King Of Sparta Leonidas & The 300 Soldiers
“ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ”
Leonidas (c. 530-480 B.C.) was a king of the city-state of Sparta from about 490 B.C. until his death at the Battle of Thermopylae against the Persian army in 480 B.C.
Although Leonidas lost the battle, his death at Thermopylae was seen as a heroic sacrifice because he sent most of his army away when he realized that the Persians had outmaneuvered him.
Three hundred of his fellow Spartans stayed with him to fight and die. Almost everything that is known about Leonidas comes from the work of the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 B.C.).
Leonidas was the son of the Spartan king Anaxandrides (died c. 520 B.C.). He became king when his older half-brother Cleomenes I (also a son of Anaxandrides) died under violent, and slightly mysterious, circumstances in 490 B.C. without having produced a male heir.
Ancient Greece was made up of several hundred city-states, of which Athens and Leonidas’ Sparta were the largest and most powerful.
Although these many city-states vied with one another for control of land and resources, they also banded together to defend themselves from foreign invasion. Twice at the beginning of the fifth century B.C.,
Persia attempted such an invasion. In 490 B.C. the Persian king Darius I (550-486 B.C.) instigated the initial such attempt as part of the First Persian War, but a combined Greek force turned back the Persian army at the Battle of Marathon.
Ten years later, during the Second Persian War, one of Darius’ sons, Xerxes I (c. 519-465 B.C.), again launched an invasion against Greece.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
2
Did you know? The Thermopylae pass was also the site of two other ancient battles. In 279 B.C., Gallic forces broke through Greek forces there by using the same alternate route that the Persians did in 480 B.C. In 191 B.C., the Roman army defeated an invasion of Greece by the Syrian king Antiochus III at Thermopylae.
As king, Leonidas was a military leader as well as a political one. Like all male Spartan citizens, Leonidas had been trained mentally and physically since childhood in preparation to become a hoplite warrior.
Hoplites were armed with a round shield, spear and iron short sword. In battle, they used a formation called a phalanx, in which rows of hoplites stood directly next to each other so that their shields overlapped with one another.
During a frontal attack, this wall of shields provided significant protection to the warriors behind it. If the phalanx broke or if the enemy attacked from the side or the rear, however, the formation became vulnerable.
It was this fatal weakness to the otherwise formidable phalanx formation that proved to be Leonidas’ undoing against an invading Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
Battle of Thermopylae
Under Xerxes I, the Persian army moved south through Greece on the eastern coast, accompanied by the Persian navy moving parallel to the shore.
To reach its destination at Attica, the region controlled by the city-state of Athens, the Persians needed to go through the coastal pass of Thermopylae (or the “Hot Gates,” so known because of nearby sulfur springs).
In the late summer of 480 B.C., Leonidas led an army of 6,000 to 7,000 Greeks from many city-states, including 300 Spartans, in an attempt to prevent the Persians from passing through Thermopylae.
Leonidas established his army at Thermopylae, expecting that the narrow pass would funnel the Persian army toward his own force.
For two days, the Greeks withstood the determined attacks of their far more numerous enemy. Leonidas’ plan worked well at first, but he did not know that there was a route over the mountains to the west of Thermopylae that would allow the enemy to bypass his fortified position along the coast.
A local Greek told Xerxes about this other route and led the Persian army across it, enabling them to surround the Greeks. Much of the Greek force retreated rather than face the Persian army.
An army of Spartans, Thespians and Thebans remained to fight the Persians. Leonidas and the 300 Spartans with him were all killed, along with most of their remaining allies.
The Persians found and beheaded Leonidas’ corpse–an act that was considered to be a grave insult.
3
After the Battle
Leonidas’ sacrifice, along with that of his Spartan hoplites, did not prevent the Persians from moving down the Greek coast into Boeotia.
In September 480 B.C., however, the Athenian navy defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, after which the Persians returned home. Nonetheless, Leonidas’ action demonstrated Sparta’s willingness to sacrifice itself for the protection of the Greek region.
Leonidas achieved lasting fame for his personal sacrifice. Hero cults were an established custom in ancient Greece from the eighth century B.C. onward. Dead heroes were worshipped, usually near their burial site, as intermediaries to the gods.
Forty years after the battle, Sparta retrieved Leonidas’ remains (or what were believed to be his remains) and a shrine was built in his honor.
The background of King Leonidas
Leonidas I was the most famous King of the city state of Sparta in Ancient Greece, best known for leading 300 of his warriors in a last stand against an overwhelming invading horde of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
Leonidas was the 17th king of the Agiad line, a ruling family that claimed to descend directly from the hero Heracles himself.
His accession to the throne of Sparta was not straightforward: he was in fact the third son of his father, Anaxandrias II.
