
The Puzzles of Thermopylae - magda_wang
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/puzzles-thermopylae
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anigbrowl
This is an oddly shallow article. The Persian army, whatever its exact size,
was vast; too vast to have travelled by sea, instead marching overland into
Greece.

The Persian fleet's job was to supply them with food and other necessities, as
the army was too large to live off the land. It is reasonable to view
Thermopylae as a delaying maneuver, although due to political differences
between the Athenians and the Spartans, it's also reasonable to view the Greek
defenders as having been backed into a strategic corner by indecision.

Anyway, while the Spartans and a small Athenian contingent were marching off
to Thermopylae, Themistocles, an Athenian leader, sent word to Xerxes that the
(much smaller) Greek navy was fearful and likely to surrender - partly true,
as the Peloponnesian contingent was less firmly committed than the Athenian
one. Xerxes has his navy block the Greek ships into a relatively narrow
strait, but then (on Themistocles' orders) the Greeks navy ran from the
Persian ships instead of giving battle. The Persians, sensing victory, chased
them into the strait.

But whereas a narrow passage provided a huge geographic advantage to the
Spartan and Athenian foot soldiers bunched together in a phalanx, it was a
fatal mistake for a naval force, which depends on freedom of maneuver. The
huge Persian navy crowded into the narrow strait, leaving the ships bunched up
against each other, at which point the Greeks reversed course and attacked
their flanks, laying waste to them. With his supply system in pieces, Xerxes
was forced to withdraw his army.

Incidentally, the popular book/film _300_ , which focuses heavily on the
bravery and martial ethos of the Spartans, instead depicts the Persian fleet
as being destroyed by a storm prior to the decisive battle. This makes for a
simpler story, but at a rather significant loss of historical accuracy.

~~~
dragontamer
> Incidentally, the popular book/film 300, which focuses heavily on the
> bravery and martial ethos of the Spartans, instead depicts the Persian fleet
> as being destroyed by a storm prior to the decisive battle. This makes for a
> simpler story, but at a rather significant loss of historical accuracy.

I'm pretty sure the film stopped caring about historical accuracy when they
created a wall out of dead bodies, samurai-ninja-trolls attacked at night, and
an executioner with swords-as-arms appeared on screen.

[https://300.fandom.com/wiki/Executioner](https://300.fandom.com/wiki/Executioner)

~~~
Archit3ch
It's a Zack Snyder adaptation of a graphic novel loosely inspired by the
retelling of a historian criticized even during his own time for preferring
drama. Did anyone expect historical accuracy?

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YeGoblynQueenne
>> Yet another puzzle is Leonidas’ decision to stay and die.

That's probably the easiest question to answer: the Spartans were war-crazy.

This is well-documented, and the tales of Leonida's wife asking him what to do
if he doesn't return, and the 300 celebrating their own funerals, etc, are par
for the course, for Spartans. Their whole society was hyper-militarised, their
highest ideal was bravery in battle, to kill their enemies with no regard for
their own life (in the service of the City, of course). They drilled their
children from a young age to this mindset and they all became mad with it. So
when the time came to choose between ditching their shield and running to
fight another day, or staying and dying, the Spartans stayed and died. "Ή ταν,
ή επί τας" as a Spartan mother said to her child ("with it, or on it"; "it"
being his shield: either he carried it home, or they carried him home on it).

It is perhaps difficult to interpret this mindset from the point of view of a
rational actor, because in terms of a strategy that maximises rewards and
minimises losses, heroism does not compute. But a good general must take into
account the fact that people are not perfectly rational, that they are in
their most irrational when faced with death, that men with their backs to the
wall fight to the death to a man. And that, at the end of the day, some troops
will never break and run.

Remember also the Sacred Band of Thebes.

~~~
dragontamer
> the Spartans were war-crazy.

Consider the source. The tales being told at the time amount to war-
propaganda. In practice, you want to appear as if you were a war-crazy state,
but actual behavior is extremely unusual.

The modern equivalent would be looking at North Korean documentation of the
North Korean military. Probably not the best source.

It would be one thing if the Persians documented the battle, because then we'd
have an outside viewpoint proving the war-craziness. (Or perhaps another
example: the Assyrians were well documented by many cultures of being actually
war-crazy). But we only have Greek propaganda / Greek tales to tell one side
of the story. Obviously, things are lost in history, and the battle of
Thermopylae was not a strategic hindrance at all to the Persians. So it makes
sense that it was only really documented by the Greeks.

Still, it would be nice to have some non-Greek viewpoints into the battle.

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NamTaf
Dan Carlin I feel does a relatively good job at covering this battle within
the broader context of the war in his Hardcore History podcast. Specifically,
in his three-part series King of Kings. Don’t ask me which one, as it’s been
well over a year since I listened to it, but he does make a reasonable attempt
at drawing out some logic for why the rearguard stayed and died. If I recall
correctly, one factor is that it helped buy time for the Greek city-states to
retreat back and remove sources of supplies, which would stretch the Persian
supply chains even further.

He paints this particular battle into the context of many others too, and
tries to put some thoughts around the broader environment in which both the
Greeks and Persians were making their decisions during these wars. He tells it
all with his trademark engaging fascination and I really cannot recommend it
highly enough. It’s part of his free releases, so you should readily find them
on your podcast source of choice.

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ummonk
Good article, but some quibbles:

>The Persians were meticulous record keepers; but no Persian source has
survived

Eh, they weren't particularly big on record keeping. The Babylonians (who were
part of the Persian empire) kept decent records, but not the Persians.

>Modern guesstimates by different means arrive at around 200,000.

Those are just people throwing out random figures. In reality it's highly
unlikely that the Persians had the logistical capability to field an army that
large beyond the fringes of their empire. Tens of thousands would likely be a
more realistic number.

~~~
christudor
It seems to me that the Persians were just as good at record-keeping as any
relatively sophisticated ancient civilization.

The Persepolis Fortification Archives, for example, contain about 20,000
records that deal with the movement of several commodities (e.g. cereals,
fruit, livestock, etc.) in the region around Persepolis, and dates to exactly
this period (c. 510-490 BC):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_Administrative_Arch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_Administrative_Archives)

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AtlasBarfed
Despite the huge numbers, the battlefield supremacy of the greek phalanx seems
to be forgotten here. 100 years after this, Alexander the Great conquered the
world with the phalanx enhanced with longer spears called the sarissa.

I recall reading many descriptions of the Alexander's forces taking on armies
10x bigger than them and routing them with little losses as he conquered
Persia and other lands to the east.

Alexander never conquered the Spartans, IIRC.

~~~
tpchnmy
\- You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army
into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your
city

\- If

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GarvielLoken
For all who are interested in this I can strongly recommend the book Beyond
the Gates of Fire: New Perspectives on the Battle of Thermopylae coaoutherd by
a favorite authour of mine Christopher Matthew.

