The Last Stand of the 300 | King Leonidas of Sparta

Today, I will be taking you to ancient Sparta where the warrior king Leonidas ruled over one of the most elite class of warriors that ever lived. The legendary King of Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylae is one of the most brilliant and tragic events of ancient Greek history. The man that was King Leonidas and the battle itself has inspired many artists, poets and filmmakers to recreate this event in their own way. This is the true story of King Leonidas and his loyal 300 Spartan warriors. First, let's look at the ancestry of Leonidas and his early life. Leonidas was said to be the 17th ruler of the Aegean line, who claimed direct descent from the demigod Hercules. In the ancient world, it was common for kings to claim that their ancestors were divine. This way, the normal population would buy into their kinship due to how strong their religious customs were. Leonidas was said to be 20 generations down from the legendary Hercules, with his bloodline being hailed as king's. Leonidas' father was Anaxandridas II, who was the ruler of Sparta between 560 BC and 524 BC. Leonidas was born in 540 BC, but he had no ambition or right to the throne as he had an older brother named Cleomenes, who would himself be a notable figure. In 508 BC, Cleomenes assembled an alliance of Peloponnesian states to attack Athens. His intention was to install anti-Persian rule in Athens. However, Cleomenes had a co-king who was called Demaratus, who was also part of Cleomenes' army. After Cleomenes revealed his intention to try to break away from Persian influence, his co-king Demaratus would withdraw from his army, causing it to collapse. Years later, in the year 491 BC, Darius I, also known as Darius the Great, who was the third Persian emperor, sent messengers around Greece to demand that the various kingdoms and city-states submit to Persian authority and rule. Many having heard of the vastness of the kingdom of Persia, its riches and its boundless army, submitted, but the Spartans led by Cleomenes would do no such thing. When the Persian messengers came to the city of Sparta, he would murder them by having them thrown into a well, going against all the rules of diplomacy. Cleomenes then tried to get his co-king removed as king. Cleomenes bribed the oracle at Delphi to declare him illegitimate, he was demoted to a lower ranking public office. A year later, Cleomenes was forced to flee Sparta when his plot was discovered. However, soon after, Demaratus was humiliated in public and would be forced to go into exile. He went to the court of Darius I the Great, the king of kings. He would befriend a young prince Xerxes, who wasn't the heir to the throne as he had an older brother named Artor Bazan. But Demaratus argued that being the eldest doesn't universally mean they have a claim to the crown, and that other factors including the blood and ancestry of their mother may also be considered. Artor Bazan's mother was a commoner, while Xerxes' mother was the daughter of the founder of the empire. Thus, Xerxes was crowned and succeeded his father in 486 BC when he was 32. The transition of power was smooth due to the authority of the lineage of his mother. When Xerxes came to the throne, he would begin his invasion of Greece. By this point, Leonidas had already succeeded his half-brother Cleomenes to the throne of Sparta in 489 BC. Sparta's military reputation had never stood in higher regard, with citizens embracing their warrior society. Subjected to military drills since early manhood, the Spartans had become one of the most feared and formidable military forces in the Greek world, attaining legendary status. With their king being descended from Hercules, there was no force in the ancient world with such a reputation. Like all male Spartan citizens, Leonidas had been trained mentally and physically since childhood in preparation to become a hoplite warrior. Hoplites were armoured with a round shield, spear and an iron shortsword. In battle, they would use a formation known as the phalanx. However, it would take more than brutal training to defeat and outmanoeuvre Xerxes, the king of kings and ruler of the Persian Empire. Xerxes would move his immense army south through Greece on the eastern coast. Their destination was Attica, the region controlled by the city-state of Athens, and the Persians needed to get through the coastal pass of Thermopylae. Many Greek states, especially to the north of the country, had decided to submit to the Persians, but further south, most decided to resist, and they were led by Sparta and Athens. The Greek allies would meet, and decided to defend the narrow pass of Thermopylae. Sparta would then consult the oracle at Delphi, and the oracle is said to have made the following prophecy. For you, inhabitants of wide-weighed Sparta, either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men, or if not that, then you must mourn a dead king from Hercules' line. The might of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing strength, for he has the might of Zeus. I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these. Demaratus, formerly the king of Sparta, would accompany the Persian army during the invasion of Greece, and he would send a warning message to Sparta with two possible motives. One, a genuine desire to warn his countrymen, whom he had betrayed, or to gloat and tell them their deaths were near. In August 480 BC, King Leonidas marched out of Sparta to meet Xerxes' army with a small force of 1,200 men, where he joined forces with other