What was the Real Story Behind the Spartan 300?

The Battle of Thermopylae as seen in the movie 300 was just one of many battles in the Graeco-Persian Wars. It wasn’t one the Greeks won, but we think of it as a kind of victory. Leading the Greeks through the push back against the Persians were the Spartans, a warrior society built on the backs of some rather brutally treated slaves, to the point that the Spartans feared other Greeks stepping in in defense of their mistreated underlings who occasionally revolted. Nevertheless, this societal structure allowed the aristocracy to enjoy a life training for battles like Thermopylae. But what led up to this battle, and was it actually anything like depicted in the 2006 film 300?

To begin with, as you are no doubt aware, Ancient Greece wasn’t one country, but several independent city-states, with the most famous today being Athens and Sparta, though Ancient Greek city-states could be found all the way into modern day Western Turkey, and in colonies around Italy and Sicily. All of these locals spoke Greek and were considered to be part of a greater Greek culture, even if they weren’t unified into one federal state.

On the other end of things, off in Central Asia there was a state unifying several related and unrelated peoples into a Persian empire: the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE, which at its height, contained two fifths of all humans within its borders. Its eastern territory stretched to modern day Pakistan and the Aral Sea, while its western territory stretched to Egypt, Thrace, and Macedon. This empire also conquered the kingdom of Lydia, which previously conquered the Ionian Greek city-states in 547 BCE.

As to how they managed this vast empire, the Achaemenids were masters of infrastructure, logistics, and long-range communication. This enabled them, among other things, to successfully consolidate their rule over the Ionian Greeks and helped keep the Greeks divided.

To further help manage things, Cyrus and his predecessors installed tyrants to rule over the Ionian city states. Important to note here is that “tyrants” meant something very different for the ancient Greeks than it does for us today. It didn’t have that ring of authoritarian and unpopular rule. In fact, usually tyrants returned power to ordinary residents of the city-state, and away from the aristocrats of the region. Sometimes they even advocated for democratic reform to broaden enfranchisement.

In any event, the tyrant of the Ionian city-state of Miletus was a man named Aristagoras, who embarked on a failed invasion of the Greek island of Naxos with Persian support. On the way, he got into a fight with his Persian handler, as you do. Ultimately Aristagoras managed to alienate himself from Persian support and the powerbase in Miletus. To save face, he tried to incite support amongst the other Ionian city states to revolt, and embarked to Sparta and then Athens to convince them to support the revolution. Sparta refused, but Athens agreed to send twenty ships to help out. Ultimately the revolt was not successful, but this all turned Cyrus’ later successor, Darius’, eye towards the other Greek city-states, especially Athens.

On this one, Darius demanded symbolic gifts of water and soil from the Greek city-states as a sign of submission. As you probably guessed from the fact that we’re about to talk about a major war between these peoples, Sparta and Athens refused to do this, with the Athenians kicking the Persian messengers down a ravine used for executing prisoners. The Spartans did something similar, although would later apologize for this act against the messengers. To try to make up for it, the Spartans even sent two individuals to be executed as a token offering. Though their lives were ultimately spared, with the offering deemed insufficient for the slight.

In any event, ultimately Darius responded to the Athenian and Spartan refusals to submit by sending a conquering fleet to siege the islands leading to Athens. With the help of an exiled Athenian politician, he learned that he must establish a beachhead in the bay of Marathon, which they did in 490 BCE. The Persians camped for a few days here before Athenian and neighboring Plataean troops attacked them.

So where were the Spartans in all this? Well, they were supposed to be there, but were busy with a religious festival that couldn’t end until after the full moon. Nevertheless, the Athenians and the Palataeans fought the larger Persian forces off the bay, and then the Athenians swung back to Athens fast enough to head off an attempted invasion by sea. When the Spartans eventually arrived, the battle was over by a day.

While this was a significant victory for the Greeks, in the process of preparing for a beachhead, the Persians had conquered several islands in the Aegean, giving them control over the sea in the region.

