Spartan Hoplites, the Phalanx, and the Film 300
Word of the end has reached the Spartan King, Leonidas. He and his small force of elite Spartan hoplites, assisted by Arcadian allies, have thwarted the might of the Persian army for days. By taking advantage of the narrows at Thermopylae, the path constrained by cliffs on one side and the sea on the other, the Greeks have halted the Persian invasion of their lands no longer. The betrayer, Ephialtes, revealed to Persian king Xerxes the goat track that circles behind the Greek defences. Daxos, leader of the Arcadians, now reports to Leonidas that the Phocians guarding the path have been routed; the Persian Immortals will be at the Greek rear lines in the morning. Hearing the news, Leonidas simply shouts his command: ‘Spartans, prepare for glory!’ An incredulous Daxos replies, ‘Glory? Have you gone mad? There is no glory to be had now! Only retreat; or surrender; or death.’ Leonidas growls, ‘Well that’s an easy choice for us Arcadian. Spartans never retreat. Spartans never surrender. Go spread the word. Let every Greek assembled know the truth of this. Let each among them search his own soul. And while you’re at it … search your own.’ Ultimately the Arcadians leave, perhaps to fight another day, but the Spartans remain at their post … and die.
This is one of many dramatic vignettes director Zack Snyder employs in 300 to retell the legend of the Spartan defence at Thermopylae. The story was told and retold among the Greeks, and Herodotus preserved it in his Histories, some 2,500 years ago. Three hundred Spartans, as Herodotus told it, along with several thousand other Greeks – a point too often overlooked – held the pass at Thermopylae against tens of thousands of Persian warriors. The story of their defence became legend, the legend of the fearsome and ever-obedient Spartan warrior. In 1998, Frank Miller took up the legend in a graphic novel called 300. In 2006, Snyder brought the graphic novel to life onscreen. He is clear that this work was not meant to provide a historical representation of the battle, but rather an epic story. In one interview, Snyder notes,
I’d say 300 is a movie that is made from the Spartan perspective. Not just from the Spartan perspective, the cameras are the Spartans, but it’s the Spartans’ sensibility of the Battle of Thermopylae. If you had Spartans sitting around a fire and they were telling you before anything was written down what happened at Thermopylae, this is the way they would tell it. It’s not necessarily down to the fact that they don’t have armour on. Everything about it is just to make the Spartans more heroic.1
Heroic they are. Still, the core event depicted is historical and naturally raises questions for viewers. Were the Spartans really that formidable? Why would they fight and die at Thermopylae? Once one strips out the fantasy beasts and the computerized exaggerations, does 300 capture the face of battle in fifth century Greece, what the Greek soldiers wore, how they fought and how they died?
Development of Greek Warfare: Hoplite and Phalanx
The Greek armies of the Archaic age, which we considered in the last chapter, underwent a critical evolution in the seventh century. Once armies consisted of noble warriors accompanied by less well armed followers. Soldiers fought collaboratively but in loose, unordered formations. The new form of fighting, however, was based on a highly organized and orderly formation, the phalanx, manned by uniformly armed soldiers, the hoplites.
Since each hoplite had to supply his own equipment, there assuredly was variety in how each was armed. Still a standard panoply developed in the seventh century and persisted without significant modification into the beginning of the fifth. Most critical of all the new equipment was a round shield, perhaps 3ft in diameter with a wooden core and, by the fifth century, a thin bronze covering. These shields were concave like bowls and perhaps 6in. deep from rim to centre. A hoplite carried this shield using a forearm band and a hand grip near the edge of the shield. The concavity of the shield allowed a hoplite to rest the rim of the shield on his shoulder, an important feature which will be addressed later. A good estimate for the weight of one of these shields is a hefty 15lbs, which may not sound like much until one remembers this was dead weight that would need to be held up in position for lengthy amounts of time.2
While the shield was the defining piece of equipment, early hoplites also wore a great deal of body armour. The typical breastplate for a hoplite in the seventh and sixth centuries was crafted from bronze. Front and back halves were attached to the wearer’s body by straps. Typically, the armour was bell-shaped, curving out from the waist. This allowed for mobility – the flared bottom of the corselet left the hips unrestricted – and served to catch any downward sword or spear stroke lest it slipped down to the unprotected lower abdomen. By the time of the Persian Wars, new designs of leather or stiffened linen started to be put into use as well as lighter corselets of bronze.3 Greaves of bronze were worn to protect the lower legs. Shaped to fit the shin with an opening in the rear, they stayed in place due to the elasticity of the bronze. To protect the head, a hoplite wore a bronze helmet, often with some kind of horsehair crest. The most common type of helmet was the Corinthian, which was bell-shaped, with the flaring bottom serving to protect the neck as well as the head. Cheek-pieces came forward to protect face and mouth (see plate 5).4 Altogether, this panoply was hot and very heavy at 50 to 60lbs, but it unquestionably provided superior protection for close combat.
The primary offensive weapon of the hoplite was a heavy thrusting spear. Ranging from 6–9ft in length, the spear had a wooden shaft 1in. thick and was topped with a bladed point of iron. A bronze spike tipped the butt end. It allowed the spear to be used after the head snapped off – a not uncommon occurrence. More brutally, it allowed the hoplite easily to stab down at an enemy on the ground. A sword would often be carried as a backup weapon.
The phalanx consisted of closely packed rows of hoplites, perhaps with no more than 3ft of space per soldier, in ranks typically eight hoplites or more deep. The key to a phalanx’s success was teamwork. It may be instructive for the reader to raise their left arm and imagine a shield attached to it 3ft in diameter with the hand grip a few inches from the rim. Such a shield would offer superior protection for the hoplite’s left side but far less protection for his right – it is worth noting, so far as we know, left-handed hoplites were required to fight as right-handers. Therefore, each hoplite received protection on his right from the shield of his comrade. Indeed this arrangement resulted in a phenomenon noted by ancient experts: a large phalanx would tend to drift to the right as it marched, each soldier shifting just a little to the right to gain more protection from his comrade. Leaving that aside, so long as each hoplite maintained his position in the phalanx, he protected and was protected by his neighbours as he used his large thrusting spear to attack the enemy. The key to the success of the phalanx, however, was not so much the front as the rear. Those hoplites in rows beyond the first two or three could not engage directly in battle; their weapons were too short. Consequently these hoplites in the rear ranks experienced a considerable amount of stress with no way to release it. They had a superior position to see those ahead stabbing fiercely, hear the scrape and clang of bronze and the grunts and cries of men, but all they could do was wait and watch. If the men in those rear ranks felt the battle was going poorly, and decided to think of themselves rather than their comrades, they might start to drift away and leave the leaders. Unsupported by the rear, the leaders too might turn to flee. The great irony of this kind of flight was that while it was surely motivated by a sense of self-preservation, it actually increased the likelihood of death since a fleeing hoplite would turn his less-protected back to the enemy and generally cast away his shield to gain speed.5 For this reason, incidentally, Spartan mothers famously admonished their husbands to come back with their shields or on them.6
It is striking that the Greeks, who loved to compete for personal glory in so many other areas, chose a form of combat that emphasized the team player, the one who did not stand out. Recently, though, historian J.E. Lendon has demonstrated that the teamwork of the phalanx was not contradictory to competition. Rather, individual hoplites still competed with their comrades when in battle. Instead of a competition to win the most duels or otherwise excel as an individual fighter, however, the hoplites competed to be thought the most stalwart, most steadfast member of the phalanx, showing bravery and discipline even in the horror of battle.7 Tyrtaios, a seventh century Spartan general and poet, illustrated how teamwork could be thought of as heroic in a series of elegies he wrote to inspire warriors in their duty.
For it is fine to die in the front line a brave man fighting for his fatherland …
So let us fight with spirit for our land. Die for our sons, and spare our lives no more.
You young men, keep together, hold the line,
Do not start panic or disgraceful rout. Keep grand and valiant spirits in your hearts,
Be not in love with life – the fight’s with men!
