The Movie ‘300’ Is Fascist Propaganda

For those who don’t know, the 2006 fantasy action film 300, directed by Zack Snyder, written by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Michael B. Gordan, is based on the 1998 limited comic book series 300, which was written and illustrated by the American comic book artist Frank Miller. Both the film and the comic book are very loosely based on the story of the three hundred Spartans who allegedly fought and died in the Battle of Thermopylai in 480 BC.

The film is almost entirely a work of fiction with very little basis in historical reality. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes this. Zack Snyder himself has boasted about how historically accurate the film supposedly is; he said in an interview with MTV: “… the events are 90 percent accurate. It’s just in the visualization that it’s crazy… I’ve shown this movie to world-class historians who have said it’s amazing. They can’t believe it’s as accurate as it is.”

I don’t know which “world-class historians” Snyder has been showing the film to, but I hope to demonstrate here that the film is not in any way an accurate reflection of historical reality and that it deviates markedly from the historical record in ways that clearly promote a message that is overtly racist, homophobic, ableist, and fascist.

Regarding the title

300 is so wildly historically inaccurate that, even if you don’t actually watch the film and all you do is read the title, the film has already lied to you. The film’s title suggests that there were exactly three hundred Spartans who fought and died alone against the Persians. This, however, is not historically true.

First of all, while the movie refers to the so-called “three hundred” as “Spartans,” it’s important to clarify that they were more specifically Spartiates (i.e., full Spartan citizens). This is important to clarify because, as I will discuss in a moment, the vast majority of all the people who lived in Sparta in ancient times were not Spartiates and there were undoubtedly many non-Spartiates who fought at Thermopylai alongside the three hundred.

Probably our most important source of historical information about the Battle of Thermopylai is the book The Histories, written by the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC). According to Herodotos, the group that traveled to Thermopylai originally included 301 Spartiates (i.e., Leonidas, plus the three hundred Spartiates who accompanied him).

Nonetheless, Herodotos reports that two of the original three hundred Spartiates who accompanied Leonidas actually did not, in fact, die in the Battle of Thermopylai. One Spartan named Pantites was not at the battle because Leonidas sent him as a messenger to Thessalia. According to Herodotos’s Histories 7.232, Pantites was so ashamed when he returned to Sparta and found out that the others had died that he hanged himself.

Herodotos records in his Histories 7.229-231 that two other Spartiates named Eurytos and Aristodemos had eye infections that rendered them blind and unable to fight, so Leonidas ordered them to return to Sparta. They left and began heading back home. Upon hearing that the Persians were flanking the Greek forces, however, Eurytos turned back around, flung himself into the battle, and was killed almost instantly.

Aristodemos returned to Sparta, where he was shamed as a coward because he had not committed suicide like Eurytos. The Spartiates refused to speak to him or give him kindling for his fire and they persistently taunted him, calling him “Aristodemos the Trembler.” Herodotos records, however, that Aristodemos fought bravely in the Battle of Plataia. He died in battle and the Spartiates removed the black mark from his name.

The character of Dilios in the film is fictional; there was no Spartan of this name who survived the battle. Dilios is, however, extremely loosely based on the historical figure of Aristodemos because, like Aristodemos, he is portrayed as surviving the Battle of Thermopylai and later fighting in the Battle of Plataia. In the film, Dilios suffers an eye injury, which may be an allusion to Aristodemos’s eye infection. Unlike the historical Aristodemos, however, Dilios is not portrayed as being regarded as a coward and he is sent back to Sparta to tell the story of the Spartans who died at Thermopylai—not because of an eye infection.

The film omits all reference to Pantites and Eurytos and omits all mention of Aristodemos being mocked as a coward because these are details that reveal the dark side of Sparta’s obsession with death in battle. All three of these men were driven to literally kill themselves for no reason other than to escape the opprobrium of having followed orders and not died in battle. I think that even the filmmakers recognize just how insanely messed up that is.

ABOVE: Shot from the film 300 of the fictional character Dilios bandaging his injured eye—a probable allusion to the eye infection suffered by the historical Aristodemos that led Leonidas to order him to return to Sparta

The Spartiates weren’t alone at Thermopylai—far from it

300 portrays the “three hundred” Spartiates as fighting alone at Thermopylai, but this is not at all what the ancient historical sources describe. In addition to the 298 Spartiates, Herodotos records in his Histories 7.222 that seven hundred Thespians under the command of Demophilos, son of Diadromes, also remained at Thermopylai. Leonidas ordered the Thespians to leave, but they insisted on remaining, saying that they would rather die alongside their Spartiate allies than abandon them.

In addition to the Spartiates and the Thespians, there were also four hundred Thebans, whom Leonidas supposedly forced to remain because he did not trust them, since Thebes had sided with the Persians. According to Herodotos, the Thebans fought the Persians alongside the Spartiates and Thespians for a while, but, when it became clear that they stood no chance of survival if they continued fighting, they surrendered to the Persians and were taken as prisoners.

Finally, in addition to the Spartiates, Thespians, and Thebans, there were also at least several hundred helots who stayed behind to attend to their Spartan masters and (probably) fight alongside them. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact number of helots who stayed behind, but the best estimate is that there were probably around nine hundred—three for each Spartiate.

Altogether, there were around 2,300 Greeks who stayed behind for the last stand at Thermopylai and the vast majority of them were not Spartiates. For some reason, though, the other Greeks who stayed behind and fought alongside Leonidas at Thermopylai are always forgotten.

I imagine it is probably because saying there were 2,300 Greeks who stayed behind for the last stand at Thermopylai diminishes the impressiveness of their supposed ability to hold out against the Persians. Also, Thespians, Thebans, and helots do not seem to have the same mythic status that the Spartiates do in popular culture, so people tend to forget about them.

ABOVE: “THIS. IS. THESPIAI!!!” No? Doesn’t have the same ring to it?

Casting of Greek characters

With that out of the way, let’s talk about casting. This is one area where the movie’s racism really overtly stands out. It is abundantly clear that the Greek characters in the film were not cast to look Greek, but rather cast to look white. There is not a single significant Greek character in the film who is portrayed by an actor of Greek ancestry—or, indeed, any Mediterranean ancestry whatsoever. Instead, all the significant Spartan characters are played by actors of British ancestry who look very stereotypically “white.”

The main Spartan characters in the film are Leonidas (who is played by Gerard Butler—a pale-skinned, blue-eyed Scottish actor), Dilios (who is played by David Wenham—a pale-skinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired Australian actor of English ancestry), and Gorgo (who is played by Lena Headey—a pale-skinned, blue-eyed English actress).

