The Art of Manliness - The Spartans at Thermopylae

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast for knowing the

00:00:11.900 death which is about to come upon them by reason of those who are going around the mountain they

00:00:16.560 displayed upon the barbarians all the strength which they had to its greatest extent disregarding

00:00:21.620 danger and acting as if possessed by a spirit of recklessness so wrote the Greek historian

00:00:26.760 Herodotus our main source as to what happened at the battle Thermopylae he was clearly impressed by

00:00:31.620 the bravery the Spartans showed in making a stand against the multitudes of invading Persians even

00:00:36.220 down in the present time this legendary battle continues to capture our imagination and my

00:00:40.560 guest today will go beyond pop culture depictions of it to describe what really led up to Thermopylae

00:00:45.100 how the epic clash that happened in a narrow coastal pass in Greece unfolded and why it matters his name

00:00:50.180 is Paul Cartledge he's an ancient historian professor of Greek culture and the author of several books

00:00:54.360 on Sparta including Thermopylae the battle that changed the world at the start of the show Paul

00:00:58.680 describes Sparta's martial training system which allowed it to become a dominant power in Greece

00:01:03.340 the Spartans relationship with other city states and how they ended up partnering with their sometimes

00:01:07.380 enemy Athens and repelling a second Persian invasion we discussed who made up the famous 300 Spartan

00:01:12.560 warriors who would defend the Grecian past to death how they armed and prepared for combat and what

00:01:16.880 happened over three days of battle we ended up conversation with the importance of the Spartans

00:01:20.520 courageous stand at Thermopylae not only in the outcome of the Greco-Persian wars but in the course

00:01:24.760 of world history after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash Thermopylae

00:01:29.720 Paul Cartledge welcome to the show thank you very much for having me so you are a professor of

00:01:45.400 ancient history and you've written several books about the Spartans you've got the Spartans the world of the

00:01:50.100 warrior heroes of ancient Greece and then you have a book about the battle that made them legendary

00:01:53.980 it's called Thermopylae the battle that changed the world and we're going to talk about that battle

00:01:58.900 today but before we get into it let's talk a little bit about the Spartans in general and how they ended

00:02:04.060 up in such a critical position in the Greco-Persian war their leadership and dominance of the Peloponnese

00:02:09.840 really rested on their military prowess so let's start there what was the Spartans education and

00:02:15.260 martial training system like one of the unique features of Sparta was that it had an educational

00:02:22.000 system for all citizens that is all males and to some extent all females whereas in most other Greek

00:02:30.100 cities there was virtually no public provision for education in other words there are private schools

00:02:37.340 which depends on your wealth whether or not a father is prepared to pay a teacher etc etc but in Sparta

00:02:44.820 from the age of seven boys were removed from their homes their sisters were not so this is a gender

00:02:54.940 differentiation and grouped in well I'm not sure quite what the right word would be but barracks

00:03:01.560 something like that in accordance with their age grade so people born between notable points in the year

00:03:10.660 and I imagine it's a particular festival that would have been taken as the central point so if you're born

00:03:17.440 between this year's celebration of that festival and the next year's celebration you're in the same

00:03:24.560 cohort as everybody else born between the and then you move through the grades from seven through to

00:03:32.780 18 in lockstep so long of course as you're up to it and the goal the ultimate goal of the educational system

00:03:42.400 was to make Spartans fighting fit so to imbibe the values of collective collaboration daring but above all

00:03:55.640 obedience in a collective mode such that you don't run unnecessary risks such that if you're given an

00:04:04.860 order by an officer you instinctively behave in accordance with that order and so on this is the

00:04:10.920 the Spartan mode now the educational program is very poorly understood no ancient source sets out what it

00:04:20.000 is involved at any particular point except in the most general terms and we imagine that it was quite

00:04:28.580 largely consistent of as it were being in training in military training in different stages different

00:04:35.740 types of training different times of the year different age grades and so on but it's not the case that

00:04:42.520 the education was exclusively military but it was totally if you like philistine because they were taught

