Quote:Min, what do you know about the 300 Spartans.
Is it all myth?
Myth? Not at all. But they were not alone. There were perhaps 7,000 other Greeks with them. The Athenian Navy under Themistocles covered their seaward flank. The idea was that Leonidas was leading with his 300-man personal bodyguard while the main Spartan army was jerking off waiting to see what happened. Archaeology has confirmed a hill with a shitload of bronze, Persian, arrowheads testifying to the accuracy of Herodotus' final description of the surviving Greeks being cut down by archers. The reason for the last stand after the position was compromised by the flanking Persian column was to allow the retiring Greeks time to escape. Once past Thermopylae the territory opens up which would have allowed the vastly superior Persian cavalry to run the Greeks down during the retreat.
BTW, nearly 300 years later in 191 BC a Roman army under consul M. Acilius Glabrio defeated the Seleucid Greeks of Antiochus the Great. In that case, the Greeks were holding the pass and Glabrio, attacking from the other direction than Xerxes, had no trouble driving the Seleucids from the pass. Apparently having read Herodotus, Glabrio sent two columns under military tribunes to attack the Greeks. One failed but the other succeeded and one was enough to cause the Seleucid army to panic and flee lest the Romans get behind them.
End of Thermopylae II.
A year later a Roman army nominally under the command of Lucius Cornelius Scipio ( brother of Africanus, who despite not being eligible for the consulship that year was most likely "advising" his brother) crushed Antiochus III at Magnesia in Asia Minor in 190 BC. Rome had come to Asia.
