Word: spartanic
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...famous lines are here: "Go tell the Spartans"; "Come and get us"; and the Spartan soldier's deflection of the Persian threat, "Our arrows will blot out the sun" - he says, "Then we will fight in the shade." Herodotus: damned fine screenwriter...
...book is in its portrait of Leonidas' queen, Gorgo (who in Greek legend was also the daughter of the king's half-brother). Miller, mesmerized by battle and honor, had little interest in the queen; she appears in just a few panels. The movie, true to the actual Spartan tradition of emancipated womanhood, promotes Gorgo (played with a kind of stalwart sensuality by Headey) to a co-starring role, allowing her to take fatal revenge on a wicked politician who had sodomized her. In the book, Leonidas thought Sparta was always an ideal worth dying for. In the movie, Gorgo...
...Illustrating that, despite time, nothing really changes, the film’s modern portrayal of Thermopylae diverges from Herodotus’ only to embrace our Western, 21st. century democratic biases. The heroic Spartan warriors fight for oddly modern Western values, in contrast to those of their actual society. At a climactic point in the film, Leonidas encourages his men: “A new age has come, an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend...
...Then we’ll fight in the shade,” Spartan king Leonidas replies nonchalantly. Thanks to their heroic last stand, the Athenians found enough time to prepare for a naval battle that would doom Xerxes’ invasion. Hard to find a better bedtime story, right...
...hawkish state. In fact, the state provided hordes of slave workers, helots, to work the lands of “equals.” Sparta’s economic and social arrangement was built around the assumption that colonized cities would be enslaved and, thanks to their labor, Spartan armies would be fed and clothed. How is that for an “age of freedom?...