Reading Like a Historian Battle of Thermopylae Answers
In 480 BC, the male monarch of Persia invaded Greece. As the ruler of a vast empire, Xerxes brought with him the greatest army Greece had ever seen, and for four months this massive force rolled s through the country unopposed. City after metropolis surrendered.
But Xerxes's campaign came to a juddering cease when his army reached the laissez passer of Thermopylae in central Greece, where he found a Greek army waiting, led past the Spartan king Leonidas. The battle that followed has gone downward in history as the mother of all concluding stands.
The battle for the pass
Equally you lot approach Thermopylae (about 200 kilometres from modernistic Athens) from the north, the mountains loom earlier you like a wall. At the time of the invasion the view was more daunting withal. Changes in the sea level mean that these days, the hills at Thermopylae now skirt an alluvial plain [a mainly flat landform]. But in 480 BC, the sea washed up to the base of steep hills and the pass was narrow: five metres wide at most at each end, and no more than 15 metres even in the middle.
The opposing Greek force was small, not much more than than 7,000, with 300 Spartans at its cadre. Only it was stuck similar a cork in a bottle. To advance due south, Xerxes had to accept the pass – and time was not on his side. It was late summer, and he needed to wrap up the whole invasion every bit far equally possible before winter. His army was vast: ancient sources put its numbers in the millions, although mod historians incline to about 200,000. Even fifty,000 would accept been huge by ancient standards. Xerxes knew that if he delayed, he faced supply issues. He needed to feed and water non just the warriors but a host of camp followers, cavalry mounts and baggage animals – plus an immense and lavish imperial retinue. So, he was under pressure.
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The Greeks were heavily outnumbered. But the tight space meant that the Persians could non use their vast numbers to shell them. And they could not utilise the tactics that had made them masters of the earth from the Aegean to the Indus: breaking the enemy with volley after volley of arrows from a distance, before moving in to annihilate them. Xerxes's forcefulness instead had to resort to the brutal hacking clash of infantry lines at close quarters: the Greek way of fighting. Worse still, the sheer numbers of the Western farsi force counted against them, since in this confined space they were at constant adventure of existence crushed by their own side.
For ii days, Xerxes threw division subsequently division into the pass. All came dorsum mauled – even his aristocracy corps of 10,000 'Immortals'. Simply there were paths through the hills, and one in particular led forth the mount overlooking the laissez passer to a point behind the Greek lines. Alerted to the path by a local Greek, at dusk on the 2nd day Xerxes sent his Immortals to fix to outflank the Greeks on the morning of mean solar day three.
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Surrounded by the enemy
When Leonidas learned of the encirclement early on the third day, he called a meeting. They still had time to withdraw, merely Leonidas and what was left of his 300 Spartans insisted on staying. So, likewise, did the contingent of 700 from the aboriginal Greek city of Thespiae. Since their city in the nearby region of Boeotia was in the path of whatsoever Persian advance, they had good reason to lay downward their lives. Four hundred Thebans also stayed (only to desert at the terminate).
Leonidas needed a rear-guard to hold back the Persians – and die, if necessary...
The rest of the Greek force chose to leave. The historian Herodotus, smashing to lionise Leonidas, tells us that the leader sent the allies away to spare their lives and win immortal glory. Although neither motive can be dismissed, it's probable that the master reason was strategic. The Persians (different the Greeks) had cavalry, which could overtake and destroy the retreating forces. To buy time for the retreating troops, Leonidas needed a rear-guard to concur dorsum the Persians – and die, if necessary.
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The rear-guard held their ain, despite losing their commander Leonidas amidst vicious, drawn-out fighting . But then the Immortals arrived, and the Greeks had to retreat to a low colina. The vicious hand-to-hand fighting had cleaved their spears and swords, only they fought on with daggers, hands and teeth until the Persians tired of unnecessary losses and shot them down with pointer volleys. Arrowheads of Anatolian blueprint accept been found in large numbers on the colina past modern archaeologists.
