Goldie Ghamari - December 25, 2025


PURE TRASH： My opinion on the movie 300 as an Iranian. Here's what the Persians ACTUALLY looked like


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

115.35

Word count

1,542

Sentence count

61

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about why I think the movie 300 gets it wrong about the history of the Persian Empire and why it pisses off Iranians. I also talk about how the Achaemenid Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 So a lot of you have been asking me about my opinion as an Iranian on the movie 300.
00:00:06.080 You know, that that movie where the Spartans fight like a horde of, you know, Persian demons or whatever.
00:00:15.760 Um, um, I can't even believe that I'm making this video, but you know, I'll, I'll make this video
00:00:34.120 one time I'll respond to it. And then you guys can just refer back to it or share it with anyone
00:00:40.240 else who wants to know um um I can pretty much safely say that you know on behalf of all Iranians
00:00:53.320 regardless of background or politics or whatever I can pretty much safely say that we all pretty 1.00
00:01:00.700 much think the movie 300 is utter trash like it's it's just complete nonsense like I watched the 0.99
00:01:07.760 video when it came out and I was just like this is so stupid and I mean I get it I get it like 0.99
00:01:15.040 it's supposed to be a fantasy movie like it's not an accurate depiction or whatever but the amount 0.98
00:01:21.300 of historical revisionism in that movie is utterly mind-blowing I mean like
00:01:28.200 just just thinking about it makes me angry i mean for starters xerxes was not some like half naked
00:01:39.480 bald savage with piercings and chains all over here's what xerxes actually looked like based on
00:01:47.180 this rock carving taken from persepolis and here's a historically accurate depiction of what xerxes
00:01:53.640 would have probably looked and dressed like. And no, Iranian women, aka my ancestors, were not some
00:02:01.300 half-deformed freaks with piercings all over their faces. Again, here are more images of Iranian 0.56
00:02:08.020 women carved into rock at Persepolis. Here's a more historically accurate depiction of what
00:02:14.440 Iranian women looked like in the Persian Empire. In fact, unlike the ancient Greeks, women in Persia
00:02:20.380 were in fact considered equal to men. Did you know that? Women in the Persian Empire could own land, 0.61
00:02:26.620 they conducted business, they received equal pay, they could travel freely on their own without the 0.99
00:02:31.980 permission of a male, they led armies of men, and women who were part of the noble family held
00:02:38.220 policy and council meetings on their own. But I'll talk more about that in a future video.
00:02:43.420 And for those of you who think that I'm biased because I'm Iranian, I actually found a video
00:02:48.860 that speaks about how the movie 300 is utter nonsense welcome to hilarious helmet history
00:03:05.980 the show where today's cultural historical misconceptions are even sillier than my helmet
00:03:10.700 300 presents us with sparta as the defenders of western civilization outnumbered by a galaxy of
00:03:16.540 despotic persian aliens its spartans are basically the men in black but for freedom out to save 1.00
00:03:22.220 democracy from persia's wacky oriental army of combat rhinos the cave troll from lord of the 1.00
00:03:27.020 rings and a harem of quadriplegic female sex slaves still you're yeah we we never we never 0.99
00:03:34.140 had combat rhinos i can yeah like you can you can take that one to the bank we never um we never 0.99
00:03:41.180 rode rhinoceroses into battle we're smart you understand we also we also didn't you know look
00:03:49.260 like that either like this this troll looks like he's from like he's an orc from the lord of the
00:03:54.240 rings my ancestors did not look like that and that that troglodyte isn't a realistic human from
00:04:00.320 ancient iran you understand artistic choices but frank miller and zach snyder's tom of holland fest
00:04:05.740 movie doesn't just exaggerate history it gets it backwards they kept telling you ancient spartans
00:04:11.000 fought for for our lands for our families for our freedom but the reality was two out of three
00:04:17.840 if anybody fighting at thermopoly represented freedom it was persia and this bit
00:04:22.340 do you know why do you know why
00:04:27.580 he's he's gonna explain it but i want you to think about that this is this is why this movie 300 0.52
00:04:36.140 pisses off Iranians. Again, regardless of our political background or what we think about the
00:04:42.780 current political situation, I can guarantee you that one of the few things that unites Iranians
00:04:51.160 all across the world is our mutual hatred and frustration for the movie 300, which literally
00:05:00.780 gets it backwards. And he's about to explain why. Don't take my word for it. He's about to explain
00:05:06.840 why. Anti-Persian trash talk coming from a Spartan. Run along and tell your Xerxes he faces free men 1.00
00:05:13.440 here, not slaves. Would have been awfully confusing to a Persian. The Achaemenid Persian Empire, 0.99
00:05:18.820 the one that invaded Greece twice, was the largest empire the world had ever seen. And other than a 0.94
