Empire: World History - 100. Thermopylae: Xerxes, Leonidas, and the 300

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

August 480BC; the might of the Persian army, roughly 100,000 soldiers, face down a few thousand Greeks, led by Leonidas and his brave 300. In light of their overwhelming advantage, an embassy of Xerxes asks the Spartans to lay down their weapons. Their response, 'come and get them'. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Paul Cartledge to discuss the heroic last stand of Leonidas and the 300 at Thermopylae. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. Now, today I think it's fair to say that we have the historian's historian on, because never has there been somebody that I've had so many people say, he's brilliant, he's so brilliant, he's so brilliant, he's my inspiration.

He used to, I mean, he bought me a pony for Christmas, and they loved our next guest. He's like, he's very much, he's very much loved. Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis, Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, author of Thermopylae, the Battle that Changed the World and the Spartans and epic history, and the absolutely perfect guest to talk about the Battle of Thermopylae. one of the most famous battles of history fought between the Persians and the Greeks following the Persian invasion of Greece. Welcome, Paul. Thank you so much. No pressure then, eh?

Paul, we've come at this very much from the Persian angle. Most of us who have studied Thomopoli have done so from the point of view of the classics, from Herodotus, and in some versions of that Thomopoli and this whole conflict is looked at as a great sort of monumental moment. for Europe, the moment that Europe defied the tyranny of the East and so on. And yet, when we look in the Persian sources, there's barely a mention of this battle. And there are those who question whether Herodotus is really the father of history that we're all taught he is and a reliable source of any sort. Do you think that the story that we're going to have today really is a central a story in all our consciousness, or is it the making of Herodotus and the big,

up by interested parties of what was actually a fairly small skirmish. Ah, well, now there are two points, two different points there, whether or not it was really small or whether it happened at all, I think, is the other... Oh, that sounds very promising for a bit of revisionism. You know, this is me. You see, as a historian, you ask yourself, what is the evidence? You have to start always from the evidence. And for the ancients, we have two kinds, written, which has survived, because there's tons

of oral tradition, but if it's not written down ever, that's it. It just vanishes into the air. And the other kind, I actually did a doctorate in archaeology. So I'm particularly interested in what we now call material culture evidence. And so if you have any doubt about the Battle of Thermopylae ever having happened, because, as you rightly say, Persians don't mention it. They didn't keep records. They weren't historians. They weren't interested in history in the way that this is, I think, a big Western-eastern cultural divide. But if you then look at the site where everything is said to have happened, geology, topography, radically changed.

That's not a problem. We know about crustal movements, earthquakes, what have you, rising sea level. But if you go to where the central final conflict happened, and you sink in a spade, as Marinatos did, a man called Marinartos, And he found enough Persian evidence. This is the point, not just Greek stuff, but arrowheads which the Persians had fired, plus other stuff, to make it absolutely clear, this is the site of Thermopylae. But that's merely, as it were, a pinprick in amongst the immense amount of detail that you've already, I know, started.

And we're going to try to cover a little bit more today. When we talked about Herodotus, Lloyd O'Ewell and Jones was scathing. about Herodotus saying you can't believe him. He made a lot of stuff up. He really questioned whether Herodotus was reliable. Well, he's not the first. And famously Plutarch, who came from a place in Central Greece, and not far from where Thebes is. I wrote a book on Thebes recently. And Plutarch was exceptionally upset with Herodotus for representing his near ancestors, as it were, as a traitors and generally a very, very bad thing. And the fact of the matter is that if you believe Herodotus and there is, in some cases, no other source and in all cases no other near contemporary

source, then we have to take it that the Thebans did play a very bad role. You know more about this than most people on the planet. Do you accept that it was, you know, the invasion, the motivation for it was a retaliation against Athens for their support of insurgents, and the Ionian Revolt. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode. Well, it's twofold because if you go back a little bit before that, in other words, before Greeks, mainland Greeks started interfering as the Persian saw it in the Persian Empire, they claimed all of Asia as theirs, up to, in other words, the Hellespont and the Aegean. If, on the other hand, you look at it from the Greek side, they see this massive power expanding

within a generation. It's the greatest empire yet, in other words, before China. And it encompasses the whole of Asia up to Afghanistan in the northeast, Pakistan in the southeast, and then all the way over to the west. Now, my point is this, that Darius, Darius I first great, he had already tried to expand a long way to his northwest into what is now Georgia, that sort of caucuses. area, around the Caspian Sea, and he failed there. And Cyrus was even killed by them before that. Yeah. And I think it's a given of empire that what you worry about is the next people along on your frontier. And if they start irritating, same of the Roman Empire. Why did Julius Caesar