The fact that all three of the main Spartan characters have pale skin and blue eyes, while one of them even has blond hair, is a bit peculiar, considering that actual Greek people generally tend to have black hair, brown eyes, and relatively dark complexions compared to other Europeans.

On its own, the prominence of pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes isn’t strictly inaccurate, since there are certainly some Greek people with pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. What is inaccurate, though, is the fact that there is not a single noticeable Spartan character in the film with even moderately dark skin. It’s almost as though the filmmakers didn’t realize that this movie is supposed to be set in Greece, not Scandinavia.

ABOVE: The three main Spartan characters in 300: Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler, a Scottish actor), Dilios (played by David Wenham, an Australian actor of English descent), and Gorgo (played by Lena Headey, an English actress)

Casting of Persian characters

When it comes to the Persian characters, 300 has exactly the opposite problem. All the Greek characters are portrayed as white, but all the Persian characters are portrayed as people of color. This sets up a clear dichotomy; in the film’s universe, all white people are either heroes or traitors and all people of color are villains from the start.

Near the beginning of the film, a group of Persian emissaries come to speak to Leonidas. The main emissary is portrayed by Peter Mensah, a Black Ghanaian-British actor. He is portrayed in such a way so that it is clear that audiences are supposed to dislike him. Leonidas ends up kicking him into a bottomless pit (more on this later). Later in the film, Xerxes, the Achaemenid king, is portrayed by Rodrigo Santoro, a Brazilian actor who is Hispanic and relatively dark-complexioned.

This heavy emphasis on the idea that the Persians are darker-skinned than the Greeks has no basis in reality. In the real world, Iranian people are not consistently significantly darker-skinned than Greek people. There are some Iranians who have darker skin than some Greek people, but there are also some Greek people who have darker skin than some Iranians. It is certainly not possible to reliably tell a Greek person apart from an Iranian person based solely on skin color.

The reason why all the Persian characters in the film are portrayed as having much darker skin than all the Greek characters is not because this portrayal has any basis in reality, but rather because the filmmakers are trying to send an explicit racist message. The film is overtly trying to portray the Greco-Persian Wars as a racial conflict and trying to exalt the Spartans as heroes for supposedly keeping people who are not white from entering Europe.

ABOVE: Shot of the Persian messenger killed by Leonidas in the famous “This is Sparta!!!” scene

Spartan armor

The film doesn’t just use casting choices to convey its reactionary right-wing political message; it also does this through costuming. Historically speaking, in the early fifth century BC, any Greek hoplite going into battle would have worn some kind of helmet, some kind of breastplate, greaves, and probably some kind of tunic underneath the breastplate.

The concept of a soldier’s “uniform” did not exist in Greece during this time period. All hoplites were required to bring their own armor and weapons in order to fight. Consequently, there was a significant degree of variation in the styles of armor that would have been in use, even within the same army.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix dating to between c. 500 and c. 475 BC, showing how ancient Greek hoplites really dressed before going into battle at the time of the Battle of Thermopylai

In 300, the Spartiate warriors are portrayed as initially wearing bronze Corinthian helmets, greaves, red capes, and weird garments that look like Speedos. The Spartiates in the film noticeably do not wear breastplates of any kind, leaving their muscle-bound bodies completely exposed. Many of the Spartiates also take off their helmets while they are fighting, leaving themselves even more unprotected.

ABOVE: Image of a totally buff, near-naked Leonidas from the film 300

The fact that the Spartiates are portrayed as fighting almost completely naked is obviously ridiculous. It goes flagrantly against all common sense and against everything that is known about ancient Greek warfare. Only a complete idiot of the highest order would have even considered trying to go into battle without a breastplate—and that idiot would have most likely gotten killed fairly quickly as a result of his complete ill-preparedness.

The film 300, of course, inherited the trope of depicting the Spartans fighting almost completely naked from Frank Miller’s comic book, which also portrayed the Spartans fighting almost completely naked. Miller did this deliberately; he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

“The inaccuracies, almost all of them, are intentional. I took those chest plates and leather skirts off of them for a reason. I wanted these guys to move and I wanted ’em to look good. I knocked their helmets off a fair amount, partly so you can recognize who the characters are. Spartans, in full regalia, were almost indistinguishable except at a very close angle.”

As Peter Gainsford, a professor of the classics at the Victoria University of Wellington, discusses in this blog post from 2016, Miller probably got the idea of portraying the Spartans fighting naked from the painting Leonidas at Thermopylae, which was painted by the French Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David (lived 1748 – 1825). David began the painting in 1799 and completed it in 1814. In the painting, Leonidas and the other Spartans are portrayed fighting naked.

ABOVE: The painting Leonidas at Thermopylae by Jacques-Louis David, which is probably where Frank Miller got the idea of portraying the Spartans fighting naked

Jacques-Louis David got the idea of portraying Leonidas and the other Spartans fighting naked from ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, which sometimes depict heroic figures nude. This is an ancient artistic convention known as “heroic nudity.” One example of this artistic convention can be seen in the statue of Diomedes pictured below. Heroic nudity, however, was merely an artistic convention; no one in ancient Greece actually fought naked.

This explains where the idea of Spartans fighting naked comes from, but we should also think about the effect of Miller and Snyder choosing to portray the Spartans in this manner. The Spartans’ bare, rippling muscles aren’t just there as eye candy; they also emphasize the film’s association of masculinity with extreme toughness and brute physical strength. The Spartans’ nakedness also conveniently emphasizes their whiteness by showing as much as their white skin as possible.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue of the Greek hero Diomedes of Argos, based on an earlier Greek sculpture dating to the late fifth century BC

The problem of uniformity

Even what little armor the Spartiates are actually portrayed as wearing in the film is inaccurate. As I mentioned above, Spartan hoplites in the early fifth century BC actually wore a range of different styles of armor. 300, however, noticeably portrays all the Spartiates wearing exactly the same style of armor.

For instance, all the Spartiates in 300 are portrayed as wearing Corinthian-style helmets. This is a style of helmet that was very popular in the early fifth century BC. Some of the Spartiates who fought in the Battle of Thermopylai in 480 BC probably really wore this style of helmet. There were, however, other styles of helmets that were also popular.

A significant number of ancient Greek helmets have survived to the present day, meaning we have a pretty good impression of what these helmets actually looked like. Many of these surviving ancient Greek helmets are on display in museums.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of different kinds of ancient greek helmets on display in the Staatliche Antiksammlungen in Munich

In addition to the famous Corinthian helmet, another helmet that was commonly worn by Spartiates during this period is the pilos helmet, which is shaped like a cone and looks very simplistic compared to the Corinthian helmet.

