“Beyond Glory and Guts: Unveiling the Untold Secrets of the Spartan 300”
A famous epitaph was later written that commemorated all the Greeks that fought there with a section for the Spartans with the famous line “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we died here obedient to our laws.”
On the other end of things, the Battle of Artemisium didn’t fare much better for the Greeks. Before the battle began, a storm did destroy some of the Persian ships, but the Greeks lost anyway.
After Thermopylae, Xerxes captured Athens and destroyed it. At which point it looked like all of Greece was about to be conquered by Xerxes. That is, until the battle of Salamis. Noteworthy on this one, unlike Leonidas, Eurybiades survived the previous battle he led, and ultimately commanded the battle at the straits of Salamis against Xerxes’ fleet. In this one, the Greeks won and it was a major turning point in the war. These two battles are the subject of 300’s sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire.
The movie is framed as a story told by a survivor of Thermopolaye to the Greeks before the battle of Plataea. He is based on a real survivor of the battle, Aristodemus. Aristodemus had an eye disease that kept him from participating, and Leonidas did order him back, but he was not well received in Sparta when he arrived, being treated with disgust for being deemed a coward for leaving. That said, Aristodemus ultimately died in the battle of Plataea heroically enough to redeem his name in Sparta. This battle took place in 479 and was another victory for the Greeks. From there, they recaptured Athens, battled the rest of the Persian navy at Mycale, and were able to repel them back to Asia Minor.
