Far-sighted Themistocles. Several years have passed since the Battle of Marathon. The Persians began to be gradually forgotten in Greece, and in Athens itself. On Athenian coins, a sprig of laurel, a symbol of victory, was added to the image of the goddess Athena. It seemed that the Persians, having learned a lesson at Marathon, would no longer venture into Hellas. Only the most far-sighted Athenians thought that a new Persian invasion was inevitable, and among them the outstanding figure of Athenian democracy, Themistocles. When a new rich deposit of silver was discovered in Attica, from which coins were minted, and some proposed dividing the unexpected wealth little by little among all citizens, Themistocles convinced the people's assembly of something else: with this money it was decided to build warships, and since then the Athenian fleet of 200 The trireme became the strongest in Greece.
The fact is that Themistocles understood perfectly well: on land, the Athenians had no chance of victory over the countless hordes of the Persian king. In this sense, the Marathon victory was only an accident: the arrogant Persians believed that the Greeks would be intimidated by their name and appearance alone. In a naval war, the wise Athenian believed, the fight would be on equal terms, and it was still unknown to whom the gods would grant victory.
Xerxes asserts himself in power. Meanwhile, the old king Darius died in Persia. It took his successor Xerxes several years to destroy his rivals and establish himself in power. Only after this did he begin to draw forces from all corners of his enormous power. Xerxes decided to put an end to the independence of Greece once and for all, to march through the country with fire and sword, sweeping off the face of the earth everyone who dared to resist him.
Sparta and Athens reject the Persian demands. First, Persian ambassadors were sent to all Greek cities demanding “land and water,” i.e. recognition of the power over himself of the Persian king. For the Greeks, this demand sounded like a bolt from the blue. The general horror was so great that the majority of the Greeks obediently accepted the power of the Persians over them. Only a few decided to resist, and the first among them were the Spartans and Athenians. In Sparta, the Persian ambassadors were thrown into a well, with the advice that they themselves should take the land and water there for themselves. The Athenians executed not only the ambassadors, but also the translator - because he had desecrated the noble Greek language by transmitting such a vile sentence. Of course, killing unarmed people does not honor anyone, but by doing so the Spartans and Athenians wanted to show the Persians and the whole world that the upcoming struggle would be bloody and merciless, that they themselves contemptuously rejected life under the yoke of the Persians, preferring to die as free people, with weapons in their hands. hands.
Persian military forces. Finally, the Persian military preparations were completed. A huge fleet (1207 ships) reached the coast of Asia Minor, and in Sardis, the capital of the Lydian satrapy, a ground army consisting of different tribes and peoples, all with their own weapons, gathered. The king himself arrived here with his guard - 10 thousand “immortals”. These royal bodyguards were called that way because the size of their detachment always remained unchanged; a new guard was immediately hired to replace the one killed or died.
In total, for the campaign against Hellas, Xerxes gathered, as the Greeks believed, more than 5 million people, of which 1 million 700 thousand soldiers. This figure is completely unrealistic, and it can only be explained by the fact that fear has big eyes, and then unprecedented fear reigned in Hellas. In reality, the Persian army could hardly number more than 200 thousand people. A larger number simply would not be able to feed themselves and there would not be enough drinking water for them in all the rivers and reservoirs that were to be encountered along the way. But even such an army was several times greater than the forces that could gather all the Greek city-states together to repel the Persians. The trouble was that this also turned out to be impossible: there was no unity among the Greeks, most of them were ready to bow to the will of the ruler of the Persians.
The most combat-ready part of the multilingual army, which, at the behest of the Persian king, set out on a campaign against Hellas, were, of course, the Persians, brave warriors, dashing riders and well-aimed archers. They said that every Persian was taught three things from childhood: to ride a horse, shoot a bow and tell the truth. The Persians were armed with spears (shorter than the Greek ones), bows and daggers, their body was protected by a short scaly shell and a wicker shield covered with leather. Some, mainly in the cavalry, had metal helmets. Thus, unlike the Greek hoplites, the warriors of Xerxes had only light weapons; among the “immortals” they differed only in the richness of their decoration. Most of the army was armed only with bows and javelins.
Xerxes and the Greek spies. The ruler of the Persians was absolutely confident of victory. When Greek spies were captured in the Persian camp and they wanted to be executed, the king accidentally found out about this. He canceled the execution, ordered the Greeks to be taken through the entire Persian camp and shown everything they wanted to see. Then he invited them to his place, asked them through an interpreter if they had seen everything they wanted, and sent them on their way. This gesture must have made a strong impression on the Greeks. Xerxes hoped that now, having become convinced of his power and determination, the Greeks would finally come to their senses, stop holding on to some kind of freedom of their own, incomprehensible to the Persians, and voluntarily submit to his will. Before setting out on the campaign, Xerxes once again sent envoys to the Greeks demanding confirmation of the promise of “land and water.” Only Athens and Sparta were bypassed by the Persian embassy. This exception did not promise anything good for the Athenians and Spartans.
The Persian army is transported to Europe. At the narrowest point of the Hellespont Strait (now the Dardanelles), separating Asia from Europe, Phoenician builders built a cunning bridge that connected both banks: they placed ships side by side, laying flooring on top. But a storm came and only chips remained of the bridge. The enraged Xerxes ordered the builders to be executed, and the sea to be flogged and shackles placed in it so that in the future it would not dare to resist his will. After this, a new bridge was built, much stronger than the previous one, and along it the Persian army moved to Europe. The crossing lasted continuously for seven days and nights.