00:04:51.160 reading and writing and they did learn poetry which native Spartans had produced and so Spartans were not

00:05:01.420 totally uncultured as non-Spartans liked to present the Spartans as if they were just brutes

00:05:09.280 and because they're the Spartans unique economic system in which they used helots who were sort of

00:05:14.280 like serfs or slaves who had more rights than your typical greek slaves the helots did all the work so

00:05:19.780 the Spartan men could spend most of their time on military training but what else they do with the

00:05:23.760 rest of their time i mean what else they focus on outside of that well it was a kind of leisure society

00:05:28.840 and um the the sources and i'll mention the theme called xenophon he actually spent quite a lot of time

00:05:36.500 in sparta and two of his sons were put through as foreigners the spartan educational system but the

00:05:45.960 point about leisure is that there was only one legitimate form of work and this was war and xenophon

00:05:55.780 actually calls the spartans craftsmen that is skilled practitioners of war but not so much because of

00:06:06.080 their military skills or the particular discipline particular maneuvers and so he mentions all those

00:06:12.780 but he oddly to us says that was because they knew how to manage relationships between the gods and

00:06:21.320 themselves better than any other greek city so they had an elaborate set of rituals for finding out what

00:06:29.440 the gods will was and following it the relations between men and the gods were as already herodotus

00:06:37.540 had said very very important so religion piety we might call it superstition was a key part of being

00:06:46.180 spartan so what was the state of relations between of sparta with other greek city-states before the

00:06:54.280 greco-persian war was there were they butting heads with other city states very much by the early fifth

00:07:01.420 century sparta has already been in major complex in order to first of all establish its own territory

00:07:09.160 because in addition to the bit of southern peloponnese where sparta lies there is another bit i mean it's

00:07:18.180 roughly 50 50 on the other side of a very tall 8 000 foot mountain chain mount tegetus runs down the

00:07:27.480 middle of sparta's territory and on the west is the messenian land and that's where the majority of

00:07:36.200 helots works because the land is slightly more fertile both sides are quite fertile and so the spartans had

00:07:43.720 first of all to defeat whoever was living in that part of the world they then wanted to expand their

00:07:51.100 territory and this we're now in the sixth century bc in the 500s bc but they came up against an obstacle

00:07:58.240 they couldn't overcome namely the men of arcadia immediately to the north and there's a famous battle

00:08:04.960 that they actually lost and it's called the fetters battle because spartans went up north and they

00:08:12.060 attacked the arcadians carrying or you know they had with them iron chains to put the people they

00:08:19.720 assumed would be their defeated captives in but the arcadians won and the spartans were put in those

00:08:27.000 chains and they were eventually released but the chains were supposedly left behind and dedicated

00:08:32.800 to the gods by the arcadians as a symbol of how the gods had helped them keep free from becoming

00:08:40.600 slaves of the spartans the other major power of the peloponnese however argos up in the northeast was

00:08:50.120 eventually defeated there are a couple of encounters but one major pitched battle in the middle of the

00:08:56.580 sixth century so from about 550 bc sparta is number one in the peloponnese and as such it's one of the two

00:09:08.680 most powerful cities in mainland greece and that remains the case really down into the fourth century

00:09:16.180 for another 150 200 years all right so sparta was the top dog pretty much they formed the peloponnese

00:09:24.120 league when i thought it was interesting it was alliance but not really like all the other city

00:09:28.100 states swore an oath to come to the defense of sparta but sparta it wasn't reciprocal like sparta could

00:09:33.360 come if they wanted it wasn't what you and i would call a league because the allies did not have to

00:09:39.960 be allied with each other on the other hand they needed some sort of decision making framework that

00:09:45.960 was collective and under it apparently every ally regardless of its size and there were about 15 to

00:09:53.640 20 of them had one vote so majority decisions were binding as normal in greek the question is you know

00:10:01.220 who's entitled to vote who counts as equal and a couple of times one of the major allies of sparta

