h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I saw 300 three days ago. I thought it was a very entertaining film, but it can't be taken seriously. Remember this is a film based on a graphic novel. That's not so far away from a comic, and it should be regarded with this same cartoonish outlook. Look at it that way and you will enjoy it. There are several points I'd quite like to make, though.

**SOME SMALL SPOILERS COMING UP** (not major ones, because the basics of the plotline is contained in the Entry).

I think that the film is probably quite similar to the story the Spartans would have told after the battle. Most Spartans (and Greeks in general) truly believed the Persian 'barbarians' to be inferior beings, and no doubt believed that various supernatural monsters fought in their army. The Persians had access to elephants, but there is no record of them being used in the battle, and they would not have been as big as the ones portrayed in the film. The rhinoceros is very fanciful.

It must be remembered that, though the Spartans talk about freedom and how Persians are oppressed, Sparta was not a liberal state. In fact, it has similarities with Nazi Germany. Greeks had slaves, and Sparta had an entire race (the Helots) to till their fields. A9565437 (my own entry - shameless plug ) has more information on the 'real' Sparta. The portrayal of the society of Sparta is accurate in other respects, such as in the Spartan male's complete devotion to martial pursuits.

Persian society did not have a formal slave structure in the same way as the Spartan. But I do not doubt that most of the Persian soldiers (most of the infantry, excepting the Immortals) did not really want to be at the battle. They were not professional soldiers and so would rather have been at home tending their crops or doing whatever they normally did.

Leonidas refers to the Athenians as 'boy-lovers'. And yet in Sparta homosexuality was common. Men lived together in communal barracks. To quote from my entry: "After the age of 12, the Spartan teenager was expected to take a young adult warrior as his lover and teacher (called an 'inspirer'; the child was the 'hearer'). Though the relationship was usually sexual, it was more than that; responsibility of educating the youth in the Spartan way of life fell mostly on this mentor."

However, Spartan women did indeed have a great deal of freedom. Their men did little other than fight, and did not live with their wives until they were aged 30.

The Oracle has been moved to Sparta, rather than at Delphi. The Ephors, by the way, were not horribly disfigured or anything of the sort. Their function as limits on the king's power is correct, however. On a side note, the film makes no mention that Sparta was a dyarchy, ie, had two kings.

Ephialtes was not disfigured in reality and neither was he Spartan. He was simply a local man who wanted to be made rich by leading the Persians to victory.

I don't know much about it, but I don't think there is any source that tells us of Queen Gorgo's exploits in persuading the Spartan government to send aid to Leonidas.

More on 300's relation to history here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3012/

There have been debates about the political issues the film supposedly raises. Yes, it's not exactly flattering to the Persians, who had a flourishing and highly 'civilised' culture. That's why it's important to view this film as a depiction of the *myth* of Thermopylae, rather than any kind of truth. It exaggerates everything, from the numbers of the Persian army to the height of the Persian King Xerxes. The film shows Dilios (historically Aristodemus played a similar role to him) telling the story to a group of Spartans. This is how it should be treated. Storytellers always exaggerate.

A far better point to take from it is that a superpower is invading a tiny collection of states.

It was 2500 years ago that East and West first went to war. Early in the 5th Century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, whose kings had founded the first world empire, incomparably rich in ambition, gold and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the most powerful man on the planet and defeated him is as heart-stopping as any episode in history.
- Tom Holland, Persian Fire.

Note how we regard the 'terrorists' here as the 'good guys' in Western culture.

Oh, one more thing: the Persians would not have used any gunpowder-like substance the 'magicians' pelt the Spartans with in the film.

Dear laconian,

Please note that, although understandably attempting to make a fashionable contemporary analogy, your description of Athens and Sparta as terrorist states on the edge of a Persian superpower implies Athens and Sparta terrorized Persia or its interests - which never occurred as far as we read from historians. In fact, they were more like competing superpowers: centers of military and political power that developed their own advanced sciences, arts, and cultures. As powerful neighbors, they eventually had competing interests and this led to conflict. In order to make your current-day comparison, you use the term "terrorist" incorrectly to describe Greek city-states with laws and civilized citizens that laid the foundation for our modern society today.

Sure, they used slaves and were just developing the first principles of democracy (as well as medicine, mathematics, physics, literature, astronomy, sculpture, architecture, theater, wine-making, philosophy, etc.), but all ancient societies had some type of slave until then. The Greek city-states gradually allowed them to earn citizenship and the right to vote as they developed and learned that paying people for a job would be better than providing food and shelter to them in exchange of their slave labor (as well as the moral issues of owning another human being that eventually came up, of course).

However, Greeks in general - and Spartans and Athenians in particular - did not terrorize Persia. They fought several wars in recorded history to defend Greece (or the Hellenic League as mentioned in the previous article) from invading Persian armies bent on imperial domination. Fortunately, the Greeks succeeded in the defense of their blossoming way of life.

Clearly, history is usually written by the prevailing side of any struggle - but this does not mean that history is a cycle of terrorists prevailing over imperialists! Remember the Middle Ages (a.k.a. the Dark Ages) followed the amazing and productive Egyptian/Phoenician/Persian/Macedonian/Hellenic/Roman empires and did not really advance our way of life until the Renaissance brought on a renewed development of art, knowledge, and technology.

Best regards, m.

I think at this point in history Greece was far from the powerhouse it was in the Classical Period. My terrorist analogy is does not in any way imply they were 'barbaric', which you seem to be getting at when you talk about the slaves.

It seems to me Persia saw the Greek city-states, especially Athens and Sparta, as threats to its interest, and possible rivals to their future domination of the Aegean if they were not checked. To your average Persian they would have been considered terrorists.

"They fought several wars in recorded history to defend Greece (or the Hellenic League as mentioned in the previous article) from invading Persian armies bent on imperial domination"

Ever heard the phrase 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'? That's what I am trying to get at.