Then Xerxes gave a new order, and the entire huge army, like one man, obeying his will, moved against Hellas. The Thracians and Macedonians, through whose lands the Persians passed, hastened to submit to them. True, the Macedonian king Alexander sympathized with the Greeks and, while in the Persian camp, from time to time reported important information to the Greek command.
Greek plans. Initially, the ten thousand Greek militia intended to defend the mountain pass that led from Macedonia to Thessaly, i.e. to Northern Greece. However, the Greek commanders learned that the enemy could easily reach their rear by other roads. In addition, the Thessalian aristocracy did not even hide its sympathies for the Persians, so the Greeks did not dare to leave potential traitors behind them. They left Thessaly to the Persians without a fight, which, by the way, was famous for its cavalry. Without further thought, the Thessalians sided with Xerxes and began to serve him.
King Leonidas and his 300 soldiers. The new war plan provided for the simultaneous defense of Central Greece on land and sea. Those few Greek city-states that decided to fight for freedom to the end gathered together an army and a navy. At the suggestion of the Athenians, the command of the combined forces was entrusted to the Spartans, led by King Leonidas. Having selected three hundred warriors for himself (only those who had sons), Leonidas prepared to set out. At the sight of this handful of people, even the hearts of the Spartan elders, accustomed to everything, trembled. They told Leonid: “Take at least a thousand.” The king replied: “To win, even a thousand is not enough; to die, three hundred is enough.”
Thermopylae Gorge. Greek warships (271 triremes) anchored off the northern tip of the island of Euboea, awaiting Xerxes' fleet. To the left of their position, the land road ran along the mountain slope along the seashore itself through a gorge, which was called Thermopylae ("Warm Gate") because of the hot sulfur springs that still exist in this place. At the narrowest point of the Thermopylae Gorge, as ancient historians report, a cart could barely pass. It was this place that the Hellenes chose for defense, because here the Persians found it difficult to exploit their overwhelming numerical superiority. Here at the end of August 480 BC. Leonid's four-thousandth detachment gathered - he did not risk a larger army, saving the strength of the Greeks for future battles. Long before these events, the gorge was blocked by a defensive wall with two towers. Now the Greeks strengthened this wall, set up a camp behind it and began to wait for the enemy.
Persian scouts near the Greek camp. They didn’t have to wait long: horsemen from the Persian vanguard soon appeared. Having stumbled upon an obstacle, they reported the enemy to Xerxes, and the king stopped his hordes. A Persian scout drove up to the wall and looked at the Greek camp for a long time, trying to determine the number of enemy forces and watching with curiosity what they were doing there. When he returned and reported the results of his observations to the king, he was very surprised. It turned out that some of the Spartans, who were near the wall, were singing songs, accompanying themselves on musical instruments, others were busy with their hair, carefully combing their hair. Xerxes did not know that in peacetime the Spartans were subject to the strictest discipline, and only during war were relaxations allowed, they could take care of their appearance and have fun singing war songs, so war was always a holiday for the Spartans.
The Persian king decided that the enemy was out of his mind, and summoned the former Spartan king Demaratus, who was expelled from Sparta and found refuge in Persia. He explained that such behavior of the Spartans can only mean one thing: they are preparing for mortal combat and will sell their lives dearly. Xerxes did not believe it and waited for four days, hoping that this handful of madmen would either run away or surrender. Without waiting, he sent a truce to Leonid demanding that he lay down his arms. He replied: “Come and take it.”
First day of battle. Then Xerxes ordered the Medes to seize the insolent men and bring them to him alive. But just as quickly as they attacked the enemy, trying to distinguish themselves in front of the king’s eyes, they rolled back in the same way, encountering the indestructible defense of the Greeks. A few more attacks - and again the Medes, leaving many killed and wounded, retreated under the attacks of the phalanx. It was then that Xerxes realized that there were many people in his army, but few men. And he decided to send the guard, commanded by his favorite Hydarn, into battle. The “Immortals” rushed to the attack, and a bloody battle began to boil. While he was walking, Xerxes jumped up several times from the golden throne in alarm for the fate of his chosen army. Finally, the “immortals”, desperately resisting, were forced to retreat. Thus ended the first day of the Battle of Thermopylae.
Second day of the battle. The next day, Xerxes ordered a continuous attack, hoping that the defenders of Thermopylae would be exhausted by the continuous fighting. But Leonidas constantly replaced tired front-line fighters with fresh ones, the Greeks skillfully defended themselves in the gorge and so far suffered small losses, the Persians never managed to overcome the wall. The ruler of the Persians was at a loss, but suddenly a local resident named Ephialtes came to him and offered to show him for money a mountain path that went around the gorge and led to the rear of the defenders of Thermopylae.
The Persians are using cunning. In the evening, when the lights are turned on in the houses, the entire building, i.e. 10 thousand people “immortals” silently left the camp and began to climb a winding mountain path on the slope of Mount Eta. Hydarn and his guide, the traitor Ephialtes, walked ahead. The journey took all night. When the sky in the east began to brighten, they came out onto a plateau densely overgrown with oak trees and suddenly, to their surprise, they saw some warriors near the dying fires who hastily pulled on their armor. This was a detachment of Phocians of 1000 people, whom Leonidas left to guard the path (the Greeks knew about its existence). They were also stunned when suddenly, at the end of the night, last year’s leaves rustled under the feet of many people and Persians appeared between the trees.
Meeting with the Phocians. Hydarnus asked the guide warily: “Are these Spartans?” Hearing a negative answer, he calmed down and ordered his soldiers to push back the enemy. Under a hail of Persian arrows, the Phocians rushed up the slope and lined up in battle formation. But the Persians did not pursue them, but moved further along the path. Then the chief of the Phocians sent one of the soldiers to Leonidas with the news of the Persians moving to the rear of the Greeks.