Fortunately for the Greeks, however, Darius’ empire was very large, and as much as the Greeks may seem important to us today, they were not the main concern for Darius once the Egyptians began revolting, with Darius ultimately dying while planning to put down the revolt. His son, Xerxes, succeeded him in 484. Another revolt, this time in Babylon, kept Xerxes busy until 481, but this was only a calm in the storm for the Greeks and Xerxes had not forgotten about their disrespect and the shameful loss at Marathon.

And so it was that when he was able to finally focus on the Greeks, Xerxes REALLY focused on the Greeks, this time intent on crushing them completely. He assembled a massive army comprised of peoples and animals from all over his empire. He also intended to lead them himself into Greece. In the process, he ordered the building of two pontoon bridges using interconnected ships to cross between Abydos in Asia Minor and Sestos in Thrace. The pontoon bridges were famously destroyed in a storm, with Herodotus reporting that Xerxes had the sea shackled, whipped, and branded in punishment, although it isn’t actually clear whether that really happened or not.

Whatever the case, Xerxes had the bridges rebuilt and this time was able to move his forces into Thrace, estimated to be around 100,000-200,000 strong, a staggeringly large army for the era. Noteworthy here, though is that Herodotus famously puts Xerxes’ army into the millions, but historians generally discount this number as an exaggeration. Whatever the case there, in 480 Xerxes marched with his people into Thrace. The Persian genius for logistics and planning worked out and Xerxes had little trouble feeding and watering his forces and their animals all the way into central Greece with the help of his Macedonian and Thracian allies.

This brings us back to the Spartans, who were ruled by a mix of democracy, theocracy, and dual monarchy. The rule of the two kings was supported by two democratic bodies, ensuring a balance of power between the Spartans and their kings. One of these ruling groups was the Ephors, which the movie 300 was not very kind towards. In truth, the Ephors were not mutant and debauched priests, but a group of five elected officials cycled amongst the citizenry. On the other end, the famous Leonidas was one of the dual kings.

We’ve already discussed in great detail how the Spartan society functioned in our video How Did One Actually Become a Spartan Warrior?, but what is important to note in this one is that Spartans were a very hierarchical society based on the social organization of the mythical king, Lycurgus. The only true citizens were the Spartiates; these were the ruling class and the leaders of Sparta’s military. They were isolated to the city of Sparta, whereas the region itself was actually called Laconia. As for this ruling class, as alluded to, they lived a life of leisure geared towards athletics and combat training, so they were always ready for battle. Below them were the majority of Laconians, the free Dwellers-Around, and the slave Helots. Both of these groups also saw combat alongside the Spartiates, though little spoken of today in popular media. As also previously alluded to, it is noteworthy that the Helots were treated much more harshly by the Spartiates than most other Greeks tended to treat their slaves, possibly even having a festival where young Spartiates would sneak off into the night to murder Helots.

Unsurprisingly from this, the Helots occasionally revolted against the Spartiates, which presumably didn’t exactly improve their treatment, and notably also kept the Spartiates suspicious of them. On top of this, most other Greeks found the Spartans’ mistreatment of the Helots extremely troubling, and the Spartans feared outside intervention into their affairs by other Greeks on behalf of the mistreated Helots.

However, given the Spartans were the good guys in the movie 300, it is perhaps unsurprising that one major difference between the movie 300 and real life is that the movie does not portray the Helots and Dwellers-Around. Who, by the way, not only also bled and died at Thermopylae, but vastly outnumbered the 300 Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae. Naturally, their inclusion would have made the movie’s portrayal of Sparta much more complicated, especially having to explain why these groups do not enjoy the freedom and liberty of the Spartiates despite the fact that they were forced to die for it.