Thermopylae was a Greek defeat. The rear-guard was annihilated and the Persians rolled on to occupy fundamental Greece. But Thermopylae did – crucially – prove that the Persian war machine could be stopped. It likewise tested the Greek strategy of using confined infinite to neutralise Persian numbers, a strategy that later proved devastatingly constructive when the Greeks destroyed the Persian armada in the narrow strait of Salamis just a month or then later on.
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Where does the myth of 300 Spartans come up from?
Win or lose, the battle achieved mythic status almost at once, like the British retreat at Dunkirk in 1940, or the massacre of the defenders at the Alamo mission in Texas in 1836. And information technology became Sparta'due south myth. The 300 Spartans were a minority of the defending force – not but in the ground forces but even in the last stand – only the clash became the boxing of the Spartan 300, not the Greek 7,000, in popular imagination.
It was Thermopylae that created the myth that Spartans always win or die...
It also served to polish Sparta'due south already formidable reputation for invincibility. In the fifth century BC, Herodotus recounts how Xerxes (before Thermopylae) asked the exiled Spartan rex Damaratus how free Greeks could stand against him without being forced to fight under the lash. Damaratus replied that the Spartans, though free, take a main whom they fear more than the Persians: their king and the law, which tells them not to retreat, but to stand and dice. This wasn't strictly true; the Spartans knew how to retreat. It was Thermopylae that created the myth that Spartans always win or dice.
Equally useful for Sparta's image were stories of Spartans who made the mistake of surviving. One such story is that of Aristodemus, who was one of two Spartans invalided out of the battle due to an centre infection. His comrade, Eurytus, was blinded –but he returned to the battle to fight and die. Aristodemus, meanwhile, went home. He was ostracised and his life was fabricated and so unbearable that he preferred to die as a berserker fighting against the Persians a yr later. The Spartans still refused to forgive him, even then. The message was articulate: no 2d chances in Sparta.
Later on sources nowadays the whole campaign equally a suicide trek...
Most strikingly, later sources present the whole entrada every bit a suicide expedition, having Leonidas tell the authorities at Sparta earlier the boxing that his real goal is to dice for Hellenic republic. But 7,000 seems a large force to send out simply to dice for no strategic goal. And the story works simply for the 300 Spartans, not the 6,000+ allies. Certainly, those who left on the third twenty-four hours did not think they had joined a suicide team. The story reflects the trend nosotros all take to 'read history backwards' and run into the outcome as both inevitable and anticipated. It normally isn't.
Thermopylae also generated proliferating stories of Spartan courage under burn down, always tied to the Spartan reputation as 'men of deeds' not words. The Spartan soldier Dieneces, when told that the Farsi arrows would blot out the lord's day, is said to take replied calmly: "Skilful news; we'll exist fighting in the shade." A after story adds to this reputation: when the Persians demanded that the Spartans manus over their weapons, Leonidas answered "Come and get them" (words now inscribed on his statues in Sparta and at Thermopylae).
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Thermopylae became the archetype for the mettlesome final stand. In modern times, it has been used and driveling as the yardstick for courageous cede against the odds. Information technology has been used to glorify genuine tales of courage – such as the stand of the Indian and British forces at Kohima, in north-eastward Republic of india, against the Japanese invasion in the Second Globe State of war, or the mettlesome action of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 on nine/eleven confronting the terrorists who hijacked the plane (the aircraft crashed in a field, prevented from reaching its intended target).
Also, ironically, Thermopylae has been used to glorify imperialist failures – such as the defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam in 1954 during the endmost years of French control in Indo-China, or the British defeat by the Zulus at Isandlwana in KwaZulu-Natal in 1879. It was invoked, too, at the catastrophic German failure at Stalingrad during the German invasion of Russia in the Second Globe War.
There's no dubiousness that the events of Thermopylae in 480 BC live on, in our history, our popular culture and beyond.
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Chris Carey is Emeritus Professor of Greek at University College London. He is the author of Thermopylae, part of the Cracking Battles serial, published past Oxford University Press in August 2019
Reading Like a Historian Battle of Thermopylae Answers
Source: https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-history-guide-battle-thermopylae-300-spartans-last-stand-leonidas-xerxes/
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