300
Madness? This. Is. Sparta!
Before the rise of Athens Sparta unarguably had the best army in ancient Greece. Both city-states let their rivalry result in a great series of conflicts nowadays known as Peloponnesian War. However, Sparta’s glory was hard won in the famous Battle of Thermopylae, 480 BC. This battle is well remembered and many an officer has learned about it in tactics lessons in military academies around the world. Some of us may have already heard about it in history classes, though.
Well, at this battle an alliance of city-states fought against the massive army of Xerxes I. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road possible for the great Persian army and hold them successfully back for two days. On the third day of battle, though, a Greek shepherd named Ephialtes betrayed his brethren and revealed a hidden mountain path to the Persians. The path led behind the Greek lines and so King Leonidas dismissed the remainder of his army and stayed behind with 300 soldiers of the Spartan royal guard and about 700 Thespians. There also were some hundred Thebans hold as hostage who had had to stay behind too.
In this context it has to be known that the bravery displayed by the Thespians was indeed a very impressive effort. As opposed to the Spartans who were trained from birth to fight and give their lives in combat as Spartan law dictated, the Thespians were no more than citizen-soldiers. Now, this mixed bag of soldiers fought bravely to buy the rest of the Greek army some time to retreat and reform. This heroic battle is said to haven been excessively brutal down to fights at close quarters with bare hands, teeth and nails.
After the numbers of the Greeks had diminished they retreated to a small hill in the narrowest part of the pass. During this retreat the remaining Thebans surrendered to the Persian army leaving the rest of the Spartans and Thespians to fight the enemy. After King Leonidas was killed the Spartans fought even more fanatically than before to defend his body. In this final stand the Persians suffered heavy losses, so that the Persian army killed the last of the Spartans with heavy flights of arrows to avoid losing more men. It is said that the Persian losses were way over 20.000 dead and some estimates stand at more than twice that number …
Now, there will be a film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Frank Miller took some liberties in this narrative and applied an art style this project that is very similar to Sin City. Over the last weeks different trailers and teasers have made their appearances in the web and know I’m going to add to it too. I’m quite excited and I can hardly wait for the movie to be released on March 2007.