This kind of helmet leaves much more of the wearer’s face exposed, but is arguably a much better helmet than the Corinthian helmet, since it doesn’t block the wearer’s peripheral vision. By the end of the fifth century BC, Spartan hoplites had almost completely abandoned the Corinthian helmet in favor of the pilos helmet.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a pilos helmet, a kind of helmet that was often worn by Spartans in the fifth century BC

In the same way that the Spartiates in the film use nearly identical-looking helmets, they also use nearly identical-looking shields. This is also historically inaccurate. In historical reality, we know that ancient Greek hoplites actually painted their shields with all kinds of different symbols and patterns to make them look distinctive and unique. If you look at ancient Greek vase paintings, you can get a real sense of the sheer diversity of ancient shield decorations.

Some Greek men painted the image of the Gorgon Medousa on their shields, hoping to frighten their enemies. Other men painted symbols associated with their polis; for instance, an Athenian soldier might have chosen to decorate his shield with the image of an owl bearing an olive branch, which appears on Athenian coins. These shields were often brightly colored.

The portrayal of the Spartans wearing identical armor and carrying identical shields emphasizes conformity, egalitarianism, and lack of individuality. In the film, these are portrayed as positive, masculine qualities.

ABOVE: Detail of the Chigi Vase, dated to the seventh century BC, depicting Greek hoplite warriors with shields decorated with a variety of symbols and patterns

Flowing red capes?

The red capes worn by the Spartans in 300 look majestic, but they are probably not historically accurate either. The Greek historian Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BC) does mention in his treatise On Spartan Society, chapter eleven, that Spartiate men wore red cloaks. He writes, as translated by E. C. Marchant:

“In the equipment that he [i.e., Lykourgos] devised for the troops in battle he included a red cloak [στολὴν … φοινικίδα], because he believed this garment to have least resemblance to women’s clothing and to be most suitable for war, and a brass shield, because it is very soon polished and tarnishes very slowly.”

The kind of cloak that Xenophon is describing here, however, probably wouldn’t have been worn as a flowing cape, but rather would have been worn wrapped around the body. Furthermore, the Spartiates probably only wore these cloaks before battle and probably took them off before actually going into combat.

Ancient Spartan hairstyles

300 also inaccurately portrays the way that Spartiate men normally wore their hair. In the film, many of the Spartiate men, including Leonidas and Dilios, are portrayed as having short hair. This, however, is not accurate. In the early fifth century BC, many Greek men did wear their hair short, but Spartiate men were particularly known for wearing their hair long. Long hair was an integral part of the Spartiate “look.”

A few Spartiates in the film do have long hair, but their hair is portrayed as wild, unkempt, and tangled. In reality, as strange as it may sound, Spartiate men cared deeply about making sure that their hair looked perfect, especially before their went into battle.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the character Stelios, played by Michael Fassbender, who is portrayed with a full mane of wild, unkempt hair

Herodotos claims in his Histories 7.208-209 that, before the Battle of Thermopylai, Xerxes sent out a scout to observe the Greeks in their camp and that scout was astonished to see a large number of the men carefully combing and grooming their hair. He writes, as translated by A. D. Godley:

“Riding up to the camp, the horseman watched and spied out the place. He could, however, not see the whole camp, for it was impossible to see those posted inside the wall which they had rebuilt and were guarding. He did take note of those outside, whose arms lay in front of the wall, and it chanced that at that time the Lakedaimonians [i.e., Spartans] were posted there. He saw some of the men exercising naked and others combing their hair. He marvelled at the sight and took note of their numbers. When he had observed it all carefully, he rode back in leisure, since no one pursued him or paid him any attention at all. So he returned and told Xerxes all that he had seen.”

The later Greek writer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 AD) similarly emphasizes that Spartiate men were known for wearing their hair long and that they were extremely attentive to making sure it looked good, especially before battle. He writes in his Life of Lykourgos 22.1, as translated by Richard J. A. Talbert:

“It was in wartime that they relaxed the harshest elements of the young men’s training: they did not stop them grooming their hair and decorating their clothes and weapons, but were pleased at the sight of them like horses prancing and neighing before a contest. So they wore their hair long as soon as they had passed the age of ephebes; they took particular care over it in the face of danger, making it look sleek and combing it. They bore in mind one of Lykourgos’s statements about long hair, that it renders handsome men better looking, and ugly ones more frightening.”

The reason 300 omits this extremely vital aspect of Spartan warriors’ appearance is because, in twenty-first-century American culture, it is considered “effeminate” for men to wear their hair long and spend a lot of time styling it. This, however, was clearly not the case in ancient Sparta.

Ancient Greek depictions of warriors with long hair show them wearing their hair in what appear to be long, intricate braids that come midway down their backs. It is extremely likely that this is how many Spartiate men wore their hair.

ABOVE: Photograph of an ancient Greek statue of a warrior wearing his hair in long, intricate braids that come midway down his back. This is how many Spartiate men probably wore their hair.

How Xerxes I really looked

In addition to portraying the Persians as people of color, the movie 300 also goes to great lengths to portray them as bizarre, foreign, backwards, and sinister as possible from the perspective of a straight cisgender white American man.

For instance, the film portrays the Achaemenid king Xerxes I as an unnaturally tall, bald, clean-shaven man with a huge gold nose ring in his right nostril and all kinds of crazy gold jewelry covering his face. He wears heavy eyeliner, he has long fingernails, and, apart from all the elaborate gold jewelry he wears, he goes around almost completely naked, allowing us to see all his rippling muscles.

Zack Snyder openly admitted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he deliberately tried to make Xerxes seem gay because he believed that this would make homophobic young men even more afraid of him. He is quoted as saying, “What’s more scary to a 20-year-old boy than a giant god-king who wants to have his way with you?”

ABOVE: Image of Xerxes I as he is portrayed in the film 300

The way that Xerxes I is portrayed in the film has absolutely no basis whatsoever in historical reality. It is entirely a product of Frank Miller and Zack Snyder’s imaginations. The historical Xerxes I didn’t have any piercings that we know of, he wasn’t bald, he didn’t walk around naked, and he didn’t wear gold jewelry covering his face.

As it happens, we have a very good impression of what the historical Xerxes I probably looked like because he is depicted in numerous surviving works of ancient Persian art. Judging from how Xerxes I is depicted in Persian art, he usually dressed in long, flowing robes with long sleeves and had long, curly hair and a long beard.