invade Britain? I'm not going to go into this, but he did so because the bloody Britons had been interfering in Gaul. So when you have an imperial, if you like, Dianne, dynamic, and Herodotus, to his great credit, among many, many credits picked up on this. The Persian Empire is inherently expansionists, and I don't know if your programme's got as far as pointing out that already before Thermopylae, the Persian Empire extended into Europe, because Macedonia was a vassal people state of the Persian Empire well before Marathon, actually. Yes, we've done Marathon and exposed the Macedonians as mere Persian. sat traps. Can I just move us to Xerxes now? Because he oversees the construction of these two

pontoon bridges across the Hellespont, and we're talking about 480 BC. So these are what exactly, when we're talking about pontoon bridges that link Europe and Asia, what do they look like, and how are they constructed? Well, just as you say, their boats side-on lashed together with an earthen walkway in the middle with planks and built by Egyptian engineers. Remember, the Persian Empire encompasses not only Asia, but also part of Africa. I should say, I'm taking this from Delhi where there was a bridge of boats right up to the last century. I was just going to make the point that in not only in India, but Pakistan today and Afghanistan today, big rivers, the jellum and so on. To get across them, you don't build a stone bridge or an iron bridge. You build a

bridge of boats and normally because what did for Xerxes I'm anticipating here, but there are currents in the Hellespont and so there are nasty winds and the stability of the moorings became unstuck and so that they eventually were destroyed quite easily actually. But anyway, they served the purpose, which was to get something like 200,000 men and beasts across the Hellespont. The thing that struck me from reading you is that they did some modifications to this pontoon bridge, which were just genius because, you know, horses get nervous and water. It's not, you know, they're not sea horses after all. Exactly. They raised up the sides. That's the point. With curtains. So these linen curtains

so they couldn't look to the left and right of them. Yeah. And so linen, that means possibly, probably Egypt actually. So they had fantastic resources at their disposal, the Persian Empire. There was something over 20 different provinces, very, very different in language, religion, material culture, and so merely to bring that together in one fighting force was something of a feat. I've stood on those steps at Persepolis, and they have these images of all the different peoples of the empire bringing gifts. Yeah. The Apadana, it's called, that's the audience hall, and the staircase up shows you a significant selection from the various peoples, bringing tribute, their relevant tribute. and, for example, gold dust from India. So, I mean, this is Xerxes's great triumph,

not just to erect this pontoon bridge where the horses can get across and thousands of men can get across without getting nervous. But it does shake also, it follows up his father's promise and failed ambition. But what do the Athenians say? Can they believe that this is actually happening?

Does it immediately strike? So, I mean, what's their response to this? Well, they are the prime target because it was they who responded to the rising in Asia of their. They fought relatives, people in Miletus and so on, along the western coast of Asia Minor, today, Turkey. So that's the Karzisbele of, first of all, the invasion in 490, which resulted in marathon, and then failed, and therefore there's unfinished business. But I don't know how far you've gone into Xerxes personally yet.

He wasn't the Crown Prince. Well, remind us, give us a little sketch of Xerxes. Right. Well, the earliest two sources for him are the poet playwright, Ischalus, writing his play Persians, which has performed in 472. And that is our earliest source for the Persian wars of a literary kind, though it's focused not on Thermopylae, but on Salamis. But the point is that he agrees with Herodotus, or rather Herodotus agrees with him, that Xerxes, whom one wouldn't have predicted would have become king. He wasn't the crown prince. He was the third son. He becomes, he's got a lot to prove. And in a way, he overdoes it. He is excessive. This is the keynote of both

Isculus and Herodotus's picture of Xerxes. Right. And so, I mean, he shouldn't surprise us that he comes across this great pontoon bridge with his enormous army. But he's never going to fight. it's not like the sort of Achilles model or the, you know, Alexander the Great model that they are there, sword in hand or bow and arrow in hand and they're going to fight. Xerxes doesn't fight. Well, you say that that he might have done because you possibly have seen the very famous mosaic from Pompeii. So then Alexander the Great Battle, people differ as to which battle it is. But clearly in the battle, Darius III, this is a much later Persian Emperor, is on horseback in his chest, chariot. With his wonderful Persian hat or Phrygian hat. All of that. And the fact is that he's in the

midst of the fray. Now, Xerxes is not recorded as having entered any fray whatsoever. He, as it were, sits it out. And famously, Battle of Salamis, which is going to come after Thermopyla, he finds himself a nice high vantage point where he has his throne set up so that he can look down on the battle at a good distance from it. But close enough to... be able to see. That was presumably unusual in both camps in that you do hear about Cyrus going into battle. You do hear about Darius going into battle. Oh, yes. This was not like the 19th century when King stayed at home. So Xerxes was unusual in hanging out. Well, he was there, yes, but on a throne, I mean, watching like you're watching from, well, I mean, you know, it's not impossible that he's

within Arrow's reach, I suppose. But look, Herodosus also says that he has 1,700,000 infantry, hundreds of thousands of cavalry, all types of other forces, drawn from all over the Persian Empire. Yeah. What do you think to that? I mean, is that another Herodotus, let's amp the whole thing up kind of thing? There is an amplification. Herodotus starts in his proemium. We know, why should one record anything?

