Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors are
surrounded by Persian forces. The Spartans deflect blow after blow with their shields
as enemy soldiers crash against them like a wave in a storm. Spears shoot out
of the Spartan line like lightning, tearing through enemy flesh, but they are
vastly outnumbered; many begin to fall. Shields are splintered, spears broken
in two, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans retreat up a hill to make their final stand.
Suddenly, an arrow enters the chest of the great king. Leonidas falls to the ground as
his blood soaks into the earth around him. The Battle of Thermopylae went down in history
as one of the most awe-inspiring fights of all time. But how much of what we see on the
big screen and TV is actually true? Not everything you have watched or read about
on the Battle of Thermopylae is correct, but some truths are even more incredible
than the dramatizations of Hollywood. The invasion of Greece by the Persians was
predicated on revenge more than anything else. Xerxes, the ruler of the Persian Empire, had lived
with the brutal defeat of his father’s forces by the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon.
His father was Darius King of everything and everyone from Egypt to West India, but he
never managed to conquer the Greeks. The inability to defeat the Greeks was both a devastating
blow and a humiliating blunder for the ruling family of Persia. Xerxes was determined to crush
the insolence of the Greeks once and for all. Ten years after the failed invasion of
Greece by Darius, Xerxes would launch his own campaign into the heart of the
country to the west. This time, however, the Spartans of legend would join the battle.
There would be so much bloodshed and destruction during the Battle of Thermopylae that the final
stand of the 300 would never be forgotten. In 480 B.C.E., Xerxes and his forces
began marching towards the center of Greece towards Athens. At the time, many Greek
city-states were warring with one another. But when Athens received word of their
impending doom at the hands of the Persians, they pleaded with the other Greek city-states
to form an army to stop the invasion force. The Athenians had been able to fend
off Darius and his forces in the past, but Xerxes commanded an army many
times larger than his father's. Surprisingly, Sparta answered Athen's plea for
help. Up until this point, Sparta had stayed out of the conflicts with Persia. But the leaders
of the great city-state saw this new threat to their people and land as too great to ignore and
decided the Persians must be stopped at all costs. From scouting missions and allies to the east, the Greeks received word that Xerxes' army was
enormous. It was estimated that he commanded somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 men.
This military force would be much harder to defeat than the one Darius had brought with
him a decade earlier. If the Greeks were not prepared, this would spell the end of
Democracy and their very way of life. Sparta knew that the only way Greece would be able
to survive this invasion would be if they could gather soldiers from across the city-states
together. But this would take time. It was decided that the only possibility for success
would be if Xerxes forces could be slowed down, giving Greece more time to organize their
defenses. Scouts were sent out across the lands of Greece to find a location to make a
stand; someplace where the number of soldiers Xerxes had wouldn’t matter. Tensions were high as
some Greek city-states refused to join the cause while others blatantly backed the Persian
forces and welcomed their new overlords. But Sparta and Athens would not let the progress
they had made and the freedoms their people enjoyed be taken away by a foreign power. The
scouts eventually returned with a location that suited their needs. There was a narrow pass at
Thermopylae that the Persian army would need to pass through to get from northern Greece into
the center where Athens and Sparta were located. Thermopylae also sat near waterways that
connected mainland Greece to the Aegean Sea, which meant Athens' formidable Navy
would be able to hold off Persian ships and prevent any forces from landing on the
shores behind Thermopylae. This would stop the Persians from circling behind the Greek
forces deployed at the narrow pass, making sure the only way into central Greece was by land.
