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The 300 Spartans is a 1962 film depicting the Battle of Thermopylae. Made with the cooperation of the Greek government, it was shot in the village of Perachora in the Peloponnese. It starred Richard Egan as the Spartan king Leonidas, Ralph Richardson as Themistocles of Athens and David Farrar as Persian king Xerxes, with Diane Baker as Ellas and Barry Coe as Phylon providing the requisite romantic element in the film. In the film, a force of Greek warriors led by 300 Spartans fights against a Persian army of almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans will not flee or surrender, even if it means their deaths.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persians in one of history's most famous last stands, though eventually succumbed to a Persian victory. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I of Persia (Xerxes the Great) could pass. After two and a half days of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes is believed to have betrayed the Greeks by revealing a goat path that led behind the Greek lines.

The Greeks were represented by "three hundred Spartan armed men; one thousand from Tegea and Mantinea, half from each place; one hundred and twenty from Orchomenus in Arcadia and one thousand from the rest of Arcadia; that many Arcadians, four hundred from Corinth, two hundred from Phlius, and eighty Mycenaeans. These were the Peloponnesians present; from Boeotia there were seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebans." In the final battle, when an ensuing Persian victory appeared imminent, most of the Greeks retreated but Leonidas and some others stayed to fight. Though they "knew that they must die at the hands of the Persians, they displayed the greatest strength they had."

Greek preparations

The Greek high strategy is confirmed by an oration later in the same century:

But while Greece showed these inclinations [to join the Persians], the Athenians, for their part, embarked in their ships and hastened to the defence of Artemisium; while the Spartans and some of their allies went off to make a stand at Thermopylae, judging that the narrowness of the ground would enable them to secure the passage.

Herodotus writes

The force with Leonidas was sent forward by the Spartans in advance of their main body, that the sight of them might encourage the allies to fight, and hinder them from going over to the Medes, as was likely they might have done had they seen that Sparta was backward. They intended presently, when they had celebrated the Carneian Festival, which was what now kept them at home, to leave a garrison in Sparta, and hasten in full force to join the army. The rest of the allies intended to act similarly; for it happened that the Olympic Festival fell exactly at this same period. None of them looked to see the contest at Thermopylae decided so speedily; wherefore they were content to send forward a mere advance guard. Such accordingly were the intentions of the allies.

The overall commander of Greek forces was Leonidas, who was generally admired.Herodotus writes that he was convinced he was going to certain death, as his forces were not adequate for a victory, and so selected only men with living sons. Plutarch mentions in his Sayings of Spartan Women that, after encouraging him, Leonidas' wife Gorgo asked what she should do on his departure. He replied, "Marry a good man, and have good children."

Battle

Failure of the frontal assault

Xerxes waited four days for the Greek force to disperse. On the fifth day he sent Medes and Cissians, along with relatives of those who had died ten years earlier in the battle of Marathon, to take the Greeks prisoner and bring them before him. They soon found themselves in a frontal assault. The Greeks had camped on either side of the rebuilt Phocian wall. The wall was guarded and the Greeks fought in front of it.

Details of the tactics are scant. Diodorus says "the men stood shoulder to shoulder" and the Greeks were "superior in valor and in the great size of their shields." The formation being described is the standard Greek phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and layered spear points, which would only have been effective if it spanned the width of the pass. Herodotus says that the units for each state were kept together. The small shields and shorter spears of the Persians were not a match for the superior armament of the Greek hoplites. The Greeks killed so many Medes that Xerxes is said to have started up off the seat from which he was watching the battle three times. According to Ctesias, the first wave was "cut to pieces" with only two or three Spartans dead.

According to Herodotus and Diodorus, the king, having taken the measure of the enemy, threw his best troops into a second assault on the same day: the Immortals, an elite corps of 10,000 men. Ctesias tells a totally different story, that Xerxes sent another 20,000 troops against the Greeks, after the first 10,000 under Artapanus were defeated. They also failed to open the pass even though they were flogged by their leaders to press on. Although there might have been 10,000 Medes, the Immortals were only 10,000 and as elite troops it would not have been necessary to flog them. On the second day Xerxes sent, according to Ctesias, another 50,000 men to assault the pass, but again they failed. Xerxes at last stopped the assault and withdrew to his camp, totally perplexed.

Encirclement of the Greeks

Late on the second day of battle, as the Persian king was pondering what to do next, he received a windfall: a Malian Greek traitor named Ephialtes informed him of a path around Thermopylae and offered to guide the Persian army. Ephialtes was motivated by the desire of a reward. For this act, the name of Ephialtes received a lasting stigma, coming to mean "nightmare" and becoming the archetypal term for a "traitor" in Greek.

In Herodotus, Xerxes sends his commander Hydarnes to flank the pass with the men under his command, but he does not say who those men are. Hydarnes commanded the Immortals, but they had been cut to pieces the day before. Ctesias tell a different story, asserting that 40,000 troops were sent around the pass conducted by the leaders of the Trachinians. The stories can be reconciled by presuming that Hydarnes was given overall command of an enhanced force including what was left of the Immortals, but it is only a presumption. The path led from east of the Persian camp along the ridge of Mt. Anopaea behind the cliffs that flanked the pass. It branched with one path leading to Phocis and the other down to the Gulf of Malis at Alpenus, first town of Locris. Leonidas had stationed 1,000 Phocian volunteers on the heights to guard that path.

Their first warning of the approach of the Persians at daybreak was the rustling of oak leaves. Herodotus says that they jumped up and were greatly amazed. Hydarnes was perhaps as amazed to see them hastily arming themselves as they were to see him and the Persian forces. He feared that they were Spartans, but was enlightened by Ephialtes and proceeded by firing "showers of arrows" at them. The Phocians retreated to the crest of the mountain to make their stand, but the Persians took the left branch of the pass to Alpenus and hence circled behind the main Greek force.

Last stand of the Greeks

Learning that the Phocians had not held, Leonidas called a council of war at dawn. Some Greeks argued for withdrawal, while others pledged to stay. After the council, many of the Greek forces did choose to withdraw.] Herodotus believed that Leonidas blessed their departure with an order, but he also offered the alternative point of view that those retreating forces departed without orders. The Spartans had pledged themselves to fight to the death. However, a contingent of about 700 Thespians, led by general Demophilus, the son of Diadromes, refused to leave with the other Greeks, but cast their lot with the Spartans.

The Greeks this time sallied forth from the wall to meet the Persians in the wider part of the pass in an attempt to slaughter as many Persians as they could. They fought with spears until every spear was shattered and then switched to xiphoi (short swords). In this struggle, Herodotus states that two brothers of Xerxes fell: Abrocomes and Hyperanthes. Leonidas also died in the assault and they fought over his body, the Greeks taking possession.

Receiving intelligence that Ephialtes and the Immortals were advancing toward the rear, the Greeks withdrew and took a stand on a hill behind the wall. The Thebans "moved away from their companions, and with hands upraised, advanced toward the barbarians..." (Rawlinson translation), but a few were slain before their surrender was accepted. The king later had the Theban prisoners branded with the royal mark. Of the remaining defenders Herodotus says: "Here they defended themselves to the last, those who still had swords using them, and the others resisting with their hands and teeth; ...." Tearing down part of the wall, Xerxes ordered the hill surrounded and the Persians rained down arrows until the last Greek was dead. In 1939 the archaeologist, Spyridon Marinatos, excavating at Thermopylae found large numbers of Persian bronze arrowheads on Kolonos Hill, changing the identification of the hill on which the Greeks died from a smaller one nearer the wall.