Well, one should record the great and wondrous things that are done. And he says, not just by Greeks, he's not going to be a nationalistic historian. He's going to be even-handed by Greeks and barbarians, which is the Greek term for non-Greeks. So he does amplify, and the Greeks are very, very bad numbers. The same word with a different accent in ancient Greek meant both countless, in other words, so big you can't count it, and 10,000. Yes, yes. So any number above 10,000 is for them what you.

You and I used to be a million. Now, of course, we talk in trillions, don't we? Wow, right. Tell us about the crack troops. Tell us about the immortals. Do we believe in them? Well, we don't believe in the word immortal, which is, of course, Greek. And the Greek's built on that, a mythology that you've got these 10,000 guys.

And when one is killed, there is, as it were, someone on the substitutes bench, who immediately is called up by the manager. But the crack troops in a pitched battle for the Asiatics was always cavalry. So as Macedonia in response under Alexander the Great, it's a cavalry that actually decides battles in a huge set piece. So the median, that's the North Iranian horses and the Persians, their crack troops were actually cavalry, but you couldn't deploy them in Greek conditions in the same way. there isn't the terrain, there isn't the fodder, etc, etc. And so they had to rely on the infantry being the decisive fighting force and the Navy being in association with the infantry on that.

Well, I'm going to throw one of the hotly disputed sources, Gerard Butler's 300 on the table. Yes, I'm playing that card. That is me doing that right now. But in that movie, which is just bad, bad in so many ways, But they do portray the immortals or this crack infantry or the 10,000, you know, different, different names for these men. Covered head to toe in armour and under their masks, they wear these very sort of ornate and terrifying masks. But underneath, they're all a bit warty and ugly and messed up. I mean, this whole thing of the masks and the head to toe, I mean, what would they have looked like, the immortals?

Because they do make a big thing of this. Well, I think the aesthetic of 300 is Darth Vader. It's Star Wars rather than 5th century BC, Greece and Persia. And the warty stuff, of course, operates on both sides. There are very warty Greeks as well as Persian. But the point of all that is to other, to make the Persian seem not even unfortunate humans, but really unhuman or inhuman. They are kind of animalian.

It's a really unpleasant, I think, sort of. It wasn't popular in Persia, that movie. It's fair to say, or in the Persian diaspora. It's also just a very bad film. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the Navy. We've talked a bit about the army and the infantry and the men who are on foot and horse and chariot. What about provision on sea? What do they have? Right. Well, this enables me to bring in a point that I've wanted to make. We talk about it being the Greeks against the Persians, understood the Persian Empire. Actually, there were 700 or so separate Greek political entities, cities or peoples in mainland Greece and the Aegean. Of those 32 or 33 actually banded together to resist the Persian invasion. So let's be absolutely clear, a few Greeks resisted vast numbers of Persians and people on the Persian Empire side. The navies are particularly good illustration of this, because a significant,

portion of it was Greek. Remember, the Persian Empire extends all the way to the Aegean. So there are lots and lots of naval ports along the Aegean from in the south, what's today Lebanon, all the way up through Turkey and so on. Well, there are lots of Greeks who live on Cyprus. They live in what's now Turkey. They were commandeered. And now one thing that the wretched 300 franchise got right was that a very significant commander, suburb. commander on the Persian side was a Greek. And she was not only a Greek, she was a woman called Artemisia, and she came from the very city Herodotus came from, which is modern Bodrum, which is ancient Halicarnassus. So Herodotus calls her. He uses a word, which means virility, masculinity, bravery, because she was so unusual as a Greek woman for being so terrific in war. Plus, she was smart, and she gave Xerxes now. This is where one wonders where the fiction comes in. Advice, which, of course, Xerxes didn't take.

So it's a wonderful story on the Persian side. The Navy has a significant Greek element, but its principal force is what we call Phoenicians. The Greeks called them Phoenicians. From Tyre? Yes, from Tyrr and Saiden and from Biblos. We don't know what they call themselves. The Phoenicians means red men. simply because I think they had date palms and phoenix means date palm in Greek and the juice of dates is red and blah blah.

