This is a man who, given recent publicity in modern media, hardly needs an introduction anymore. Although of course heavily romanticized and artificially inflated in the 2007 movie 300, the general idea is pretty solid and semi-accurate enough if you remove the added Hollywood sensation.

Before I go on, I must say I really liked 300. But make no mistake, Leonidas already found his way on my list before I heard of the movie.

For those who missed the film, here we go;

Biography

Leonidas I of Sparta was a Spartan king of Sparta (how surprising) around 350 BC. Now there was something odd about Sparta, as it was quite unlike any other culture of that time. First of all Sparta had at any time 2 kings, which was quite odd then and still is now. Second, Sparta was a military nation. An extreme military nation. Excellent physical fitness and iron discipline was expected from all the citizens. All Spartans were essentially trained for war after reaching the ripe age of about 8. Not surprising, Sparta became the most powerful of the Greek states with a military that went undefeated for a long time (the only time a Spartan army was defeated head-on resulted in the actual destruction of Sparta though).

Now Leonidas was one of the leaders of these fine chaps. Fortunately, it is not his governing skills that gave him a place in history. You see, at some point in time, the Persian Empire decided it would be awesome to conquer Greece. Persia was rather large and powerful and was composed of a rather large part of what is now the Middle East. The Persian emperor Xerxes I raised up an army of which the size is not exactly known. For realistic purposes (unlike Achilles, Leonidas existence was quite certain) I will abide by the lowest estimate of roughly 260,000 troops. Marching to Greece.

Now for some reason I’m not entirely certain of the Greeks were not really in the mood for fighting. Fortunately for them, Leonidas was. Hence, Leonidas led a group of about 300 Spartan soldiers, backed up by 700 Thebians and roughly 3000 other Greek soldiers to stand their ground in what is quite possibly the most epic last stand ever. They were to face a massive Persian army at Thermopylae, also known as the ‘Hot Gates’. The reason for this was that it consists of a narrow pass, hence the vastly inferior Greek forces could not be overwhelmed but absolutely had to be faced head-on by the Persians.

This is where the epic starts. The 3000 miscellaneous Greeks fled quickly and were basically useless. The Thebians gave up after a day or so. Thus, 300 sole Spartans basically stood against more than 200,000 Persian soldiers. They would be totally annihilated right? Wrong. The Spartans actually formed a rather unbreakable barrier and hold of the army for [three days]. Just let me emphasize that, they were holding of an army at a ratio of 1 Spartan for every 866 Persians. Unfortunately we will never know how successful it would have worked out in the end, as the 300 brave souls were betrayed to a secret route allowing the Persians to attack from both sides and thus resulting in victory. All 300 were slain. The Persian army was crushed roughly a year later by the combined Greek armies (including more Spartans!).

Legacy

One of the things Leonidas is famous for is in fact his reply with Spartan wit and his most famous one-liner. Apparently he was at one point of time given the opportunity to ‘lay down their weapons’. The return message was a simple one; “Molon Labe”. Which roughly translates to; “come and get them”. This one-line defiance would continue after threats from Xerxes that “if we are ever to enter Sparta we will slaughter every man , women and child” (roughly paraphrased) which was met by an even shorter reply; “if”.

Needless to say, for being such an extreme badass Leonidas earns a solid spot in the 9 Heroes of History. If you disagree, go watch 300 again. If you still disagree, you either have no soul or you’re a woman.

Next time; Alexander the Great.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.