Spartans at the Gates of Fire

and this is a land where the weak are enslaved and killed violence is every man's daily bread and a dead husband is every woman's dream here children expect to be beaten for their own good sometimes to death this is the fabled warrior kingdom of Sparta soon it will be the unlikely savior of the free world the cradle of Western civilization is under attack King Xerxes and his quarter of a million strong Persian army are invading Greece in the first major struggle between east and west the slave-owning Spartans and their King Leonidas will be transformed into glorious heroes the next two and a half thousand years their heroic stand will become a legend the two forces would meet at Thermopylae the gates of fire and only outcome would hang the fate of Western democracy itself this is the mapa li the scene of one of the most glorified slaughters in history many thousands died here the smell of death and decay still hangs in the air as sulfurous Hot Springs pour their stench down the mountainside given the battlefield its name thermal pill I the hot gates the gates of fire a solitary figure surveys the battlefield one of the greatest heroes of antiquity the Spartan King lay on a deaths ear Lyanna - took on the might of the Persian Empire with just a tiny Greek Defense Force and stopped it in its tracks legend says that Liana dasa struggle against King Xerxes saved Western democracy at the very moment of its birth the minute had happened it immediately vaulted into legend we look back 2500 years and it seems ancient it seems mythological to us we can't even tell if it's real if it but it really happened it was a historical event we know who was there we know the names it really happened but with Thermopylae a few facts are certain almost all we know about the battle and the Spartans themselves comes from the ancient historian Herodotus writing from a Greek perspective more than 40 years after the battle herodotus was responding to stories that he was told by the Spartans when he visited Sparta and the Spartans had already put together their version of events by the time Herodotus came to write his history so Herodotus himself was gathering a partly mythologized version the legend of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae reverberate it down the ages historians and artists transformed Leonidas and his men into mythical figures until their battle for Greece became seen as a fight for the entire Western world in the Western imagination the story of the la Polly is the most important example of heroic self-sacrifice for country but simple message is that it's better to be dead than on free rayona Dez came from a secretive and violent society totally at odds with the rest of Greece their presence at one of the key battles for freedom has intrigued Western scholars for centuries for 2,500 years people have been arguing about them never agreeing as to who they were what they did why they did it the Spartans have left a wonderful mythical paper trail that nobody has really succeeded in sorting out today very little remains of Sparta the most isolated in secretive city-state in ancient Greece but in Leon odessa's time this remote valley was home to the most feared warriors in the Mediterranean and unlike other Greeks who spent most of the year farming all spartans were full-time warriors every time you faced the spartan army you faced a mass of identically perfectly trained spartans you are not really confronting even mortal men you were confronting sort of this eternal notion of unbeatable sparta Layana das was master of his own realm and feared in many more but his supremacy was about to be challenged Persia was the largest empire the Western world had ever seen from its center in modern-day Iran it stretched from India to Egypt Greece was just a tiny speck on its western horizon Persia was a world empire it included 28 nations it had all the resources it ever wanted it had all the money it ever wanted and controlled something that nobody before them had ever controlled the Persians looked like they could take over the world but it would be some years before they realized they would have to get past the Spartans first in sparta Persia would find a military machine like no other close to the outside world Sparta's people thought they were a chosen super race and with extreme laws and ideals they plan to stay that way to maintain discipline everyone in Sparta was always under surveillance a group of ultra conservative old men called the gerousia looked for signs of nonconformity watching the gerousia was another group of officials the air force even royalty wasn't above suspicion a Spartan King wasn't a monarch it was a dire key there were two of them carefully watching each other being rivals and knowing that if they stepped out of line the F Wars might get them King could be put on trial could be exiled and his character systematically ruined in the eyes of history no one escaped Sparta's judgmental gaze all babies were examined to check that they conformed to the Spartan ideal at the age of seven a boy would have been removed from his family and taught the Spartan ways young Spartans were brought up and educated communally by the state from we're told the age of seven and this education was intended to inculcate physical