It's All Greek to Me
I really like Greek history, I guess because it reminds me of happy times at college ... Greek art, Greek philosophy ... my boyfriend buying me Greek coins with Athena's owl on them, my sister and I spending afternoons pouring over our green-covered copy of Plato's Republic :-)
A post on Paula's blog made me think about Greek history in general and the battle of Thermopylae in particular.
- Leonidas at Thermopylae by David
The description of the battle can be read in Herodotus' twenty-second logos: Thermopylae... a nice online translation with modern commentary. But you can also read the long-story-short version at Wikipedia, which writes, in part, ...
In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in a mountain pass. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persian advance for three days. Leonidas, the Spartan King commanding the army, held up the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. The resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable opportunity to make battle preparations and decisively defeat the Persians at the battles of Salamis. The final blow was delivered at Plataea, ending the Persian invasion of Greece and marking the rise of the Athenian Empire as a political and cultural world power. The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment and good use of terrain to maximize an army's potential, as well as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.
There have been a number of films, books and even poems about the battle ... one of the most recent efforts is a graphic novel, Frank Miller's "300", from which is being made a 2007 film with the same title. The movie, which stars Scottish actor Gerard Butler as Spartan King Leonidas, will use a digital backlot technique, in which actors do their thing in front of a blue screen, with the locations added on later by computer. I'm not a big fan of this technique (the film Sin City is an example) but on the other hand, after seeing how traditionally made movies like Troy and Alexander have turned out, well ... :-)
I'm a peace-nik, so it's odd for me to be so interested in a military battle, but I think it's that I'm intrigued not by the fighting, but by the human qualities shown through the fighting ... courage, self-sacrifice, and perhaps even more, a defiance in the face of assured defeat. Such defiance can be found in the words spoken by Leonidas to Xerxes, when the Persian king offered to spare the Greeks if they'd surrender their weapons ...
Come and get them.
A post on Paula's blog made me think about Greek history in general and the battle of Thermopylae in particular.
- Leonidas at Thermopylae by David
The description of the battle can be read in Herodotus' twenty-second logos: Thermopylae... a nice online translation with modern commentary. But you can also read the long-story-short version at Wikipedia, which writes, in part, ...
In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in a mountain pass. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persian advance for three days. Leonidas, the Spartan King commanding the army, held up the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. The resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable opportunity to make battle preparations and decisively defeat the Persians at the battles of Salamis. The final blow was delivered at Plataea, ending the Persian invasion of Greece and marking the rise of the Athenian Empire as a political and cultural world power. The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment and good use of terrain to maximize an army's potential, as well as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.
There have been a number of films, books and even poems about the battle ... one of the most recent efforts is a graphic novel, Frank Miller's "300", from which is being made a 2007 film with the same title. The movie, which stars Scottish actor Gerard Butler as Spartan King Leonidas, will use a digital backlot technique, in which actors do their thing in front of a blue screen, with the locations added on later by computer. I'm not a big fan of this technique (the film Sin City is an example) but on the other hand, after seeing how traditionally made movies like Troy and Alexander have turned out, well ... :-)
I'm a peace-nik, so it's odd for me to be so interested in a military battle, but I think it's that I'm intrigued not by the fighting, but by the human qualities shown through the fighting ... courage, self-sacrifice, and perhaps even more, a defiance in the face of assured defeat. Such defiance can be found in the words spoken by Leonidas to Xerxes, when the Persian king offered to spare the Greeks if they'd surrender their weapons ...
Come and get them.
posted by crystal | 3:28 PM
7 Comments:
Thanks for support Crystal. You made me remember the high-school time when I wanted at some point to go for history. I ended-up doing science, but I still have a soft corner for history, specially Greek and Roman history.
I got interested in history first through novels and movies ... that made it seems less dry and more real. I like Greek and Roman too , and also medieval - after that it gets less fun :-)
Oh, yes..after medieval it starts to be too much about ideologies...an ideology is something that first produces illusions and then dead bodies.( as my favourite Romanian writer, Vintila Horea, says)
I know I'm revealing a base nature here (not to mention ignorance about Greek history), but why were they doing battle in the nude? Or was battle not what they were doing? :-)
Hi Susan :-). My understanding is that the typical Spartan in battle would have a shield, spear, sword, helmet, greaves on the lower legs, perhaps a breastplate, short tunic. I think the battle was fought in August and it does get hot there.
I should ask Gabriele - she probably knows what the wore :-)
Leonidas.... He was "the man".
I've been fascinated by this battle ever since I chose to do a report on it in the 9th grade for my World History class.
Susan - I forgot ... also sandals and a cloak.
Jeff - yeas, he was cool :-). The wikipedia article also mentioned that popular history often leaves out something ...
a contingent of about 700 Thespians, led by Demophilus, refused to leave with the other Greeks. Instead, they chose to stay in the sacrificial effort to delay the advance and allow the rest of the Greek army to escape.
The significance of the Thespians' refusal should not be passed over. The Spartans, brave as their sacrifice indubitably was, were professional soldiers, trained from birth to be ready to give their lives in combat as Spartan law dictated. Conversely, the Thespians were citizen-soldiers (Demophilus, for example, made his living as an architect) who elected to add whatever they could to the fight, rather than allow the Spartans to be annihilated alone. Furthermore, the Spartan royal bodyguard had to stay because of their king's order. No one forced the Thespians to do so, it was their free will.
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