The Spartans are not retreating. Leonidas still had a few hours left before the “immortals” appeared in the depths of the Thermopylae Gorge. A military council was urgently convened, and at it the Spartan king announced that with the enemy reaching the rear, further defense of Thermopylae became meaningless, so he released everyone except the Spartans, for whom the military regulations prohibited retreat under any circumstances.
He did not forget to send a messenger to the allied command of the Greeks with a message about the Persian breakthrough into Central Greece: the sad fate of the Spartans and their comrades was reported by the Athenian messenger ship, which had previously been on duty with Leonidas’s detachment. In addition to 300 Spartans and their helots, Leonidas left 400 Thebans as hostages, who were suspected of treason. They themselves refused to leave and 700 soldiers from the town of Thespia in Central Greece remained with the Spartans.
Having completed urgent matters and remaining only with those who were going to die with him, Leonid said: “Let’s have breakfast, friends, because we will have to have lunch in Hades.”
Last Stand. Soon the main forces of the Persians again moved to attack the gorge. Seizing the moment, the Thebans rushed to them with a humiliated plea for mercy. The handful of soldiers remaining with Leonid this time left their position near the wall and quickly attacked the enemy. In the ensuing battle, Leonid was one of the first to die. Then the Spartans and Persians fought for his body. Finally, the Spartans managed to recapture their king. They retreated to a hill in the depths of the gorge and defended there until the end until they were shot by Persian archers. By noon the battle had died down. All the defenders of Thermopylae were dead. Xerxes ordered to dig up the body of Leonidas from under a pile of corpses, cut off his head and impale him on a spear. This shows how infuriated he was by the heroic resistance of the Greeks, since Persian military custom dictated that the courage of a fallen enemy should be respected and military honors given to him.
Another trick of Xerxes. Herodotus says: “The king did this with the bodies of the fallen: of the total number of those who fell in his army at Thermopylae (and there were 20 thousand people), Xerxes ordered to leave about a thousand, and for the rest to dig graves and bury them. The graves were covered with leaves and filled up. land, so that people from the ships would not see them. The herald... said this to the entire assembled Persian fleet: “Allies! King Xerxes allows anyone who wants to leave his place to go and see how he fights with these reckless people who dreamed of defeating the royal power!" After this announcement, so many people wanted to see the bodies of the fallen that there were not even enough ships to transport them all. They were transported and they looked, walking through the rows of dead bodies. Everyone believed that the dead lying there were only Lacedaemonians and Thespians (they also considered the helots to be the same). It was really even funny: of the total number of fallen Persians, only 1000 corpses lay in plain sight, while the fallen Hellenes - 4 thousand dead bodies - were all dumped together in one place."
Monument to Leonidas and memory of the Spartans. When the war ended, a monument was erected at the site of the death of Leonid's detachment - a statue of a lion (Leonid means "lion cub" in Greek). The words were carved on the pedestal:
“Traveler, tell the Spartans about our death: Faithful to our laws, here we died with our bones.”
The fallen Spartans were revered as heroes in their homeland. Even six centuries later, Sparta remembered them all by name.
And for the Persians, the defeat of the Spartans opened the way to Central Greece.
Persia, which reached its peak under the rule of the Achaemenid dynasty, actively expanded its borders. In some sources, the Greco-Persian Wars are sometimes simply called the Persian Wars. This formulation usually refers to the campaigns of the Persian army on the Balkan Peninsula in 490 BC. and a series of military conflicts in 480-479 BC.
The main historical result of the Greco-Persian Wars was the following: the territorial expansion of Achaemenid Persia was stopped, and the ancient Greek civilization, which defended its independence, entered an era of prosperity and its highest cultural achievements.
In the historiographical tradition, it is customary to divide the Greco-Persian wars into two (the first - 492-490 BC, the second - 480-479 BC) or even three wars (the first - 492 BC, the second - 490 BC, the third - 480-479 (449) BC).
And the main milestones of this historical period are the following events:
- Revolt of Miletus and other cities of Ionia against Persian rule (500/499-494 BC).
- The invasion of Darius I on the Balkan Peninsula, which ended with his defeat at Marathon (492-490 BC).
- Campaign of Xerxes I (480-479 BC).
- Actions of the Delian Military League against the Persians in the Aegean Sea and Asia Minor (478-459 BC).
- The Athenian expedition to Egypt and the end of the Greco-Persian wars (459-449 BC).
Of all these wonderful historical events, in this material we will talk about only one. We are interested in the campaign of the Persian king Xerxes I, and even more precisely - the battle of the Persians with the Spartans and the Greek militia in the Thermopylae gorge.
Army of Xerxes and Greek militia
According to ancient chronicles, compiled, in particular, by the ancient Greek source Herodotus, the number of Persian troops was almost two and a half million soldiers. Persia in its heyday, of course, was a huge state, but even at that time the Persian kings would hardly have been able to assemble such a huge army.
Researchers agree that ancient historians significantly exaggerated the number of troops that invaded Greek territory. The figures proposed by modern historians look much more plausible: 200-250 thousand.
However, regardless of the actual number of soldiers in the Persian army, the number of Xerxes’ troops was truly colossal at that time. This is what Xerxes was betting on: to conquer the scattered Greek city-states, crushing them with a numerical advantage.
The Persian king sent envoys to all Greek city-states with an ultimatum, according to the text of which it was proposed either voluntary surrender on extremely humiliating conditions, or doom the cities to destruction and the inhabitants to extermination. Almost all Greek policies accepted the terms of the ultimatum and recognized Xerxes as king, but Athens and Sparta not only refused to submit to the demands, but also dealt with the ambassadors.
