(no subject)
I did not walk in expecting a historical epic.
I walked in expecting a badass action movie, and I walked out happy.
Now get comfy, and if a history lesson bores you, this will be boring.
Thermopylae occupies a deservedly prominent place in western culture. It is the event that set the standards of heroism in our culture for the next three millenia, and as it came in a time at the beginning of Western civilization, when everything that would come after hung in the balance..
Possably the most famed example of sacrifice, selflessness, and courage in our society, the names Leonidas, Thermopylae, and Sparta are truly commonplace.
Not so many people seem to know that Thermopylae accomplished nothing, and would have been remembered as nothing more than an act of gallant, but futile bravery, if not for another man...
Thermopylae was, is and shall remain the dictionary definition of a glorious death, but in the great example of popular culture glorifying the losers at the expense of the long term winners (see my previous rants on the subject), I'll throw out a few details that bear remembrance.
After the battle of Marathon, an Athenian came into prominence in his native city. A leader and statesman who had unprecedented vision among his peers and saw that so long as Persia's massive Navies controlled the Aegean sea, any Greek victory was simply delaying the inevitable. This man managed to persuade the city to empty it's treasury building a fleet of galleys, which was still far smaller than the navies Persia could send against them.
When the 300 Spartans marched north, with their allies, there is one very good reason that the Persians simply did'nt ferry thier troops around the narrow passes: the Athenian fleet was offshore under the command of that same statesman and leader, now acting as Admiral. Unknown to most, the Battle of Thermopylae was actually a combined land and sea battle.
For the three days in which Leonidas gained his fame, the Athenians at sea faced steep odds, and staved off defeat. When the news came that Leonidas and his men were dead, and the Persian host was closing on Athens, the Athenian Fleet escaped back along the coast, and prepared for a second stand.
On land, the Athenians and thier allies sent frantic word to Sparta, calling for the full might of southern Greece to stand with them.
The Spartans refused.
There is a very long standing, and possably boring reason for this, which I'll go into if people care, but the sad fact remains that they refused to march to save Athens. With the Persians closing on thier city, the Athenians made one of the most heroic decisions of all time. Rather than submit to Xerxes, they evacuated thier women and children to the islands off the coast, crewed the Fleet with thier men, and watched as the Persian army sacked thier beloved city.
As always, where the Persian army marched, the Persian Fleet moved along the coast as well, supplying the army that 'drank rivers dry'. Here, took place one of the most pivotal battles in all of Western Civilization: where the Athenian Fleet, outnumbered and faced with quarrelling allies, faced the combined Persian, Phoenician, and Egyptian Navies off the shores of Salamis, to protect thier refugee families.
The Persian Fleet was broken, and driven back north in disarray, the victim of a crushing flank envelopment devised by the Athenian admiral; the same man who had seen the need for the Fleet in the beginning; who had led it to victory, and saved not only his own people, but the future of Greece, and through it, Western culture as we know it.
His name was Themistocles, and I'll shake the hand of anyone who had heard of him before this.
The effects of Salamis were immediate. No longer able to supply his massive army by sea, and with the illusions of his invincability shattered, Xerxes took three quarters of his army back across land to Asia minor, where he feared a revolt within his patchwork empire (A revolt which the loss at Salamis did in fact inspire). With a quarter of the Persian strength remaining to pillage northern Greece, the Athenians again appealed to Sparta to join them in a battle to drive the barbarians out of thier country.
Again, the Spartans refused.
Now Themistocles threatened that if Sparta would not aid them, then the Athenians would rebuild thier city among the greek colonists of Italy, and leave the Spartans without the defense of thier Fleet. Without command of the sea, all the spartan land defenses at the Corinthian isthmus would be rendered useless, and whether it was a bluff or not, this threat was enough to stir the Spartan Army to join the war at last.
The battle of Plataea broke the Persian army remaining in Greece, and the loss of Persian prestige and territories due to revolt precluded another invasion of such size.
And while the shining example of sacrifice remains that of 300 brave, doomed Spartans, and thier king who died defending thier homeland.. Once in a while it might do well to recall the people who won the war that Leonidas died fighting.