So for the Greeks, the Phoenicians are the red men. Who dribble when they're eating dates? Is that the idea? They dribbled when they're eating, obviously. They're the wrong kind of dates, I expect. I never do that. They and the Egyptians, to be serious, had developed a form of worship which the Greeks called a three banker, triremes. It's also, the Greek is actually tree eerie, and the trirem is from the Latin, three rowing, three banks of rowers.

But at any rate, these were a kind of guided missile, 200 people altogether, 170 rowers, very light, very quick, very fast, with a ram, a bronze ram at the front. So the key thing was to be able to maneuver your ship such that it would ram into the side of the enemy that you're trying to attack. because you don't want to go beak to beak or beak to stern. You want to sink it amid ship so that it takes on water and sinks, and you kill as many of the enemy by boarding them as you can. So anyway, they were much more skilled than the Greeks, any Greeks, until the 5th century BC. And so it's the Persian threat that makes the Athenians suddenly realize they've got to up their game.

And they had about three years, about three years warning, to build a fleet up to 200 trierings and to get good at it by practicing, because it's damn difficult as very recently there's been a reconstructed triering which sits in Dry Dock in Thaleron today. Who would have been the rowers? Would they have been free men or would they have been slaves? Well, in the Persian Empire, you know, there's a big issue with this word Bandaka, which in Persian, Iranian, means something like unfree person. but actually all subjects of the great king were in some way Bandaka. They were servile because it was an autocratic hereditary monarchy.

And that stereotype holds up a measure of truth, does it? That there is more autocracy on the Persian side. Well, it would be surprising if it wasn't, Willie, because if you look at human history, very, very sadly, the number of Republican states, let alone egalitarian debt, Democratic Republican states that there have ever been, you can count them on the fingers of two hands over, what, a million years, since we know anything about politics, only maybe two, three thousand years, but almost always they are hereditary, dynastic autocracies.

Got it. Okay. Now, just bringing us back to the battle itself or the run-up to the battle. So you've got this enormous Persian force dividing into three columns, marching roughly 10, miles a day, so making really good progress through Greece. And Zerxes has decided that what he needs is he needs ultimate submission from the Greeks. He needs to, you know, some of his generals are telling him many of the Greeks will come on side. As you've said, it's only some Greeks who are standing up to him. But he's talking about total war here. Tell us about Sparta and Sparta's role in this and where does it stand and why is it so very important. Yeah, Sparta is complicated in this as in absolutely every other respect. It had not made it to marathon to help the

Athenians. Therefore, the Persians didn't have a Karsus belly specifically against the Spartans. So the question is, why when the Persians came back in 480, did the Spartans not only agree to join the Athenians, but actually take the lead and form the alliance in 481? Two reasons, I think. One, they knew that if a Persian force got into Greece, mainland Greece, down into the Peloponnese, there a wonderful position of power. They controlled two-fiths of the Peloponnese. They had lots and lots of Greeks who were in a servile position. They were the richest, most powerful, land-based state, and had been for 100-plus years. That game would be up. Secondly, and you might think this is a bit romantic, but Leonidas, one of the two Spartan kings, took the lead in Sparta. Many Spartans were

pretty suspicious about resisting. Could we resist the Persians? You know, they're going to wipe us out. No, no. Leonidas says, we're going to show the flag. We're going to form this alliance, and I'm going to take the lead. I'm going to go up to wherever it is that we first encounter the Persians when they invade by land. Why? Well, freedom. And now this is an irony, isn't it? Many Greeks in the Spartan state down in the Peloponnese, they are unfree. The Spartans have a slave-based economy and society and politics. But on the other hand, they're fiercely proud of not being dominated by anybody else. And there's a tradition. This is, of course, Herodotus, there is no other source. That as early as Cyrus's time, the Spartans had tried to make a show of saying,

Saras, hey, look out, you know, don't think that you can just ignore us. We're going to resist you guys. And Cyrus famously says, who are the Spartans? Because that reflects the situation then. Again, I'm holding on my Gerard Butler card. Okay, in the film, Leonidas has 300 men with him. Okay. Now, how accurate or inaccurate or fanciful is that? How many did Leonardo's take to face off against this enormous Persian sea that was crashing towards them? Right. Well, I'm now going to maybe tell you something you didn't know, but something that many people I find don't realise. Spartan kings, there were two of them, and there was a bodyguard which would accompany any