Do not desert your elders, men with legs no longer nimble, by recourse to flight:
It is disgraceful when an older man falls in the front line while the young hold back,
With head already white, and grizzled beard, gasping his valiant breath out in the dust. Let every man then, feet set firm apart, bite on his lip and stand against the foe.8
Above all, a hoplite had the duty to be loyal, steadfast in holding one’s place on the team. These high standards were the marks of honour that Spartan hoplites, indeed all hoplites, strove to achieve.
Perhaps it is not surprising that just as Greek warfare veered away from the noble-led masses shown in Troy to the egalitarian phalanx, so too Greek societies – plural because ancient Greece was always politically fragmented – developed a new form of political organization, the polis. Essentially this uniquely Greek form of city state was based on the principles of citizenship. A citizen of a polis, which generally, though not always, meant a landowning male whose parents were from the polis, enjoyed a certain degree of political participation and legal equality to his fellow citizens. Perhaps the defining feature of any polis was its citizen assembly where all citizens had the right to register their opinion on the direction of the state. Though we cannot determine which came first and spurred the development of the other, the two developments, phalanx and polis, were surely interconnected. The ideals of egalitarian teamwork in the phalanx crossed over into the ideals of equal voting in an assembly, and vice versa.
Sparta and its Powerful Phalanx
No polis had a stronger and more feared phalanx than Sparta, and this was largely due to Sparta’s peculiar historical development. The polis itself – the actual region was called Lacedaemonia, hence the Λ on the shields – consisted of five small villages along the Eurotas River. A rising power in the seventh century, by the sixth century Sparta occupied the dominant position in mainland Greece and was at the centre of a series of unilateral alliances with most of the polises in the Peloponnesus, the so-called Peloponnesian League. Though its power and status were challenged at times, most often by Argos to its north, Sparta consistently remained the most politically powerful and militarily feared polis. This was certainly the case when the Persians invaded Greece at the beginning of the fifth century.9
The key to Sparta’s military dominance, and commensurably weighty political influence in Greek affairs, was its phalanx. Sparta alone of all the polises enabled its citizens to engage fully in military life, training regularly in the arts of war and drilling in their phalanx formations. Sparta had this capacity because early in their history, the Spartans came to dominate the Greeks of neighbouring Messenia, located to Sparta’s west. In a set of wars that are poorly documented and poorly understood, the Spartans conquered Messenia and subjected the Messenians to the status of helots. Helots were serflike subordinates required to deliver half of the agricultural produce they farmed to their Spartan masters. This freedom from the need to produce their own food was what allowed Spartan males to devote their time to participating in the political life of the polis and training for military service. Since the Spartans viewed these two practices – civic and military participation – as most critical to the good life of a citizen, keeping the helots labouring at agriculture, and the Spartans not, was of paramount importance.10
For understanding the battle of Thermopylae there are two main sources, neither of them Spartan. The first is Herodotus of Halicarnassus. Halicarnassus was a city on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor – the ancient Greek name for what is now Turkey. Little is known for certain about Herodotus other than what can be concluded from his writings. At one point it was accepted that he had travelled extensively throughout the eastern Mediterranean in search of evidence for his narrative, but even that no longer seems certain. What is reasonably certain is that Herodotus eventually travelled from Halicarnassus to Athens and seems to have written his history there in the second half of the fifth century. His central topic was the great war between Persians and Greeks, in which the Thermopylae campaign played a significant role.11
The second substantial account comes from Diodorus Siculus, a Greek writer from the first century BC. When it comes to his account of fifth-century Greece he is valued mostly because of his use of Ephorus as his main source. Ephorus, like Herodotus, came from Asia Minor and eventually travelled to Athens. He wrote his history in the later fourth century with an emphasis on writing a universal history, one that would describe not only the Greeks but other Mediterranean cultures. Though his level of source criticism was not always as sophisticated as other Greek historians, the importance of his work, preserved through Diodorus, to those reconstructing fifth-century Greek history cannot be denied.12
One of the difficult truths of studying ancient Sparta, however, is that the Spartans themselves left very little historical evidence. Though the general and poet Tyrtaios, quoted above, left war speeches from the seventh century, there are no fifth-century Spartan voices in history, theatre, poetry, or any other literary form. What cannot be gleaned from archaeology must be gathered from references to Sparta by other Greeks.
So it is that when it comes to understanding Spartan institutions our most extensive and valuable sources are Xenophon and Plutarch. Xenophon was an Athenian with interests ranging from historical writing to commanding troops as a mercenary. It was in this role that he encountered the Spartan king, Agesilaus, and struck up a fast friendship, even serving with him against Athens at the battle of Koroneia (394 BC). Activities like this earned Xenophon exile from Athens for a time, during which he was able to observe, first hand, Sparta and its customs. These observations were crafted into a treatise on Spartan society and customs that is invaluable to anyone hoping to understand Sparta.13 Plutarch was a Greek biographer who lived and wrote under Roman rule in the first and second century AD. Among his other work is the biography of the legendary law-giver, Lycurgus, which is full of explanations of Spartan customs. He also wrote works collecting memorable Spartan sayings.
The accounts of the various sources differ on a number of issues, but a good case has been made for the following as the essentially historical narrative of the Thermopylae campaign.14
The battle at Thermopylae was part of the second Persian invasion of Greece. These invasions were sparked two decades before, in 499 BC. That year the Greeks of Ionia, in what is now western Turkey, revolted against their Persian king, Darius. The city of Miletus led the way. Milesians sought and received support from Athens in mainland Greece. Together, the Ionians and Athenians managed to sack the Persian capital of Ionia, Sardis. King Darius recaptured the rebel polises, then set his sights on the polis of Athens. Whether revenge was a sufficient motivation or he simply thought it a good enough excuse for extending Persian control into Europe, Darius launched an amphibious campaign against Athens. A fleet of Persian warships and troop transports crossed the Aegean and landed at the plains of Marathon, a day’s march northeast of Athens. A force of Athenian hoplites drove the Persians back to their transports. After a failed attempt to bypass the Athenian walls through treachery, the fleet returned to the east whence it came.
Darius never managed to punish the Athenians. He died sometime in the next decade and was succeeded by his son, Xerxes. Xerxes was fiercely motivated by revenge, according to some ancient accounts, though one suspects he also saw a good opportunity to justify an invasion. He summoned contingents of soldiers from all the subject peoples of the Persian Empire. This large army marched for mainland Greece by way of the Hellespont, the narrow channel of ocean from the Black Sea to the Aegean. Royal engineers, not without difficulty, bridged the Hellespont and the Persian army marched west and south, through Thrace to Thessaly and the doorstep of Greece. The Persian navy, meanwhile, followed along the coast, guarding the flank of the land forces, transporting supplies, and facilitating communications.
Word reached Sparta of Xerxes’ plan to invade Greece in the summer of 481 BC. The Spartans reacted by sending envoys to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi and to other Greek polises. The message from the oracle was grim indeed. The Persian invasion would only be stopped when Sparta was sacked or one of its kings slain in battle. Ultimately, the Spartans opted for the latter possibility and a fight with Xerxes. The Athenians, meanwhile, got the news from Sparta and consulted the oracle for themselves. The oracle’s message this time was more complicated but included an indication that the wall of wood would not be defeated. The Athenian politician Themistocles persuaded the assembly that this wall of wood could only mean the Athenian fleet of triremes, the state of the art warships of the day. Consequently, the assembly voted to fight against Xerxes. With the powerful polis Sparta and the up-and-coming polis of Athens ready to fight, a conference was called in Corinth with other like-minded Greek states, and the Hellenic League was formed to face the Persian threat.