00:10:08.440 within this organization corinth actually was able to persuade enough of the other allies to go against

00:10:15.640 the spartans decision but the spartans could never be committed by a majority vote of the allies so sparta

00:10:24.820 always was asking the allies to follow it and that actually was the phrase used to follow the spartans

00:10:32.380 whithersoever they may lead that is what being a member of the peloponnesians was all right so they

00:10:41.180 kind of they worked together but sparta and other city states they kind of looked at each other you

00:10:45.700 know with a stink eye always you know okay this guy could be an enemy but they had to come together

00:10:50.240 because the persians decided to invade the peloponnese like tell us about the persians like why did they

00:10:56.280 decide like where was persia and why did they decide well we also want to take over greece what

00:11:01.900 happened there right herodotus begins his account in what we would say is the middle of the sixth

00:11:07.520 century bc why because that is when the persian empire grew it started its life under cyrus in greek

00:11:17.820 kuros in persian kurash and he's actually cyrus the second but we don't worry about that cyrus the

00:11:26.720 great so in southern iran this people the persians first of all came to dominate their northern

00:11:35.360 kinsfolk the medes the median people so they conquered the whole of iran and then from that

00:11:43.720 beginning in round about 550 bc they spread out first west then east until by 520 or so they had

00:11:52.060 egypt the northern bit of egypt the nile delta part of egypt they had a foothold in european greece that

00:12:02.180 is roughly what's today bulgaria and romania up there on the western shores of the black sea

00:12:09.160 they had all of asia and of course they had a restricted view of asia they didn't know about

00:12:14.780 china some of them knew about india but they didn't know about china and so for them asia meant

00:12:21.660 everything from afghanistan and the indus valley in northwest india pakistan today as far to the west

00:12:31.400 as the aegean sea so encompassing all of turkey and part of the levant so absolutely massive it's the

00:12:39.380 biggest oriental empire yet it's the fastest growing and it's unified not by culture but by

00:12:47.560 power in other words the persians put garrisons in key points they established governors and the

00:12:54.360 subjects have to pay tribute and they have to serve militarily if the persians tell them they have

00:13:03.000 to herodotus was born at the very far western edge of the persian empire in a place called halikarnassus

00:13:10.840 which is today in turkey bodrum so he's born actually within the persian empire which gives him his very

00:13:18.100 interesting perspective because though he's not viciously hostile to the persian empire unlike some

00:13:25.800 other greeks who you know persians couldn't do anything right herodotus actually is quite respectful

00:13:31.640 of the persians nevertheless what he values most is what he calls freedom and freedom has two dimensions

00:13:40.000 it's freedom from so that you're not conquered by or at the mercy of a foreign power and secondly

00:13:48.080 internally you're free to do things and herodotus is very political and so he's very interested in

00:13:56.180 democracy and other modes of political organization oligarchy the spartan way of doing things and he

00:14:04.360 believed that they were free states in that they chose their own laws they administered their own laws

00:14:11.520 they made their own political decisions without being dictated to from the outside

00:14:17.360 yeah and i think something to note too like that idea of that they were really fighting for freedom

00:14:22.000 like the spartans and the other greeks they were fighting for their idea of freedom and that was

00:14:25.520 foreign to the persians because like the persians you know they would say well you know we're going to

00:14:29.360 come in we're not going to really take away everything's going to be pretty much the same you guys can

00:14:33.600 still worship your gods you don't have to worship our gods you guys can still kind of run things

00:14:38.540 the way you typically do all you got to do is just pay us taxes and for a lot of greek city states

00:14:45.160 that are sort of on that periphery of the persian empire like yeah that sounds good we'll do that

00:14:49.580 but the spartans and the athenians are like no that's not freedom that you might feel like or look

00:14:55.600 like freedom but it's really not freedom well now you are quite right in the way you put it i like the

00:15:01.500 way you put it but actually already before the spartans and the athenians get together in the late

00:15:08.040 480s to resist a massive persian invasion all the greek cities within the persian empire including