king who went on battle, and it would number 300. It was selected from young Spartans, you become a full adult at the age of 20. Between 20 and 29, you're eligible to be picked to be one of the elite, bodyguard, the commandos of the Spartan state. And this is within what is already a very militaristic Spartan culture. Well, people argue about militaristic. It's definitely militarized. The question is, do they, as it were, waste time doing military things that aren't functionally useful? Or were they geared to being a well-oiled military machine? I mean, there are two points of view on that. My colleagues tend to disagree with me. I tend to take a rather old-fashioned view and think, yes,

the whole point of it was to be on constant alert. At any rate, the 300 bodyguard was not what Leonidas took to Thimoponauton. How do we know? Now, this is where it's absolutely crucial, what your view of Herodotus is. And if you think he could have talked to the children of the 300 who died, then you start to think he had privileged access to implement. which no one else, I mean elsewhere in Greece, not necessarily, then would have known. And he makes this point. Leonidas chose men, obviously great soldiers, but they had also to be married. And in Sparta, they were very old-fashioned.

For a child to be legitimate, it had to be born to married parents, both of whom were Spartans. So he says, Leonidas picked up his 300 men, who had each of them a son living. So they've not only got married, but they've had enough time for their wives to produce a son, not just a daughter, whereas, of course, famously King Cleomones I, had only a daughter, Gorgho, who married Leonidas. So it wasn't the case that all Spartans all had sons, and this is just human genetics. Now, why then, did he take men only who were already married and had a son. Who would, by virtue of that, be older? Yeah, but they mustn't be too old, if you see what

I mean, because they wouldn't do a good job. They're going to die most of them heroically, because we'll go on to what other troops he took and what chance was there of them ever surviving. I'll come back to that. But the point is this, that the sons of those dead Spartans would be, imagine being the son of Bobby Charlton or something like that, that you live, you, got this terrific reputation that your father was such a hero. And in Sparta, they worshipped people who they thought were once human beings, they die. And then you give them worship after their death as hero. Spartans were big on heroizing Spartans. It just is a thing. That's something most people don't realize. They assume Leolidas took his regular bodyguard of 20-year-olds. He didn't.

So the Persians are on the move. The Spartans have chosen their men with sons. The place that they are going to meet is Thomopoli, the hot gates. Is that how it translates? No, that's quite right. But it's not actually what happens. Again, this is where Herodotus is so valuable that suppose you just had headlines. There was a battle at Thomopoli, Artemisian, Salamis, Micali. No, before Thamopoli, the first force that the United Greeks decided. to send was much further north until, oh dear, it was pointed out to them. It shows you how ignorant southerners were of the north. What's new. There was quite an easy way of past, where they originally were planning to meet the Persians, which is in the veil of Tempe further north. So, having discovered that, they then sent out a second force, because they pulled back the whole first force, and then sent out a second force, and that was the one led by Leonidonidon. to Thermopylae, which is a one-kilometer long pass running east-west, and it's in what's now, well, it's called Focus in ancient Greece. How narrow is it? And we've got this picture,

well, I've got this picture in my mind of sort of jagged mountains on one side, the sea on the other, and a very narrow pass in between. I mean, how narrow are we talking? That is absolutely correct, because one source says that it was just wide enough at its narrowest point for two wagons to pass each other. And there were three nodal points, the entrance on the west, the entrance exit on the east, and in the middle. And there was a fortification, which already had been fortified by the locals, it's an earlier period, the Fokians. And like many Greeks, they were always at the throats of their neighbours, the Thessalians. So what Leonidas found was a fortification, which needed to be repaired and made more robust.

I should add, though, that he didn't take only 300. I mean, he pitched up with this 300, but there were between 6,000 and 7,000 other Greek allies infantry with him when he starts fortifying and resisting in August 480 BC. Right, okay, and so we're coming to the eve of Battle, but I just want to paint one more picture of Thermopylae, itself, which translates as the hot gates. And it gets that name because there's a lot of geothermal activity in that area. I mean, are we talking about steam shooting up from the ground? I mean,

yes, yes, you are. And still today, you can bathe in the hot springs and people do regularly. So, yes, hot thermos, as in thermos means hot gates because it's a narrow entrance into southern Greece. Okay, so the Persians kicking up a huge heap of dust, one would assume, because there's such great numbers. And it's height of summer, height of summer, August. 40 degrees, up to 40. Well, one other thing we haven't dealt with, which is presumably very weighing very heavily on the Greeks, the Delphic Oracle has gone over to the enemy. Tell us about that. In effect, I mean, it's hard to say you could take them as being pragmatic and you could also take them as wanting the Persians not to do damage, that is to loot Delphi, because Delphi