Speaking of maybe not so much being the good guys by our modern perspectives, it’s also noteworthy that during this era of Greek history, the Spartans kept up good relations with democratically organized aristocratic regimes across the city-states. Despite our modern understanding of democracy standing for liberty and freedom, Greek democracy was almost always controlled and meant for the aristocratic families. These families jealously guarded democratic participation from even wealthy common citizens. That said, as alluded to, these regimes were occasionally challenged by Tyrants, who sometimes overthrew them and took power. Tyrants, again as mentioned, often returned power to ordinary residents of the city-state away from the aristocrats, sometimes even advocating for democratic reform to broaden enfranchisement.

Given the power structure among the Spartans, it should come as no surprise that it was Spartan foreign policy to depose these tyrants and democratic reformers in order to return power to the aristocracy of foreign city-states. This happened in Athens in 507 when Sparta attempted to remove the reformer Cleisthenes. On this one, however, the people successfully forced the Spartans away.

Nevertheless, for the purpose of Xerxes’ invasion, Spartan foreign policy in these matters around this time in support of other aristocratic leaders meant that it was relatively easy to organize a force against the Persians under Spartan leadership, although the Spartans’ track record did isolate some rivals and neighbors such as the Argives. Other city-states were either allied with the Persians or were busy with other conflicts around Italy and Carthage.

The allies that ultimately did band together formed a league of sorts historians call the Hellenic League, but it was by no means a unified Greece, and even amongst themselves they had a bit of trouble getting on the same page about where to allocate their resources and where to stand their ground, owing to the league city-states being spread across very different parts of Greece. In short, not all points could be easily defended and so nobody wanted to send the bulks of their armies too far from their respective homes.

Further, leading up to Thermopylae, under Sparta, the league already lost a fight when Xerxes’ army entered Thessaly in 480. So everybody was being a bit cautious.

So why was Thermopylae, specifically the middle gate, chosen to make stand? Thermopylae was a narrow path with the mountains on one side and the sea on another. The middle gate was wider than the path in front of it and behind it, but the slopes of the mountain were easier to climb next to the middle gate than at either point. There was another path that led behind the contingent, but Leonidas blocked it with warriors native to the region to keep the Persians from flanking him. The Greeks also camped for a time and rebuilt an ancient wall to support themselves further.

This all set the stage for two battles that happened simultaneously to the point of being called twin battles- the more famous Thermopylae on land, and the lesser talked about Artemision in the water. The purpose of the fleet in Artemision was to keep the Persian fleet from landing behind Thermopylae and attacking the Greeks. King Leonidas led the stand at Thermopylae while a man by the name of Eurybiades led the fleet, with the assistance of a much more experienced naval commander Themistocles. As to why Themistocles wasn’t leading this one officially, this was simply because the rest of the banded city-states didn’t want an Athenian leading them.

For his battle, Leonidas chose three hundred soldiers who had sons who could replace them if they were killed, and after a religious festival, set out for Thermopylae. But this, contrary to what is depicted, was not all he brought. Leonidas’ actual number of soldiers was in the ballpark of 8000 warriors. Again, the Dwellers-Around and Helots and the like vastly outnumbered the Spartans, despite in popular history the Spartan warriors getting all the credit. As for Eurybiades, for his supporting fight, he was at the head of 271 ships.

Now, while bringing a massively larger number than just 300 soldiers, the 8000 or so were still a miniscule amount compared to the army attacking. As to why so few here, at the time many Greeks were observing different religious festivals, like the festival of Carneia for the Spartans, and the Olympic festival for the other Greeks. The movie, 300, takes a strange stance against Greek religion, but Leonidas and much of Sparta were well regarded for being more pious than other Greeks. Leonidas himself respected oracles to the point that he accepted his later death due to an oracle predicting he would either die, or Sparta would be captured. That said, some historians think these “festivals” excuses were actually just a cover for the Greeks’ own uncertainty about the league, and that the city-states wanted to hedge their bets and keep the majority of their forces closer to their respective homes.