00:15:16.560 herodotus is halicarnassus and greeks living on the island of cyprus had already decided that freedom

00:15:25.520 and being within the persian empire were incompatible so in about 499 bc there's a great we call it the

00:15:34.640 ionian revolt it actually included some non-greeks who joined in this desire to be freed from the

00:15:44.000 persian imperial constraints so when the persians put them down that revolt they had to put it down

00:15:51.800 because it challenged the persians alleged as it were natural right to dominate the entirety of the

00:15:59.520 middle east when the persians put it down they were quite careful not to be too viciously vindictive

00:16:09.260 with one exception the city that had started the revolt place called miletus it was utterly destroyed

00:16:17.580 and was not occupied again for a considerable period so that is just a sign of how you know the

00:16:25.200 so-called iron fist in a velvet glove well mostly they wore the velvet glove but occasionally they

00:16:33.440 tore it off and that was one occasion so because the athenians had supported that rebellion the persians

00:16:42.400 first attempt to intervene in mainland greece was a punitive expedition 490 to punish the athenians

00:16:51.400 the point being not so much to conquer the greece of the greece of the mainland but say look do not

00:16:57.940 interfere in our sphere yes those greece are your in a sense cousins but tough they're ours you've just

00:17:07.820 got to admit that the aegean sea is an impassable barrier well the athenians didn't they won the battle

00:17:15.540 of marathon 490 that meant the persians were bound to come back and when they came back this is the big

00:17:23.480 massive armada that herodotus really is most interested in 480 479 bc and this is this uh now

00:17:33.640 the leader of the persian is xerxes they cross the hellespont and this is where this kind of leads up

00:17:39.380 to thermopylae like what why was thermopylae such a key battle and what was the spartans role in that

00:17:46.380 what did that what did the battle thermopylae look like okay there would have been no resistance

00:17:50.580 of any significant kind but for the spartans and the athenians agreeing to fight together even though

00:17:58.440 they'd actually fought against each other within living memory and they agreed on this basis that

00:18:05.720 because most of the allies coming to this really tiny alliance were actually in the peloponnesian

00:18:13.220 league we talked about earlier sparta therefore was treated as the senior member of this alliance

00:18:20.800 what sparta didn't have or personally didn't have was a decent fleet and since the invasion was going

00:18:28.260 to be by land and by sea the athenians who had the biggest navy were able to put themselves forward

00:18:35.520 as almost equal to the spartans in terms of their absolute role so they come together they have to

00:18:43.180 formulate a strategy how do you resist a land and sea invasion well obviously by land by sea

00:18:48.900 and though thermopylae wasn't the first point the first choke point in northern greece chosen by the

00:18:57.900 resistance to resist it was actually the second it was the most viable as a place where you could

00:19:05.500 at least hold up the persian advance probably you couldn't hold it up forever but you might so

00:19:14.920 hold it up that the fleet could have a good chance of doing whatever it could against the persian's

00:19:22.640 fleet and that is actually what happened so there was another battle going on at exactly the same time

00:19:28.440 as thermopylae at sea and that was much more even thermopylae is a heroic defense and one of the reasons

00:19:38.640 it's so famous is that it involved an elite force specially selected for that particular mission by the

00:19:49.280 leading spartan king leonidas or leonidas consisting of men all of whom were already married and had a son

00:20:00.660 so it's not that they necessarily were the 300 absolutely top crack spartan fighters they were clearly all

00:20:09.920 pretty hot but their sons when their fathers died as was a very likely occurrence would have a terrific

00:20:19.540 example to follow and a real desire for revenge when they grew up knowing how their fathers had

00:20:27.420 fought and died so one of the parts of the legend of thermopylae is that this was not exactly a suicide

00:20:35.540 squad not exactly a kamikaze squad but one that knew that it couldn't possibly win and the best it could

00:20:45.260 do is lose magnificently heroically which is exactly what they did so there was 300 spartans there were

00:20:52.960 some other members like some cities other soldiers from other city states there but it was outmatched