It was the best possible location for a defense, and the Greeks only hope for slowing down the
swarm of Persian soldiers approaching their lands. However, this location was literally the spitting
image of hell. The location was named Thermopylae, which translates to “hot gates” because
the landscape was filled with hot sulfur springs. This created an eerie mist
that covered parts of the battlefield and a terrible smell. A more ominous location
couldn’t have been chosen even if they had tried. The Greek's plan to slow Xerxes now had its
foundation. But there was a problem. Xerxes was already close, and there wasn’t enough time
to send all of the Greek armies to Thermopylae. In fact, many city-states still didn’t think
there was an invasion force coming at all. It also didn’t help that the Olympics and several
important religious festivals were happening at the end of summer, which would be at the same
time that Xerxes forces would reach the hot gates. Many city-states were so focused on
these other events that they couldn't be bothered by something as trivial as a massive
invasion force knocking on their front door. Sparta decided they couldn’t wait for the
rest of Greece to come to their senses. They needed to send a force to secure
the hot gates and give the rest of the city-states time to organize their
militaries. After weighing their options, Sparta determined that they needed to
send one of their two kings and a force of 300 elite soldiers to Thermopylae to
hold the hot gates as long as possible. The king chosen for this mission was
Leonidus. But before he could head out, Sparta needed to speak with the Oracle at Delphi. This was not an uncommon occurrence. The Oracle
needed to be consulted before going to war and making major decisions. However, when the Oracle
looked into the future, they had bad news for the Spartans. The Oracle foretold that the Persians
would destroy either Sparta as a whole or one of the kings of Sparta would need to die. When this
prophecy reached Leonidas, he did not hesitate for a moment. He would gladly lay down his own
life if it meant securing victory for Sparta. Now that the Oracle had been consulted, Leonidas needed to select his 300 soldiers
and head to Thermopylae to prepare for battle. It seems likely that Leonidas knew that he and
his forces would not be making it back alive as he only chose men who already had a
male heir to carry on their family lineage. Spartan warriors fought until victory or
death, and since they were so outnumbered and the main objective was to slow Xerxes down
as much as possible, no one was coming home. Also, Leonidas had the Oracle’s prophecy to
contend with. Unless he somehow managed to defeat 100,000 men with his 300 Spartans and a handful
of other Greek soldiers, he would need to fight to the death in order to ensure that the prophecy
was fulfilled and Sparta itself did not fall. Sparta recruited as many other soldiers as
possible for the mission from their allies and the surrounding area. The Athenians
were in charge of protecting the seas, so they could only offer a limited
number of soldiers on land. Upon departure for Thermopylae, Leonidas
had his army of 300 Spartan soldiers, and around 7,000 other men made up of Athenians,
1,000 Phocians, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. The force marched from central
Greece to Thermopylae. The stage was set for the greatest
battle in ancient history. In late July or early August of 480 B.C.E.,
Leonidas and his forces reached the hot gates and set up their defenses. They were a few
days ahead of the Persians, which gave them time to scout out the area and make sure
everyone knew what to do during the battle. The Spartans were hardened warriors who had
fought in wars before. However, the same could not be said about all the soldiers that made
up the rest of Leonidas’ resistance force. The pass through the hot gates was approximately
20 to 100 meters across. On one side was a sheer cliff that dropped into the sea below; on the
other were impenetrable jagged mountains. With his 300 Spartans at the front and in key
positions along the opening of the pass, Leonidas could fend off the oncoming Persian
forces. The narrowness of the hot gates rendered the number advantage that Xerxes had
over the Greeks almost completely useless and would mean that his cavalry wouldn’t be able
to outflank the Greek forces. But would this be enough to allow Leonidas and his men to
slow the Persian army? Only time would tell. Up until this point, Xerxes and his military
had met little resistance. They had marched across the Persian empire, crossed the
Dardanelles strait on two pontoon bridges, and made their way through northern Greece
to Thermopylae. As Leonidas waited for the Persian army to reach the hot gates, he sent
men out to scout the area. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. The Spartans and