For instance, Xerxes I is depicted as the crown prince in an ancient Persian relief carving from Persepolis known as the Audience Scene of Darius I, which is now held in the National Museum of Iran. While the representation is stylized, it should does give us some impression of what Xerxes I really looked like.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Xerxes I, as depicted in the Audience Scene of Darius I

ABOVE: Detail from Wikimedia Commons of Xerxes I’s face, as depicted in the Audience Scene of Darius I

Xerxes I is also depicted in a Persian relief carving from his tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam, in which he is shown wearing long robes and carrying a bow. Once again, the depiction is stylized, but it should still give us a decent impression of what Xerxes I looked like.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Xerxes I as he is depicted in the relief carving on his tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam

The Persians weren’t nearly as awful as they are portrayed in the film

300 portrays the Persians as utterly, irredeemably evil. In historical reality, they were no such thing. In fact, the Achaemenid Persians were actually remarkably merciful conquerors, especially compared to other ancient peoples. Obviously, getting conquered in the ancient world was never a fun experience, but, if you had to be conquered by someone, the Achaemenid Persians were probably some of the best people in the ancient world you could pick to conquer you.

The Achaemenid Persians had a general policy of letting the peoples they conquered keep their culture, keep their language, keep their identity, keep their traditions, keep their religion, and, in many cases, even keep their government. The only thing the Persians usually asked of the peoples they conquered was that they acknowledge the Persian king as their supreme ruler and pay regular tribute to him. As long as a people acknowledged the Persian king and paid him tribute, the Persians pretty much left them alone for the most part.

Also, the Persians were not just invading Greece because they wanted more land; they were invading Greece because, in 499 BC, the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were already under Persian rule, had rebelled against the Persians and sent requests for help to the major Greek city-states of the mainland. The Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria had sent ships full of soldiers to help the Ionians. This rebellion had resulted in considerable destruction, including the burning of the Persian city of Sardis, before it was ultimately put down.

Darius I therefore launched the first Persian invasion of Greece in 490 BC in retaliation against the Athenians and Eretrians for aiding the Ionians in their revolt. Darius I’s forces burned Eretria to the ground, but they were defeated and repulsed by the Athenians in the Battle of Marathon in August or September of 490 BC. Xerxes I launched his invasion of Greece ten years later in effort to finish his father’s work. In other words, the Persians were not just making a land grab; they were invading because they perceived the Greeks as a genuine threat to the stability of the westernmost part of their empire.

Additionally, the Persians actually offered very good terms to nearly all the city-states of Greece. Consequently, most Greek city-states actually sided with the Persians. Only a handful of city-states, including Athens and Sparta, even tried to resist.

The reason why most of these Greeks chose to resist the Persians was not because the Persians were actually going to enslave and oppress them, but rather because they wanted to avoid the shame of having to acknowledge and pay tribute to the Persian king. The primary motivation that most Greeks had for resisting the Persians, then, was that they wanted to preserve their honor—not their freedom in the sense that we would think of it today.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons illustrating military actions during the Ionian Revolt. It was the involvement of Athens and Euboia in this revolt that triggered Darius I’s invasion of Greece in 490 BC.

The dark truth about Spartan society

Not only were the Persians not nearly as awful as they are portrayed in 300, but the Spartans were not nearly as awesome. Let’s start by talking about the Spartan social and political structure. 300 somehow manages to simultaneously portray Sparta as far more egalitarian than it really was, while also portraying it as far more autocratic than it really was.

On the one hand, the film’s portrayal of Spartan society as essentially egalitarian is not even remotely correct. Sparta was, in fact, arguably the most hierarchical state in the entire ancient Greek world. It had an extremely rigid caste system in which the vast majority of people were huddled at the very bottom and only a tiny handful were at the very top.

The vast majority of the Spartan population was composed of helots, a class of enslaved serfs who were, by all accounts, brutally oppressed. The Spartan poet Tyrtaios, who lived in around the middle of the seventh century BC, describes the brutal mistreatment the helots suffered in a surviving fragment. Here is his description, as translated by M. L. West:

“…like donkeys suffering under heavy loads,
by painful force compelled to bring their masters half
of all the produce that the soil brought forth.”

The helots did nearly all the agricultural labor in ancient Sparta. Consequently, pretty much the entire Spartan economy rested on their backs. According to Greek writers, the Spartiates lived in constant fear of the helots rebelling, since they knew that the helots greatly outnumbered them.

Another large segment of the population of Sparta was made up of perioikoi, non-citizens who were free but who lacked political rights. Perioikoi were the merchants and manufacturers of Spartan society. They were the ones who made all the armor and weapons for the Spartiates.

Spartiates (i.e., full Spartan citizens) were only an extremely tiny minority of the overall Spartan population. We don’t know exactly what percentage of the Spartan population they were, but an informed guess is that they probably made up less than ten percent of the total population. They were an extremely elite class, essentially equivalent to millionaires of the contemporary United States.

Even if you totally ignore the helots and perioikoi, though, Sparta still wasn’t egalitarian because there were significant wealth disparities even among Spartiates. The surviving sources on Spartiate society try very hard to hide these disparities and to portray it as egalitarian, but, occasionally, one of the sources lets slip the truth. For instance, Xenophon mentions in his On Spartan Society 5.3 that, although Spartiates were nominally supposed to eat together communally, rich Spartiates could afford to eat better food.

Once you know that Spartan society revolved around an ingrained caste system and nearly the entire economy rested on the backbreaking labor of a brutally oppressed class of serfs, that really changes the way you think about the Battle of Thermopylai. If the Spartans were fighting for “freedom” in any sense, then they were really only fighting for the freedom of elite male Spartiate citizens—not the freedom of “all Greeks,” as the film puts it at several points.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic black-figure neck amphora by the Antimenes Painter dating to between c. 530 and c. 510 BC depicting people (probably slaves) gathering olives.

Oddly enough, despite 300‘s emphasis on the supposedly egalitarian nature of Spartiate society, the film simultaneously distorts Sparta’s government in a way that eliminates all elements that could be seen as democratic and that glorifies authoritarian autocracy. In the film, Sparta is more-or-less portrayed as an authoritarian state ruled by a single charismatic king: Leonidas, who is portrayed is extremely masculine, powerful, and beloved by everyone worth talking to.

In historical reality, Sparta had a complex government system that combined aspects of a kingship, an oligarchy, and a democracy. Sparta had two kings, who were descended from two different royal families. One of these was the Agiad royal family; the other was the Eurypontid royal family. The two kings were equal in power (at least in theory) and functioned as religious leaders and military commanders.

Meanwhile, domestic affairs were chiefly governed by the five ephors, who were selected annually. Any male Spartiate could become an ephor, but each ephor only served a one-year term and, once someone had served as an ephor, he could never serve as an ephor again.

Other administrative duties were assigned to the gerousia, a council of twenty-eight elders over the age of sixty who were elected for life terms by the apella (i.e. the assembly of all male Spartiates over the age of eighteen years). Most members of the gerousia were members of one of the royal families.