The League initially planned to send 10,000 hoplites to Thessaly to defend the Vale of Tempe. The flat, open plain made this plan untenable, however, particularly when further word reached the Greeks of the magnitude of Xerxes’ army. A new plan was formed: a land force would hold the narrow pass at Thermopylae supported by the fleet nearby in the strait at Artemisium. The Spartan king, Leonidas, exercised his authority to form a small detail of 300 Spartans – men who had at least one son living and thus their line of inheritance intact. He and his 300 set out, leaving the rest of the Spartan hoplites at home. Leonidas also levied 1,000 of the Lacedaemonians, those who lived under Spartan authority but were not themselves Spartan citizens. Though it may seem odd, this small Spartan force also included helots acting as camp servants and light infantry. Other Peloponnesian hoplites brought the total expeditionary force to, perhaps, 4,100. Once Leonidas left the Peloponnesus and reached Boeotia, west of Athens, 700 Thespians joined his band – citizens of Thespis that is, not actors. Thebes, meanwhile was forced to contribute 400 hoplites to the enterprise. The polis’ loyalty was suspect and these hoplites were hostages to guarantee the Thebans’ good behaviour. At Thermopylae an additional 3,000 soldiers from Locria, Phocis and Malia joined Leonidas’ force. All told, the Greek defenders may have numbered about 7,000 hoplites and several thousand light infantry.
Though the modern shoreline has changed significantly, in the fifth century the pass at Thermopylae was exceedingly narrow. According to Herodotus:
the narrowest part of this whole region lies … in front of Thermopylai and also behind it, consisting of a single wheel-track only both by Alpenoi, which lies behind Thermopylai and again by the river Phoinix near the town of Anthela there is no space but a single wheel-track only: and on the west of Thermopylai there is a mountain which is impassable and precipitous, rising up to a great height and extending towards the range of Oite, while on the east of the road the sea with swampy pools succeeds at once.15
The narrowest part of the pass, then, was perhaps 7ft wide and reinforced by the remnants of a wall built long before. Seemingly, Thermopylae was the perfect defensive position. Perfect that is until Leonidas learned of a mountain path that circumvented the position. He dispatched 1,000 Phocians to guard the path and, no doubt, hoped its existence would remain unnoticed by the Persians.
The Greek forces, heavily armed and armoured, organized in a phalanx, and aided by an outstanding defensive position held the pass for two days with few casualties received and many inflicted. By the third day, however, the Persians had received news of the mountain pass that undermined the Greek position. They dispatched a force to occupy it. The Phocians were defeated, the summit of the mountain captured, and the Persian force was ready to descend the mountain and strike at the rear of the Greek position. The leaders of the Greek coalition forces met, and Leonidas ordered that all forces should return to the south while the Spartans and their Lacedaemonian subordinates remained to defend the pass as long as they could. The 400 Theban hostages were also required to stay; the valiant Thespians volunteered to stay. This rear guard approximated something close to 2,000 heavy infantry, only 300 of whom were actually Spartans. The helots also remained, though probably not by choice. The Persian forces entrapped these Greeks and slew them from a distance with arrows and javelins. What the Spartans and their loyal comrades had brought the Hellenic League was a little more time to prepare a defence and evacuate Athens, which was next on Xerxes’ list. But these Greeks also won a resounding moral victory that motivated the Hellenic League in its resistance to Persian domination. The Greeks who died at Thermopylae were buried together in graves marked by five stone markers. Leonidas, ‘the Lion’ was memorialized by a stone lion. Almost four decades later, Leonidas’ bones were transferred to a Spartan grave that was topped by a memorial and a list of the Spartans who had fought at Thermopylae. Annual games in honour of these dead were held at Sparta.
The Origins of the Conflict in the Film 300
As the film 300 would have it, Persian envoys arrive at Sparta to demand earth and water for their ‘god-king’ Xerxes. These are the traditional tokens of submission, and so far as the viewer can tell, for the Persians, the Spartans are just another little power in the path of the Persian conquests. King Leonidas of Sparta (Gerard Butler), just finished giving lessons in fighting with honour to his son, is given the news. He opens the doors of his house to reveal a small city centre with Spartans going about their daily business. Councilman Theron (Dominic West) arrives with the envoy who demands earth and water. The historical context, the Ionian Revolt and the battle at Marathon a decade before are omitted entirely. The envoy recounts the vastness of Xerxes’ empire and the size of his army, so monstrous that ‘it drinks the rivers dry’. Then he relays the god-king’s demand for submission.
‘Submission.’ Leonidas turns the word over in his head, considering. He decides quickly. ‘See, rumour has it, the Athenians have already turned you down. And if those … philosophers and, uh, boy lovers have found that kind of nerve then …’ Theron interrupts, urging diplomacy, but Leonidas continues: ‘and of course Spartans have their reputation to consider.’ Now the envoy threatens Leonidas to choose his next words carefully. As the music rises, the camera shifts to pan across nearby Spartans. Leonidas considers them, their freedom, and their lives. He reaches a decision. ‘Earth and water – well, you’ll find plenty of both down there!’ indicating a gigantic – and strangely unfenced – well to the back of the Persian messengers. ‘Blasphemy! Madness!’ shouts the Persian envoy as he and his comrades are driven back into the well, a filmic moment rendered in slow motion. The screams of the falling Persians fade away and we never do hear them reach the bottom.
Leonidas knows well that the Persians must be stopped, and they must be stopped at the narrow pass of Thermopylae where, he says, ‘their numbers will count for nothing’. Even the king in Sparta, however, must gain the permission of the ephors for such a venture. Historically Xenophon suggests that the position of ephor was established,
[The Spartans] had come to the conclusion themselves, that of all the blessings which a state, or an army, or a household, can enjoy, obedience is the greatest. Since, as they could not but reason, the greater the power with which men fence about authority, the greater the fascination it will exercise upon the mind of the citizen to the enforcement of obedience. Accordingly the ephors are competent to punish whomsoever they choose; they have power to exact fines on the spur of the moment; they have power to depose magistrates in mid-career – nay, actually to imprison them and bring them to trial on a capital charge. Entrusted with these vast powers, they do not, as do the rest of states, allow the magistrates elected to exercise authority as they like, right through the year of office; but in the style rather of despotic monarchs, or presidents of the games at the first symptom of an offence against the law they inflict chastisement without warning and without hesitation…16
… Monthly they exchange oaths, the ephors on behalf of the state, the king himself on his own behalf. And this is the oath on the king’s part: ‘I will exercise my kingship in accordance with the established laws of the state.’ And on the part of the state the oath runs: ‘So long as he (who exercises kingship) shall abide by his oaths we will not suffer his kingdom to be shaken.’17
Cinematic Misleadings
• Leonidas is king of Sparta, but no mention is made in 300 of that unique Spartan institution: a second king.
• Leonidas scoffingly calls the Athenians ‘philosophers and boy lovers’. Historically, romantic relationships between adult males and young teen boys were considered a common feature in Spartan male society.
• Great pains are taken by the narrator to tell the story of Leonidas’ upbringing in the agoge, the Spartan system of education. In fact the kings were exempted from the agoge.
• The Immortals were the elite Persian warriors. They are represented on the walls of Persepolis as infantry armed with spears and bows, and protected by wicker shields, loose clothes and turbans. The origin of their name is unclear – but they were not black-robed and gold-masked inhuman warriors.
Where the ephors are described by Xenophon as stern guardians of the law, however, in 300 they are cast as twisted fiends, ‘inbred swine more creature than man’. They keep a mystic, despotic control over Sparta and its actions. Their chief tool is prophecy gained by preying sexually on the beautiful young oracles who tell them the future. Their supposed superstition, and irrationality, evil really, are set foils to the noble rationalism of King Leonidas. Accordingly, after Leonidas shares his plan, the ephors protest:
Ephor: We must consult the oracle … trust the gods, Leonidas.
Leonidas: I’d prefer you trusted your reason.
Ephor: Your blasphemies have cost us quite enough already!
The oracle, intoxicated by the smoke of the cavern, delivers an ill prophecy, and Leonidas’ request is denied.
This scene is part of the writer and director’s methodical emphasis. Throughout the film Leonidas and his supporters are portrayed as fighters for reason and freedom. Indeed at the very end of the film, the narrator Dilios tells the Spartan warriors around him, on the eve of the battle of Plataea,
From free Greek to free Greek the word was spread. That bold Leonidas and his 300 so far from home laid down their lives. Not just for Sparta but for all Greece and the promise this country holds …This day, we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.
