One must note that before criticizing the movie’s accuracy, it was based off of a Frank Miller graphic novel. Unlike other movies (such as The Patriot and Braveheart), this movie is obviously cannot even pretend to look 100% accurate. The movie 300, released in early March, is perhaps the most extreme movie that is based off history. Frank Miller's translation of the famous words at the burial mound at Thermopylae. True, the Thebans were there largely because they were anti-Persia rebels their own society disapproved of and they had nothing to lose.Go tell the Spartans, passerby, That here, by Spartan law, we lie. True, Leonidas could only muster a handful of Spartans and fought hard. You know who got screwed in all the myth-building and legends surrounding Thermopylae? The Thespians. The Spartans were so glad he was dead, they paid out anyway. Ironically, he did manage to survive the battle, even with a price on his head: He died in 470 BC, killed by Athenades of Trachis, for unrelated reasons. He had no profound, sympathetic reason to sell the Spartans up the river he was just kind of a dick.Įssentially, he thought the Persians were going to win, and he wanted money and to be on the side of the people he thought were going to be enslaving people left and right. Makes for a great story, but Ephialtes was actually from Trachis and as far as we know, was a completely normally formed guy. The rest would have stayed too, but Leonidas specifically ordered them to retreat so there were more soldiers to deal with the Persians when they broke through. A fighting force of 1400 men stayed behind, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans in addition to the Spartans. So what about that famous last stand? Only 300 Spartans stuck around for that, right? Nope. The primary historical source for the battle, Herodotus, actually pegs the 300 Spartan hoplites as just a small part of a 5,200 strong fighting force. The Athenians were going to attack via the sea, while a fighting force at Thermopylae would bottle up the Persians and starve them out. It makes a great story, but it’s also a crock, and not just because the Spartans were so “noble” they murdered slaves for giggles.įirst of all, the Battle of Thermopylae was part of a larger defensive operation. The movie would have you believe “noble Sparta” was the sole defense for freedom against an overwhelming enemy. That’s why Leonidas only showed up with his “personal bodyguard,” that’s all he could bring under the law and by religious strictures.įar More Than Just The 300 Spartans Showed Up At Thermopylae
FACTS ABOUT THE MOVIE 300 FULL
They were planning to show up during the festival of Carneia and during the Olympic games, and getting the full Spartan army together to go kick some ass would have violated the Olympic truce and been sacrilege into the bargain. Give this to the Persians: The timing was a complete accident, but it worked in their favor.
In reality, what screwed Leonidas was the Olympics. In the movie, Leonidas is screwed by a slimy rapist in a town meeting. Leonidas Wasn’t Prevented From Bringing More Men By Internal Corruption Oh, and did we mention the Greeks were much better armed?
Secondly, Xerxes spent a week farting around after demanding the Greeks give up and settle on nicer land before attacking, giving them plenty of time to fortify the pass. So Xerxes was essentially sending his men into a death-trap, something everybody involved knew. In fact, there have been a lot of battles at Thermopylae, and again and again, it did not end well for whoever was trying to chase someone up the pass. Secondly, Xerxes was, in military parlance, “an idiot.” Thermopylae was nicknamed “The Gates Of Hell” for two reasons: One, the bubbling hot springs nearby, and two, the fact that it was a deathtrap. But modern scholars put it at 70,000 to 300,000 a lot of men, and undeniably outnumbering the Greeks by orders of magnitude, but not exactly the vast army of the movies. To be fair to the movie, the primary historical source for the battle claims that there were millions of Persians on the beaches, and even more conservative estimates put it at 800,000. The Persians Weren’t A Vast, Clever Fighting Force Here are five reasons that 300 is ridiculously historically inaccurate. Too bad the movie itself is way more boring than what actually happened. Nobody expected an adaptation of an obscure Frank Miller graphic novel to be a massive hit, but a massive hit it was, launching several careers and helping to cement the rise of the comic book movie in the popular imagination.
0 kommentar(er)