Whatever the case, when the two forces initially faced one another, no action happened for the first five days. Ultimately Persian spies observed that the Greeks, specifically the Spartans, were just lounging about during this time combing their long and luxurious hair. On this one, traditionally, Spartans wore their hair long as a sort of flex against their enemies and took exceptionally good care of it. It was at this point that Xerxes sent men from two different nations against the Greeks, which they were able to fight off with few casualties.

Next, Xerxes sent the Immortals to fight, with the name supposedly referencing that when one man would fall, another would be assigned immediately to take his place in the force, such that it never diminished in number. Whatever the case there, these were the Persian kings’ crack bodyguards, which numbered between 10,000 to 15,000 men and were drawn from Persian nobility and from the nobility of nations culturally close to the Persians. Unfortunately for these troops, this wave of Immortals was at a disadvantage because their spears were shorter than the Greeks’. Noteworthy here on this is that the Greeks did indeed push some of them into the waters off the cliff of Thermopylae as depicted in the film.

Another relatively accurate thing was that although probably not a deformed person like in the movie, the traitor Ephialtes did exist and he informed the Persians of the pass that led behind the Greeks. The Persians were thus able to push through the natives who guarded it and successfully flanked the Greek forces.

Before they were flanked, however, Leonidas held a council where many of the Greeks wanted to disband and return to their homes. It is debated who left and who stayed at this point, but Leonidas seems to have disbanded most of the Greeks except for his own people who were comprised of the surviving among the original 300 Spartans, along with untold numbers of Dwellers-Around and Helots, 700 Thespians, and Theban hostages who were there against their will.

As for the Spartans’ decision not to retreat in the face of sure defeat, they had a very strict ethos about cowardice. If a Spartiate was branded a coward, he was essentially demoted to a type of pariah called a Trembler. So great was the fear of being branded a coward, that there are references to mothers beating their adult Spartiate sons to death for turning their backs on their comrades. Thus, Leonidas was probably holding to this ethos in his decision to send back the other Greeks but make his last stand with his fellow Spartans and support force who weren’t given a choice.

Ultimately, so vastly outnumbered, Leoniadas did indeed die during this battle, and the Greeks and Persians fought over his corpse several times before the battle was over. However, in the end, all the Laconians and Thespians died in the battle, while the Thebians begged Xerxes to recognize they were held as captives and their loyalty belonged to him, an act he also treated as a sham.

A famous epitaph was later written that commemorated all the Greeks that fought there with a section for the Spartans with the famous line “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we died here obedient to our laws.”

On the other end of things, the Battle of Artemisium didn’t fare much better for the Greeks. Before the battle began, a storm did destroy some of the Persian ships, but the Greeks lost anyway.

After Thermopylae, Xerxes captured Athens and destroyed it. At which point it looked like all of Greece was about to be conquered by Xerxes. That is, until the battle of Salamis. Noteworthy on this one, unlike Leonidas, Eurybiades survived the previous battle he led, and ultimately commanded the battle at the straits of Salamis against Xerxes’ fleet. In this one, the Greeks won and it was a major turning point in the war. These two battles are the subject of 300’s sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire.

The movie is framed as a story told by a survivor of Thermopolaye to the Greeks before the battle of Plataea. He is based on a real survivor of the battle, Aristodemus. Aristodemus had an eye disease that kept him from participating, and Leonidas did order him back, but he was not well received in Sparta when he arrived, being treated with disgust for being deemed a coward for leaving. That said, Aristodemus ultimately died in the battle of Plataea heroically enough to redeem his name in Sparta. This battle took place in 479 and was another victory for the Greeks. From there, they recaptured Athens, battled the rest of the Persian navy at Mycale, and were able to repel them back to Asia Minor.

Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale are considered the five major battles of the second Greco-Persian wars for most historians. After this, the Spartans withdrew from the rest of the war, and Athens led a newly constituted Delian League in revenge against the Persians, attacking Persian targets in the Mediterranean. The final battle of this war was in Salamis in Cyprus.

Noteworthy here is that the Delian league consolidated Athens’ power, which all set the stage for the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. That story, however, we’ll save for another day.

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