These claims must be taken with a healthy dose of salt. Though the ancient Greeks are rightly recognized even today for their contributions to reason and logic, they were not modern rationalists and certainly not atheists. Their faith in the gods, fear of forces beyond their comprehension, and surrender to irrationality were much the same as most ancient peoples.
The Spartans, far from being rational atheists, were noted for religious scruples that exceeded those of other Greeks. Herodotus asserted that they ‘esteemed the things of the gods as more authoritative than the things of men’. They were known for their respect for divine signs and were willing to offer sacrifice after sacrifice, even in battle, to obtain properly the messages of the gods.18 Indeed, Xenophon actively linked their piety with their excellence as soldiers, noting:
But I will go back to the beginning, and explain how the King sets out with an army. First he offers up sacrifice at home to Zeus the Leader and to the gods associated with him. If the sacrifice appears propitious, the Fire-bearer takes fire from the altar and leads the way to the borders of the land. There the King offers sacrifice again to Zeus and Athena. Only when the sacrifice proves acceptable to both these deities does he cross the borders of the land. And the fire from these sacrifices leads the way and is never quenched, and animals for sacrifice of every sort follow. At all times when he offers sacrifice, the King begins the work before dawn of day, wishing to forestall the goodwill of the god. And at the sacrifice are assembled colonels, captains, lieutenants, commandants of foreign contingents, commanders of the baggage train, and, in addition, any general from the states who chooses to be present. There are also present two of the Ephors, who interfere in nothing except by the King’s request, but keep an eye on the proceedings, and see that all behave with a decorum suitable to the occasion. When the sacrifices are ended, the King summons all and delivers the orders of the day. And so, could you watch the scene, you would think all other men mere improvisers in soldiering and the Lacedaemonians the only artists in warfare.19
So the suggestion that religious scruples played little role in the more rational world of the Spartans holds no water. Leonidas’ categorical rejection of anything not founded in logic is a modern varnish to the story.
The claim that the Spartans fought for the freedom of all Greeks is only slightly more substantial. It is all too easy to forget that Greek society, for all its seemingly progressive features in government and law, was a slave society. Slaves worked the silver mines and tutored children even in Athens, that paradigm of early democracy. While the Spartans may not have had chattel slaves as such, they practised their own particular brand of oppression against the helots. These were the semi-enslaved inhabitants of Lacedaemonia and neighbouring Messene. They worked the land allotted to each Spartan so that, free from the burden of agricultural labour, he could participate fully in political and military life. Indeed Spartan obsession with military preparedness is explicable in part because of their desire to keep the helot population in check. Every year when five new ephors took office, they formally declared war on the helots. This was not to suggest that the Spartans actively conducted military operations against the helot, but rather the declaration effectively put the helot population under martial law and made slaying a helot equivalent to slaying an enemy combatant, not murdering a potentially innocent soul.20
Spartan Cold Warriors
1962’s The 300 Spartans begins with a shot of the Athenian acropolis – an ironic choice really since Athens and Sparta were enemies more often than not and had fundamentally different approaches to political and social life. The narrator’s opening words, however, make clear that this will be a film about ideals: ‘Greece. That hard and timeless land where even the stones speak of man’s courage, of his endurance, of his glory.’ Now the camera shifts to a shot of the modern plaque in the pass of Thermopylae, and the narrator continues, ‘and none more eloquently than this lonely pillar in a desolate pass some 200 miles north of modern Athens. Across the hush of 24 centuries, this is the story of a turning point in history.’ Now the camera captures a single line of Spartans sloping down a gentle hill. They are clad in red cloaks, helmets with red horsehair crests, round bronze shields and spears. Behind them stand a few archers. ‘… Of a blazing day when 300 Greek warriors fought here …’ The camera shifts to the front of the line and reveals a second line of Spartans perhaps fifty feet behind with some archers. ‘…to hold with their lives their freedom and ours.’ It should come as no surprise that the film is viewed by many as a thinly veiled moral allegory for the Cold War. Here the Spartans are transformed from their controversial ancient selves into the freedom fighters of the West.
The Ideal of the Spartan Hoplite and the Spartan Myth
300 resoundingly promotes the raw courage and toughness of the Spartan warrior. When Leonidas must bid his beloved queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) farewell, their looks and tones are tender, but not their words. Looking Leonidas in the eye, Gorgo bids, ‘come back with your shield or on it’, a saying attributed to a nameless Spartan mother by Plutarch in his Sayings of Spartan Women.21 When Leonidas and his 300 join with a few thousand Arcadians, the Arcadian leader Daxos expresses dismay that the Spartans have brought so few warriors, Leonidas points out that he brought more than Daxos – more true warriors that is. When the young Spartan Stelios accompanies Arcadian leader Daxos on a scouting mission, his face breaks out in a mad smile upon seeing the size of the Persian army. When Daxos asks whence the grin, Stelios replies that at last, after so many battles, he may finally find an enemy worthy of him.
The film clearly links this hardiness to the Spartan system of education, the agoge. Indeed the film opens to Dilios (David Wenham) weaving a tale of Leonidas’ education. Ignoring that the Spartan kings were actually the only male Spartan youths freed from participating in the agoge, the cinematic account suggests that only those children who were physically fit were allowed to survive; others were cast aside to die.22 From selection until adulthood then, Spartan males were ‘baptized in the fire of combat’. Shouted at, abused, beaten when they were weak, beaten if they proved themselves defiantly strong, Spartan males were taught systematically ‘that death on the battlefield in service to Sparta was the greatest glory he could achieve in his life’. Then when his upbringing was largely complete, the Spartan child underwent his initiation by surviving alone in the wild. In Leonidas’ case, Delios tells, this involved a night in the snow with only a loincloth and a desperate fight for survival with a large, ferocious, and quite hungry timber wolf. Historically, it also involved the Krypteia. Those Spartans who, during their time in the agoge, showed themselves fit for leadership in Spartan society were gathered into the Krypteia, a secret police made up of promising youths. The special charge of the Krypteia was to keep the helots suppressed. Quite often this meant that the men of the Krypteia identified and murdered select helots both to weed out potential troublemakers and to terrorize those left alive into submission. Roaming the countryside with only a dagger, they preyed on the helots in order to demonstrate their Spartan manhood.23
Through this description of the Spartan agoge and elsewhere throughout the film, 300 raises the perennial historical problem of the ‘Spartan mirage’, as one historian dubbed it many decades ago.24 As noted earlier, the Spartans left essentially no written evidence about themselves. Rather, all our written information, save a few inscriptions, comes from outsiders, these mostly Athenian. But the Spartans had a vested interest in appearing as formidably trained killers to the rest of the Greek world. Hence the mirage. Was Spartan life as tough as this or did the Spartans simply find it suitable to let the rest of Greece think so?
Our best account of the agoge comes from the Athenian Xenophon’s observations. Here he describes the system set in motion, as the Spartans believed, by the semi-legendary lawgiver Lycurgus:
Lycurgus … gave the duty of controlling the boys to a member of the class from which the highest offices are filled, in fact to the ‘Warden’ as he is called. He gave this person authority to gather the boys together, to take charge of them and to punish them severely in case of misconduct. He also assigned to him a staff of youths provided with whips to chastise them when necessary; and the result is that modesty and obedience are inseparable companions at Sparta. Instead of softening the boys’ feet with sandals he required them to harden their feet by going without shoes. He believed that if this habit were cultivated it would enable them to climb hills more easily and descend steep inclines with less danger, and that a youth who had accustomed himself to go barefoot would leap and jump and run more nimbly than a boy in sandals. And instead of letting them be pampered in the matter of clothing, he introduced the custom of wearing one garment throughout the year, believing that they would thus be better prepared to face changes of heat and cold. As to the food, he required the prefect to bring with him such a moderate amount of it that the boys would never suffer from repletion, and would know what it was to go with their hunger unsatisfied; for he believed that those who underwent this training would be better able to continue working on an empty stomach, if necessary, and would be capable of carrying on longer without extra food, if the word of command were given to do so: they would want fewer delicacies and would accommodate themselves more readily to anything put before them, and at the same time would enjoy better health.25
Enduring physical hardship and having the resourcefulness to survive in the midst of scarcity were critical parts of the agoge and Spartan boys learned these skills through practice, not theory.
