SPARTA’S LAST STAND

In 480 BC Xerxes, the great king of Persia, headed west into Europe with a massive force – allegedly more than 2 million fighting men and 1,207 warships. He was, by all accounts, a formidable foe. “I am Xerxes, the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide,” proclaimed the official documents of a monarch whose kingdom stretched from the Balkans to the fringes of the Indian subcontinent. And now, this powerful ruler had come to crush the Greeks, determined to avenge the embarrassing defeat that his father, Darius, had suffered at their hands at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

Charged with stopping Xerxes’ forces was King Leonidas from the city-state of Sparta, leading 300 Spartan soldiers. Spartan citizens, known as the homoioi (equals), were well-versed in the arts of war. They had all been trained in the same brutal, compulsory, state-run education regime, which Plato characterises as “systematic training in the endurance of pain”. They kept their hair and beards long and wore uniforms of scarlet cloaks and tunics.

The Spartans joined up with around 6,000 soldiers from southern and central Greece, including 400 men from Thebes (called Thebans) and 700 from Thespiae (known as Thespians). Both city-states were in Boeotia, a region in central Greece. Leonidas set about making his defence of Greece at Thermopylae (the ‘Hot Gates’), a narrow pass through the mountains on the main line of communication between northern and central Greece. At its thinnest point, a stretch around 20 metres long, the pass was only 15.5 metres wide, with sheer cliffs on one