By eliminating the complexities of the Spartan government and concentrating power in the hands of a single man, who is portrayed as virtuous and beloved, 300 is overtly glorifying autocracy.

ABOVE: Screenshot from 300 of Leonidas directing his spear towards the Persian forces. The historical Leonidas didn’t wield the kind of autocratic power that he is portrayed as wielding in the movie.

The “This is Sparta!” scene

The most iconic scene in the entire movie 300 occurs near the beginning, when the Persian emissary comes to ask Leonidas to give him “earth and water” as a sign of submission. Leonidas responds by shouting “This is Sparta!” and kicking the emissary into a bottomless pit. This scene has been parodied and memed more times than anyone probably cares to count.

The scene happens to be based on a story recorded by Herodotos in his Histories 7.133. Herodotos reports that, when Darius I sent emissaries to Sparta in 490 BC to demand payment of earth and water as a sign of submission, the Spartans threw the emissaries down a well and essentially told them that they’d find plenty of earth and water at the bottom.

It’s hard to say whether Herodotos’s story is historically true, since he was writing decades later and not everything he tells us is necessarily trustworthy. If the story is true, then the decision to throw the emissaries down the well was probably made either by the ephors or by a vote of the gerousia. It is extremely unlikely that Leonidas spontaneously decided to kick one of the emissaries into a well. (In fact, it is unclear whether Leonidas was even a king yet when this supposedly happened, since the Agiad king at the time may have still been Leonidas’s predecessor Kleomenes I.)

ABOVE: Screenshot of Leonidas kicking the Persian emissary into the bottomless pit, as portrayed in the movie 300

The movie relocates the event from 490 BC to 480 BC, replaces the well with a bottomless pit, and turns the act of throwing the Achaemenid emissaries down the well into a spontaneous act on Leonidas’s part. All of this is done for the sake of enhancing the drama and excitement, while also glorifying Leonidas as an active and aggressive ruler.

Ironically, according to Herodotos, the Spartans later came to regret their decision to kill the Achaemenid emissaries, believing that it was an egregious crime. Herodotos reports in his Histories 7.134–136 that the Spartans later sent two volunteers to Xerxes and told him that he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to them as recompense for them having killed two of his emissaries.

Herodotos tells us that Xerxes responded by telling the volunteers that the Persians are a civilized people and that, unlike the Spartans, they do not kill emissaries. He reportedly treated the Spartan emissaries with great hospitality and sent them back to Sparta unharmed.

ABOVE: Illustration by M. A. Barth from 1830 depicting the Spartans hurling the Achaemenid emissaries down a well

Spartan women

The vast majority of 300 is focused on what the Spartiate men are doing, but it does devote some screen time to Leonidas’s wife Gorgo. The film portrays Gorgo as wielding significant power, playing off the popular notion that Sparta was some kind of ancient paradise for women’s freedom.

It is true that Spartiate women generally had more freedom than citizen women in other Greek city-states and that the Spartiates did value strong women. Nonetheless, Sparta was far from the paradise for women’s freedom that is often portrayed as and sexist attitudes towards women still pervaded. Indeed, the ancient sources strongly indicate that the primary reason why strong women were so valued in Sparta was because it was believed that strong women would bear strong sons.

Ploutarchos of Chaironeia records a number of anecdotes about Spartiate women in his treatise Sayings of Spartan Women. Ploutarchos was writing hundreds of years after the events he describes supposedly took place, the sayings he records represent a heavily idealized view of Spartiate women, and it is highly unlikely that any of the anecdotes he tells really happened in exactly the way he tells them. Nonetheless, the anecdotes do illustrate the values that were ascribed to Sparta in antiquity.

Some of the most illustrative anecdotes in Sayings of Spartan Women are about Gorgo, the wife of King Leonidas. Most famously, Ploutarchos tells this story about her, as translated by Richard J. A. Talbert:

“When asked by a woman from Attike: ‘Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?’, she said: ‘Because we are also the only ones who give birth to men.'”

Many people have tried to read statements such as this one as feminist, but this is certainly not the case. These kinds of statements overtly reflect the grim reality that Spartiate women weren’t valued for their own essential worth as human beings, but rather on account of the sons it was assumed that they would bear.

Indeed, Spartiate women’s own feelings and livelihoods weren’t supposed to matter; all that mattered to Spartan society and to the Spartan state was that they bore strong sons. Ploutarchos tells another anecdote in the Sayings of Spartan Women about how, supposedly, when Leonidas preparing to go to Thermopylai, Gorgo asked him what she should do if he happened to die in battle. Leonidas replied: “Marry a good man and bear strong children.”

Women in other ancient Greek city-states were valued because of the work they contributed to the household; Spartiate women, on the other hand, were valued solely as baby-making machines. Ploutarchos records the following anecdote in his Sayings of Spartan Women, as translated by Talbert:

“When an Ionian woman was priding herself on one of the tapestries she had made (which was indeed of great value), a Spartan woman showed off her four most dutiful sons and said they were the kind of thing a noble and good woman ought to produce, and should boast of them and take pride in them.”

Taken together, these attitudes towards the role of women are actually really sexist and dehumanizing.

Moreover, it’s important to remember that Spartiate women only made up an extremely tiny minority of all women who lived in ancient Sparta. The vast majority of women who lived in ancient Sparta were helots. Unfortunately, we know very little whatsoever about what life was like for helot women because they are barely mentioned in any of our surviving written sources. Nonetheless, we can probably safely conjecture that life for them was not especially pleasant.

ABOVE: Photograph of a bronze statuette of a Spartan female athlete, dating to c. 520 – c. 500 BC, likely made by a perioikos

The myth of Spartiate military invincibility

300 also contributes to the popular myth that the Spartiates were invincible in battle. In scene after scene, the Spartiates are portrayed slaughtering Persians right and left while suffering very few injuries themselves. Meanwhile, much of the rhetoric in the film focuses heavily on the Spartans’ supposed invincibility.

The truth is, though, that Spartans weren’t invincible in battle at all. The Spartans may have had a reputation for their skill in combat, but they really did sometimes lose. Most notably, the Persians defeated the Spartans at Thermopylai in 480 BC; the Athenians defeated the Spartans at Sphakteria in 425 BC; the Thebans and their allies under the leadership of Epaminondas and Pelopidas defeated the Spartans at Leuktra in 371 BC; the Thebans arguably defeated the Spartans again at Mantineia in 362 BC, although their leader Epaminondas was killed.

The list goes on. And this list only includes land battles in which the Spartans were defeated; the Spartans rarely ever won sea battles. (The Battle of Aigos Potamoi in 405 BC in which the Spartan navy decisively defeated the Athenian navy was an unusual case—certainly not the norm.)