According to the testimony of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the Greek militia had much smaller forces: from 5,200 to 7,700 soldiers. Despite the rather advantageous defensive positions, such a small army could successfully defend itself, but not win.
Battle of Thermopylae
The militia was led by the Spartan king Leonidas, who selected three hundred soldiers to participate in the battle. The elders, as the chronicles report, insisted on increasing the number of the detachment to one thousand people, to which Leonid replied: “To win, a thousand is not enough; to die, three hundred is enough.”
The main task of the Greeks was to delay the further advance of the Persian army into the territory of the Peloponnese. The narrow gorge of the Thermopylae Pass made it possible to solve this strategic problem even with small forces.
According to the accepted disposition, the Greek militia positioned its forces in the narrowest places in the path of Xerxes' armies. This allowed the inferior Greeks to compensate for the enemy’s numerical advantage: the Greek army did not need a large amount of forage (food and feed for horses), while the Persians needed to pass through Thermopylae deep into the peninsula to supply the army.
From a tactical point of view, the Thermopylae Gorge was an ideal position for the Greeks. The phalanx of hoplites (Greek heavily armed warriors) could not be outflanked in the narrow gorge, and the Persians could not use their cavalry. The only weak point of the position was a bypass mountain path, quite surmountable for infantry, which Leonid knew about. A detachment of a thousand Phocians was posted on the path.
Before the battle, Xerxes sent an envoy to the Greeks, who offered to surrender and receive in return freedom, the title of “friends of the Persian people” and lands better than those they owned. Such a proposal was naturally rejected and then the ambassador conveyed Xerxes’ demand to lay down his arms, to which, according to Plutarch, he received the legendary answer: “Come and take it.”
According to the testimony of ancient historians, Xerxes waited four days before starting hostilities. On the fifth day the Persians began to act. Xerxes consistently sent into battle first close relatives of the soldiers who died 10 years earlier in the battle with the Greeks at Marathon. Then - the Kissi and Saks, and when these units failed - the personal guard, the so-called "Immortals", who, however, also failed. According to Ctesias, Spartan losses were minimal - 3 people died.
The second day did not bring any significant changes to the balance of forces: the Persians were defeated while trying to break through the Greek defense with a frontal attack. Being forced to retreat, Xerxes pondered further actions. Just at this time, the Trakha resident Ephialtes was brought to him.
This man told the Persian king about the existence of a bypass mountain path that led directly to the rear of the militia. The traitor even offered his services as a guide, asking for a considerable reward. That same evening, an army of twenty thousand under the command of a certain Hydarn set off along a mountain path to make a detour.
On the third day, Hydarnes' detachment reached the Phocian positions. They, preparing for defense, sent a messenger to Leonid. Having received the news, Leonid convened a council. The opinions of the Greeks were divided and as a result, part of the army was disbanded to their policies. Only the Spartans, the Thespians, who refused to leave the battlefield, and the Thebans remained in the gorge. According to Herodotus, Leonidas himself ordered the Greeks to disperse to their cities, since the situation was hopeless.
Moving away from their initial positions deeper into the gorge, Leonid and the remaining soldiers fought a general battle, in which he died. His squad was completely defeated, the victory was Xerxes. According to Herodotus, up to 20 thousand Persians and 4 thousand Greeks, including Spartan helots, fell at Thermopylae.
In 1939, Greek archaeologists under the leadership of Spyridon Marinatos carried out excavations at the supposed battle sites. They found numerous evidence of a battle described more than two thousand years ago. Today, several monuments and memorial signs have been erected near the site of the battle. In addition to the slab with the epitaph of Simonides, there is a monument to King Leonidas and a detachment of 300 Spartans, as well as a monument in honor of the Thespians who died along with the Spartans.
I first learned about the feat of the Spartans at the age of twelve, when I watched the American film “300 Spartans” directed by Rudolf Mate.
Then all the boys were inspired by this film and watched it several times. In every yard they played Spartans. They made spears, swords, and shields with an inverted letter “V”. The phrase “with a shield or on a shield” has become a catchphrase for us.
But I never even dreamed of seeing the site of the legendary battle of the Spartans with my own eyes.
And when I recently visited Greece, I visited the site of the battle between the Spartans and the Persians.
True, it was not preserved. In 480 BC, when the Battle of Thermopylae Gorge took place, it was a narrow piece of land 20 meters wide on a cliff face. Now the sea (Malian Gulf) has receded, exposing a large area of land.
Recently, I once again enjoyed watching the 1962 film “300.” In my opinion, the old film is incomparably better than the new one - the computer comic “300” on the same topic, which only more accurately reproduces the location of the battle.
In life, of course, everything was much more complicated than shown in the film.
The only reliable primary source about the feat of the 300 Spartans, on which later references are based, is Book VII of Herodotus.
At the end of the 6th century BC. The Persian power, having by that time conquered the Greek city-states of Asia Minor (Ionia), directed its expansion into the territory of Hellas. In 480 BC. e. A huge army of Persians led by Xerxes made the transition from Asia Minor to Europe through the Hellespont.
Herodotus estimates the army of the Persians and dependent peoples at 1 million 700 thousand people. Modern historians estimate the number of Persians to be up to 200 thousand people, although these figures are also questioned as overestimated.
Representatives of the independent Greek city-states met in a council in Corinth to decide how to work together to repel the Persian invasion.
