“Beyond Glory and Guts: Unveiling the Untold Secrets of the Spartan 300”
Now, while bringing a massively larger number than just 300 soldiers, the 8000 or so were still a miniscule amount compared to the army attacking. As to why so few here, at the time many Greeks were observing different religious festivals, like the festival of Carneia for the Spartans, and the Olympic festival for the other Greeks. The movie, 300, takes a strange stance against Greek religion, but Leonidas and much of Sparta were well regarded for being more pious than other Greeks. Leonidas himself respected oracles to the point that he accepted his later death due to an oracle predicting he would either die, or Sparta would be captured. That said, some historians think these “festivals” excuses were actually just a cover for the Greeks’ own uncertainty about the league, and that the city-states wanted to hedge their bets and keep the majority of their forces closer to their respective homes.
Whatever the case, when the two forces initially faced one another, no action happened for the first five days. Ultimately Persian spies observed that the Greeks, specifically the Spartans, were just lounging about during this time combing their long and luxurious hair. On this one, traditionally, Spartans wore their hair long as a sort of flex against their enemies and took exceptionally good care of it. It was at this point that Xerxes sent men from two different nations against the Greeks, which they were able to fight off with few casualties.
Next, Xerxes sent the Immortals to fight, with the name supposedly referencing that when one man would fall, another would be assigned immediately to take his place in the force, such that it never diminished in number. Whatever the case there, these were the Persian kings’ crack bodyguards, which numbered between 10,000 to 15,000 men and were drawn from Persian nobility and from the nobility of nations culturally close to the Persians. Unfortunately for these troops, this wave of Immortals was at a disadvantage because their spears were shorter than the Greeks’. Noteworthy here on this is that the Greeks did indeed push some of them into the waters off the cliff of Thermopylae as depicted in the film.
