Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC): Leonidas and the 300

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in August or September 480 BC at a narrow coastal pass in central Greece, where a small Greek army led by the Spartan king Leonidas held back the vast invasion force of the Persian king Xerxes for three days. Betrayed by a local man who revealed a mountain path, the Greeks were outflanked, and Leonidas died with his rearguard. Although a defeat, the stand became one of the most famous examples of courage and sacrifice in history.

Background: Xerxes’ invasion

Ten years earlier the Athenians had defeated a Persian expedition at Marathon. Darius I planned a much larger campaign but died in 486 BC, and his son Xerxes I took up the plan.

After years of preparation, including a canal cut through the Mount Athos peninsula and supply depots along the route, Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on bridges of boats in spring 480 BC. His army marched through Thrace and Macedonia while a huge fleet followed along the coast.

Many Greek states submitted. Those determined to resist, led by Sparta and Athens, met in a league in 481 BC. After abandoning a first plan to hold the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly, they chose a joint land and sea position: an army would block the pass of Thermopylae while the fleet held the strait at Artemisium off northern Euboea.

The pass and the Greek army

Thermopylae, meaning “hot gates”, took its name from hot sulphur springs. In 480 BC the road ran between steep mountain slopes and the sea, narrowing in places to the width of a cart track. An old wall built by the Phocians stood at the central “gate”, and the Greeks repaired it.

The Greek army was small because Sparta was celebrating the Carneia festival and the Olympic Games were under way, so many states sent only advance forces. Herodotus lists about 3,100 hoplites from the Peloponnese, including 300 Spartans, joined by 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, 1,000 Phocians and the Opuntian Locrians. Modern totals are around 7,000 men, plus Spartan helots and other light troops.

Leonidas I was one of Sparta’s two kings, an Agiad and half-brother of Cleomenes I. He chose for his bodyguard 300 men who had living sons, so that no family line would be extinguished.

According to Herodotus, the Spartans had received an oracle from Delphi at the start of the war. It warned that either Sparta would be sacked by the Persians or the city would mourn the death of a king descended from Heracles. Herodotus believed Leonidas had this prophecy in mind when he chose to stay, although the story may have been shaped after the event.

The choice of position made sound military sense. The narrow pass cancelled out the Persian advantage in numbers and cavalry, while the fleet at Artemisium, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) away by sea, stopped the Persian navy from landing troops behind the army. The two forces kept in touch by fast boats, so each knew how the other was faring. As long as both held, Xerxes could not advance into central Greece.

What happened

Xerxes camped at Trachis and waited four days, reportedly expecting the Greeks to withdraw. Herodotus says that a Persian scout found Spartans exercising and combing their long hair, and that the exiled Spartan king Demaratus explained to Xerxes that this was how Spartans prepared to fight to the death.

On the fifth day the Persians attacked. Median and Cissian troops made repeated frontal assaults but could not break the Greek line in the narrow space, where longer spears, heavier armour and shield walls gave the hoplites the advantage. Herodotus says the Spartans also feigned retreat and then turned on their pursuers.

Xerxes then sent in his elite guard, the Immortals, 10,000 picked troops under Hydarnes. They too failed. The second day of fighting went the same way, with Greek contingents taking turns in the front line.

The deadlock was broken by Ephialtes of Trachis, who, hoping for a reward, told Xerxes of the Anopaea path that ran over the mountains to the rear of the pass. Hydarnes and the Immortals set out at nightfall. At dawn they surprised the 1,000 Phocians guarding the path, who withdrew to a hilltop to make a stand, and the Persians marched past them.

The last stand

Warned by lookouts and deserters, the Greeks held a council. Most contingents withdrew. Leonidas stayed with his 300 Spartans, the 700 Thespians under Demophilus, who refused to leave, and the 400 Thebans. Herodotus claims the Thebans were kept against their will as hostages, but many historians doubt this hostile account.

On the third morning Leonidas led his men out to the wider part of the pass to inflict as many casualties as possible. When their spears broke, they fought with swords. Leonidas was killed, and a fierce fight broke out over his body, which the Greeks recovered four times.