The Spartans did not want to send a large army to Thermopylae because they were only going to defend their own lands. The Athenians proposed sending an army to Thermopylae. At that time, the Thermopylae Passage was the only route from Northern Greece to Southern Greece.
The Greeks revered the gods and therefore, even during the Persian invasion, they did not intend to anger the gods by refusing to celebrate. In Sparta, the festival of Carneia was celebrated, which also coincided with the 75th Olympic Games in 480 BC. And during the Olympic Games there were no wars.
However, the Spartans could not completely refuse to participate in the war against Xerxes, and therefore sent a small army led by King Leonidas. Leonid selected 300 worthy husbands from the citizens who already had children, so that the line would not be cut off. The rest of the Spartans were going to join the army immediately after the end of the festivities.
When the detachment left Sparta, the Spartan leadership shed crocodile tears: take, they say, Leonidas, at least a thousand, to which he reasonably remarked: “To win, a thousand is not enough, to die, three hundred is enough.”
The united Greek army at Thermopylae consisted of permanent city detachments of professional, heavily armed hoplite warriors, sent as advance troops while the cities raised militias.
In total, up to 6 thousand hoplites gathered at Thermopylae. The Spartan detachment of 300 warriors was led by King Leonidas; he was then about 40 years old.
To the west of Thermopylae a steep and high mountain rises. In the east the passage leads directly to the sea and marshes. There was a road for only one cart, 20 meters wide and 1 km long.
A wall was built in the Thermopylae Gorge, and there once was a gate in it. The wall was a low barricade made of heavy stones. The Greeks now decided to rebuild the wall and thus block the Persians' path to Hellas. They set up camp behind a wall blocking the narrow Thermopylae Pass.
For the first two days, the Greeks successfully repelled the attacks of the Persians, thanks to the fact that they were armed with long spears and acted harmoniously in the phalanx, covering themselves with large shields. The Persians could not turn around in the narrow passage and died en masse in a crush or being thrown off a steep bank.
Xerxes did not know what to do, and sent messengers to announce that he would reward the one who would show the way around the Thermopylae Gorge.
And then a certain local resident Ephialtes approached him, who volunteered to lead the Persians along a mountain path around Thermopylae for a reward. The path was guarded by a detachment of Phocians (from Central Greece) of 1000 soldiers. A selected Persian detachment of 20 thousand under the command of Hydarn marched secretly all night, and by the morning they unexpectedly attacked the Greeks. The Phocians sent runners to inform the Greeks about the Persian outflanking maneuver; The Greeks were warned about this at night by a defector named Tirrastiades from the Persian camp.
The Greeks found themselves surrounded. What was to be done?
Submitting to the will of circumstances, most of the units from the united Greek army went to their hometowns. Only 300 Spartans of King Leonidas, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans remained to cover the retreat. Thespiae and Thebes are cities in Greece through which the route of the Persian army inevitably had to run, so the detachments of these cities defended their native land in Thermopylae.
Xerox suggested that Leonid surrender. To which King Leonidas answered succinctly: “Come and take it!”
Leonid allegedly forced the Thebans to stay by force so that they would not run over to the enemies. According to Herodotus, during the retreat the Thebans separated and surrendered, thus saving their lives at the cost of being branded into slavery.
Not counting on victory, but only on a glorious death, the Spartans and Thespians accepted the battle. The Spartans had broken spears and struck their enemies with short swords. By the end of the battle, they didn’t even have any weapons left - they were dull, and then hand-to-hand combat began.
All the Spartans, of course, died. King Leonidas fell in battle, and the brothers of King Xerxes died among the Persians.
King Xerxes personally inspected the battlefield. Having found Leonid's body, he ordered his head to be cut off and impaled. At Thermopylae, according to Herodotus, up to 20 thousand Persians and 4 thousand Greeks fell, including Spartan helots (helots are state slaves).
Of the 300 Spartans, only Aristodemus survived, who was left sick by Leonidas in the village of Alpena. Upon his return to Sparta, dishonor and disgrace awaited Aristodemus. No one spoke to him, they gave him the nickname Aristodemus the Coward. The next year, at the Battle of Plataea, he fought like a madman, trying to atone for his guilt.
Sparta announced a reward for the head of the traitor Ephialtes. But he was killed by a fellow tribesman in a quarrel.
The fallen Hellenes were buried on the same hill where they took their last battle. The names of all those who died at Thermopylae were carved on the slab. A stone was placed on the grave with the epitaph of the poet Simonides of Keos: “Wanderer, go and tell our citizens in Lacedaemon that, keeping their covenants, here we are laid to rest.”
At the site of the death of the last Spartans, they subsequently placed an empty sarcophagus - a cenotaph (so that souls would find peace), on which there was a statue of a stone lion (Leonidas in Greek Leo). On the sarcophagus it was written: “Of animals I am the strongest, among people the strongest is the one whom I am guarding here in a stone coffin."
The remains of King Leonidas were reburied in Sparta 40 years after his death. Residents of the city, 600 years after the battle, already in Roman times, held annual competitions in honor of the national hero.
In 1955, a memorial was built on this site. Every year on August 26, the “Feast of Thermopylae” is held here - in memory of the heroism of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians.
The death of a detachment under the command of King Leonidas in September 480 BC. e. became a legend. Although another similar detachment of 300 Spartans was also completely destroyed in the 3rd Messenian War (mid-5th century BC).
History is unfair. The feat of the 300 Spartans was forgotten for a long time, until Napoleon revived this story in the 19th century to inspire his soldiers.
Mussolini also made attempts to exploit history for the sake of his political goals, putting the history of ancient Rome at the service of his fascist regime.
Hitler also used the spirit of the ancient Germans to create the thousand-year Third Reich.