ABOVE: Fictional illustration from 1882 depicting how the artist imagined it might have looked when Pelopidas led the Thebans and their allies into battle against the Spartans in the Battle of Leuktra in 371 BC, in which the Thebans utterly defeated the Spartans and decisively proved that the Spartans were far from invincible.

The Spartans weren’t irreligious either

One of the stranger themes in the film 300 is its portrayal of the ancient Spartans as predominately irreligious. In the film, most Spartans are implied to no longer believe in the gods. Leonidas in particular is repeatedly implied to be an atheist and he is frequently chided as a “blasphemer” for not adhering to religious protocols.

In historical reality, however, as I talk about in this article from September 2019, atheism as we conceive of it today was extremely rare in the ancient Greek world. Although many Greek philosophers questioned traditional beliefs about the gods, they overwhelmingly believed in the gods’ existence. The Spartans in particular were actually widely known throughout the Greek world for their intense piety and devotion to all religious matters.

The historical King Leonidas I of Sparta was about as far from an atheist as it is possible to get. Herodotos portrays Leonidas I as an especially pious king who honored the gods, performed sacrifices to them before battle, and heeded the words of the Delphic oracle.

In service to its generally anti-religious message, 300 makes a number of rather baffling departures from the historical record. For instance, as I have already noted, in historical reality, the ephors were government officials who served one-year terms. In the movie 300, however, the ephors are portrayed as hideous, corrupt, inbred priests of “the old gods” who only possess authority because of obsolete tradition and who are implied to engage in all sorts of deviant sexual behaviors.

The ephors are explicitly described by the narrator of the film as “worthless remnants of a time before Sparta’s ascent from darkness, remnants of a senseless tradition, a tradition even Leonidas cannot defy.” All of this is, of course, wildly inaccurate. Not only were the historical ephors not “worthless remnants” of an older tradition, but they were probably actually relatively recent additions to the Spartan constitution in Leonidas I’s time.

Ploutarchos of Chaironeia records in his Life of Lykourgos 7 that the ephors were first introduced as government officials during the reign of King Theopompos, who is said to have ruled in around the early seventh century BC or thereabouts. Ploutarchos implies that the introduction of the ephors was seen as a way to make the Spartan constitution somewhat more democratic while still maintaining both Spartan kings and other older aspects of the constitution.

Although Ploutarchos was writing many centuries after the events he describes, he is believed to have relied heavily on much earlier sources that have since been lost, meaning his report may indeed be accurate.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the ephors, who are portrayed in the film as hideous, inbred priests of “the old gods.” In reality, ephors were normal government officials who served one-year terms.

Not a racial conflict

As I have mentioned previously, the not-so-hidden message behind 300 is one of white supremacy and fascism. The Persians, who are uniformly portrayed as people of color, are depicted as irredeemably evil, backwards, and—worst of all—eastern, while the Spartans, who are uniformly portrayed as white, are portrayed as heroic and noble. The clear message of the film is that white Europeans and so-called “western civilization” are good and that people who are not white are all evil barbarians who want to take away the freedom of white Europeans.

I’ve already mentioned that there is no consistent significant difference in skin color between Greek people and Iranian people, but I feel I must also emphasize that, in historical reality, most of the people in Xerxes I’s army that the Greeks would have been fighting at Thermopylai weren’t ethnic Iranians at all.

In fact, a large number of Xerxes I’s army was actually made up of Greeks who had sided with the Achaemenid Empire. Herodotos explicitly tells us in his Histories that a significant bulk of Xerxes I’s army was made up of Greeks from the northern regions of Thrake, Makedonia, and Thessalia. The film deliberately omits this fact in order to draw as stark of a dichotomy as possible between the Spartiates and the Persians.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the political situation in Greece during the Greco-Persian Wars. Many northern Greek city-states and kingdoms actually sided with the Persians.

Ephialtes wasn’t deformed… or a Spartan

Probably the most despicable character in 300 is Ephialtes, who is portrayed as a hideous, horribly disfigured hunchback. According to the film, Ephialtes’s parents were Spartans, but he was born disfigured and, according to Spartan law, disfigured infants were to be killed, so he was forced to live his entire life an outcast.

The film portrays Ephialtes as wanting to fight with the Spartans, but being rejected by Leonidas because he cannot hold up his shield. Thus, Ephialtes betrays the Spartans by revealing the location of the path the Persians ultimately use to bypass Thermopylai and flank the Spartans. He does this out of desire for gold, women, and a military position.

In historical reality, we have no evidence to suggest that Ephialtes was deformed at all. Furthermore, he was not a Spartan, but rather a native of the city of Trachis, which was in Thessalia, a region of Greece that had mostly sided with Persia. While Herodotos does tell us that Ephialtes was seeking a reward for his treachery, I am not so sure that money was the only reason why Ephialtes revealed the location of the pass.

I could easily see Ephialtes as truly believing that it would be better for Greece to be ruled by the Persians. We have to remember that the Greek city-states were fractious and constantly at war; the Persians offered a hope for stability and peace. Plus, most kingdoms and city-states in northern Greece had already pledged themselves to the Persians. Indeed, as I mentioned before, a large part of Xerxes I’s army was made up of Thessalians, so I doubt Ephialtes would have even thought of himself as a traitor.

The film deliberately deviates from the historical record and portrays Ephialtes as deformed in order to portray people who have physical disabilities as evil, ungrateful, and untrustworthy. The film also blatantly endorses the murder of infants who are deemed “unfit to live” by suggesting that, if Ephialtes had just been murdered as an infant according to Spartan customs, then the Spartans would have won at Thermopylai.

ABOVE: Shot of Epialtes as he is portrayed in 300. We do not know what the historical Epialtes of Trachis looked like, but we have no evidence to suggest that he was a hunchback or that he was deformed in any way.

The three hundred Spartans were not Leonidas I’s personal bodyguards

300 portrays the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylai as members of Leonidas I’s personal bodyguard. According to the film, the ephors forbade Leonidas from leading an army to fight the Persians, so Leonidas used the excuse that the warriors he was leading to Thermopylai were his personal bodyguard. This is an idea that Frank Miller evidently got from the 1962 sword-and-sandal epic film The 300 Spartans, which was, by and large, generally less inaccurate than 300.

This idea that the Spartans at Thermopylai were Leonidas’s personal bodyguards, though, is entirely false. No ancient source ever claims that they were Leonidas’s personal bodyguard and, furthermore, Herodotos actually tells us in his Histories 6.56 that the Spartan king’s personal bodyguard was only one hundred men and that the duty of these men was to protect their king while campaigning. Herodotos writes, as translated by A. D. Godley:

“These privileges the Spartans have given to their kings: two priesthoods, of Zeus called Lacedaemon and of Zeus of Heaven; they wage war against whatever land they wish, and no Spartan can hinder them in this on peril of being put under a curse; when the armies go forth the kings go out first and return last; one hundred chosen men guard them in their campaigns; they sacrifice as many sheep and goats as they wish at the start of their expeditions, and take the hides and backs of all sacrificed beasts.”