Greek city-states that put themselves under his command to form an army of 7,000 warriors. The rest of the Spartan army were waiting for the end of the festival of Carnea before they could march, which is why so few warriors were present at Thermopylae. Herodotus, a Greek philosopher, estimated that the size of the Persian army was in the millions, but this figure has been discounted and its real estimation would be around 200,000, but even so, that is a frightening number, especially during the ancient time of antiquity. Xerxes would send a Persian emissary to negotiate with Leonidas. The Greeks were offered their freedom and the title of friends of the Persian people, and the opportunity to resettle on land better than they possessed. When Leonidas refused these terms, the ambassador carried a written message to Xerxes, the battle became inevitable. Xerxes waited for four days, in hopes that the Greeks would disperse and surrender due to the difference in numbers, when they didn't, he finally sent in troops to attack. It was the descendant of Hercules, King Leonidas of Sparta, against the King of Kings, Emperor of Persia. On the first day of the battle, Xerxes ordered 5,000 archers to shoot a barrage of arrows, which would darken the sky. A rainstorm of arrows hit the Greek forces, but were mainly ineffective. The Persians then launched a frontal assault in waves of 10,000 men on the Greek lines. The Greeks fought shoulder to shoulder in their phalanx position, within the pass created by the landscape, which made it impossible to outmanoeuvre the Greeks. It is said the Greeks were killing so many Persians, that Xerxes is said to have stood up three times from his seat, to watch the devastation that was being caused. Xerxes then sent in his best troops named the Immortals, who were an elite group of soldiers, who also served as imperial guards. However, the Immortals fared no better than the first group of soldiers and failed to break the lines of the Greeks. The Spartans would use a tactic of feigning retreat, then turning and killing their enemy troops when they ran after them. On the second day, Xerxes again sent more infantry soldiers to attack the pass, but the Persians still had no success. Xerxes at last stopped the assault and withdrew, and he was absolutely furious. Later that day, Ephialtes would betray his homeland by showing Xerxes a path around the allied Greek position at the pass of Thermopylae. The name Ephialtes has since come to mean nightmare in the Greek language, to symbolise the archetypal traitor in Greek culture. The Immortals would first be led down the path which led east from the Persian camp, along the ridge of Mount Anopia, behind the cliffs that flanked the pass. At daybreak, on the third day, the Immortals made their way down the mountain pass, and would encircle the main Greek force. Leonidas would quickly call a war council, and many Greeks argued that they should withdraw, but Leonidas resolved to stay at the pass with the Spartans. He told the allies that they could leave if they wanted to, around 2,000 soldiers stayed behind to fight and die. Leonidas recalled the words of the oracle, and was committed to sacrifice his life in order to save Sparta. If all of the troops had retreated, then the open ground beyond the pass would have allowed the Persian cavalry to run the Greeks down, and if they all remained, they would have been encircled and all killed, but by covering the retreat and continuing to block the pass, Leonidas chose to save thousands of men who would be able to fight again. As well as the 300 Spartans who remained, a group of Theban warriors would also guard the pass and commit themselves to a fight to the death, so it wasn't just the 300 Spartans who fought the entirety of the Persian army. At dawn, a Persian force of 10,000 men charged at the front line of the Greek formation. The Spartans fought with their spears until every single one was shattered, they would then draw their short swords. Two of Xerxes's brothers would die in the ongoing slaughter, but suddenly, a storm of arrows would rain down on the Greeks while the battle ensued. King Leonidas himself would die in the assault, with his body being riddled with arrows. The two sides would then fight over the body, but in the end, the Persians would surround the remaining force of Greeks, and would rain arrows down until every single one of them was dead. Leonidas' body was then decapitated and crucified. A stone lion was erected at Thermopylae to commemorate Leonidas and his bravery 40 years after the battle. Leonidas' bones were returned to Sparta, where he was buried with full honours, and funeral games were held every year in his memory. The Battle of Thermopylae is one of the most famous battles in history, due to the Greeks being massively outnumbered, and how valiantly they resisted, knowing the result would mean certain death. Leonidas and all the men under his command were turned into martyrs, which then boosted the morale of all Greek soldiers, due to the glory that King Leonidas and his soldiers obtained in death. Leonidas wasn't born to be king, but fate made it so. He wasn't born to sacrifice himself, but fate made it also so. Circumstance would allow these things to happen, but it was the conscious decisions of Leonidas that made him the legendary figure we see today, a descendant of Hercules, a great king, met a noble end to save his countrymen from certain death. I hope you all enjoyed the video, if you did, make sure to like, subscribe and share, and I'll see you all soon for another history profile.