When the Immortals appeared behind them, the survivors withdrew to a small hill behind the Phocian wall. There they fought with swords, hands and teeth until they were overwhelmed by arrows and missiles. Most of the Thebans surrendered. Xerxes is said to have ordered Leonidas’ head to be cut off and his body displayed, an unusual insult for a Persian king.

Key people

Leonidas I (died 480 BC) became king of Sparta around 490 BC. He was married to Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes, a woman noted in ancient sources for her shrewdness.

Xerxes I (ruled 486–465 BC) was the son of Darius I and Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great. He personally led the invasion.

Ephialtes of Trachis was a local Greek. A price was later put on his head, and he was reportedly killed some years afterwards for unrelated reasons.

Dieneces was a Spartan whom Herodotus names as the bravest. Told that Persian arrows would blot out the sun, he is said to have replied that they would then fight in the shade.

Consequences

Herodotus says some 20,000 Persians died at Thermopylae, while the total Greek dead over the three days were about 4,000. Both figures are uncertain, but Persian losses were clearly heavy.

The defeat opened central Greece. The Greek fleet, which had fought for three days at Artemisium, withdrew south. Xerxes marched through Boeotia and occupied Athens, burning the Acropolis, while Athenians were evacuated to Salamis and other places of refuge.

Thermopylae did not halt the invasion, but it delayed it and cost Persia men and time. Within weeks the Greek fleet won at Salamis, and in 479 BC the Persian army was defeated at Plataea.

Of the 300 Spartans, two survived because they were absent. Aristodemus, sent away with an eye infection, was shamed on his return and died fighting recklessly at Plataea. Another, Pantites, who had been sent as a messenger, is said to have hanged himself.

Myths and facts

Myth: only 300 men held the pass. The 300 were Spartan citizens within an army of several thousand. On the last day the Thespians, who stayed by choice, outnumbered the Spartans more than two to one.

Myth: the Persians were a horde of slaves. Xerxes’ army was a multi-ethnic imperial force of subject levies built around professional units such as the Immortals. Ancient Greek writers and modern films have exaggerated both its size and its barbarism.

Fact with a later source: “Come and take them”. The famous reply of Leonidas to a demand to hand over weapons, in Greek “molon labe”, appears in Plutarch, writing almost 600 years later, not in Herodotus. It may be a later embellishment.

The Spartans were buried where they fell. An epitaph attributed to the poet Simonides, best known in English as “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie”, was inscribed on the site.

Legacy

Thermopylae became the classic example of a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds. It was celebrated in ancient poetry and history, revived in the age of Romanticism with paintings such as Jacques-Louis David’s of 1814, and invoked in later wars from the Greek War of Independence to the 20th century.

In 1955 a bronze statue of Leonidas was erected at the site, inscribed with the words “molon labe”. In popular culture the story reached a mass audience through the comic book 300 and its 2006 film adaptation, which present a highly stylised version. Historians such as Paul Cartledge have used such interest to explore the real battle and Spartan society, shaped by the laws attributed to Lycurgus.

Timeline

• 486 BC: Darius I dies; Xerxes I succeeds and continues invasion plans.
• 481 BC: Greek states opposed to Persia form an alliance.
• 480 BC, spring: Xerxes crosses the Hellespont.
• 480 BC, summer: Greeks abandon Tempe and occupy Thermopylae and Artemisium.
• 480 BC, August or September: Persians attack the pass for two days; Immortals outflank the Greeks via the Anopaea path; Leonidas’ rearguard is destroyed on the third day.
• 480 BC, September: Persians occupy Athens; Greek naval victory at Salamis.
• 479 BC: Persian army defeated at Plataea.
• 1955: Leonidas monument unveiled at Thermopylae.

Why it matters

Thermopylae was a military defeat that became a moral victory. It bought time for the Greek alliance, showed that the Persian army could be held, and gave the Western world one of its most enduring images of sacrifice for freedom.