was a kind of giant war memorial and full of expensive gifts made of really precious metals as well as stone. And if you think about what the Persians did in Didima, I don't know if you covered that at the end of the revolt, the ionine revolt, they destroyed the main sanctuary by Miletus. Miletus was the leader of the revolt against the Persian. Well, the Persians grabbed stuff, which they took off, too. There's a famous statue, Persephone it thought to be, to Sousa, which is one of the principal palaces in Iran. So Persians lute, it's the standard thing going back to the Assyrians, one way you take it out on your enemy, you don't just defeat them, but you grab their stuff. So the Persians were coming. Most Greeks thought the Persian

were bound to win. There was absolutely no point really in resisting them. So most did not fight against the Persians. A few actually went over to the Persians, including the Thebans, but most sort of shivered on the sidelines, hoping that the battle would not roll over them or involve them. So the stage is now set. We are talking 480 BC. You've got the dusty, hazy Persians. Lots of on one side. And then you've got the 300 Spartans plus a few thousand of other Greek soldiers who are waiting for them. Join us after the break and we find out what happens when these two forces come face to face. Welcome back. So just before, this is this exciting moment, which again, the films in Hollywood would have made much of, but this face-to-face of an enormous army

with, if you'd watch the film, 12-foot Xerxes, who's been elongated beyond. any reason, and his enormous crack troops, and then you've got the plucky Spartans, as the film puts it, and, you know, as Paul, our very special guest today has pointed out, thousands of others, add-ons, not all Greeks, some Greeks. Is there any attempt, Paul, to try and have a peaceful resolution? Is there any embassy that's sent out first, or do they just go at it? Xerxes arrives with his, I think, probably 80 to 100,000 troops at the west end of the paths of Thermopylae. And he waits, and I'm sure the reason he waits, this is all Herodotus, by the way, one just got to say, I'm not making this up as it were. Maybe Herodotus was,

but I'm not. He waits for two or three days. Why? Because he assumes when the Greeks, under Leonidas see what they're up against, they will realize that at best they'll be able to hold out for a day or so. So why not go now, you know, give up? And there's allegedly a message. Now, this is much later. This is not in Herodotus. We do have later sources. And there will have been an oral tradition that Herodotus chose not to write down. Anyway, the story goes, that Xerxes through a messenger sends a message saying, lay down. arms, in effect, surrender. And of course, famously, Spartans typically don't surrender. And this is where Leonidas resorts to a classic Spartan. Laconicism, laconic means Spartan in Greek. And he just says,

come and get them, come and get the weapons, using two Greek words, Molon Labet, which has to be cashed out in English to at least come and get them or come get them. It's like the first. It's like the football thing. Come on over here if you think you're hard enough. Come on over here if you think you're hard enough. This is really what they say. Fantastic. That's what Herodontus really says they say. Well, Herodontas doesn't have this. This is actually in Plutarch, a much later source. But he does have, he preserves a number

of sayings of Spartans at the time. And Plutarch, who is particularly interested in these witty sayings, has lots and lots of witty sayings that Spartans make. And I'll come on to one of Leonidasis, which is in Hirodotus. Okay, so the suing for peace is just an utter failure. They're going to fight. They are just going to fight.

Take us through day one of the battle, which proves to be actually very good for Leonidas in many ways. Right. So now imagine the pass, which at its narrowest, is just wide enough for two chariots to pass. So, in other words, kettling, blocking up the pass in itself is not difficult. You put at the front your bravest truths. I'm talking about the Greek side, and that means the Spartans, and that means one or two other Greek, mainly from the local area who are resisting. They're not the only people resisting. The story will emerge soon of a whole detachment that Leonidas has sent away 1,000 men to guard another bit behind the past. At any rate, Xerxes, quite rightly, doesn't risk his absolutely

crack troops initially. So rather than the Persians, who are the southern Iranians, he sends in medians who are the North Iranians. There, as it were, the second best. From the Caspian Highlands, from the Al-Burtz. Yeah, all of those. And they suffer terrific losses. And of course, it's not possible to be accurate about losses, but it's been estimated that perhaps as many as 10%. If we start from 200,000, it's been estimated that in the first two days, perhaps as many as 10% of those 200,000 died. So that's very severe casualties. And when you see pictures at Persepolis or at Sousa of these wonderful elite Persian forces, they've all got bows and arrows, these huge quivers full of arrows. Can we imagine a kind of flights of arrows coming down on the Spartans first before hand-to-hand compact? We can.

Well, the idea is not so much first, but at the same time. And so the arrows are a terrific distraction. And this is one of the sayings that Herodotus does preserve of a Spartan. He's told, do you know, the Persians, they have so many archers that when they fire all at once, it blots out the sun. And remember, this is August in northern Greece. We're talking high 30s, probably Celsius. And so Deinichies, he actually gets a name check, says, great, we'll fight the battle in the shade.

