Once more into the breach - '300'

My favorite classical historian has written an assessment of the historical reality behind '300.' He doesn't attempt to rehabilitate the Spartans specifically, but the wisdom of portraying the Greeks in general as 'good' while the Persians are 'bad.' Does a good job of it too.

Such openness was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. That
freedom of expression explains why we rightly consider the ancient Greeks as the founders of our present Western civilization — and, as millions of moviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them.

True. Though a major component of our civilization is actually Christianity, based on the sacred writings of enthusiastic members of the Persian Empire. Just pick you role-model and have at it.


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An Update on Salamis and the Spartans

Jack's comment about the Athenians had Spartan help at the battle is more accurate than my account that they were all alone. That'll teach me for relying on memory!

The Wikipedia article he cites seems to be accurate. In my defense I will say that the basic point is still clear - the ancient Greeks, or at least the Athenians and their pals, thought of it as an Athenian victory because the action took place partly to protect the evacuated population of Athens, the general in command was Athenian, and about half the navy was Athenian (180 by Herodotus' account). When you consider that the next largest contingent was 40 ships (from Corinth), and most sent fewer than 10, you can see how vital Athens was to the project.

Most of the states sending ships were either Athenian allies or from the Peloponnese, i.e. south of the Isthmus of Corinth. Most of Greece north of the Isthmus went over to the Persians. You will also notice that the Athenian commander and the Spartan commander almost came to blows over strategy, with the Athenian finally resorting to trickery to get the battle started. I have to admit that this last detail seems likely to be Athenian propaganda, but who knows?

Here's a paragraph from Victor Davis Hanson's article on the battle in the Reader's Companion to Military History (since I wrote about five short articles for the same book you could say that we are co-authors, along with about 160 others):

... Greeks rightly saw the victorious rowers of Salamis as proof of the skill and courage inherent within the nascent democratic citizenry of Athens. But in the years subsequent, reactionary philosophers took a dimmer view. Plato and Aristotle traced radical democracy, Athenian maritime imperialism, and the collapse of the traditional Greek values back to Salamis -- a victory that had given enormous prestige to the poor and ill-bred of the fleet, and therefore in their eyes had made the Greeks "worse as a people." Few Greeks, however, shared their jaded appraisal, and instead
rightly commemorated Salamis as the battle that had saved the West.

Which also happens to be Hanson's view oddly enough.

Thanks Jack!

"300" - and the Hard Right

Perhaps I should have phrased that a little differently, considering how some of Andrew Sullivan's readers have interpreted '300'. [and btw, thanks Elliot, and Anactoria!] But have you begun to wonder what real men, the burly men of the Right Wing would make of this flick? I mean the John Wayne/Gary Cooper type?

Well, just check out this sharply observant review by a Hollywood writer writing under the name David Kahane on National Review Online. It even mentions Wayne and Cooper, pining for a simpler time when you knew who your enemies were. First notice that the first three paragraphs make no sense at all unless you assume, like, say, Dan Simmons, that our enemies consist of the entire Muslim population of the planet, plain and simple. Here is an example of
the prose of this review:

The Spartans mock the god-king Xerxes (whose traveling throne resembles a particularly louche Brazilian gay-pride carnival float), mow down his armored “immortal” holy warriors clad is nothing but red cloaks, loincloths, and sandals, and generally give their last full measure to defend Greek civilization against superstition and tyranny. Where are the liberal Spartan voices raised in protest against this blatant homophobia, xenophobia, and racism?

You might note from that last line that Mr Kahane has no idea about the homoerotic appeal of the Spartans, nor that gay men aren't all queens. But, let that pass. Just read the review and see what you think.

All I'll say about it is that Kahane is certainly no poseur.

300 Spartans and history

The movie "300" hammers home the moral that real men are willing to strip to their speedos and face the enemy come what may. The battle of Thermopylae is presented as a type of Alamo, where Leonidas leads his men knowing they are simply a sacrifice to the struggle against the tyranny of the evil Persian Empire but one that will provide the rallying cry for all of Greece to unite together for democracy, the rights of man, heroic nudity and olive oil. Or something like that.

The problem is, we will never know exactly what happened because we really only have one complete source: Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars. Keep in mind that one of Herodotus' nicknames was "the father of lies." Only fools would attempt to explain what actually happened.

So here is my explanation. What did the battle of Thermopylae and the sacrifice of a 300 Spartans and about 1,500 other Greeks who stayed that last day?

Absolutely nothing. They held up the Persian army for two days. Xerxes spent more time resting his dancing girls than that. Rallying cry? Most of the Greek city states north of the Peloponnese other than Athens went over to the Persians. The Spartans were so worked up over the noble example of their king that they called for a total abandonment of northern Greece, including Athens, to defend Sparta herself.

The Persian army was large, but also well organized, well supplied, and well led (best book would be Peter Green's The Greco-Persian Wars - also check out this site for some maps). The Greeks were disunited, with many of them being part of the Persian Empire and more than willing to fight bravely for the King of Kings Xerxes. Others, even Spartans, betrayed the cause - guess who shows that Persians how to clamber over the mountains to come down behind the Spartans at Thermopylae. The Greeks guarding the pass simply high tail it. And all those evil Spartan councilmen like Theron who want to betray the resistance? Every single one of them was a Spartan warrior who had gone over exactly the same training as the 300 who follow Leonidas on his walk to the north. Where is the 'warrior ethic' that the original graphic novel was supposed to be about?

So what did save the day? The Athenian fleet at the battle of Salamis. They had no choice - everyone else, including the Spartans, had left them to face the Persians alone. It was the shop keepers, potters, carters, farmers, sail makers, and other craftsmen, the type of Greek warrior Leonidas openly derides in the movie, who man the Athenian fleet and against all odds destroy the Persian fleet while Xerxes watches from his throne.