toughness military skill and above all obedience living together in barracks the boys learned comradeship and deprived of all comforts they were molded into austere Spartans through extreme physical hardship the boys were deliberately given not enough to eat and also they were encouraged to steal to augment their meager rations and they were whipped if they were caught not because stealing was a crime but because they were clumsy thieves the eyes of Sparta we're everywhere when a boy reached puberty he was considered to be particularly dangerous the boys were always supervised every moment of every day spartans felt that boys teenagers were at a particularly dangerous age they might go off the rails they had to be policed every minute to make sure that the values of the ruling group were transmitted Spartan girls were given some sort of formal education and they had some sort of exercise allegedly naked in front of the boys the aim being for them to be when they married and they married late by Greek standards educated brought up in such ways to be able to survive the rigors of childbirth ideally they gave birth to boys because Sparta was a fundamentally military society so the whole system is geared to producing the largest number of physically fittest fighting males one of the things that always amazes me is that they haven't managed to produce any children because they were encouraged to go into sort of military homosexual relationships until they were allowed to marry the Spartans might well be fighting next to their boyfriends homosexuality was thought to bind men to their peers it was your job with your shield and York spear to Guard unit that was part of the simmer that kept the Spartan battle line together homosexuality was very common in Sparta and was positively looked on provided it didn't stop men breeding the Spartan population was perilously small and so there were laws designed to spice up the sex lives of married couples a Spartan man wasn't allowed to see his wife in daylight for the first 10 years or so of their marriage a man was encouraged to see his wife as a splendid sex object emotional development was something they didn't want because families were the source of peculiarity Spartans wanted to produce similars they wanted them wheeling on the battlefield with one mind like a flock of birds Sparta's invincible military reputation had been built up by conquering the surrounding lands of Messina and Laconia and turning their old neighbors into slaves forcing them to work their fields Messina became the free breadbasket for Sparta which meant that the Spartan upper military class could devote their entire existence to military training and defense of the realm and the whole of Spartan society became dependent on slavery 8000 Spartan overlords suppressed a quarter of a million slaves these were the helots drastically outnumbered the spartans faced a constant threat of a helot uprising every year spartans declared war on the helots they'd no intention of killing them their economy arrested on the helots so did a lot of their love lives but it had to be religiously permissible to kill a habit and the great time for doing that was at night because that was the time of greatest terror the Spartans were connoisseurs of terror and the helots had to be intimidated at night young Spartans patrolled in death squads the faceless assassins were known as the Crypt air but keeping the helots in check would soon become secondary to the trouble unfolding across the sea back in Persia a new king was being crowned Xerxes sought to emulate the expansionist ambitions of his father's reign herodotus records his declaration it was by taking risks that my ancestors brought us to where we stand today we therefore are following in the footsteps of our fathers we shall conquer all Europe and we shall return home in triumph Xerxes ordered his generals to prepare for war against Greece it would be the largest invasion force ever seen and Xerxes himself would lead it men from every corner of the Persian Empire were ordered to muster for Xerxes caused tens of thousands of archers horsemen and even Greek mercenaries gathered in preparation for a massive attack as news of purchase preparations for invasion group the threat to Greek civilization could no longer be ignored Leonidas went north to Corinth to meet a group of his Greek rivals their immediate thought was how to save their skins and Greeks being Greeks at that time what they would have thought was how can I save my city Leonidas knew that Sparta's basic instinct to withdraw to its homeland wouldn't work against Xerxes it probably would have been very tempting for the Spartans when faced with these unimaginably large numbers from the Persian Empire to defend just the home territory but they had no worthwhile fleet Sparta could be surrounded by an enemy who landed from the sea Sparta had to have an ally with a big fleet and that meant Athens for Athens to help Sparta Leonidas would have to come to an agreement with his former enemy but although he was willing to lead a small alliance of Greek states against the Persians he did not have the authority to provide the troops to support them over the coming weeks you would have to convince his Spartans of the need for the Greeks to work together if you are a