The Three Hundred Spartans
-Chrissie
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The story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one of the touchpoints of the history of Europe. It is seen as a crucial battle in the wars between Greece and Persia and has served as an example of heroism since, despite the fact the Spartans lost.
By 480 BCE, the war between Persia and the Greek poleis (city-states) had been going on in fits and starts for nearly a generation. It had begun in 499 with a rebellion of Greeks living in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) against the Persians, who had taken control of the area in 456. Athens aided these cities in their revolt, but to no avail—the rebellion was crushed in 494 and the city in which it had begun, Miletus, was completely destroyed. With consideration of the aid provided by Athens, the Persians decided to attack Greece. Their first attempt, in 492, was stopped by a massive storm in the Aegean which destroyed their fleet. Two years later, another Persian army tried to invade Greece, but was stopped at Marathon. Further plans were delayed by the death of Persian king Darius I and the succession of his son, Xerxes, who had to put down some rebellions to secure his position. By 481, Xerxes had readied a force for a full-scale invasion of Greece.
Herodotus, our earliest and one of our most important sources for the Persian Wars, says the Persian army consisted of around 2.6 million people, including the soldiers and all those accompanying them. This is likely a gross overestimate. After the Battle of Marathon, the Greeks had formed the Hellenic League in anticipation of the obviously forthcoming Persian invasion. Athens built up a large navy to prevent resupply via the Aegean, while land forces were deployed in strategic areas around the peninsula, led or advised by Spartans. In the Spring of 480, Xerxes led his troops across the Hellespont (the Dardanelles). He intended to push into Greece from the north via Thrace and Macedonia. The Greeks had little faith that these countries could even delay the Persians for very long, a belief that was validated. A large Greek force was assembled at Thermopylae, the only reasonably-sized pass into the southern part of the peninsula through the mountains. The pass itself was given to a force of 7000 Spartans and their auxiliaries under the command of Leonidas. This would have been sufficient to hold the Persians off, which they did for two days. On the third day, using information from a Greek defector, Xerxes sent his men around the Greek forces via a small pass near Thermopylae. The Persians attempted to encircle the Greeks, trapping them in the pass. When Leonidas realized the best he could do was delay the Persians, he sent all but three hundred of his fellows back down into Greece, to help reinforce below the pass and so as to waste as few lives as possible. The choice of the three hundred men was said to have been made according to those who had already fathered sons, assuring that no Spartan family would be ended with this battle. There were also about a thousand other men with them; the largest groups of which were some Thebans whom the Spartans were holding hostage and a group of 700 volunteer soldiers from the city of Thespiae who refused to allow the Spartans to stand alone. They held the Persians off for one more day before being completely wiped out with a massive volley of arrows. Xerxes reportedly had Leonidas’ body crucified in a rage over his losses in the battle. The Persians pushed through into Greece proper, but the war was over within a year, ended in the sea at Mycale and on land at Platea. The Greeks were soon able to recover the bodies of their men and created a burial mound in the pass as a monument to their courage. Leonidas’ body was taken to Sparta for burial.
Herodotus’ account is the earliest we have, but at least thirty years had passed by the time he wrote, by which time legend and myth had already begun to overshadow truths. The battle had taken on a great deal more importance in retelling than the influence it had in the war itself. As the centuries passed, historians began to question how much of it was true, while at the same time lauding the actions of these men as saving the “rational” West from a takeover by the “Oriental” East. The existence of the battle was confirmed, at least in part, by archaeological excavations of the area in the 1930s, which found Persian arrowpoints and Greek armor and weapons in a small grouping in the pass. The oversized interpretation remains, in both history and fiction, of the great feat of the Three Hundred Spartans.