The agoge however, was not simply a curriculum designed to produce tough Spartan warriors, though that was certainly a goal. Learning obedience, propriety, and respect were equally important:
In order that the boys might never lack a ruler even when the warden was away, [Lycurgos] gave authority to any citizen who chanced to be present to require them to do anything that he thought right, and to punish them for any misconduct. This had the effect of making the boys more respectful; in fact boys and men alike respect their rulers above everything. And that a ruler might not be lacking to the boys even when no grown man happened to be present, he selected the keenest of the prefects, and gave to each the command of a division. And so at Sparta the boys are never without a ruler.26
Upon reaching young adulthood, Xenophon says, a final round of restrictions was imposed on a youth lest he get ideas about independence and individualism:
… When a boy ceases to be a child, and begins to be a lad, others release him from his moral tutor and his schoolmaster: he is then no longer under a ruler and is allowed to go his own way. Here again Lycurgus introduced a wholly different system. For he observed that at this time of life self-will makes strong root in a boy’s mind, a tendency to insolence manifests itself, and a keen appetite for pleasure in different forms takes possession of him. At this stage, therefore, he imposed on him a ceaseless round of work, and contrived a constant round of occupation. The penalty for shirking the duties was exclusion from all future honours. He thus caused not only the public authorities, but their relations also to take pains that the lads did not incur the contempt of their fellow citizens by flinching from their tasks.27
Xenophon’s account, whether embellished or not, is that of an eyewitness, albeit one observing the Spartan system a hundred years after the period that concerns us. And while certainty remains out of reach, the broad outlines of the educational system have been reasonably well established.28
So, Sparta’s agoge was, in fact, a systematic and brutal effort to eliminate a boy’s ties to family and his desire to act independently. In place of these drives the agoge substituted loyalty to the polis and strict obedience to the elders in the state. Everyone was subordinate to someone or something in Sparta. The citizens were subject to their elders, as revealed in the Spartan policy that the citizen assembly’s vote could be overturned by the council of elders, the gerousia.29 The kings could be thwarted by the ephors. The ephors are the best candidates for leaders in Sparta but even they swore oaths to follow Spartan law. Obedience was a cardinal virtue in Sparta. Young lads, Xenophon noted, were required to walk in silence, eyes down, not venturing a word or a glance lest it appear disobedient.30 Again it’s worth noting that the kings were exempt from the agoge – perhaps since the position of king was inherited it would not do for a royal child to wash out of the system. Besides this point, however, Delios’ discourse on education in 300 is essentially consistent with the historical system.
In a society where obedience, duty, and conformity to polis laws and authorities were so paramount, it is not surprising that military operations were an area in which a Spartan’s worthiness could be judged. When Spartans returned from campaigns one of the critical roles of Spartan women was to praise or shame each publicly according to his performance in battle. Indeed honourable death in battle, above all, was the mark of a true Spartan. Unlike other polises, which clearly designated areas away from the living for the dead to be buried, Spartan dead were buried in places where the living still gathered. The only graves that were actually honoured with a mark, a simple grave stone, were those whose occupants had died in battle.31 And to be the relative of such a Spartan was a great honour. In short, while the film is undeniably over-the-top in presenting Spartan attitudes, the core presentation of Spartans as dutiful warriors seeking worthy battles in which to show their skill and service to their polis, fits the ancient evidence well.
Hoplite, Phalanx, and the Battle at Thermopylae
Even the historical account of Ephialtes, the Greek traitor, shifts considerably under the treatment of author Frank Miller, preserved in the film 300. Herodotus offered only the following report on Ephialtes:
Now, as [king Xerxes] was in a great strait, and knew not how he should deal with the emergency, Ephialtes, the son of Eurydemus, a man of Malis, came to him and was admitted to a conference. Stirred by the hope of receiving a rich reward at the king’s hands, he had come to tell him of the pathway which led across the mountain to Thermopylae; by which disclosure he brought destruction on the band of Greeks who had there withstood the barbarians. This Ephialtes afterwards, from fear of the Lacedaemonians, fled into Thessaly.32
In 300, however, Ephialtes is a caricature, a horribly, seemingly impossibly, deformed man. Parting ways again with the evidence, he is even a Spartan. Or rather, he was born to Spartan parents in Sparta, which is not the same thing. His tale is a sad one to modern ears. He would have been abandoned to die at the command of the Spartans for his horrible disfigurement but his mother loved him too much. And so, she and her husband secreted Ephialtes out of Sparta, he tells Leonidas. He has his father’s shield, helmet and cloak, however, and he proudly declares that his father taught him to fight, ‘to make spear and shield and sword as much a part of me as my own beating heart’. It is the case, Plutarch records, that Spartan elders ultimately decided the fate of each male child: life for those deemed physically fit to survive and thrive as warriors, and death for the rest. This feature of Ephialtes’ story is consistent with Spartan practice.33 Leaving aside that any child with the physical challenges displayed by Ephialtes would assuredly not survive in an ancient world with ancient medicine, Ephialtes was clearly not a true Spartan. And not to be a true Spartan was not to be a Spartan at all.
Despite its almost complete lack of historical grounding, this transformation of Ephialtes from a nobody to a Spartan outcast allows for a deeper illustration of the overruling conventions of Spartan society, most important of all, that a true Spartan must serve honourably in the phalanx.
Leonidas is moved, clearly, by Ephialtes’ tale; his look betrays a hint of sympathy for this tortured body with a determined soul. When Ephialtes finishes his story with a few exemplary thrusts of his spear, however, Leonidas simply says, quietly, ‘Raise your shield.’ ‘Sire?’ Ephialtes questions. ‘Raise your shield as high as you can’. Ephialtes strains at the effort, but he physically cannot bring the shield to cover his shoulder. Leonidas then notes: ‘Your father should have told you how a phalanx works. We fight as a single impenetrable unit. That is the source of our strength. Each Spartan protects the man to his left thigh to neck with his shield. A single weak spot and the phalanx shatters.’ Then he looks down at Ephialtes and raises his hand above him; ‘Thigh to neck, Ephialtes.’
Carrying the wounded, removing the dead, and bringing water, these things Ephialtes can do. He cannot be part of the phalanx, however; he is not the equal of the Spartan citizens. The rejection wounds Ephialtes deeply, and in his rage he turns to the Persian king and reveals the secret path around the Greek lines.
This short episode introduces audiences to the principles of the phalanx, that characteristically Greek fighting formation. The principle as Leonidas states it is historically sound and recalls words from Tyrtaios’ war poems:
Abide then, O young men, shoulder to shoulder and fight; begin not foul flight nor yet be afraid, but make the heart in your breasts both great and stout, and never shrink when you fight the foe. And the elder sort, whose knees are no longer nimble, fly not ye to leave them fallen to earth.34
The phalanx depends on each soldier standing his ground fighting with his colleagues and living or dying together.