Spartan and one of your Kings came back and said they want us to march over 250 miles to the north and stop the Persians whom they had never seen before to save Greeks that they didn't know very well most of them would have probably said no the Spartans considered themselves separate unique special the idea that they would even fight alongside other peoples other Greeks was a new concept but by now it was becoming clear just how great the threat was there's a story about two Greek spies who obviously weren't very professional they were caught and what zerks he is dead in his absolute confidence was to show them round nothing could have prepared the spies for the site of the Persian army I would have seen the place of gathering of this massive I believe it's well over 50 different nationality Imperial Army when they'd seen the enormous preparations they would go back and tell the people back home oh you might as well give in you know this is a juggernaut this is too big for any of us with four years of preparations complete Xerxes finally embarked on his invasion entering Greece from the north he hoped to sweep down the coast shadowed by his Persian fleet but first he had to cross the Hellespont Strait between Europe and Asia Minor Xerxes simply ordered that the Hellespont be bridged his engineers lashed together hundreds of bowls this was unheard of it was just absurd in the eyes of a Greek but for the Persians it was part and parcel of the whole army work that there were people who could provide anything that was necessary to shift an army as efficiently as possible and if that required a bridge across the Hellespont that was done to huge bridges were floated both over two miles long but just as the task was complete the gods or at least nature intervened herodotus records that a sudden violent storm turned the boats to matchwood he writes that Xerxes was so enraged he had the Hellespont whipped and branded with a hot iron but the resources of the Persian Empire were limitless within a month the Hellespont was bridged again Xerxes had everything going for him he did not face a concerted military attempt to block him at the bridgehead which would have created real problems for him he crossed completely unopposed nothing now stood between Xerxes and mainland Greece as the Persian threat loomed ever closer to Sparta it said that King Leonidas went to ask the gods for help in defeating Xerxes you went north to consult the country's most potent religious symbol the Oracle Adel fee the Delphic Oracle is the most sacred seat prophecy in the entire Greek world when the Spartan King visited the Oracle he would have been surrounded by a huge entourage this would have been an incredibly exciting and intense and semi-public event so they would have all had been there desperate to know what the Oracle said the whole experience was heightened by the preparatory rituals that went on beforehand a sacrifice scattered water and a pathway down some secret steps into a subterranean prophetic chamber they honored s went to hear the most important prophecy of his life it came from the god Apollo speaking through a revered priestess steam or smoke arose around her and then she went into some kind of trance or hypnotic state and uttered the most extraordinary noises they're often referred to as noises like a dog barking or growling which then in fact interpreted by male priests Apollo to the visitor Herodotus relates what the Oracle prophesized for lay on the dance but the prophecy was disastrous here your fate Oh dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces either your famed great town must be sacked by purchase sons or the whole of Sparta shall mourn the death of a king of the house of Heracles when they honored us consulted the Oracle the news was terrible the Delphic Oracle simply said either a Spartan King must die or Sparta itself will fall if Flay honored ass was going to fight he would have to act soon Xerxes vast army was thundering through Greece crushing anyone who stood in their way there's little doubt that a provincial Greek used two armies of a few thousand would have been gobsmacked when he watched the passage of the army of Xerxes which would have taken days just to walk past one spot but Leonidas had yet to persuade the Spartans to send troops to Thermopylae the next carnea festival was imminent and fighting would be forbidden under Spartan warrior code they weren't going to leave in our terms the Christmas or Easter celebrations behind because they could expect the gods to punish them if they didn't carry through the celebration of God's great occasions Spartans usually hated fighting abroad they had a massive population of slaves they had to control at home keeping the helots under control was more important than taking on a distant Empire they were constantly scared of helot revolt and this meant they were very shy indeed of doing any kind of foreign policy of any kind of foreign adventurism but with Xerxes Persian army thundering south Leonidas had no choice some of Sparta's elite warriors would have to go north the spartans probably thought that if they didn't send anyone that no greeks would go that sparta is the leading military state and with the military leadership the land leadership in its hands had to set an example only 300 hardened