Any ruler rapes history, turning known mythologemes into the ideologemes he needs.
In Russia, this is how the famous saying of Elder Philotheus was used, to whom the words “Moscow is the third Rome, and there will never be a fourth” allegedly belonged. The theory of “Moscow is the third Rome,” as we know, served as the semantic basis for messianic ideas about the role of Russia and the justification for the policy of gathering Russian lands around the Moscow principality, and later the creation of the Russian empire.
History was once thought to belong to kings. Then they believed that everything was decided by the masses. Now we see that putting your own person at the head of the state means steering politics in your direction, even despite the protests of the popular masses.
Why do people always fight? Why can’t they solve all their problems peacefully?
Maybe innate aggressiveness is getting in the way?
Representatives of no other biological species fight among themselves like this.
What prompted Xerxes to conquer small, free Greece, while the Persian empire was several times larger and more powerful?
Ambition? revenge for the defeat of Darius' father at the Battle of Marathon? or thirst for conquest?
What can be opposed to the paradigm of conquest?
War is on our minds!
Over the past five thousand years, only two hundred and fifteen have been without war. The entire history of mankind is one continuous war. Just pure murder! The ground is all soaked in blood.
Of course, you don’t have to interfere when the ants are fighting among themselves. But when, in the heat of battle, they are ready to blow up the planet...
Wars are still the same, only bows and arrows have been replaced by atomic bombs and laser weapons.
Or maybe the Spartans died in vain if Xerxes burned and plundered Athens anyway?
Was their self-sacrifice meaningful?
Why didn't the Spartans surrender?
Why did they die?
Not why, but why!
They couldn't do otherwise!
Their slogan was: victory or death!
Of course, we can say that the Spartans had cruel morals: they led a paramilitary lifestyle, threw children born sick into the abyss, and expelled cowards and traitors. It is known that a mother killed her Spartan son, who returned from the war wounded in the back.
According to rumors, another Spartan named Pantitus survived the Battle of Thermopylae, sent as a messenger to Thessaly. Upon returning to Lacedaemon (the region where Sparta was located), dishonor also awaited him, and he hanged himself.
Is it possible to sacrifice one to save many?
For military leaders, this issue has long been resolved. To cover the retreat of the main forces, it is necessary to leave the rearguard to die in order to save the retreating ones.
Was there a feat?
Or did the rearguard simply perish, as usually happens during a retreat?
The Spartans, of course, were in a hopeless situation. Someone had to cover the retreat of the main forces and die so that the rest could be saved.
What is this, heroism out of necessity?
Could the Spartans have surrendered as the Thebans did?
No, they couldn't. Because “either with a shield or on a shield”!
Death was a necessity for them. They died fulfilling their duty to their family and friends. After all, they defended their loved ones, they defended their love - Greece!
A similar feat was accomplished by 28 Panfilov heroes who blocked the road to Moscow for fascist tanks.
They saved us - the living ones.
Those who die for the sake of others want their death not to be in vain.
This is why it is so important to remember fallen heroes.
The dead don’t need this, the living need this!
The Battle of Thermopylae took place in September 480 BC. e. in the Thermopylae gorge.
Few historical events are as famous and at the same time surrounded by so many myths and misconceptions as the Battle of Thermopylae Gorge. We have repeatedly heard the opinion that in this battle, 300 heroic Spartans held back a five-million-strong Persian army for several days (one of the most absurd misconceptions of Herodotus, but at the same time one of the most tenacious), and only betrayal led the Spartans to death.
According to another opinion, the Spartans, led by King Leonidas, sacrificed themselves to give Hellas time to prepare for the invasion. The reality, as often happens, looked completely different...
The defeat did not force the Persians to abandon the idea of conquering Hellas. But preparations for a new invasion dragged on for 10 years. Death in 486 BC e. the Persian king Darius I led to the usual struggle for power for eastern despotism and other troubles in the form of uprisings of conquered peoples. It took Darius' successor and son Xerxes several years to resolve these problems. And when the new king strengthened his power, he immediately returned to the old idea.
It took almost 2 years to prepare for the great invasion. By the beginning of 480 BC. e. the basic preparations were completed. A huge fleet (1207 ships) was pulled up to the coast of Asia Minor, and in Sardis, the capital of the Lydian satrapy, a ground army gathered, which consisted of representatives of various tribes and peoples, all with their own weapons.
Xerxes himself arrived here with his guard - 10,000 “immortals”. These royal bodyguards were called that way because the size of their detachment always remained the same: a new guardsman was immediately accepted in place of someone killed or deceased.
Herodotus, reporting on the size of the army assembled by Xerxes, wrote that for the campaign against Hellas, Xerxes gathered more than five million people, of which 1,700,000 were warriors. This figure is absolutely unrealistic, and it can only be explained by the fact that fear has big eyes, and then unprecedented fear reigned in Hellas.
In fact, the Persian army could hardly number more than 200,000 people. A larger number simply could not feed itself, and there would not be enough drinking water for it in all the rivers and reservoirs that were to be encountered along the way. It should be noted that of these 200,000, no more than half (or rather a third) were real warriors, the rest represented numerous servants, transport workers, and builders.
However, such an army significantly exceeded the forces of not only any of the Greek city-states, but also all of them combined. And if we take into account that precisely this unity did not exist among the Greeks, it must be admitted that the forces of Xerxes were extremely great and the danger for Hellas was actually formidable.