How well, though, does theory play out in 300’s battle scenes? First, consider the equipment of the Spartans and Persians in the film. The Spartans certainly cut imposing enough figures as hoplites. Equipped with shield, helmet, and greaves, wearing the archetypical Spartan red cloak, and armed with spear and sword, they have most of the historic panoply. The helmets may be a bit fantastical, but are basically sound. A look at various models from the British Museum shows that the Spartan model, with its faux-visor, cannot be confirmed but still stays reasonably close to what we know of such helmets (see plates 5–7 and 10). The lack of breastplates is more problematic. It is not that warriors could not fight without them, but so far as can be determined, the breastplate was typical for the early fifth century hoplites 300 portrays. Even the Arcadians fight without the cuirass and it seems more likely that the director wanted to enhance the heroic material of the graphic novel by portraying the heavily muscled Greek torsos. If anything, the limited archaeological evidence suggests a reversed situation. Sixth century metal figurines of warriors, crafted in Sparta, all show the hoplite armed with breastplate and helmet but completely naked from the waist down. This does not seem like an appealing mode of dress for modern sensibilities but at least would have offered significantly greater protection than 300 allows its warriors. The Spartans are countered by all manner of Persian warriors. Historically different nations provided different troops whose capabilities and costumes span the spectrum, as a survey of Herodotus’ descriptions reveals.35 The film follows suit, though most of the infantry are variants on a theme. Some wear what appears to be leather armour of a sort. Most tend to wear no armour at all, relying only on tunic, cloak, and trousers for protection. Most carry wicker shields, serviceable enough to deflect the errant arrow or sword but of little use against a determined spear thrust. In these attributes they resemble Herodotus’ description of the Persian infantry: ‘about their heads they had soft felt caps called tiaras, and about their body tunics of various colours with sleeves’ and ‘about the legs trousers’ although he notes that the tunic sleeves have ‘the appearance of iron scales like those of a fish’. Next he goes on to note that ‘instead of the ordinary shields they had shields of wicker-work, under which hung quivers; and they had short spears and large bows and arrows of reed, and moreover daggers hanging by the right thigh from the girdle’.36
Ephialtes the Spurned Lover?
The 300 Spartans of 1962 directed by Rudolph Maté gave a different spin to Ephialtes that, while less fantastical, still deviates from the ancient accounts. In this cinematic version, the young Spartan Phylon has been denied the right to fight alongside the 300. He and his love Ellas follow the army as it moves north and eventually come across a couple living in the hills near Thermopylae. The elderly couple have taken in a man name Ephialtes without asking too many questions. Ephialtes is spurned in his advances toward Ellas. In revenge and for gold, he tells King Xerxes about the mountain track that circumvents Thermopylae. It seems that for both filmmakers the historical Ephialtes needed a stronger motive of personal revenge to justify informing the Persians about the back route at Thermopylae.
When the main Persian force arrives, the ground shakes from the weight of their numbers. Since Herodotus’ day the Persian army has been estimated at sizes up to and including 2,100,000 soldiers, which was essentially Herodotus’ estimate. A great deal of energy has been invested by historians trying to constructively revise these hyperbolic numbers. Some aim for about 50,000, others for 200,000 or 300,000.37 In any case, the first Persian warriors appear. The lead soldiers carry oblong wicker shields with cutouts in the middle that give them the appearance of a violin body. They wear turbans, shirts and trousers, and corselets of what appear to be leather embossed with metal plates. Spears are their primary weapons. Leonidas looks back at his soldiers, arrayed in the phalanx and roars: ‘This is where we hold them! This is where we fight! This is where they die! Remember this day, men. For it will be yours for all time.’ Only Spartans hold the pass; there are no other Greeks to be found. The Persian commander demands the Spartans lay down their weapons. He receives a spear through the chest for his effort. The Spartans raise their shields into a wall, thrust forth their spears and Leonidas taunts: ‘Persians, come and get them,’ a saying historically attributed to that Spartan King.38
The battle begins. The Persian warriors charge as a mass not unlike the Greek host in Petersen’s Troy. They have no defined ranks or columns; as a result the fastest runners start to outstrip the rest. The Spartans meanwhile, wait to receive the charge. The first two lines hunker behind their shields in a combat stance, chests perpendicular to the shield and the rim resting on their left shoulders. They are covered in their crouch, as Leonidas noted, from thigh to neck and then some. Spears are at the ready in underhand grips, the iron heads extending over the fronts of their shields. The camera shifts to the Persians charging, then changes to a top view close-up that emphasizes the contrast between the disorderly Persian charge and the Spartans, holding their positions as their captain bids them.
Then comes the impact. Wicker shields raised, the Persian infantry collide with the Spartans. The Spartans dig their heels in the sand, pushed back ever so slightly by the force of the massive charge. The front ranks of hoplites lean into the concavity of their shields. They are too close to their enemies to use their weapons. Instead a shoving contest develops. The camera closes in on a handful of combatants shoving back and forth, the Spartans leaning into their shields. There is very little killing. One Spartan in the third row receives a cut to the arm from a spearhead which he returns by stabbing his enemy in the chest. This is the exception, however, not the rule. The focus is on pushing with shields. The weight of the enemy numbers pushes the Spartans back, but then they dig in and halt. Dramatically, and quite unrealistically, the Spartans use their shields to throw back the leading Persians then follow up with stabbing spears to dispatch their foes. This begins a cycle: shove back, move shield aside, stab and move forward a few inches. There are instances of individuals lifting their shields and slashing with sword, but the shield wall of the phalanx quickly reforms and most of the killing work is done with spears.
Certainly, the close-ups of Spartan warriors shoving their enemies back with their shield arm, raising their shields over them and unleashing murderous spear thrusts makes for outstandingly heroic cinematography. Still the practical limitations on such a tactic make it unlikely this was how Spartans, or anyone else for that matter, fought. First, though the push, pull, and shove of the infantry lines did occur in these battles, this also presumably involved soldiers leaning into their shields and using their bodies to push. Throwing back something the size of a man with the back of a shield arm is a feat of strength most cannot accomplish and certainly not repeatedly. Second, even if each and every Spartan were appropriately Herculean for this task – as the movie really does suggest – the tactic of lifting one’s shield high and exposing oneself to stab essentially negates the very purpose of the shield, to defend. Instead we should reject this aspect of the scene in favour of other shots that capture fierce scrabbling and pushing with Spartans thrusting spears over or to the side of their shields. These kinds of attack were devastating enough. When Greek fought Greek and all wore comparable bronze body armour, the casualties would have been minimal. The effect of the Spartans’ iron spearheads against the wicker shields and cloth armour of the Persian warriors, however, must have been devastating.
The Spartans’ rhythmically methodical killing creates breathing room between the opposing lines. Now there is more space, perhaps 3–6ft. The Spartans continue their grim work following a tempo. Shields move aside and spears thrust forward. The camera shifts to a high angle shot showing a wave of Persian troops checked by the slow and orderly Spartan advance. It is worth noting that the Persians are not massed but still flowing irregularly up against the Spartan wall individually or in small groups. One cannot help but wonder if the Persians would really have sacrificed their great advantage in numbers by sending soldiers so haphazardly against the phalanx. Essentially, though, that is what the ancient sources said they did and in the absence of any means to circumvent the Spartan line, there probably was little else to try other than steadily increasing the numbers assaulting the Spartans. Whether orderly or haphazardly, however, the Persian shields and armour were simply not up to the task. They could not stop the thrust of Spartan spears.
Spartan Sayings
Plutarch, a second century Greek living in the Roman Empire, collected and wrote the Sayings of the Spartans. A number of rough-and-ready aphorisms he attributed to those involved in the Thermopylae campaign. These two make their way into 300:
• ‘When someone said, “Because of the arrows of the barbarians it is impossible to see the sun,” [Leonidas] said, “Won’t it be nice, then, if we shall have shade in which to fight them?”’
• ‘When Xerxes wrote, “Hand over your arms,” Leonidas wrote in reply, “Come and take them.”’
Plutarch also ascribes to Spartan mothers in general, a saying other Greeks attributed to Queen Gorgo: ‘Come back with your shield or on it.’
Finally, Plutarch records a number of other sayings attributed to the Spartan king Leonidas at Thermopylae:
• ‘When someone else said, “[The Persians] are near to us,” he said, “Then we also are near to them.”’
• ‘When someone said, “Leonidas, are you here to take such a hazardous risk with so few men against so many?” he said, “If you men think that I rely on numbers, then all Greece is not sufficient, for it is but a small fraction of their numbers; but if on men’s valour, then this number will do.”’
• ‘He bade his soldiers eat their breakfast as if they were to eat their dinner in the other world.’