00:20:58.380 like how many persians were there to greeks at thermopylae right we differ i mean herodotus thinks there

00:21:04.780 were five million i mean it's just they couldn't stand up together or you know it's just utterly

00:21:11.760 beyond um the range of possibility modern scholars think in the order of between 100 and 200 000

00:21:19.160 altogether by land that's separate from the fleet where you have up to 600 or maybe more ships each of

00:21:27.540 whom has um 200 men so you're talking about you know 120 you know thousands and that's all

00:21:34.660 together you've maybe got getting on for 400 000 on the persian side but at thermopylae waiting

00:21:41.960 outside the pass could have been as many as a hundred thousand not all of whom of course very few of whom

00:21:49.680 could fight in a very narrow space at any one time but what xerxes have has is a sort of limitless

00:21:57.520 reserves so the spartans were the front line resistance and they did extremely well extremely

00:22:04.860 bravery but they could only they it's thought may have killed as many as 20 000 as many as

00:22:11.720 10 percent of xerxes land forces we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors

00:22:17.380 and now back to the show can you talk about the difference like in fighting styles between the

00:22:23.960 spartans and the persians well there are two points to make there's no such thing as as it were

00:22:29.020 the persians um there are persians there are medes there are assyrians there are egyptians

00:22:35.360 and they're all differentially equipped they have their different cultures their different customs

00:22:41.700 what differentiated all of them was that none was as heavily armed or armed in the same

00:22:50.900 mode that is with a very heavy wooden shield a meter across all embracing head chest and to some

00:23:00.720 extent leg armor one or two thrusting spears and men who are accustomed who are trained to fighting in

00:23:10.100 what later is called a phalanx in other words not as individuals but in serried ranks so it very much

00:23:17.720 matters that you know who is the man on your left the man on your right the man in front of you the

00:23:24.000 man behind you and there's an esprit de corps so the spartans leading the resistance were just very

00:23:31.820 difficult to get at and it's very significant how far the persians relied on archers who of course

00:23:38.420 reached their enemy at a distance not hand to hand face to face and in fact the very end of the

00:23:46.660 spartan resistance famously on little hillock on day three was brought to a conclusion by a shower of

00:23:55.400 arrows not by hand to hand slaughter by infantrymen on infantrymen and that's where that famous saying

00:24:04.500 came from like oh we'll get the fight in the shade or something like that it was now there's an issue

00:24:09.920 there how on earth did anybody know if almost all the spartans died and many of the others the other

00:24:16.280 six to seven thousand greeks also either died or they weren't with the anyway it's a wonderful saying

00:24:22.560 spartans were famous for their as it were gallows humor leonidas is said to have made one of these

00:24:29.540 men he said on the morning of the last day when it's all over by the shouting he says have a hearty

00:24:37.920 breakfast because this evening we're going to dine in hades now hades is the greek underworld

00:24:46.200 and actually you're not a body under there you're a kind of spirit flitting around there's not much

00:24:54.220 eating and drinking going on down in hades uh so the spartans they were well equipped i mean do we

00:25:01.540 know how much like their their armor and swords and weapons like how much it weighed approximately

00:25:07.680 yeah um modern scholars differ but let's say between 30 and 50 pounds weight with bronze breastplate

00:25:15.180 helmet the spear which is mainly of course wood with an iron tip and a bronze butt and then the wooden

00:25:22.900 shield basically with bronze facing and maybe greaves that shin guards and maybe thigh guards maybe um

00:25:30.820 abdominal guards so of the order of 30 to 50 pounds and the other thing too i mean i think the way

00:25:37.540 haradis describes it xerxes really underestimated the spartans i mean i remember there's a scene where

00:25:42.600 they see the spartans like dancing they think they're dancing like doing each other's hair and

00:25:47.260 like man these guys are weirdos like right right before this big battle they're doing each other's hair

00:25:51.960 and kind of dancing around but they're like no you don't understand like this means they mean

00:25:55.980 you better watch out yeah it's not doing each other's hair it's doing their own and like all