And now that's very Spartan, because it means you make light of an immensely horrendous situation. You joke about it, and therefore you reduce it to manageable proportions. Give us an idea of the defence. So they're shoulder-to-shoulder overlapping shields. Do they have shield walls in Sparta, round-shed? so you can't lock them. They are and they aren't. In other words, they are always together, but they're not always static. And Herodicities, again, who reports a tactic which only an exceptionally

well-drilled force could execute. And it's this. So you get the, first of all, the arrows, softening up, the Spartans, etc. Then you get the second best troops. Then you get other troops. Well, they're repulsed. So in other words, there's a space. They didn't do at all. well. Too many of them died. And so the other guy's pause. Well, in the pause, the Spartans and others, under Leonidas's direction, retreat apparently, such that the Persian side thing, oh, so we didn't do so badly, and they advance, whereupon just before they're about to close with the Spartans apparently in retreat. And Spartans are at the front of the Greek forces. They wheel around and whack into the Persians who are out in disorder chasing them and do more damage.

So this is all contributing to this figure of roughly 10% casualties that I was suggesting. That's so high with such enormous numbers involved. Particularly also if it's this very narrow spot, it doesn't like it's a long line of troops line out. They're just in this tiny block in the past. Well, either blocking or falling off the side. I mean, there's a sea on one side. They're just toppling over, just bodies and bodies falling over the cliffs, aren't they? No, there probably is some of that, though that's not actually mentioned.

But when I say it narrows at one point, that is the narrowest point. That's where you obviously fortify. But on either side of that, it's wider. So you can have fighting on either side of where the Spartans and their allies are encamped. Okay, so the end of day one, Lianidas has proved himself to be actually a very smart tactician. You know, this fake out has been really very effective against the Persians. Day two, then. How do they change their thinking the Persians?

Because now they've realized they've been out thunk by these pesky Spartans who, you know, trick them. Well, the, and what should we say? The Greeks have the view that so unwilling are many on the Persian side to fight for an emperor who is not one of theirs. So in other words, they're not Iranians, most of them. And apart from the Medes and the Persians, the others are not, that they needed to be whipped into battle. Now, this could be Greek propaganda. All Persian subjects are slaves.

Slaves need to be whipped. Therefore, they needed to be whipped to even fight. Possibly, possibly not. But as far as we are recorded, day two is pretty much the same as day one, with one difference on the Greek side. and this is very, very controversial because it's a much later source. He's diodorus Sicilian Greek writing in the first century BC, a generic history of all the Greek world in the 5th century BC.

He records that the Greeks tried to assassinate Xerxes at the end of day two. In other words, sent in a task force to the Persian camp undercover to try to assassinate Xerxes in his tent, failed, and therefore the battle went on. Most of us think that that's not going to be actually something that's very plausible. You can't just stroll in, can you? I thought people would notice. Exactly. It's daring due. It makes it seem as if the Greeks weren't purely passive. But do you remember I mentioned that Leonidas had sent away a detachment 1,000? Right away, while they're waiting around, and the battle hasn't commenced, he sends a thousand local.

people, they're called Fokians, to occupy a pass behind the battle, behind the pass. So he knows Lianidas about this route around the back. And it's on day two, this is in Herodotus, that a local Greek, not a Fokian, not one of the resisting forces, a man called Effialtis, allegedly gets to, somehow, to the Persian camp with a message, O King, I know a ray around the back of the past so that you can kettle the Greek. The freighter. Both at the West End and then the troops come round. And what force does Xerxes choose the 10,000 immortals?

The crack infantry. This is where, as it were, their whole purpose is revealed. They've been brought over, but until there's a pitched battle, they've got no particular function. But as a crack force used to traveling over mountains in the dark, et cetera, et cetera, they go round overnight and they just simply walk past that Fokian detachment who somehow were asleep. I mean, I think probably literally asleep. And so they get past no problem at all and they're down and they kettle up the Greeks from the east end.

And do the immortals engage on day two? And they've come around the back, they've found their way. to the rear of the Spartan force, what happens? Do they engage or do they just sort of stand there with their spears and arrows and weight? No, they are simply moving up. But what's Leonidas's response? Because there are messengers who tell him that the pass has been passed. So in other words that it's called the Anapaya Pass. The immortals have got passed, but there are locals who are in a position, as in Crete. When Crete was occupied in the Second World War, you have locals who know the mountains, and they are quick runners. They're used to running.