(Plutarch Moralia 225B-D)
The same probably should be noted about the Spartans and their equipment in 300. If the historical Spartans had been as naked as the filmic ones, they would have suffered a far greater number of wounds. This is not to suggest that hoplite shields and a phalanx formation alone were flimsy defences. Clearly they were quite the opposite. Diodorus points directly to the critical role of Greek shields and phalanx in his description of the fighting:
The fight which followed was a fierce one, and since the barbarians had the king as a witness of their valour and the Greeks kept in mind their liberty and were exhorted to the fray by Leonidas, it followed that the struggle was amazing. For since the men stood shoulder to shoulder in the fighting and the blows were struck in close combat, and the lines were densely packed, for a considerable time the battle was equally balanced. But since the Greeks were superior in valour and in the great size of their shields, the Medes gradually gave way; for many of them were slain and not a few wounded. The place of the Medes in the battle was taken by Cissians and Sacae, selected for their valour, who had been stationed to support them; and joining the struggle fresh as they were against men who were worn out they withstood the hazard of combat for a short while, but as they were slain and pressed upon by the soldiers of Leonidas, they gave way. For the barbarians used small round or irregularly shaped shields, by which they enjoyed an advantage in open fields, since they were thus enabled to move more easily, but in narrow places they could not easily inflict wounds upon an enemy who were formed in close ranks and had their entire bodies protected by large shields, whereas they, being at a disadvantage by reason of the lightness of their protective armour, received repeated wounds.39
Still, even an unintended sword or spear blow against naked flesh stood a good chance to cripple or kill. So it’s important to remember that while this part of the film illustrates the effectiveness of shields and formation, historically the Spartans did have their panoply at Thermopylae. This meant historically their protection from wounds was significantly greater, and their cinematic defensive formation was even more effective in reality. After all, the Spartans and their allies did hold firm against a vastly numerically superior force for days.
So far, though some of the shield work is puzzling, and the lack of armour sticks out like a sore thumb, the phalanx has worked exactly as Leonidas described to Ephialtes and very much how many historians think it did. Each hoplite protects his comrades; all work together. ‘A single weak spot and the phalanx shatters,’ Leonidas had said. So far, the phalanx works like a phalanx. The less organized and less well protected Persians are devastated. Then something changes. The shot shifts from the organized phalanx to Leonidas and his captain moving ahead of their comrades. Gaps in the shield wall remain where they once stood, and the two sally as much as 10ft in front of the line, like Homer’s promachoi. No longer part of a team, the two engage in a brutal display of individual spear-work, presented in slow motion. Leonidas launches into a murderous dance, spinning about, using his spear to strike with swings as well as stabs, and flipping Persians over his shield. The camera focuses on him now. He has outstripped his captain and moves forward perhaps another 10ft. Still the Persians are loosely grouped, flowing toward Leonidas in small groups of two and three. Shifting from an underhand stab to an overhand throw, Leonidas knocks a Persian to the ground, impaled on the spear. Spear gone, he draws his sword, a reasonable facsimile of a Greek sword. He flips a Persian over his head and cuts into several more. Finally the foremost phalanx fighters are but a few steps behind. There is nothing even approximating, however, the unified phalanx wall from only a minute before. Yet Leonidas catapults forward again with no indication of any concern for his comrades.
This is not a phalanx battle. Indeed it looks very much like an aristeia, a display of battlefield excellence that Homer often employs in the Iliad. One of the more memorable aristeias is that of Diomedes, who is energized by Athena to go on a killing spree:
So raging Diomedes mauled the Trojans. There – he killed Astynous, then Hypiron, a frontline captain. One he stabbed with a bronze lance above the nipple, the other his heavy sword hacked at the collarbone, right on the shoulder, cleaving the whole shoulder clear of neck and back. And he left them there, dead, and he made a rush at Abas and Polyidus, sons of Eurydamas, an aged reader of dreams, but the old prophet read no dreams for them when they set out for Troy – Diomedes laid them low then swung to attack the two sons of Phaenops, hardy Xanthus and Thoon, both men grown tall as their father shrank away with wasting age … he’d never breed more sons to leave his riches to. The son of Tydeus killed the two of them on the spot, he ripped the dear life out of both and left their father tears and wrenching grief. … Next Diomedes killed two sons of Dardan Priam careening on in a single car, Echemmon and Chromius. As a lion charges cattle, calves and heifers browsing the deep glades and snaps their necks, so Tydides pitched them both from the chariot, gave them a mauling – gave them little choice – quickly stripped their gear and passed their team to his men to lash back to the ships.40
The passage is similar enough in flavour to Leonidas’ onscreen performance. Leonidas has personally slain or wounded at least thirteen enemy soldiers in the span of one minute to Diomedes’ eight, and if the names of every Persian he had slain were included, the script would read still more like this passage from Homer. Leonidas plunges his sword into the final fallen body, then looks up to see a mass of Persian soldiers keeping their distance, perhaps 12ft away. Apparently at no point do these Persians see fit to occupy the open space and use their far greater numbers to slay the lone Leonidas. This episode is a purely cinematic construct.
Now that Leonidas’ aristeia is done, the Spartans reform with the goal of pushing the remnants of the Persian attackers off the cliffs and into the sea. This focus on duelling, however, seems to make a mockery of Leonidas’ emphasis on teamwork. And while it may have been the case that some hoplites at Thermopylae or in other battles did break ranks and engage in individual duelling, this was clearly not the expected behaviour. Each person who left the line weakened the line. If anything, our sources indicate that the Spartans did not lose discipline; they simply closed ranks. Certainly that is the gist of Diodorus’ account above. And while Herodotus suggests that the Spartans in particular were not static fighters but would lure the enemy in by faking retreat then turning to attack, both he and Diodorus, when they say anything at all about the Greeks’ formations, say that they were orderly and close ranked.41
Returning to the film, after Leonidas’ aristeia the skies indeed darken with the arrows that blot out the sun, so numerous are they. The camera reveals another advantage of the Spartan shield – it stops arrows. The Spartans crouch under their shields, the arrows lodging in the shields and piercing their cloaks but doing no damage to the men. Next the Persians try a cavalry charge. Leonidas, standing in the front rank looks back at his soldiers and growls, ‘Today, no Spartan dies.’ The phalanx reforms to await the charge – this time in a wedge. Cavalry were used in very limited capacities by Archaic Greeks engaging one another in phalanx battles. The phalanx itself is essentially the best defence against mounted units since, so long as the infantry keep their nerve and hold their place, a horse will not be coaxed or driven to a collision with a wall of men.42 The wedge as a formation was normally used by certain ancient cavalry formations, not infantry, to penetrate an enemy formation; there may not have been any disadvantage for the Spartan infantry to adopt this defensive position, but there is no easily graspable advantage either. It may be that the wedge provided a better scene setup for taking shots of the cavalry troopers’ attacks. In any event, attack is what they do. The Persian cavalry armed with sturdy spears or swords, metal helmets, oblong wicker shields and metal breastplates on top of tunics and trousers. They wear a reasonable enough panoply for heavy cavalry. Herodotus, however, says the Persian cavalry were equipped the same as the infantry except for metal helmets; he makes no mention of breastplates.43 There is an authentic moment where the Spartan captain’s son looks nervous and his father bids him to be calm – a nod to the morale impact of a cavalry charge. While horses will not normally collide with clusters of men, the men may not be aware of that fact and it surely must have taken steel nerves to hold one’s place as animal and rider bore down.
The cavalry close and flow to each side of the Spartan wedge, slashing and stabbing as they pass – authentically enough avoiding collisions. The Spartans stab and slash back as they pass. The shots of this cavalry pass illustrate an important element of cinematic versions of ancient battle. Individual cavalry troopers and soldiers are shown fighting, not the group. Though the establishing shot indicates that a whole formation is attacking, what the audience sees is a series of one-on-one battle shots. The cinematic perspective often highlights such individual attacks, personalizing the battle, bringing it close to the viewer in a way that would be lost if the camera pulled back far enough that all the engaged soldiers were in the shot. What is lost is a sense of the direction of the whole battle at that point. What is gained, however, is a visceral sense of the many individual encounters that made up a unit battle.