their allies were eating and preparing themselves for battle when one of the scouts frantically
returned to the camp. He had terrible news. A hidden path in the mountains led from where the
Persians would be camped to behind the Greek line. If the Persians discovered the trail, they would
be able to surround the Greeks and massacre them. Leonidas didn’t have enough men to fend off
attacks from both the front and back of his resistance force. Leonidas sent 1,000 Phocians to
guard the path in case the Persians discovered it. When Xerxes and his forces finally arrived at
Thermopylae, they decided to wait four days before commencing their attack. One reason for
this was to give the Persian troops time to rest, but Xerxes also had something else
in mind. He was almost positive that when the Greeks saw the size of his
army, they would run away in fear. Much to the dismay of Xerxes, this did not
happen. The Spartans had no intention of giving up Thermopylae and letting the Persians
pass without a fight. After waiting a few days to see if the Greeks would give up, Xerxes sent
an envoy to ask Leonidas to lay down his arms. According to the philosopher Plutarch,
Leonidas’ response was “come and take them!” Xerxes did not receive this defiance
very well and decided it was time to prepare for battle. Before launching his
first attack, he sent scouts to see how the Spartans were doing in preparation for the
battle. Their report shocked the Persian king. The scouts had found the Spartans exercising
naked and grooming each other's hair. The reason for this likely had to do with the religious and
funerary beliefs of the Spartans. Since Spartan soldiers fought until they were victorious or
dead, they needed to ensure their bodies were prepared for the afterlife. Therefore, before
a battle, they would groom each other. Another little-known fact about the way Spartans looked
was that all Spartan men shaved their upper lip. Like most Greek men, they still let their beards
grow long, but the upper lip was always shaved. Five days after arriving at Thermopylae, Xerxes
ordered his troops forward. He was sure that his superior numbers would make quick work of the
small Greek force, so he initially sent only his most mediocre soldiers into battle. Xerxes
quickly found that this was a huge mistake. The Spartans’ fighting ability was unmatched by
any other soldiers in the field. The Greeks had been practicing their tactics on the rough
terrain of Thermopylae for several days, which also gave them a slight advantage.
They used a phalanx formation, which was extremely effective in the tight space of
the hot gates. The Greek warriors would stand shoulder to shoulder, forming
a wall of shields in front of them. Wave after wave of Persian soldiers crashed
against the Greek line, but it did not break. The phalanx was so successful because the Greek
shields were stronger than the Persians and their spears provided a further reach. The Persians
were using short javelins and wicker shields. These definitely provided them an advantage in
open field combat as they offered more mobility. But in the tight quarters of Thermopylae,
these weapons were just not as effective against the heavily armed Spartans. It seemed
that no matter what they did, the Persians couldn’t get past the front line of the Greeks.
Leonidas and his Spartans were fierce. They would patiently wait for a build-up of Persian
soldiers against their shields and then use their spears from further back to decimate any
enemy who left themselves vulnerable to attack. Imagine being a Persian soldier and watching
line after line of your comrades die at the hands of Spartan warriors. Each wave of attack
brings you closer to the deadly phalanx. You find yourself face to face with Greek shields.
At your feet are the dead bodies of your friends. You look up and lock eyes with Leonidas
as his spear rockets out from behind the phalanx and through your heart. It is no
wonder that many Persian soldiers turned and fled the battlefield after witnessing
the carnage that the Spartans unleashed. After hours of battling, the ground was
soaked in Persian blood while the Greeks sustained minor casualties. Xerxes
realized he needed to try a different tactic and ordered his archers to release
a barrage of arrows at the Spartan forces. Unfortunately for the Persians, their arrows
were about as effective as their soldiers were against the Greek shields and armor, which is
to say they had little to no effect at all. For two days everything went according
to plan for Leonidas and his army. Even Xerxes' most elite fighters, the Immortals,
couldn’t defeat the Spartans and their allies. This group of soldiers got its name from their
ability to immediately replace casualties, making it seem that their numbers never diminished.
However, the Greek’s luck was about to change. It was said that during the first two days of
battle, the Spartans and other Greek forces killed over ten thousand Persian soldiers.
