Great Battles of the Ancient World | The Battle of Thermopylae (Lecture 11)

Lecture 11: The events leading up to this dramatic confrontation are reviewed and the battle itself is examined. Xerxes, son of Darius I, had launched a full-scale land-and-sea invasion of the Greek mainland with an army so large that it dismayed the Greeks. The advent of this Persian host forced most Greek states in its path to surrender, or medize, given that none could seriously contemplate standing up to it. Yet a handful of Greek poleis in central Greece and the Peloponnese, led by Athens and Sparta, did just that. Facing insurmountable odds, a Spartan contingent of 300 warriors led by one of their two kings, along with allied troops, was charged with stopping the Persian invader at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, while the Greek armies mustered in the rear. The battle ended in a Greek defeat, following betrayal by a local with topographical knowledge. The Battle of Thermopylae can be viewed as the first in a great cultural tradition: the Glorious Defeat. The essence of this tradition is that a military defeat be converted into a moral victory, most commonly by claims that it manifests admirable national, cultural, or ethnic qualities.

Essential Reading:
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 11.1–11.
Herodotus, The Histories, Book 7.
Green, The Greco-Persian Wars, pp. 109–149.
Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, pp. 81–150.

Supplemental Reading:
Cartledge, The Spartans.
Clough, “Loyalty and Liberty.”
Pressfield, Gates of Fire (a novel).
Strauss, The Battle of Salamis, pp. 11–89.