At this point in the film the Spartan captain says their Greek allies want to be part of the battle. Leonidas agrees that the Arcadian commander Daxos and twenty of his hand-picked soldiers should ready themselves. It’s a reminder that the battle at Thermopylae was not, by any means fought by Spartans alone. Herodotus and Diodorus are clear throughout their narrative of the first battles that the Persians were fighting ‘the Hellenes’ not simply ‘the Spartans’. They do not suggest any difference in the type of service: all the Greeks are referred to as the troops of Leonidas. With such a narrow space to fight, it seems likely that different contingents of Greek hoplites rotated into the battle as time passed, but our sources are silent on the matter.44
More than twenty minutes of film time have been devoted to the first day of battle. The Spartans have handled everything the Persians have launched at them and slaughtered an enormous number of their foes. Now it is time for Xerxes’ best troops: The Immortals. This follows roughly the account in Diodorus:
Xerxes, seeing that the entire area about the passes was strewn with dead bodies and that the barbarians were not holding out against the valour of the Greeks, sent forward the picked Persians known as the ‘Immortals’, who were reputed to be preeminent among the entire host for their deeds of courage.
The Immortals, however, fared little better than their comrades-in-arms:
But when these also fled after only a brief resistance, then at last, as night fell, they ceased from battle, the barbarians having lost many dead and the Greeks a small number.45
These immortals as Diodorus notes, were an elite unit of soldiers chosen for their courage. Herodotus also refers to these soldiers, even providing an explanation for their name:
These picked ten thousand Persians … were called Immortals for this reason: when any one of them was forced to fall out of the number by death or sickness, another was chosen so that they were never more or fewer than ten thousand. The Persians showed the richest adornment of all, and they were the best men in the army.46
He agrees essentially with Diodorus:
When the Medes had been roughly handled, they retired, and the Persians whom the king called Immortals, led by Hydarnes, attacked in turn. It was thought that they would easily accomplish the task. When they joined battle with the Hellenes, they fared neither better nor worse than the Median army, since they used shorter spears than the Hellenes and could not use their numbers fighting in a narrow space.47
He does provide the additional piece of information that the Immortals were spear fighters. This is corroborated earlier in his account when he describes the standard equipment of the ethnic Persian units, to which the Immortals belonged: sleeved tunics and trousers, wicker shields, spear and dagger, bow and arrows. This equipment suggests that the Persians served as heavy infantry, but with flexible weaponry for ranged attacks.
300 transforms the historical attack of the Immortals into something almost unrecognizable. Indeed, if the narrator did not refer to the attacking group as Immortals there would be no reason to identify them as such. In the film, night falls before the Immortals attack. They are shrouded in black from head to toe, each with a golden mask cast in a fearsome grimace and a metal breastplate. These warriors wield two katana-like blades as their only weapons. Further embellishment appears when one raises his hand. It is shrivelled and blackened like that of a mummy with long, almost talon-like fingernails. The narrator notes:
They have served the dark will of Persian kings for 500 years. Eyes as dark as night. Teeth filed to fangs. Soulless. The personal guard to king Xerxes himself. The Persian warrior elite. The deadliest fighting force in all of Asia. The Immortals.
There is little else to consider in this almost completely fanciful encounter. The Spartans fight the immortals individually and take some casualties. From the perspective of building a good story, the individual duels highlight that of all Xerxes’ troops, only the Immortals can come close to beating the Spartans. From the perspective of illustrating systems of combat, the Spartans have abandoned the very formation Leonidas himself said gave them strength and the formation that, historically, allowed the Greeks to hold the pass for as long as they did. After a bit of fantastic duelling, the Spartans return to their phalanx and the film shows a close-up of hoplites and Immortals struggling.
In its account of the second day, the film embraces the fantastic side for a time. To the crunch of distorted guitars belting out hard rock rhythms, the audience sees a monstrous war-rhinoceros, explosive magical grenades from the magi, a giant man who has crab claw hands, and of course, a gigantic King Xerxes. Eventually the film returns to simpler encounters of Spartans and Persians, but the phalanx again has been abandoned for the more dramatic and less historical duelling. Two Spartans, Stelios (Michael Fassbender) and the captain’s son Astinos (Tom Wisdom), slaughter Persians as a pair, standing perhaps 6–10ft apart from one another. The corpses spread out in the open space around them and a line in the dusty distance is the Persian army. The logic of this scene would suggest that Persians only dispatched skirmishers to fight in this round. By now it should be clear that this fundamentally misrepresents the issue. Historically the Persians en masse were not able to penetrate the phalanx; it was not a matter of individuals duelling. Diodorus highlights this feature again in his account of the second day fighting:
Xerxes, now that the battle had turned out contrary to his expectation, choosing from all the peoples of his army such men as were reputed to be of outstanding bravery and daring, after an earnest exhortation announced before the battle that if they should storm the approach he would give them notable gifts, but if they fled the punishment would be death. These men hurled themselves upon the Greeks as one mighty mass and with great violence, but the soldiers of Leonidas closed their ranks at this time, and making their formation like a wall took up the struggle with ardour. And so far did they go in their eagerness that the lines which were wont to join in the battle by turns would not withdraw but by their ceaseless endurance of the hardship they got the better and slew many of the picked barbarians. The day long they spent in conflict, vying with one another; for the older soldiers challenged the fresh rigor of the youth, and the younger matched themselves against the experience and fame of their elders.48
Fundamentally though, this scene serves the narrative of the film. Astinos will soon die duelling, overwhelming his father the captain with shattering grief and rage. In retaliation, the captain himself goes on a killing spree and the imagery of the phalanx is again left far behind.
Of course, the tragedy of this story, in the historical narrative and the fantastically embellished film, is that the Greeks that stay will die. In the end, Ephialtes, pride wounded by Leonidas, is lured by Xerxes and his appeal to sensual pleasures to betray the location of the goat track that goes over the mountain and circumvents the Spartan position. The other Greeks leave to seek safety – though in reality a number of other Greeks remained at their posts alongside the Spartans.49 A final dialogue between Leonidas and King Xerxes heightens the tragedy and the men, still all Spartans, are pierced by hundreds of arrows raining down on them from all directions. The film ends on a triumphant note, however, for Delios, the narrator of these events has survived. After the loss of one of his eyes Leonidas judged Delios could best serve not by dying with the 300 but by delivering the news. ‘Remember us,’ he tells Delios, ‘Remember why we died.’ And so Delios speaks the words that Herodotus says were carved on a memorial stone, ‘Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law we lie.’50 The brief final scene of the film shows Delios speaking to his Spartan comrades at Plataea, the site of the decisive Greek victory against the Persians. Dilios wraps up his story: ‘From free Greek to free Greek the word was spread. That bold Leonidas and his 300 so far from home laid down their lives. Not just for Sparta but for all Greece and the promise this country holds.’ The Greek army now numbers 30,000 with 10,000 Spartans and Delios encourages, ‘The enemy outnumber us a paltry three-to-one. Good odds for any Greek. This day, we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine.’
There are so many intentionally fantastical elements in 300 that one might well wonder why even include it in a search for models of ancient battle. Indeed even if all magic, all grenades, all fiends, and the 8ft tall god-king Xerxes himself were struck from the film, the frequent return to the deeds of the individual as a warrior fighting alone, undermines the concept of the phalanx. But it is in those moments, when the camera homes in on the phalanx, its members working together and staying in formation, that the film offers a helpful image of the mechanics of hoplite warfare. It is not based on complicated manoeuvres or stratagems, nor is it based on the technical skill of the combatants. In the moments of pushing and pulling, grunting and screaming, and metal clanging on metal, 300 illustrates, first and foremost, that fighting in a phalanx is a test of will, and a test of camaraderie. Secondly, this formation on the right terrain was unstoppable by the looser organizations and weaker equipment of the Persians. Indeed it remained the characteristic formation of Greek armies, though it would undergo something of a transformation under Alexander the Great, to whom we now turn.