They sustained some of their own casualties, but most of the Greek force was still
strong and could continue fighting indefinitely. Xerxes watched the battle
from his golden throne atop a nearby hill. He became so enraged at the defeat of his soldiers
he jumped up from his seat and screamed in anger. This was unbecoming for a ruler who
was seen as a god by his followers. Leonidas, his 300 Spartan warriors,
and the other Greek soldiers had done the impossible. They had stopped
the Persian war machine in its tracks. During the second day of
the Battle of Thermopylae, a local Greek shepherd by the name of Ephialtes
asked for an audience with Xerxes. He told the guards he had information that would allow the
Persians to defeat the Spartans. At this point, Xerxes had lost all patience. It seemed that
the wall of Greek soldiers would not be broken, he was ready to try anything. Ephialtes
eventually got his meeting with Xerxes, and in exchange for a huge sum of money,
he told the Persian emperor of the Anopaia path that went through the mountains and
ended up behind the Greek defensive line. Xerxes dispatched his Immortals to encircle
Leonidas and his forces. By cover of night, they left the Persian camp and
traveled through the mountains. When the Immortals reached the 1,000 Phokians
Leonidas had ordered to guard the mountain pass, they quickly defeated them. Some accounts
say that the Phokians didn’t even put up a fight but ran away in fear as soon
as they spotted the enemy soldiers. Either way, the Persians were coming. Luckily,
word reached Leonidas before the enemy forces did. The Spartan king ordered his men and the rest
of the Greek forces to retreat further south to make their final stand. But
before the battle would take place, Leonidas did something that would secure
his name in the history books forever. Leonidas decided that all of the Greek soldiers
could leave the battle and return home to fight another day. However, he and his 300 Spartans
would stay and hold off the Persians as long as possible, taking as many with them before they
were all killed. Along with the Spartans, a group of Thebans would also stay and fight. But the
remaining soldiers were to be sent back to their cities to tell the tale of Leonidas and the 300
Spartans who defied a Persian king and slaughtered thousands of his men. It would seem that Leonidas
would indeed fulfill the prophecy of the Oracle. As the sun rose on the third day of the Battle of
Thermopylae, Leonidas gathered his men. They all knew what was to come, and they were happy to die
for their king and for Sparta. Leonidas looked at each of them in turn before the day got underway,
at which point he said: “have a hearty breakfast, for tonight we dine in Hades!” Later that day,
the Immortals arrived from the mountain pass, and a huge force of Persian soldiers advanced
through the hot gates towards the Spartans. There are two different accounts of what happened
next in the epic tale of Leonidas and his 300 warriors. Ephorus and Diodorus Siculus say that
like a dangerous beast trapped in a corner, Leonidas decided to do something unpredictable
and attack first. In this scenario, the Spartans charged into the Persian camp and slaughtered a
large number of soldiers before being pushed back. The other account by Herodotus states
that the Persian’s struck first, but not before Xerxes presented an
offering to the Gods for his generals before launching the final attack
that would wipe out the Spartans. Either way, the outcome of what came next was
the same. Leonidas and his men repositioned themselves in an open area where they would
be able to move around better and kill as many Persian soldiers as possible. As the Immortals
closed in on one side and the rest of Xerxes forces moved in on the other, the Spartans
began fighting in a frenzied manner. They did not forget their training but used every method
at their disposal to rip through the Persians. As their spears broke off inside of enemy
soldiers and their shields shattered from slamming into the bodies of the Immortals, the
Spartans drew their swords and began to slash their way through the Persian ranks. It was a
bloodbath. But there were just too many Persians. Less than 300 Spartans and a handful of
other Greek soldiers remained against the might of the entire Persian army. Xerxes
still had tens of thousands of soldiers at his disposal while there was no hope for
reinforcements or relief for the Greeks. During the carnage, Leonidas fell. His men
surrounded their king and fought off the hordes of enemy soldiers. They managed to
grab Leonidas and pull his body to safety until he passed away from the wounds. At
the time of the Battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas was somewhere between 50 and 60
years old. He was by no means a young man, but Spartan warriors started their training as
teenagers and would serve in the military until their 60s, so it is not surprising that
Leonidas was still fighting at this age. The fact that he killed so many enemies
while also commanding the Greek troops at the Battle of Thermopylae makes him one
of the most respected warriors of all time. Even after Leonidas fell, the Spartans
that remained continued to fight. They had fallen back to higher ground
and used a protective wall to slow the onslaught of enemy troops. Many of them
had lost their swords, shields, and spears, so they fought with their bare hands. An unarmed
Spartan warrior was still a deadly adversary. The Persians knew this, and even after
breaking down the Spartan's protective wall and seeing that many of them were
unarmed, they did not advance. The Persian soldiers could see in the eyes of
the Spartans that if they got too close, they would very likely lose their lives.