00:26:02.400 greeks free male adult citizen greeks they exercised so wrestled or ran on the spot or did whatever

00:26:12.440 exercise they did naked and our word gymnasium gymnasium comes from the ancient greek word gumnos

00:26:20.120 which means stark naked so what xerxes scout saw was the aftermath of the 300 spartans this is before

00:26:31.400 the actual battle starts who had been exercising stark naked and then they'd had a wash in the springs

00:26:39.260 or or somehow else including washing their long hair spartans uniquely in greece grew their hair long

00:26:49.100 instead of cutting it short as most adult male greeks did they went the exact opposite way and

00:26:56.100 there's a lot of ritual and a lot of myth about why they did no one really knows for sure but at any

00:27:02.000 rate there they were like women is what the scout would have thought because it's only women who have

00:27:08.540 long hair which they have to spend a lot of time dressing so you've touched on a few of the details of

00:27:15.820 what happened at thermopylae but let's dig into more of how the battle itself which which lasted

00:27:20.640 three days how the battle took place so you mentioned the greeks were consolidated in a small

00:27:25.360 space so what was the topography of thermopylae okay so the pass of thermopylae which takes its name

00:27:31.840 from the hot sulfur springs is about a kilometer long it runs east west and it's one of the choke points

00:27:39.840 in north greece so any army such as the persians invading central and southern greece coming from

00:27:48.300 the north has to go through or at any rate nearby to the pass of thermopylae okay and and how wide

00:27:57.860 again was it at the the the pass it was only about a room enough for two chariots to pass in some

00:28:06.280 parts i mean it varied in width as the pass went along but altogether it was very close to the sea

00:28:14.300 if you go there today you're about a kilometer away from the coast because of coastal aggradation

00:28:22.260 crustal movements since 480 bc but there the army would be very conscious that if you're the persians

00:28:31.860 you're coming as it were from the west the sea is on your left if you're greeks you're facing to the

00:28:39.440 west and the sea is on your right and you're in the center of this kilometer long very narrow pass

00:28:46.180 you're very conscious that the sea is not very far away and therefore there's not any real room for

00:28:53.360 maneuver at all so what happened that first day of battle okay first day xerxes actually

00:29:01.220 waits with his what shall we say maybe up to 200 000 troops from all parts of his empire especially

00:29:09.520 the west but consisting of different ethnic groups so he has two really crack forces one of them are

00:29:18.240 the medes that is northern iranians the second of them are the 10 000 immortals as the greeks called

00:29:26.740 them because they thought that when one of them was killed he was immediately replaced but there are

00:29:32.240 10 000 and these are persians so they're from southern iran he starts off by sending in on day one

00:29:39.660 having waited three days in the expectation that leonidas would give in you know realize that the game

00:29:47.400 was up he then sends in his medes and they get more because the spartans are very well entrenched

00:29:55.260 they're also extremely better equipped the median equipment both offensive and defensive was less

00:30:03.140 strong less long spears weaker defensive armor and so on and so on and quite a few thousands on the

00:30:12.000 persian side on day one are lost and so xerxes has a a rethink and he sends in his um immortals

00:30:22.220 and they too get a bit of a bloody nose and so this is day one he realizes that frontal assault

00:30:30.600 is well it's going to take a lot of time and it's going to take a lot of men and therefore he'd better

00:30:37.120 just expect great losses and the spartans take relatively few losses they have a few allies as i've

00:30:44.540 said up to 7 000 of them the spartans there are only 301 of them maybe a few hundred other people

00:30:52.860 from the same district as the spartans but by and large the force that's sent up there is a token one

00:30:59.120 because it's thought to be a holding operation that it probably won't eventually succeed but it will

00:31:05.420 give time for the athenians to evacuate the city to get their naval defenses ready so it's a

00:31:12.020 holding operation day one is very bad for for xerxes and then what happens on day two day two

00:31:20.460 during the day he is approached by a local man who is from what the greeks called malis and he is

00:31:30.840 therefore from a people who are at odds with one of the greek forces that are supporting leonidas in