fighters were chosen to go with Layana - to head off Xerxes hordes most people believed that there was 300 as an advanced guard that would show Spartan intent seriousness and then if it went well they would send backward and more Spartans would come but I think everybody would have known that anybody who goes north and marches up to join in Greece to face an army that was anywhere from a hundred to two hundred thousand soldiers knows are going to die in early August 480 BC King Leonidas 300 Spartans and an unknown number of helot slaves left their sacred homeland and set off for Thermopylae women were actually out there ordering their men to come home victorious the famous saying of the Spartan wife is with it or on it meaning that her husband must come home with his shield or dead on it and certainly not come home as a deserter all spartans were trained killers but a 300 were not just picked for their ability on the battlefield there was a special requirement made for the men who were picked to fight at Thermopylae they had to be fathers of sons perhaps the Spartans felt that a father with sons had already done their duty for the future of Sparta these men were almost expendable as they march north the Spartans knew that the odds were against them but they entrusted their fate to their gods the most religious people in Greece they always took herds of sacrificial animals with them so they could read the omens for battle in the shape of the animals livers normally before a battle if the liver was in the right shape spartans wouldn't start the fight and then the fight wouldn't start because a Greek enemy would never provoke the Spartans to ward this time wasn't up to the Spartans when the battle started they were on the defense inspired by that example other city-states rallied to the cause Athens had already agreed to send its formidable Navy while other allies such as Thebes and Thespis swelled the infantry ranks to over 4,000 even so according to the account given by the Greek historian Herodotus the Spartans and their allies were still outnumbered by over five hundred to one by land and three to one at sea by the middle of August 480 BC steep mountains rose before them they had reached thermopylae hot springs poured down the mountainside giving Thermopylae its name thermal Pillai the gates of fire no one knows exactly what the mop that he was like in leonid asses time but the sea was said to come up to the mountains leaving only a narrow path along the coast a small army could block it with ease a natural bottleneck Thermopylae was the last defendable position on Xerxes row to Athens the Greek plan was simple they intended to block the way south along a defensive line that stretched from Thermopylae on land across a narrow channel of water to the island of Artemisium they came up with the battle plan of holding the line of Artemisium by sea connected with Thermopylae by land and it was a good plan holding the line by sea was the Athenian Navy defending it by land whether Spartans Leonidas ordered his men to block the mah police coastal path they started by rebuilding an old defensive war his plan was to turn the pass at Thermopylae into a narrow funnel of death creating a killing zone which he hoped would trap and neutralize the Persians vast numerical superiority next Leonidas addressed the one potential weakness in the plan known only to the local Greeks there was a secret track that led over the mountains to behind the Spartan position anxious to keep his own troops on the front line Leonidas took a gamble and sent only a small contingent of phocion allies to guard it with a battle plan now in place the waiting game began for King Leonidas Thermopylae was not just a good defensive position it was a place of real personal significance Leonidas believed that he was a direct descendant of the son of Zeus Heracles who spent his last days at Thermopylae when they honored us goes to Thermopylae he's conscious that over the hot spring is a massive author of his own great-great-great-great great-grandfather Heracles behind him is mount Otto which is the place where Herakles actually died he sacrificed himself on the top of the mountain towering over Thermopylae down below where the ships are moored on Cape CPS that is where Herakles no less was put off to collect water by Jason and the Argonauts Heracles presences everywhere and he is actually an ancestor meanwhile Xerxes quarter of a million strong Persian army was well fed from stockpiles of rations dispatched by special boats months earlier as they advanced inexorably through northern Greece city after city paid homage supplying dinner and entertainment for the Great King and up to 15,000 members of his close royal circle by late August 480 BC Xerxes reached Thermopylae and still no sword had been raised against him now thousands of Persian campfires ranged across the plains to the north of Leonidas position all that separated the two armies was Thermopylae 'he's narrow coastal path when Xerxes got to Thermopylae he did not see battle as soon as he arrived he waited and he waited we're told in the end that he waited until the fifth day and the reason why he was waiting was because he simply could not believe that a puny Greek force when it saw the full might of Persia would not simply turn tail and run