A small, determined band of ANZAC soldiers stationed themselves around the pass at Thermopylae, and for two days managed to slow the German advance, thereby permitting the successful evacuation of Athens. But there was hope that the advance of the Germans could be slowed in order to complete the evacuation of Athens by British and Greek forces. There was little hope that the juggernaut of the German army, led by tanks and bound for Athens, could be stopped by Allied troops. The pass at Thermopylae was the scene of several such engagements in antiquity and during later centuries, but the most dramatic example of history repeating itself occurred in April 1941. There can be no question about the bravery and determination of the Spartans who sacrificed themselves in order to delay the Persian advance. Learning that he had been betrayed and was about to be surrounded, Leonidas dismissed most of his forces except for his Spartans and a few other Greeks, the latter of whom eventually fled the scene or defected to the Persians.
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There can be no question about the bravery and determination of the Spartans who sacrificed themselves in order to delay the Persian advance.Īsian casualties were high, but the inexorable press of large numbers-plus the treachery of a local Greek who told the Persians how to circumvent the pass by a high mountain path-turned the tide against the Greek forces. For two days the Greeks, led by Leonidas and 300 of his fellow Spartans, maintained a furious defense against the invaders. A force of perhaps six to seven thousand Greeks, led by the Spartan king, Leonidas, made its way to Thermopylae, intent on delaying the Persian advance. It was here that the Greeks decided to make their stand. Heavy silting over the centuries has caused the coastline to recede some distance from the mountain, but the modern highway follows almost exactly the ancient coast line, and, at the western end of the pass, the ancient route was probably only a few yards from the sea. The choke point for the Persian advance was the pass at Thermopylae, where the main route south from northern Greece ran through a narrow lane between the sea and the steep slopes of Mt. But time was short, and an attempt to delay the relentless advance of Xerxes' army was necessary to enable the Athenians to abandon their city and the Peloponnesians to build their defensive wall.Ī statue honoring Leonidas in Sparta features, in Greek, his response to the Persian king's demand that the Spartans lay down their weapons: "Come and take them." Athens, which was vulnerable, would be evacuated, and the powerful Athenian fleet would be used to engage and destroy the Asian naval forces, thereby depriving Xerxes of necessary support.
A dispute among the Greeks regarding their best defense was resolved thus: the Peloponnesians, led by Sparta, would build a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth in order to protect the cities of southern Greece. Greek representatives met and attempted to plan a defense against an army that may have numbered hundreds of thousands (precision in numbers is impossible). The Greek city-states were aware of the movement of Asian land and naval forces through the areas north of them. Whether Xerxes intended this invasion as revenge for the Athenian victory over the Persians at Marathon a decade earlier or whether his expedition had been planned all along as the natural extension of Persian rule into Europe is still a matter of debate among modern historians. A huge military force led by Xerxes, the Persian King of Kings, crossed the Hellespont from Asia into Europe, intent on the subjugation of Greece. Herodotus, the “Father of History,” told many good stories, but there are few tales in his repertoire that surpass his narrative of the last-ditch stand of the Greeks against numerically superior forces at the pass of Thermopylae in August, 480 B.C. Spartans Overwhelmed at Thermopylae, AgainĪ technically exciting videogame of a film, 300 loses touch with a critical and moving event in Greek history.
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