According to the ancient historian Herodotus, who chronicled the lives of the Greek kings, his father and mother were uncle and niece, and the marriage initially failed to produce any children.
King Anaxandrias was advised by his counsellors to put her aside and take another wife, as was common practice at the time for men whose wives were barren.
The King said the lack of an heir was not his wife’s fault, so it was agreed that he could marry a second woman without casting the first aside.
The new wife quickly bore a son, Cleomenes. One year later the first wife would also produce a son, Dorieus, followed by two more, Leonidas and Cleombrotus.
When King Anaxandrias died in 520 BC, his eldest son Cleomenes was chosen as heir. Dorieus, who Herodotus described as the finest young man of his generation, was furious that his half-brother, the son of his father’s second wife, was preferred over him and left Sparta.
He is said to have travelled to Africa and then Sicily, where he was living when he died 10 years later.
Ironically, if Dorieus has not left Sparta, he would have become king after Cleomenes, as the king was deposed in 490 BC – reportedly on grounds of insanity – and had no sons to succeed him.
The crown was passed to Leonidas, the next eldest surviving son of Anaxandrias, when he was around 50 years of age.
4
War against the people of Hellas
In 480 BC, an endless stream of marching feet made its way from Asia Minor westward.
This stream comprised Persians, Bactrians and Medes, men from the Caucasus and Arabia, men on horseback, camels and chariots, men from the mountains and the steppes, from the ancient cities and the sea, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, and contingents from places as far away as India, Ethiopia and Egypt.
All were called to war against the people of Hellas by the King of Persia Xerxes, the King of Kings, the son of Darius the Great, their god-appointed ruler and King of the World.
The Hellenic people had been given an ultimatum by Darius. Bend the knee and offer the King of Kings what is rightfully his earth and his water.
Many had done so, but others, most importantly the two mightiest city states of Athens and Sparta, had refused.
Sparta had even thrown the Persian envoys into a well to get their water and earth from down there. This had provoked the Persians.
And so begins the story told by the father of historians, Herodotus. A story that would be told for over two thousand years.
The Greeks had won the first round against King Darius at the battle of Marathon, but Xerxes was determined to even the score.
He would not bother to send more envoys; he would send his armies instead. Sitting on a throne made of white marble, Xerxes watched his host move to the Hellespont where a mighty bridge supported by ships would bring them to Hellas.
At the head of the army marched his guard, the Immortals, with wreaths of victory on their heads. To bless this day, he threw a goblet into the sea, alongside a golden bowl and a Persian sword.
The gods will be watching Xerxes’ great victory, for bridging the Asiatic and European worlds an army of three million men was on the march, at least according to Herodotus.
Modern historians narrow that force down to a maximum of 250,000 men, and keeping them supplied was no mean feat.
While many northern Greek cities cooperated with the Persians, for fear of being destroyed, Athens and Sparta had made a pact with each other.
The powerful triremes of Athens would challenge the Persian fleet, while Sparta would march out to meet the Persians in the field.
5
The Greeks wanted freedom, but the Spartans were not truly free men. They were bound to the law of their state. Only a small fraction of Sparta could call themselves real “Spartiates”.
Those were the citizens of Sparta, the ones allowed to vote, who reigned over the Perioikos, the free neighbours, and the Helots, the servant class.
The Spartiates were the warrior class, disciplined by a system of rules that set them apart from other men.
They were not permitted to own silver or gold and weren’t allowed to trade or take a profession. Instead, they trained their whole lives to serve the state, a training which only the strong, the cunning and the tough could survive.
Their bodies and minds were toughened by a life of military drills and athletics. By the time of Xerxes’ invasion, there were only 8,000 adult male Spartiates.
They were few, but they were professionals. They wore their hair long and a proud scarlet coat, and were capable of carrying out the most complex military manoeuvres with ease.
It was already late July, and Autumn was not too far off, with the strong storms of the Mediterranean kicking in.
Xerxes had to move if he wanted to keep up with his supply fleet. The Spartans went north to meet the Persians, but could only bring a portion of their forces, since the holy festival of Carneia was just around the corner which forbade the Spartan host to go to war.
Only 300 Spartiates, led by their king Leonidas, were sent northwards. Each Spartiate was personally chosen by the King and had to have a living heir, since there was a good chance they were not coming back.
They were accompanied by around 1,000 Perioikoi and Helots, and were soon joined by other allied contingents, mostly Thebans and Thespians.
Around 3,000 men assembled at Thermopylae, the Hot Gates. Thermopylae got its name for being near sulphuric hot springs and was a narrow coastal passage that lay on the Persians’ route inland.
G.I.T.C