Spartans were trained never to run from a fight Herodotus the first Greek historian tells of a Greek scout who saw the massed Persian hordes and fled back to the spartan camp where a warrior called Diana Keyes was standing guard he tells that the Persians are so numerous that when their archers fire a volley the shafts literally block out the Sun and D Anika says good and we'll have our battle in the shade although some of the other Greeks wanted to leave under leonid asses watchful eye the Allies stood firm on the other side of Thermopylae the Persians had now been waiting for the Greeks to surrender for three days according to Herodotus Xerxes grew impatient and sent a spy to the Greek Campbell he was baffled by their refusal to be intimidated by his army the spy came across a group of Spartans performing a bizarre ritual Spartans happened to be dressing their hair and they paid no attention to him whatsoever they let him ride up check them out and ride back he was completely stunned so Izzard sees what he got that that these soldiers seemed to be treating him with absolute contempt to be seen combing their hair in the face of the enemy was a sign that they were not frightened and that was one of the Spartans chief weapons in war we do not fear you it is for you to run away on the fifth morning Xerxes decided to put an end to this strange Greek behavior he gave the order for his men to advance short of victory you took up a position overlooking the battlefield scribes prepared to note down who fought well and deserved reward and who did badly and should be punished I'm like Xerxes Leonidas marched to war beside his men against the Persians Spartan training and discipline would be tested to the limit battle-hardened comrades placed their lives in each other's hands once again the first troops the Persians sent to face the Greeks were amongst their weakest heel equipped they were ordered to squeeze into the narrow pass and advance towards the Spartans Leonidas and his men packed tightly together blocking the pass with a phalanx formation lines of men with Spears bristling above overlapping shields when the two narrow front lines collided the Persians soon found that their short javelins and wicker shields were no match for disciplined Spartans armed with nine-foot Spears so you really have kind of a chopping machine that is simply moving forward almost blindly when a line of Spartans confronted a line of more lightly armed soldiers it was absolutely bloodied it was really like a feeding meat into a meat grinder Layana dass's choice of thermopylae was working well the important thing about Thermopylae is this enormous mountain flank rising one of the great problems for the Persians brilliantly utilized by Layana das was that half of them actually fell off and fell over into the shoals below before they could even fight but as rank after rank of the Persian army fell it soon became clear that they had vastly underestimated Spartan military prowess had they been fighting on the open plains on horseback open another story but in these narrow confines the Greek heavy armor of massed phalanx the Persians didn't have an answer to them and I'm sure the Greeks were just slaughtering them by you know it's almost as fast as they could plunge their spears over their shoulders trapped in the narrow paths the advancing Persian troops were being annihilated unable to take advantage of their vastly superior numbers when Xerxes looked at this the first thing he would see literally thousands of warriors that he couldn't use because the nature of the pass was so narrow the problem he must have very quickly noticed was that he sends people down this quarter they kill him he sends people down they kill him there was no end to it frustrated by late afternoon Xerxes decided to send in the cream of his army to unblock the pass an elite force that included members of his own family some 10,000 strong the Greeks called them immortals as soon as one man was killed another immediately took his place but even Persia's elite troops were no match for the Spartans you as the to crack forces closed in on each other the spartans performed an audacious counter maneuver in the middle of the battle they pretended to retreat one of the interesting things about Thermopylae is for the first and perhaps the only occasion in classical Greek history we hear of a feigned withdrawal the Spartans would approach the enemy and an in lockstep and on order backpedal drawing the Persians in in which they would then suddenly form a rigid line and kill them even more easily as they were out of water and undisciplined usually was considered beyond the realm of Greek tactics why did it happen at Thermopylae probably a combination of Spartan discipline and the nature of the pass it was narrow if they were to do that in a regular battlefield they might easily be outflanked stand by the ever-mounting losses Xerxes ordered the Immortals to retreat as the day drew to a close Layana des and his allies had triumphed against all the odds they must have felt vindicated everything that they had been taught that they were superior because of their tremendous discipline seemed at that moment to be true and even though they must have recognized that this can't go on forever the feeling of their demonstrated superiority