The Battle of Thermopylae
Battle of Thermopylae.
Today in ‘this week in military history’ we look an astonishing 2500 years to the battle of Thermopylae that took place this week in 450BC. Despite the antiquity of the events, this battle had retained the power to inspire throughout the centuries and, in the 21st century, the events were brought to life in the film 300 which told the story to new generations.
The battle itself saw the Spartan King Leonidas, with a mixed force of Greek soldiers, hold off the much larger Persian Army at the small pass of Thermopylae, know colloquially as the ‘hot gates’ and where the narrow avenue of advance, with the sea on one side and approaches on the other full of dense thorn bushes. The term ‘hot gates’ came from the Sulphur springs in the area that had been successfully dammed and then used to flood parts of the approach, creating a narrow track through deep marsh land.
All these physical impediments, collectively, did not allow the vastly larger Persian force to employ its numerical strength to best effect and allowed the Greek Forces to hold on for three days. Their betrayal, by a local named Ephialtes, allowed the Persians to follow a narrow shepherds track, around behind the Greek soldiers, outflanking them. Knowing defeat was inevitable, Leonidas dismissed most of his men, retaining only a small core of mainly Spartans, from which the legend of the ‘300 Spartans’ originated, to fight on to the death and into immortality.
Join us again for another ‘This week in Military history’ with the Pritzker Military Museum & Library.
Photo credit - Fkerasar
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Image Credit - Eric Gaba
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Image Credit - Nicolo Arena, DensityDesign Research Lab
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Photo credit – A.Davey
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Image credit: Cleber.knfire
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Photo credit: Leonidis - Guillaume Cattiaux
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