00:31:39.460 resisting the persians the phocians so in order to both feather his own nest in other words to get

00:31:46.840 a good deal of money as well as to do damage to the enemy greek side the phocians and leonidas

00:31:55.180 he approaches xerxes and his entourage with information which he because he's a local

00:32:04.740 realizes that xerxes clearly doesn't have and it is this but behind the spartans so if the persians

00:32:14.120 go south and then turn left eastwards and then come up behind the spartans at the other end of the

00:32:23.580 pass the eastern end of the pass they will kettle the spartans and the other greeks who are resisting

00:32:30.420 who are in the center of the pass and on the night therefore of the second day xerxes agrees to the

00:32:40.740 suggestion of this local as the greeks see him traitor he's called ephialdes and he sends his crack

00:32:50.540 troops that is the 10 000 immortals under their commander hedonis via this back over the mountain pass

00:33:00.100 called the anopeia pass now leonidas being of course a greek and defending had consulted with his

00:33:08.520 local allies the phocians and they had told him about this back pass and he had posted a picket of

00:33:17.180 phocian defenders halfway up the anopeia pass for whatever reason and this is one of the big sort of

00:33:26.440 mysteries the known unknowns of this campaign why on earth did the phocian picket fail to pick up on

00:33:36.040 the 10 000 immortals quickly enough so the immortals were past them before the phocians had even realized

00:33:45.920 that they were approaching the immortals were approaching and so they were able the phocians to

00:33:52.500 alert leonidas they were able to send runners round the mountain ahead to the east end of the pass

00:34:00.120 to say to leonidas sorry you're about to be surrounded which is of course what happened at the beginning

00:34:07.140 of day three so having marched through the night the immortals reached the east end of thermopoli pass

00:34:13.880 on the morning of day three leonidas had a bit of forewarning therefore and he now this is the

00:34:21.740 account which herodotus our main source preserves and it may be being nice to the allies of leonidas

00:34:29.360 leonidas allegedly offered the allies apart from the spartans the option of retreating in advance to

00:34:38.220 save their lives the alternative view the cynical view is when these guys heard they were about to

00:34:45.080 be kettled they simply fled at any rate leonidas is left therefore with just two bands of men one of

00:34:55.100 them is some of the survivors from his original 300 plus the survivors from the group of thebans from

00:35:04.060 a city which was actually on the persian side but the thebans were divided amongst themselves and

00:35:10.680 these thebans it looks as if they were patriots they thought they should side with leonidas and

00:35:16.980 the spartans and the athenians against the persian invasion and so the end game occurs on the morning

00:35:23.820 of day three of the actual fighting and what happened on day three what was the battle like

00:35:29.480 not so much of a battle according to the survivors of course and those who were able to report what

00:35:37.300 happened and there were two spartan survivors because they weren't actually involved in the

00:35:43.280 final fighting and there were others who ran away but yet presumably found out enough about what had

00:35:50.900 happened it seems that even with the disparity between the persian side and the greeks who were left at

00:35:59.220 the beginning of day three resisting they nevertheless relied not on hand-to-hand close fighting weapons

00:36:07.480 but on archers so they simply released flurries of lethal arrows which eventually pinned the spartans

00:36:19.100 down those few who were surviving and those few thebans who were surviving and on a hill and it's still

00:36:28.200 there and today we think we know exactly which hill it was on which the final stand took place and

00:36:35.520 there's a little monument a little epigram fairly contemporary it's the famous go tell the spartan

00:36:42.660 stranger passing by that here obedient to their laws we lie and that's now inscribed piece of stone set

00:36:51.560 into this hill but remember the hill is now way about a kilometer away from where the original shoreline would

00:37:02.560 would have been the shorelines moved about a kilometer to the north

00:37:07.140 and descriptions from the war you know the art the persians relied on archers but the spartans they were

00:37:12.420 hand-to-hand guys with spears and swords and the way they described it like they were using spears and those