I have in this very room, Patrick Lee Furmore's own copy of the Cretan runner that he gave me. Oh, congratulations, yes. And have you possibly been to Anoya, the mountain where George Sikundakis is from the village, yeah. No, so they are incumbent by their equipment. Relatively speaking, Persian forces in general infantry are lighter armed. They have less heavy shields. Their spears are shorter and weaker, et cetera, but the immortals were as heavy armed as any other force on the Persian side. Now, I mentioned that Leonidas gets some advance warning that the pass has been turned. overnight. So he offers the other Greeks, non-Spartons, the other ones on his side. You can flee, you can fight another day if you wish. And it's possible that actually most of the

others simply had already fled. And this is putting a nice gloss on it, that Leonidas gave them the option. They weren't disobedient, they weren't cowardly. But the fact of the matter is by the time the Persian immortals, etc. Have the remnant of the Greek force in the middle of the pass where the mound is that the final stand is stood on day three. There are only the remnant of the 300 plus Leonidas. There are something like 700 men from a town near Thebes in Beosha. It's called Thespia.

And there are 400 Thebans, and they're the most controversial of the whole lot. Right, so we've got some leftover Greeks who haven't run away. And the reason, actually, it's really understandable that they might run away is this is a suicide mission now, to hold or to hold your position now. They're surrounded on both sides. You're going to die, aren't you? I mean, they must have known that. They must have known they were going to die. Completely right.

Now, my colleagues and I disagree over whether it was from the beginning a suicide mission. In other words, was the final day scenario what Leonidas had in mind? I think it was. And Willie mentioned the Delphic Oracle. A Delphic Oracle, an Oracle from Delphi was issued around this time. But if, and only if, a Spartan king died at Thermopyla or wherever, only then would Spar to be saved. And so if Leonidas, I think he conjured that oracle personally, I think he probably got that so that he would have to go and die. And he therefore selected 300 who had sons, therefore the family lines wouldn't die out, and so on it.

To me it all fits, but not all my colleagues are willing to see things the way I see things. So they're surrounded on both sides. Leonidas has offered anyone who wants to flee the option to go. The remains of the 300 are there. What happens on day three? So the Persian side is still so mindful. of what happened on days one and two, that they are now unwilling to engage hand to hand. It's a remarkable fact. They therefore soften up the remainder who retreat to a hill.

Soften up, in other words, spike them with arrows? They fire immense numbers of arrows such that many are seriously wounded before they can be reached to be grappled with. The Spartans and Co. Herodotus says they fought with their teeth and with their nails in their hands because their swords would break and that's all they had. They had a sword or a spear. So their spears had gone, their sword had gone and they still fought allegedly with their teeth and with their hands. We say tooth and nail. And it was quite a right. With one exception, again, this is problematic. the Thebans who were still there, surrendered. So rather than joining the Thespians who died to a man and the Spartans who on the hill died to a man, these 400 Thebans said, please, please, we never

wanted to fight you. Our cities on your side, please be kind to us, but the Persians allegedly branded them. So took them as prisoners, made them slaves and branded them. So they didn't think that the Thebans. Serves them right. Serves them right after this. It's complicated. Were they traitors? Were they not traitors? Or they're just people who wanted to live? Yeah, just people who wanted to say.

I mean, goodness me, I mean, in that position. So that was it. After three days, it's all over. So what was their legacy, Paul? Well, it's regularly stated as a fact that all 300 and Leonidas, of course, there were 301 Spartans at Thermopy, not 300, a died.

They didn't. And Herodotus, the truth teller, tells us two of them had not actually been able to fight. One, because he had been sent away before the fighting began on a diplomatic mission nearby. Please send us more troops,

and he hadn't got back in time. And one, because he was blind. He had such a bad eye infection. He couldn't actually see and chose. Now, this was a bit of a mistake. in retrospect, not to go into the battle itself. I mean, you might think, well, look, all the others are going to die anyway, so you're going to die blind. What's the difference? But at any rate, for whatever reason, he held back and made, or rather had to make up amends. Back in Sparta,

he was treated appallingly. He was regarded as a coward, as a traitor. You wouldn't have a meal with a guy like that, would you? Well, the next year, the big battle, the final, the final, battle on land at Plataia, this guy somehow wangles himself into the front line and in effect commits suicide by charging into the enemy when he should have remained in file with his comrades and moved at allegedly pace. So there's a lot of drama around the battle, not just in the battle. Well, honestly, I didn't, this makes you actually a much better storyteller than Hollywood because it is such a dramatic tale to tell. You've told it so very well. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much for talking us through this battle at the past, as the next film will be called, I'm sure. But it's been a real privilege and pleasure to talk to you, Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Anita. Thank you, really.