480 BC e. - a huge Persian army led by King Xerxes made the transition from Asia Minor to Europe through the Hellespont Strait (now the Dardanelles). At the narrowest point of the strait, which separates Asia from Europe, Phoenician builders built a cunning bridge that connected both banks: they placed ships side by side, laying a deck on top. However, a storm broke out, and only chips remained of the bridge.
The angry Xerxes ordered the builders to be executed, and the sea to be flogged and shackles placed in it so that in the future it would not dare to resist his will. After which they built a new bridge, much stronger than the previous one, and along it the Persian army moved to Europe. We crossed without a break for 7 days and nights.
The Greeks sent an army - about 10,000 hoplites - to delay the Persians on the distant approaches to the Peloponnese. At first, the allied army wanted to contain Xerxes on the northern border of Thessaly with Macedonia, but then it retreated to the Isthmian Isthmus, connecting the Peloponnese peninsula with the Balkans.
But in this case, many of the Greek cities on the mainland would be defenseless, and as a result the army moved to Thermopylae, a narrow pass in the mountains leading from Thessaly to Central Greece. At the same time, the Greek fleet of 271 triremes became a barrier for the Persian flotilla near Thermopylae, at Cape Artemisium.
Herodotus has a description of the Thermopylae Gorge. “So, near the village of Alpena beyond Thermopylae there is a road for only one cart... In the west of Thermopylae there rises an inaccessible, steep and high mountain, stretching to Eta. In the east, the passage approaches directly to the sea and swamps. A wall was built in this gorge, and there once was a gate in it. The ancient wall was built in ancient times and has mostly collapsed over time. The Hellenes have now decided to rebuild the wall and thereby block the barbarian’s path to Hellas.”
The Greek army consisted of permanent urban units of professional, heavily armed hoplite warriors, sent to act as an advance screen while the cities raised militias. At Thermopylae, up to 6,000 hoplites gathered; The Spartan detachment of 300 warriors was led by King Leonidas, son of Anaxandrides. He was also considered the commander-in-chief of the entire Hellenic army.
It should be noted that these 6,000 heavily armed warriors by no means constituted the entire Greek army. From various sources you can find out that there were up to 1,000 Spartan perieki (non-citizens) in the army, and for each Spartan hoplite there were 7 helot slaves, who were used as lightly armed warriors. It is possible to assume that in the detachments of other policies there were many warriors who were not included in the number of hoplites given by Herodotus.
According to modern estimates, the number of Greek soldiers gathered to defend the Thermopylae Pass could reach up to twenty 20,000 people. Modern historians estimate the Persian army at 70,000. Therefore, there could be no talk of any hundred or thousandfold superiority of the Persians.
The Greeks set up camp behind a wall blocking the narrow Thermopylae Pass. This wall was a low barricade, which was lined with heavy stones. The Persian army stopped at the city of Trakhina before entering Thermopylae. One local resident, telling the Hellenes about the large number of barbarians, added that “if the barbarians shoot their arrows, then the cloud of arrows will cause an eclipse of the sun.”
In response, the Spartan Dienek joked lightheartedly: “Our friend from Trachin brought excellent news: if the Medes darken the sun, then it will be possible to fight in the shadows” (in some sources this statement is attributed to King Leonidas himself).
Xerxes waited for 4 days, and on the 5th he sent the most combat-ready troops from the native Medes and Persians to attack. According to the historian Diodorus, the king sent in the first wave of attacks those warriors whose close relatives had died 10 years earlier in the Battle of Marathon.
The Greeks met them face to face in the gorge, while the other part of the soldiers remained on the wall. The Greeks feigned retreat, but then turned around and counterattacked the frustrated Persian troops. Then the Persian king replaced the Medes with the Kissians and Saks, famous for their belligerence.
The warriors of Xerxes, in lighter weapons and without drill training similar to the Greek, could not break through the dense phalanx of the enemy, hidden behind a solid wall of large shields. Before evening came, Xerxes' guard, warriors from the detachment of the "immortals", went into battle. But they retreated after a short fight.
On the second day, the king of the Persians sent warriors known for their courage (mostly Carians) into battle, with the promise of a good reward for success and death for fleeing the battlefield. The second day also passed in fruitless attacks. The Persians replaced the attacking troops; the Greeks, in turn, replaced each other in battle.
Xerxes did not know what to do next when he was approached by a certain local resident, Ephialtes, who volunteered to lead the Persians along a mountain path around Thermopylae for a reward. The path was guarded by a detachment of Phocians (from Central Greece) - 1,000 soldiers. A selected Persian detachment of 20,000 under the command of Hydarnes marched secretly all night, and in the morning suddenly attacked the Phocians. Having driven them to the top of the mountain, Hydarnes continued to move to the rear of the Hellenes guarding Thermopylae. The Phocians sent runners to inform the Greeks of the Persian outflanking maneuver; The Greeks were warned about this at night by a defector from the Persian camp named Tirrastiades.
The allies disagreed. Most, obeying the will of circumstances, went to their cities. Only 300 Spartans of King Leonidas remained, 700 Thespians under the command of Demophilus, son of Diadromus, and 400 Thebans under the command of Leontiades, son of Eurymachus.
The number of soldiers in the detachments is indicated at the beginning of the Battle of Thermopylae, but in two days of fighting the Greeks suffered significant losses. Thespiae and Thebes are cities in Boeotia, through which the route of the Persian army inevitably ran, so that the detachments of these cities defended their native land in Thermopylae.
Herodotus wrote his historical work at a time of enmity between Thebes and Athens, so he does not miss the opportunity to expose the Thebans as traitors to Hellas and reports that the Theban detachment was held by Leonidas against their will as hostages. But this version of Herodotus is refuted by both the fate of the detachment and the very logic of the war.