So, the Persians took the easy way out. Rather than trying to defeat the Spartans
in hand-to-hand combat, they used bows and arrows to kill the remaining warriors.
This may seem like a cowardly thing to do, but after witnessing how much damage and death
the Spartans had caused over the last three days, they probably wanted to stay as
far away from them as possible. A barrage of arrows was fired into the
remaining Spartans, killing them all. Now that the defiant Spartans had been defeated,
Xerxes could move freely across the battlefield without fear of being killed. He did not fight
alongside his soldiers like Leonidas did. Once the Battle of Thermopylae ended, Xerxes had Leonidas’
head cut off and his body impaled on a stake. After Xerxes and his forces moved on, Greek
citizens recovered the bodies of the dead soldiers, including Leonidas, and buried them at
Thermopylae. After the Persian War ended, a stone monument in the shape of a lion was erected on the
spot where the 300 Spartans were buried. On it, the words “Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest
by; That here obedient to their words we lie,” were written by the poet Simonides. Basically,
he was saying that the 300 Spartans who said they would fight to the death to slow the advance
of the Persian army were true to their word. Now to be fair, several Spartan soldiers
died in battle before the final stand. Also, King Leonidas allowed two Spartans
who were ill to return home instead of forcing them to fight in the final battle.
One refused to leave and was killed with the rest, while the other, a man named
Aristodemus, did return home to Sparta. However, once he reached the city,
he instantly regretted his decision. From the moment Aristodemus stepped foot in
Sparta, he was shunned by everyone in the city. The fact that he abandoned his duty and left his
king to die on the battlefield was unforgivable. Aristodemus was stripped of his civic
rights and had to carry his disgrace as a coward for the rest of his life. Luckily for
Aristodemus, that wouldn’t be very long. The next year he joined a campaign to fight the
Persians once again at the Battle of Platea. It was said Aristodemus fought like a mad man as
he wanted to make up for his shameful decision to leave the Battle of Thermopylae. He ran
to the front lines in a rage-filled furry and slashed apart the Persian ranks until
he was finally brought down and killed. There is no doubt that Leonidas, his 300
Spartans, and the other Greek soldiers who fought in the Battle of Thermopylae slowed down
the Persian advance through Greece, but there was a much more important effect that
the battle had on the Greek populace. After the story of the 300 spread across the
lands of Greece, more and more people felt it was their duty to fight. This was a matter of
pride for many and a way to avenge the deaths of the 300 Spartans who had fallen at the Battle
of Thermopylae. It was also clear at this point that the Persians were coming for everyone,
and all men who could fight needed to do so. The Spartans stopped the Persian forces at the hot
gates for several days and did significant damage to their ranks and morale. The Persian soldiers
who fought against Leonidas and his 300 Spartans would not soon forget how vicious and deadly
they were. As Xerxes' army marched into Greece, they were met by an even larger Spartan force,
which must have been incredibly intimidating. The victories at Salamis and Plataea led to
the Greeks finally defeating the invading Persian force and pushing them out of
their borders. The sacrifice of the men at the Battle of Thermopylae was definitely
a call to arms for many Greeks. Without it, the Persians may very well have conquered
the rest of Greece and enveloped it into their empire. Around 440 B.C.E, decades after the
Persian Wars were over, the bones of Leonidas were dug up and brought back to Sparta. His tomb still
exists where the modern city of Sparta is today. Now watch “Most Hardcore Soldier: Spartan.” Or check out “1 NAVY SEAL vs
the SPARTAN 300 - Who Actually Would Win?”
