ANCIENT GREEK CITY IN MOVIE 300 FULL
It was narrow enough (perhaps a few hundred feet at the time) that the Persians couldn’t bring their full forces to bear on an enemy, meaning the outnumbered Greeks could face them on even footing. Situated where steep mountains ran nearly into the sea, the pass was the only clear path available to an army bent on invading the Greek homeland.
The pass at Thermopylae was a natural choice. Together, they settled on a plan : If they could force the Persians to meet them in battle at points where the Greeks had a territorial advantage, they might be able to eke out a victory. The normally antagonistic Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta chief among them, had already brokered a fairly unprecedented alliance in the face of what they realized was a shared existential threat. The Greeks, who’d been keeping a wary eye on the Persian warmongering, knew they had few chances to defeat the far larger enemy forces. A similarly massive Persian navy also set sail for Greece around this time. With preparations complete, the Persians began their long march from modern-day Turkey, across the Hellespont and around the northern shore of the Aegean Sea. Xerxes also had a massive canal dug through the isthmus of Mount Athos for his ships, and engineers constructed a massive bridge made of boats lashed together across the Hellespont, a narrow canal (though still almost a mile wide at its narrowest) that separates Europe and Asia. (Credit: Bibi Saint-Pol/CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons) Supply caches were stored along the route beforehand for the hungry soldiers, including great piles of salted meat and grain for the horses. Preparations for the invasion of Greece took around four years, and involved an impressive logistical outlay.
Though historical estimates suggested the Persians numbered in the millions, more recent figures put their army at around 300,000 men or less - still a considerable force. To do so, the Persians assembled a massive army, pulling soldiers from all regions of their considerable empire. The newly-crowned Persian ruler, Xerxes I, decided to pick up where his father, Darius I, had left off and conquer the pesky Greek city-states. The Persians were also upset at the Greeks’ role in supporting the Ionian revolt, which had recently upended the eastern regions of the Persian Empire. Why was there an invading army in the first place? The answer lies in part with the failure of the first Greco-Persian war, a decade earlier, which ended in the Persian defeat at the Battle of Marathon (now famous for the race that bears its name).
At a certain point, this route necessarily goes through a narrow pass, named Thermopylae. Because much of Greece is mountainous, the invading Persians were forced to take a fairly non-linear approach to the Greek heartland, one that wound its way along the coast. Thermopylae is located in the southern part of the Greek mainland, near the coast. (Credit: Therese Clutario/CC by 2.0/Wikimedia Commons). Iron arrowheads and spearheads were found in the Koinos hill, where the last defenders of the Thermopyles fell, slain by the arrows of the enemy. Some recent archaeological work, such as the discovery of Persian arrow points, also helps to bolster the historical record of the battle. ” Their accounts largely line up with each other, though they do disagree on a few minor points. The history of the Battle of Thermopylae comes to us today from a few ancient Greek historians, including Herodotus, the “ Father of History. Add in hubris, betrayals and eminently quotable speeches, and you’ve got the recipe for one great story. It’s also a potent example of an outnumbered force using military and tactical advantages to their utmost and exacting a heavy toll on their enemy. But the battle lives on to the present day largely due to the ideals of sacrifice, bravery and patriotism it represented. It’s little spoiler to say the Greeks lost. Perhaps better known today as “that battle from the movie 300 ,” the Battle of Thermopylae was an epic, three-day face-off between a small group of Greek soldiers and the massive Persian Army in 480 B.C. And there is perhaps no better precedent for this archetype than one of the first such examples in recorded history: The Battle of Thermopylae. There are few more captivating tropes in storytelling than the doomed band of heroes facing off against a far superior force.
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