00:05:24.400 few long-term POWs, they built that Persian Empire without slaves. They generally banned 0.72
00:05:29.980 owning other people. Whereas as a Spartan soldier, Muscles McGee would have personally owned a bunch 0.94
00:05:35.840 of slaves. Spartan society was a rigid caste system. The male Spartan citizens at the top 0.60
00:05:41.640 of the Spanakopita were legally required to be full-time soldiers. Since stuff like farming 0.89
00:05:47.060 needed to happen, that economically required Sparta's soldier men to hold slaves. Slaves, 0.77
00:05:52.540 they were legally required to beat. Persia's military had full-time soldiers too, but Persia 0.98
00:05:57.520 wasn't psycho enough to force every adult male into their army.
00:06:01.060 Instead, they recruited a military from across their empire, paid for it with tax dollars, 0.85
00:06:05.400 and ran it with a federal government.
00:06:07.180 That sounds awfully modern for happening 2,500 years ago.
00:06:10.580 And the more you look at ancient Persia, the more western they seem.
00:06:13.980 Their empire's founder, Cyrus II, was a multiculturalist.
00:06:17.260 He didn't force his religion on the many territories he conquered.
00:06:20.100 His actions even helped free the Jewish tribes in captivity in Babylon so they could go build
00:06:24.120 a new temple in Jerusalem.
00:06:25.940 That tolerance was revolutionary for its time, because Persia's imperial predecessors, 0.94
00:06:30.180 the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, tended to rule that region by skinning and impaling 0.94
00:06:34.480 people. 1.00
00:06:35.940 If you paid your taxes and didn't revolt, you were a Persian. 0.98
00:06:38.680 But if you weren't quite muscular enough of a baby, Spartans enslaved you, or cuck you. 0.76
00:06:43.660 And Persian kings like Darius I, who the 300 movies use as tyrannical props, sorry Darius,
00:06:48.880 were leaders who improved their dominions, building roads, refining bureaucracies, standardizing
00:06:53.240 currency and pioneering lots of good government work. Heck, while the Greeks and Sparta were busy
00:06:58.240 oiling each other's abs, the Greeks and Persian-occupied Asia Minor were building a wonder
00:07:03.100 of the ancient world. And don't worry, I've seen... I mean, do you see now why we Iranians, we just,
00:07:12.180 we get so frustrated with that stupid movie? Because it literally, it literally rewrites 1.00
00:07:20.020 history. It makes it seem as if the Spartans were fighting for freedom. Meanwhile, they were the
00:07:27.320 ones who had slaves and everything. And don't even get me started on the historical revisionism when
00:07:32.400 it comes to the Spartan women versus the Iranian women, right? Like I said, Iranian women were 0.99
00:07:38.540 actually equal to men. And yet in the movie 300, it's the Spartan women who are fighting for 0.93
00:07:44.780 freedom or, you know, whatever, even though they were actually considered second-class citizens,
00:07:49.640 just one level up above slaves. So now that we've established that the ancient Persians were not a
00:07:56.900 bunch of deformed, pierced, half-naked, ogre-looking savages, you know, as they're depicted in 300,
00:08:05.720 what did they actually look like? And what did the Persian army actually look like? Well,
00:08:11.420 you're in luck. In 1971, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, actually held the
00:08:18.340 2,500-year anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. And one of the things that he did
00:08:25.080 is he recreated a historically accurate military parade depicting all of the various armies of
00:08:34.900 the Persian Empire starting 2,500 years ago with Cyrus the Great. And thanks to the foresight of
00:08:43.340 our beloved Shahanshah Aryamir, we Iranians are able to see what we actually looked like 2,500
00:08:52.240 years ago during the time of Cyrus the Great. Any historian worth their salt knows that the
00:08:57.840 ancient Persian army was not a half-naked mass of, you know, horde that just milled around
00:09:03.960 randomly. In fact, it was the ancient Persians who invented military units, the decimal system.
00:09:10.840 Heavy cavalry, siege towers, I could go on and on. So what did the ancient Persian army actually
00:09:17.640 look like when they were fighting the Greeks? Well, you're in luck because I used footage
00:09:22.080 from the 1971 military parade to make a short edited video for you.
00:09:33.960 Transcription by CastingWords
00:10:03.960 Thank you.
00:10:33.960 Thank you.
00:11:03.960 guys wait wait for the siege tower
00:11:33.960 Here it comes.
00:12:03.960 We'll be right back.
00:12:33.960 the ancient persian empire pretty much invented the foundations that led to modern military
00:12:47.720 warfare this is why the movie 300 really pisses us off because it's just utter nonsense i mean
00:12:53.320 if you want to take it as fantasy i mean okay fine i mean everyone knows that ancient iranians 0.84
00:12:58.240 weren't a bunch of ogre-looking, half-naked, pierced trolls. But I hope this gives you a
00:13:04.020 better understanding now of what ancient Persians actually looked like. And if you're interested in
00:13:09.700 learning more, let me know in the comments. I mean, maybe I'll do a live stream at some point
00:13:14.020 where I go over some videos talking about the historical inaccuracies in the movie 300.
00:13:20.980 And now you know.