But even that did not save Greece. Xerxes went home with what was left of the fleet and left the army, perhaps 40,000 men, to winter in northern Greece surrounded and protected by their Greek allies. It was the next spring that the last scene of the movie takes place: the battle of Plataea. A huge army of Greek hoplites (the heavy infantrymen) that was nearly as big as the Persian army attacked head on. The Persian resistance was ferocious and lasted most of the day. The Persian general, Marbodus, was killed fighting at the head of his troops. For a military buff like myself that shot of the Greek army going into combat was the single most disappointing scene in the movie. You get no idea of the deadly beauty of an articulated hoplite army moving into phalanx formation.

The Spartans did the best job that day, they were after professionals. But without all the other hoplites, most farm boys from the coalition of city-states that rallied to the cause after the Athenians had forced the Persian fleet to retreat, their would have been no victory.

And the Persians would have come back.

Thermopylae was a small scale fiasco due to treachery and as far as I can tell, did virtually nothing for the cause until after the war, when old men like Herodotus sat around the fire and crafted the noble tale of heroic resistance to all the unleashed forces of tyranny.

That's history folks. And now, I have been sick all day, it is after 2am, the cats are afoot in the house and I am off to bed.

"300" - the movie review

Here's a pop quiz for all you apparently ill informed Christians out there in America (at least according to Claw of the Conciliator): who in the Bible is referred to as God's messiah, other than Jesus?

Answer is: Cyrus, Great King, King of King, King of all the lands, etc etc. And the Lord's Anointed. (By the by, that is the EVIL PERSIAN EMPIRE of the new movie "300" we are talking about here. And boy, is it EVIL!)

What did he do to deserve such a rave from the Children of Israel and their God? He united civilization under an enlightened and fair rule, one that revered law and attempted to right the wrongs done to down trodden minorities like the Babylonian Jews, who were given Persian funds and a military escort to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Cyrus and his putative descendant, Darius (he of the Battle of Marathon), who begot Xerxes (the seven foot body pierced queen with the dreamy eyes and dreamier voice in "300") also get rave reviews from some modern historians, me among them. And rather than a meglomaniacal God-Emperor as shown in the movie, Xerxes, like his father before him, was a Zoroastrian. (Zoroastrianism -a warm close monotheistic friend of Judaism and Christianity)

Just thought I'd bring this to your attention so you are aware that "300" follows the pagan Greek view of the Persian Wars. It has little to do with what may have happened at the battle of Thermopylae, and even less about what it really meant to the Greek war effort, but it boils down the patriotic myth to its pure testosterone poisoned essence. The Persians are not merely evil, they are physically and morally warped, as well as sexual degenerates. I haven't seen such disgusting bad guys since the Baron Harkonnen in the move "Dune." And that is where the fun begins.

Because for a certain type of person, me, for example, plus the other four males who watched it with me last night, it is an exciting experience. It is great over the top, bombastic, but not quite mindless fun. The graphics of the movie are stunning, as stylized and thus as unreal as any Greek vase painting of the Trojan War.

Gerard Butler is riveting as Leonidas. When he is on screen the movie has weight and interest, when he is off screen, you begin to recover your wits and notice what a crock it all is. And yet, for all that, I was thoroughly entertained by it.

As one reviewer said, it is just about as violent as "Apocolypto" and twice as stupid. Yep - that about covers the down side. This ignores, however, the sere beauty of the ancient Greek landscape presented, the awesome scale of the battle scenes, and the brief but effective recreation of what hoplite warfare in the front ranks of a phalanx might have been like. No wonder Victor Davis Hanson likes it - he literally wrote the book on phalanx warfare!

The history is bunk and it hits you with the message right between the eyes, and then hits you with it again a little louder on the back of the head just in case you missed it. Subtle it is not.

And it is grossly unfair to the Persians. And the Athenians. And the Persian navy (half of which was made up of Greeks!). But the history side of this I will save for another day. As it is, some people with a tolerance for comic book blood letting and comic book moralizing will love this movie. Both the teenagers with us, Clovis and his friend Nate, loved it. They thought it was almost as good as "Sin City."

And a reader on Andrew Sullivan's blog insists it is will appeal even more to a different type of audience. Can't say I don't see his point! Wait til he hears about the Theban Sacred Band. In fact, in this movie the Spartans personify the "warrior ethos" of the Sacred Band. They fought to the last man too.

BTW, if anyone attempts to tell you this movie is making a statement about the War in Iraq, or anything else that has the remotest baring on current events, shun them! They are either a poseur or a complete idiot.

More on "300"

Tomorrow I am off to see "300" with the gang from the history department, plus Clovis. I'll post about it once I've seen it.

In the meantime, of all the reviews that have panned it (The Washington Post called it a "guilty unpleasantness), this one here amused me the most. Here's a taste of it:

Hot Gates, indeed! Devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups will find much to savor as King Leonidas leads 300 prime Spartan porterhouses into battle against Persian forces commanded by Xerxes, a decadent self-proclaimed deity who wants, as all good movie villains do, to rule the world. The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities.

"300" and the Spartans

Claw of the Conciliator has already started a discussion on the Spartans as portrayed in "300," the movie coming out this weekend. I hope to post something on the Spartans later, perhaps after I see the movie. I am going this Saturday with Maire, Clovis, and the gang (sometimes called "that family" at our favorite pizzeria). But for the time being, here is Victor Davis Hanson's take on it at the National Reviews "Corner" blog. I have a lot of respect for Hanson as an historian of ancient Greece, so his view should carry some weight. We'll have to wait and see if his prediction that critics will not like it because it takes a clear cut moral stance is accurate.

But, as I say, I will write more on it after I see the movie.