The Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE was propelled into the pop-culture stratosphere by Zack Snyder’s 2006 hit movie 300. Based on the 1998 comic by Frank Miller, it sticks fairly closely to the tale told by Herodotus, writing some 50 years after the battle. Herodotus’ story, sometimes mistaken, sometimes exaggerated, and now and again entirely false, is almost universally accepted. It is the standing narrative everyone knows about what is arguably the most famous battle in human history.
This narrative is almost certainly common knowledge to readers of this magazine: that the Spartan Agiad king Leonidas boldly advanced to hold the pass with just 300 Spartans, fated to die by the pronouncement of the Oracle at Delphi. He bravely held the pass against unimaginable odds, facing down the numberless army of Xerxes,