Counting not on victory, but only on a glorious death, the remaining Greeks took the battle at a distance from the previous place, where the passage widened. But even there the Persians could not turn around and died en masse in a crush or being thrown off a steep bank. The Spartans' spears were broken; they struck the enemy with short Spartan swords in close hand-to-hand combat.
Leonidas fell in battle, and the Persians killed Abrokom and Hyperanth, the brothers of King Xerxes. Noticing the approach from the rear of a Persian detachment led by Ephialtes, the Greeks retreated to the wall, and then, having passed it, took up a position on a hill at the exit from Thermopylae. According to Herodotus, during the retreat, the Thebans separated and surrendered: by doing this, they saved their lives at the cost of being branded into slavery.
The Spartans and Thespians made their last stand. The Persians shot the last heroes with bows and threw stones at them. According to the testimony of Herodotus, the Spartans Dienek, the brothers Alpheus and Maron, and the Thespian Dithyrambus distinguished themselves with their valor.
Of the 300 Spartans, only Aristodemus survived, who, due to illness, was left by Leonidas in the village of Alpena. Upon his return to Sparta, dishonor and disgrace awaited Aristodemus. No one spoke to him, they gave him the nickname Aristodemus the Coward. Over time, Aristodemus atoned for the non-existent guilt with his heroic death in the Battle of Plataea. According to rumors, one more Spartan survived, named Pantitus, who was sent as a messenger to Thessaly. Upon returning to Lacedaemon (the region where Sparta was located), dishonor also awaited him, and he hanged himself.
Diodorus presents the last battle of the 300 Spartans in legendary form. They allegedly attacked the Persian camp while it was still dark and killed many Persians, trying to hit Xerxes himself in the general confusion. Only when it was dawn did the Persians notice the small number of Leonidas’s detachment and pelted it with spears and arrows from a distance.
King Xerxes personally inspected the battlefield. Having found Leonid's body, he ordered his head to be cut off and impaled. According to Herodotus, up to 20,000 Persians and 4,000 Greeks, including Spartan helots, fell at Thermopylae. The fallen Hellenes were buried on the same hill where they took their last battle. A stone was placed on the grave with the epitaph of the poet Simonides of Keos:
Traveler, go and tell our citizens in Lacedaemon,
That, keeping their covenants, we died here with our bones.
Why a myth? That's why. Because if there were exactly three hundred Spartans fighting in those days, then how can we explain the losses of the Greeks, who amounted to about 4 thousand killed and about 400 captured in that battle?
I tactfully leave the film of the same name aside as a good example of epic insanity, with its three-meter Xerxes wrapped in chains, war elephants the size of a good five-story building, and fighting rhinoceroses rushing into battle (by the way, there were films with this name Several have already been filmed at different times, but now I’m talking about the last one, which made so much noise at the box office).
But let's return to the designated topic: so, according to many, in 480 BC. The Persian army of Xerxes in the town of Thermopylae (“Hot Gate”) was opposed by exactly 300 soldiers from the city of Sparta (led by the courageous King Leonidas). However, things weren't quite like that.
For the answer, let us turn to Herodotus, to the seventh book (“Polyhymnia”) of this work - the only reliable source about this battle, where in paragraphs 202 and 203 we read (the number of warriors is in bold): “The Hellenic forces that were waiting in this localities of the Persian king, consisted of 300 Spartan hoplites, 1000 Tegeans and Mantineans (500 each); further, 120 people from Orkhomenes in Arcadia and 1000 from the rest of Arcadia. There were so many Arcadians. Then from Corinth 400, from Phlius 200 and 80 from Mycenae. These people came from the Peloponnese. From Boeotia there were 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans. In addition, the Hellenes called for help from the Opuntian Locrians with all their militia and 1000 Phocians ... "*. Through simple arithmetic calculations we get the figure: 5200 warriors (note: Wikipedia in the article “Battle of Thermopylae” gives other figures: 5920, however, this figure is erroneous, since the author of the Wikipedia article, when calculating the number of warriors from Mycenae, indicated “800”, instead of “80”, which explains the inaccuracy of the calculation).
So, we no longer see three hundred, but more than five thousand warriors. In this case, I especially focus on the word “warriors”, since Herodotus included only professional heavily armed warriors (hoplites) among them, while the same Herodotus, speaking about the number of Spartans, reports only on the number of hoplites, not counting these helots - a kind of state serfs in Sparta, whom the Spartans used as lightly armed warriors and servants, but with whom they did not share glory. Warriors from other Greek city states also had people similar to the Spartan helots. The number of Spartan helots in the Battle of Thermopylae can only be approximately calculated, since Herodotus is simply silent about their number. At the same time, according to the same Herodotus a year later (479 BC), in the battle of Plataea there were 7 helots for each Spartan hoplite; their ratio in the Battle of Thermopylae is unknown, but apparently it was approximately the same, based on the number of Greeks killed in the battle. In total, about two thousand Spartans alone took part in that battle.
According to the miscalculations of a number of experts, in the Battle of Thermopylae the Persian army was opposed by about 12,000 Spartans and their allies from other Greek city states, which, you see, is certainly not 300.
However, this circumstance in no way diminishes the feat of the Spartans and warriors from other Greek policies, because they were opposed by about 200 thousand Persian soldiers, including the elite units of Xerxes - the so-called “immortals”. In this battle, which lasted three days, about 20 thousand Persians fell (including 2 brothers of King Xerxes), while the losses of the Greeks in that battle are given at the very beginning of the article.
*Cit. from: "Historians of Antiquity", M., Pravda Publishing House, 1989, vol. 1 p. 189.