In other words, three hundred men would have been three times the number of men that made up Leonidas’s personal bodyguard. Furthermore, the purpose of these bodyguards was to protect the king in battle, meaning Leonidas couldn’t have used the excuse that he makes in the film about “going for a stroll.” In any case, though, we have no record of the ephors having forbade Leonidas from leading an army north in the first place, so he would have had no reason to give any such excuse to begin with.

ABOVE: Shot from the film 300 of Leonidas’s “personal bodyguard.” In historical reality, he never had to make any such excuse because the ephors never forbade him from leading an army north to fight the Persians.

A reminder that the Spartans and their allies absolutely, utterly, unquestionably lost

Probably influenced to some extent by 300‘s wildly glamorized portrayal of the ancient Spartans as invincible war machines with seemingly supernatural fighting abilities, many people seem to have been misled into thinking that the Spartans and their allies actually won the Battle of Thermopylai. For instance, there is currently a question on Quora that asks, “How, if at all, could the Persians have won at the battle of Thermopylae?”

In historical reality, the Battle of Thermopylai was an unambiguous, unmitigated victory for the Achaemenid Empire and an absolutely crushing defeat for the allied Greek city-states who were trying to halt its advance. The ancient sources unanimously agree that the Achaemenid forces slaughtered nearly all the Greek soldiers who stayed behind for the final stand, including all the Spartans, all the Thespians, and probably most of the others. After the battle, under Xerxes’s orders, the Persians retrieved Leonidas’s body, chopped off his head, impaled his severed head on a pike, and crucified his headless corpse.

As a result of their momentous victory, the Achaemenid forces advanced south into mainland Greece, conquering all of Phokis, Boiotia, and Attike. The Athenians were forced to evacuate their city in order to escape the advancing Achaemenid army. The Persian forces marched straight into Athens itself, occupied the city, and razed the Akropolis, destroying all the temples that had been built there.

The only reason why anyone thinks of the Battle of Thermopylai as anything other than a decisive victory for the Achaemenid Empire is because the allied Greek city-states eventually managed to turn the tide of the war in their favor. Consequently, Greek historians like Herodotos tried to portray the Battle of Thermopylai in the most positive light that they could by saying that the Greeks who stayed behind to fight alongside Leonidas in his final stand may have all died, but at least they fought bravely. Modern storytellers have taken this narrative to even greater extremes than the Greeks themselves ever did.

The reality, though, is that, regardless of how bravely the Greeks who stayed for the final stand at Thermopylai may have fought, they all died and, quite frankly, they accomplished nothing in doing so—apart from possibly giving the other Greeks a little bit more time to retreat. In other words, they failed.

ABOVE: Imaginative illustration from 1900 showing how the author imagined it might have looked when the Achaemenid Persians razed the Athenian Akropolis

Can we all just talk about how incredibly not gay this film is?

Moving on from the matter of historical accuracy, it would be hard to talk about 300 without talking about the ways it deals with the subject of homosexuality. On the one hand, the film is extremely homophobic. For instance, Leonidas at one point derisively refers to the Athenians as “boy-lovers” (which is ironic, considering that, as I discuss in this article I published in June 2019, pederasty was practiced in all ancient Greek city-states, including Sparta, where it was institutionalized). Meanwhile, Xerxes is portrayed as overtly effeminate in a way that is strongly reminiscent of modern negative stereotypes about gay people.

On the other hand, the film is absolutely chock-full of gay subtext. I mean, the entire movie is full of extremely athletic, muscle-bound men going around almost completely naked, constantly trying to impress each other about how strong and brave they are. On top of that, Leonidas is constantly talking about how much he loves his men and the comradery they share. At the end, when the camera pans over the muscular bodies of the Spartans lying dead on the ground after the slaughter, it honestly looks a lot like a scene after an all-male orgy.

I have often thought that 300 is the “Ted Haggard of films,” since it uses blatant homophobia in a futile effort to hide how conspicuously gay it is. There’s no way anyone can watch this movie without recognizing that there are major gay undertones running throughout the whole thing, from beginning to end.

ABOVE: Scene of the naked bodies of Leonidas and the other Spartans lying strewn all over the ground at Thermopylai, as though sleeping after all-male orgy—one of many shots in the film that seem almost deliberately homoerotic

The important later history 300 leaves out

In addition to pointing out some of the inaccuracies in the film, I would also like to point out that the film actually leaves out a lot of important later history that completely changes the narrative.

300 ends with a portrayal of the Greek defeat of the Persians in the Battle of Plataia in August of 479 BC. It portrays this Greek victory as the beginning of a new era of Greek freedom and unity, but, in reality, just the opposite was true; the defeat of the Persians largely only brought a return to the usual Greek fractiousness. No sooner had the Persians been driven out of Europe than the Greeks began fighting against each other once again.

Indeed, Athens and Sparta, the two most powerful Greek city-states of the fifth century BC, spent nearly half of the century at war with each other; they fought against each other in the First Peloponnesian War (lasted 460 – 445 BC) and then again in the more famous Second Peloponnesian War (lasted 431 – 404 BC). In other words, the repulsion of the Persian invasions pretty much just allowed the Greek city-states to remain for the most part as they had been before; they did very little to unify the Greeks.

Furthermore, while the Battles of Plataia and Mykale, both fought in August of 479 BC may have resulted in the expulsion of the Persians from Europe, this was only the beginning of Persian meddling in Greek affairs. For the next century and a half, the Persians continued to intervene in Greek politics, supporting one Greek city-state and then another, pitting them against each other so none of them could grow strong enough to launch an invasion of their territory.

ABOVE: Shot of the character Dilios, who is loosely based on the historical figure Aristodemos of Sparta, giving his final speech at the Battle of Plataia at the end of the film

Most importantly, 300 omits all mention of the fact that less than a century after Leonidas and his comrades died at Thermopylai, the Spartans literally sold out their fellow Greeks to the Persians. Oh yes, that’s right; the Spartans totally sold their fellow Greeks out. Towards the end of the Corinthian War (lasted 395 – 387 BC), the Spartans formed an alliance with the Persians against an alliance of all the other major Greek city-states, including Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos.

The Corinthian War concluded with the so-called “King’s Peace,” a peace agreement on Persian terms. Under this treaty, all the Greek city-states of Asia Minor as well as the islands of Kypros and Klazomenai were returned to the Persians. The Persians named Sparta as the guarantor of this treaty and gave the Spartans authority over the other Greek city-states.

