartans gave to the Persian request for .earth and water.; the customary tokens of submission to the Great King that were made when a people surrendered.

Thermopylae has been called .the Spartan Alamo.! It became a source of intense pride, and a rallying cry for every Spartan to avenge the death of their fallen comrades.

The Persian invasion would end the following year. The Persian fleet was first destroyed in the naval victory off Salamis against the combined fleets of the Greek states. His supply line thus endangered, Xerxes was forced to withdraw with half of his army, for lack of supply. The remaining portion of the Persian land army would be destroyed the next year at the Battle of Plataea, by the Greek coalition army; led by Sparta.

There the Spartan phalanx would withstand a devastating arrow barrage, followed by a charge of Persia.s finest armored cavalry, led by Mardonius, brother-in-law to Xerxes and commander of the Persian occupation army. The Spartans held firmly, then counter charged the Persians and routed them utterly, slaying Mardonius, in the process!

The legacy of Thermopylae is one of courage and prowess: that a relative handful of brave, determined, and above all well-trained and disciplined troops could hold off and best many times their number; given wise and inspirational leadership, and the right terrain.

To the Greeks, it showed what .Free Men. could do against a horde of .slaves.. And with the example of Leonidas and his brave 300 foremost in their minds, take courage; and turn back the invader.

By making this heroic stand, the Spartans paved the way for Greek victory. A victory decisive to the future of mankind; in that without a free Greece acting as the incubation chamber of Western Civilization, our society and civilization today would look quite different indeed.

Without Thermopylae, there could (perhaps) have been no Golden Age; as Greece might well have succumbed to Persian domination, and liberty would have been snuffed out in the dynamic Greek City-States.

Without the free Greek cities experimenting with representative government, there would have been no foundational democracy, in the form of Athen, upon which later generations and societies, such as ours, could build.

Without the Golden Age that followed the Persian defeat, much that we take for granted might not exist: There would have been no Greek theater and playwrights, inventors of comedy and tragedy. Nor the amazingly elegant western architectural tradition, that has given us such splendid buildings as our own capital building in Washington, DC; or St Peter.s magnificent cathedral in Rome. Nor would we have the foundations of rational philosophy, Socratic Method and logical deduction. Nor the Greek contributions to mathematics and other sciences; much of which became the bedrock upon which later Renaissance thinkers such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Leonardo would build.

But perhaps the greatest legacy of Thermopylae is to be found in the military sphere.

The Spartans were the West.s first professional soldiers. They left to their heirs a tradition of discipline, training, organization, tactics and maneuver that were foundational for all that came after. Without the Spartans, there would have been no professional military tradition for which Philip and Alexander would lend ultimate expression. Nor the rich tradition of tactics and strategy that found its way into later Roman and Byzantine treatises, and ultimately into the Renaissance military writers and thinkers such as Machiavelli, Maurice of Nassau, Montecuccoli, and the great Gustavus Adolphus. And it was these men, expounding upon the classical military tradition descended from the Greeks and particularly the Spartans, that laid the foundation stone for the modern military dominance of the West over all the peoples of the globe.

What is this military legacy, exactly?

That of a professional military establishment, controlled and audited by a civilian authority. A military open to outside criticism, to adaptation, to scientific and technological advances. A military based upon regimentation and discipline, and subordination of the individual to the machine-like drill of the unit. And what is uniquely the heritage of the Greeks, and particularly the Spartans, a military whose war fighting philosophy is this: to come to grips with the enemy in close-quarter battle; and to destroy him in decisive battle. Little time or effort is wasted on ritual or pretense. Maneuver is merely a tool to bring the enemy to battle.

Unlike Eastern military tradition that emphasizes maneuver and stratagem, in the West warfare was and is distilled down to the essentials necessary to bring the enemy to close-quarter battle; and to best equip our soldiers with the tools to win such battle.

It is this that has made the West both so dominant and so deadly on the field of war for centuries; and really for most of recorded history.

This is the legacy of those deadly, efficient, scarlet-and-bronze clad Spartans who stood and died at Thermopylae; obedient to their orders to the very end.