Battle of Thermopylae

Background

Ten years after the Athenians beat a Persian landing force at Marathon, King Xerxes led a far larger invasion of Greece, crossing the Hellespont in 480 BC on bridges of boats with an army that Herodotus numbered in the millions and modern historians put somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000, supported by a great fleet. The Greek city-states that chose to resist, led by Sparta and Athens, needed a place to stop an army that size with a small force. They chose the pass of Thermopylae, the "Hot Gates," named for its hot springs, where the road south into central Greece ran between steep mountains and the sea of the Malian Gulf. Its narrowest point, the Middle Gate, was only a few dozen meters wide and was blocked by an old wall built by the Phocians. At the same time the Greek fleet held the straits off Artemisium, so that the Persians could not sail around the position. The Spartans were celebrating the Carneia festival, and the Olympic Games were under way, so only an advance force was sent north: King Leonidas with 300 Spartans and their helots, and allies from the Peloponnese, Thespiae, Thebes, Phocis and Locris, about 7,000 men in all.

The Battle

Xerxes waited four days for the Greeks to withdraw. When they did not, he attacked. On the first day his Median and Cissian infantry were thrown back with heavy losses, and so, Herodotus says, were the Persian Immortals, the king's elite 10,000, whose shorter spears and wicker shields could not match the Greek phalanx in the confined space. The Spartans are said to have feigned retreat and then turned on their pursuers. The second day went the same way. That night a local man, Ephialtes of Trachis, showed the Persians the Anopaea path over the mountains, and the Immortals marched around the pass, scattering the Phocians who guarded the path. Warned at dawn, Leonidas sent most of the allies away. He stayed with the 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians under Demophilus, and 400 Thebans. On the third day the Greeks advanced into the wider part of the pass and fought until their spears broke; Leonidas was killed, and the survivors fought over his body, then withdrew to a small hill, the Kolonos, where they were killed by arrows. The Thebans surrendered.

Weapons

The Greeks fought as heavy infantry: the Hoplite Dory thrusting spear, the Greek Aspis round shield, bronze helmets and body armor, with the Greek Xiphos and the Greek Kopis as side arms. The Persians were more lightly armored, relying on short spears, the wicker shield called the spara, massed archery and the Persian Akinakes.

Aftermath

Thermopylae was a defeat. The Persians marched on and burned Athens. But the delay and the example mattered: the Greek fleet destroyed the Persian navy at Salamis that September, and the Greek army beat the Persian army at Plataea in 479 BC, ending the invasion. Simonides' epitaph for the Spartans became famous: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie." The battle has been retold ever since, from Herodotus to the film 300.