While the other Greek city-states Sparta was fighting had previously formed an alliance with the Persians themselves, it was the Spartans were the ones who were appointed by the Persians to enforce a peace treaty that entailed the return of Greek city-states that had previously been free to Persian rule. I genuinely am curious to find out what the makers of 300 would think if only they knew about the Corinthian War and the King’s Peace.

ABOVE: Image of the Greek text of the treaty the Persians appointed the Spartans to enforce in 387 BC, as recorded by the Greek historian Xenophon in his Hellenika, along with an English translation, from Wikimedia Commons

A racist propaganda film

I could perhaps forgive most of 300’s inaccuracies if they were just there to make the film more exciting, but it is very clear that the purpose of most of the changes is to send a racist political message. It is no wonder that the story of the three hundred Spartans is extremely popular among racists, fascists, and white nationalists.

In 2008, Alleanza Nazionale, a fascist party in Italy, literally used a panel of Leonidas from Frank Miller’s 300 in one of their propaganda posters with the caption “Difendi i tuoi valori, la tua civilta, il tuo quartiere,” which means “Defend your values, your civilization, your district.” It was a clear and unambiguous attempt to equate modern-day fascists with the Spartans in Miller’s comic book.

ABOVE: Image of a propaganda poster bearing a panel from Frank Miller’s comic book 300 that was used by the Italian fascist party Alleanza Nazionale in 2008

In the United Kingdom, members of the European Research Group (ERG), the extreme pro-Brexit faction of the Conservative Party, call themselves “the Spartans.” Peter Gainsford, whom I cited earlier in this article, points out in a blog post that some members of the same group also call themselves “the Grand Wizards,” indicating that they see the Spartans and the Ku Klux Klan as related entities.

Here in the United States, Steve Bannon, the co-founder of the far-right media outlet Breitbart (which Bannon himself has described as a “sounding board for the alt-right”) and former Chief Strategist to President Donald Trump, is reportedly obsessed with ancient Sparta. Julia Jones, Steve Bannon’s former writing partner, said in an interview with The Daily Beast in 2017:

“He [i.e. Steve Bannon] talked a lot about Sparta—how Sparta defeated Athens, he loved the story. The password on his [desktop] computer at his office at American Vantage Media in Santa Monica was ‘Sparta,’ in fact.”

Meanwhile, as I discuss in this other article I wrote, the phrase “μολὼν λαβέ,” which, according to a well-known apocryphal legend, was supposedly spoken by Leonidas to Xerxes at Thermopylai, has become an extremely popular and widely-used political slogan among gun activists, white supremacists, and other members of the far right.

In Greece, no one is more obsessed with ancient Sparta than the Golden Dawn, a Neo-Nazi political party and criminal organization that is so obsessed with the idea of Greek racial purity that, according to a Greek Reporter article from 2012, they literally tried to set up a special blood drive initiative in Athens so that “pure-blooded” Greek people would not have to accept blood donations from people who are not “pure-blooded” Greeks.

The Golden Dawn holds a rally every year at Thermopylai by the statue of Leonidas in which they bear torches much like the Neo-Nazis at the rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. They do this because they believe in all seriousness that Leonidas and the other Spartans died at Thermopylai to save Greece from the hordes of evil, non-white invaders.

I am not saying that everyone who likes the film 300 is a racist, but the story of the three hundred Spartans is certainly very popular among racists.

ABOVE: Photograph from a Neo-Nazi website of Golden Dawn supporters holding a rally at Thermopylai in 2013

Don’t blame the Greek historians for this

It has become common for debunkers of 300 to blame Greek historians—in particular Herodotos—for the gratuitously racist portrayal of the Persians in 300. This is unfair, however. While it is true that Herodotos is guilty of exoticizing the Persians to an extent and it is true that Herodotos portrays Xerxes I negatively, he does not portray all Persians as irredeemably evil.

For instance, Herodotos portrays Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, as a model leader, a great ruler, and a paragon of wisdom and virtue. in fact, The Histories ends with a word of wisdom from Cyrus that is clearly aimed at Herodotos’s fellow Greeks. In other words, Herodotos clearly thought that some Persians were wise and that there were things the Greeks could learn from them.

Even Herodotos’s portrayal of Xerxes I is not uniformly negative. In 300, Xerxes tells Leonidas “I would gladly kill any of my own men for victory.” By sharp contrast, there is a famous scene in Herodotos’s Histories 7.44–46 in which Xerxes is portrayed as weeping at the thought that, in a century, his men will all be dead. Herodotos writes, as translated by A. D. Godley:

“Marking how Xerxes wept, he questioned him and said, ‘O king, what a distance there is between what you are doing now and a little while ago! After declaring yourself blessed you weep.’ Xerxes said, ‘I was moved to compassion when I considered the shortness of all human life, since of all this multitude of men not one will be alive a hundred years from now.’ Artabanos answered, ‘In one life we have deeper sorrows to bear than that. Short as our lives are, there is no human being either here or elsewhere so fortunate that it will not occur to him, often and not just once, to wish himself dead rather than alive. Misfortunes fall upon us and sicknesses trouble us, so that they make life, though short, seem long. Life is so miserable a thing that death has become the most desirable refuge for humans; the god is found to be envious in this, giving us only a taste of the sweetness of living.’”

I do not think Herodotos includes this scene to portray Xerxes as weak, but rather to show that even Xerxes was capable of compassion. Certainly, Herodotos does not portray Xerxes as a man who feels joy at the thought of killing his own men.

While debunkers of 300 are eager to emphasize Herodotos’s pro-Greek bias, it is worth noting that Herodotos actually came from a mixed background. As I note in this article I wrote in September 2019, Herodotos was a Greek, but he actually grew up in the Persian satrapy of Karia. The ruler of Karia at the time when Herodotos was growing up was the Greek queen Artemisia I, who fought for the Persians in the Battle of Salamis. As I noted in this article from October 2019, Herodotos gives Artemisia I an extremely favorable portrayal in his Histories, further demonstrating that his pro-Greek bias was not quite so absolute as his detractors have claimed.

The racist portrayal of the Persians in 300 is not Herodotos’s fault, but Frank Miller and Zack Snyder’s fault. While 300 does lift a few quotes from Herodotos, these are just for flavor; they are not in any way a sign of faithfulness to Herodotos’s account. Does Herodotos deserve some blame? Probably—but most of the blame should go to the people who actually made the film.

ABOVE: Second-century AD Roman marble portrait bust of the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos, a conventional portrayal based on a Greek bronze original of the fourth century BC