against the biggest empire in the known world must have been a source of a great deal of pride in the Persian camp after his bad day Xerxes was reeling Thermopylae must have been an enormous ly frustrating experience desert seas he'd waited days expecting his bonds to retreat and they happened he lost thousands of men when he shouldn't have done and to cap all of that he lost two of his own brothers he was emotionally absolutely exhausted and Herodotus tells us incredibly angry troops who had fought poorly are said to have paid the ultimate price Xerxes Navy had also suffered opposite Thermopylae the Athenian fleet had sunk many Persian ships keeping Leonidas safe from sea attack according to herodotus although they knew next to nothing about naval warfare a Spartan had been appointed Admiral of the athenian fleet the logic for this appointment was simple spartan admiral would not know a great deal probably about manoeuvring in detail that was athenian territory but that kind of maneuvering wasn't what was planned the fleet opposite the mapa light was to be static it was to block its main aim was not to run away and if there's one thing the Spartans were good at it was not running away as the second day of battle dawned Zack seized tried to break the deadlock once again but the Spartan infantry continued its killing spree to devastating effect as the day wore on the pass at Thermopylae became a cauldron of death piled high with mutilated and rotting Persian corpses the smell blood feces plus the hot Sun corrupting what was left and producing an even worse smell it just doesn't bear thinking about at the end of the second day Xerxes was facing the stark reality that his greatest resource numerical superiority counted for nothing it's very quickly coming to his senses that these Greeks fight better and kill his men and there doesn't seem any solution to this problem that he got himself into that numbers for the first time his life don't mean anything if numbers per person Kingdome anything you have no other resources to draw on version numbers may have met nothing but Persian gold still counted for a lot according to herodotus a local Greek called Ephialtes came forward and offered to sell information to Xerxes that could win him the battle the attractions of Persian gold which we're told by Herodotus is what induced him to betray the Greeks was well known in Greek history to exert a mesmerizing effect on Greeks and that was one of the ways in which Persia traditionally controlled Greek city-states by dishing out lots of cash it said that in return for gold Ephialtes showed the Persians the Anoka pass that led round to the back of the spartan position the pass was well known it was inevitable somebody was going to tell the Persians of its existence there were so many locals who were backing Xerxes they wanted the Persians to win and couldn't stand the Spartans 10,000 immortals marched up the secret paths all that stood in their way was a contingent of phocians local Greeks who didn't have the benefit of Spartan training there's some 1000 of them and they only have one order that is make sure that the pass is not turned and what happens Ephialtes Medes the Persians around to the rear of Leonidas the phocians see them they panic they go up to the heights and in the process they leave the pass open the phocians took one look at them and scrambled off like rabbits and let the person force through as Zach sees immortals set off up the steep mountain paths Layana - would also have been seeking a means of ending the deadlock 500 years after the battle a Roman historian suggested that Leonidas might have tried guerrilla tactics to win war at a stroke years of hunting rebellious Hallett slaves at night meant the Spartans had the skills to assassinate Xerxes under cover of darkness the notion of knocking out the one man who holds together this disparate force is not entirely implausible the Spartans were the masters of night behavior of all Greeks a small squadron of Spartans might just conceivably have been able to get as near to exactly's as this source says they did and conceivably even assassinate Sexy's in his tent if an attempt was made to assassinate Xerxes it failed by morning The Immortals would have crossed the mountain path and be marching towards the Greek position from the rear the Spartans and their allies were surrounded as day three of the battle loomed the Spartans and their King were determined to hold fast even now retreat or surrender was unthinkable I don't see any genuine choices for Leonidas and his Spartans at that point nor do I suppose that they really have wanted a choice that's almost an Athenian thought that you should have a choice at this moment of crisis I think it's a Spartan thought to look you in the eye and say there is no choice it's simply a matter of duty but Leonidas did not expect his allies to be bound by the same standards of the Spartans according to herodotus history Leonidas allowed the other Greek allies to retreat but for a small band of Thebans and thespians who decided to stay the Spartans would face the enemy alone this was the moment that they had been born for it in my opinion Leonidas knew exactly what he was doing knew exactly the myth that he was creating at this moment and I think all the other 300 knew it too the spartans prepared for battle with their usual sacrifices according to herodotus the almonds were clear even the gods had deserted them now we hear that when the Spartans sacrificed an animal before their final engagement the omens were bad and if Spartans started their fighting that day knowing that the omens were wrong they would be anticipating their own deaths gods had warned them not to fight just as the Delphic Oracle had foreseen a Spartan King would die fighting Persia all that remained was for Layana das to die well when you're gonna be surrounded the question is how do you want to die and how long do you want to die and how many people you want to take with them so I think that was the Spartan new idea that it wasn't to save Greece was now simply to make a statement about Greek courage and to prolong the Persian agony as much as possible as a Spartan and as a king leonidas was above all a professional soldier and he was above all a commander of men and so at the final moment when push came to shove Leonidas would not have had a shadow of doubt as to where his duty lay at the head of his few remaining men Layana - face to persians one last time surrounded he could no longer defend the pass so he lit his troops and a final attack killing as many Persians as possible but he could never kill enough Leonid asses life had been brutal his death was glorious despite losing their leader the remaining Spartans fought on determined to make the Persians pay dearly for every last drop of Greek blood even if they had to fight without weapons after their Spears were broken or got lost Spartans resorted to their swords which was most unusual after the same heart their swords Herodotus tells us that they fought with anything they had with their teeth with their fingernails even then when their swords were broken their spears with God and they were reduced to their hands of teeth a Spartan was not an animal that any Persian wanted to come close to Herodotus describes the Persian attack on them with a verb that indicates arrows to die under a hail of arrows would be perhaps worse than dying with a spear in your groin so the Spartans were taught to abuse arrows they were taught to see them as attract Toria spindles as women's things according to herodotus not a single Spartan survived the Battle of Thermopylae the victorious Persians found Leon a dass's body among the piles of dead and took it to Xerxes Xerxes took the very unusual step of getting hold of the corpse of Layana das beheading it and sticking the head on a pike now that kind of behavior wasn't altogether unheard of in the ancient world where the Persians didn't normally do it they honored man who distinguished themselves in battle they saw them as as true heroes and tended to respect their corpses enormous li Xerxes did this because he was really really angry what happened to Liana does quite sad because they'd hide the other bodies so the heroism all the physical evidence of the vow fuel will be hidden then they literally set up a tourist bureau and have boats to bring over other Greeks so that they see this hideous to protest head of a Spartan King on a stake as a sign that Persia superior to the Greeks the line had not been held dark seas troops descended on Athens and burnt it to the ground tactically Thermopylae was a worse defeat in the history of Sparta strategically it was a wonderful victory how can that be possible the pass was turned the fleet withdrew but it was a psychological drama that Greeks had held off the Persian Empire not just the Persian army for three days and that gave enormous psychological capital to the defenders to the rear inspired by the Spartans heroic stand the Greek forces regrouped to the south within a year the Athenian Navy would defeat Zurg seas fleet and the Persian king would be forced into a humiliating retreat Xerxes withdrew to Pasha never to return if the Persians had won there would have been no democracy in Athens if there'd been no democracy in Athens there would have been no Athenian politics no Athenian theater no Athenian philosophy an awful lot of what we call our cultural heritage would simply never have happened the events at Thermopylae would change the course of history forever Greek culture and civilization were able to flourish but Sparta's harsh warrior cult would survive for less than a hundred years their helot slaves successfully revolted and Sparta's dominance came to an end only the legend lives on Sparta really was in many ways a nightmarish Society it was capable of a moment of self-sacrifice that one has to respect and yet if we embrace the values that I see Sparta standing for I think we've lost everything that really matters about freedom and yet maybe that freedom was impossible without that moment at Thermopylae it's an odd thought and next on bbc2 the horrors of the trenches as a team of experts and relations search for the site of a first world war siege ancestors journey to hell in a moment

Channel: The History Room

Views: 633,331

Keywords: Sparta (Country), Xerxes I (Monarch), Helots, Ephors, Gerousia, Heracles, Heroditus, Leonidas, Crypteia, Gates of Fire, Battle Of Thermopylae (Military Conflict), 300, yt:crop=16:9

Id: NX62Jizz4LE

Length: 58min 15sec (3495 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 28 2014