00:37:18.380 shattered and then they moved to short swords and they even started you know using their hands to try

00:37:22.580 to fight these guys as well not only their hands but herodotus says their teeth even so as we say

00:37:31.140 by you know by the skin of their teeth they were absolutely determined not to survive but to go down

00:37:39.540 fighting and that's part of the mystique the myth if you like that i'm slightly inclined to believe

00:37:47.360 that leonidas knew from the start that there was no real hope of winning that is of actually

00:37:54.900 deterring the persian invasion but the best he could do was make a stand and make a stand not just

00:38:02.240 militarily i.e fight well but morally showing that he was going to lead the resistance and the rest of

00:38:09.940 the greeks had better live up to his moral example or they were in trouble and there is a as i say a

00:38:18.740 historical question about exactly what the spartans strategy what leonidas's mentality was because we

00:38:26.140 can't ask leonidas and he was killed in fact he was beheaded in the aftermath of the of the defeat

00:38:33.240 all right so the spartans lost but you make the case like this was an important battle like even

00:38:38.980 though the battle was lost this helped win the war how so like what what would have happened if

00:38:44.000 if the spartans hadn't stopped like slowed down the persians at thermopylae well they and the greek

00:38:49.680 fleet would have been overwhelmed too soon because they couldn't have held their station because there

00:38:54.680 would be no link with the greeks on land at thermopylae but though it was a defeat it was

00:39:02.300 a necessary defeat in this sense had the spartans not committed as they did and made such a self

00:39:11.320 sacrifice in a leadership role the alliance would be seriously weakened because its main proponent

00:39:19.580 namely the spartans would have done nothing to stop the persians okay completely correct they lost

00:39:28.280 xerxes and his men pour through the thermopylae pass in pursuit of their main objective which is not

00:39:36.940 the city of sparta because sparta yet has not done anything particularly nasty to the persians in the way

00:39:45.700 that the athenians have done at marathon so as revenge for marathon the persians occupy under xerxes

00:39:53.620 athens and they simply torch it including the temples the religious shrines up on top of the

00:40:01.280 acropolis and they torch private houses and they torch public buildings and so on at the foot of the

00:40:06.860 acropolis all in central athens and that is very very bad news but how come they had a free hand

00:40:16.200 in torching athens because the athenians had taken their own major major decision which is not

00:40:24.520 intuitively obvious to evacuate their city totally men women and children and to take to the ships

00:40:34.220 and so athens becomes its navy that is athens which is why the battle that ensues within the month

00:40:44.020 of thermopylae the battle of salamis is not just for the greek alliance but in particular for athens

00:40:52.540 absolutely critical and so that is the first battle which if the greeks who are resisting lose it

00:41:00.460 the war is over and the fact is that the alliance won the battle of salamis they really in a way shouldn't

00:41:07.840 but i can't go into all the mistakes that xerxes made but herodotus who's our principal descriptor

00:41:15.420 our source actually passes a judgment he says because of that the athenians are rightly to be

00:41:23.920 treated regarded as the saviors of hellas that is of the greek world from being incorporated in the

00:41:32.380 paesian empire not the spartans interestingly so even though the spartans are the dominant the leaders

00:41:39.200 of the alliance well now actually salamis was not finally decisive because there was still a large

00:41:47.820 persian army left in mainland greece xerxes goes back to iran and leaves behind very substantial force

00:41:56.460 based on the greek city of thebes which then marches south in the summer the campaigning season of the

00:42:04.020 next year 479 and a major battle there are at least a hundred thousand on each side is fought at a place

00:42:11.980 called platia and in that battle the spartans played the same sort of role as the athenians at salamis

00:42:20.140 the decisive military role in land fighting that is the finally decisive battle of the greeco-persian

00:42:29.340 wars all right so the battle of thermopylite certainly gone down in history i still think it

00:42:33.880 you know remains today popular culture it's a symbol of heroism and self-sacrifice as a historian who's

00:42:40.440 studied written about read about the spartans your whole entire career do you think there's something

00:42:44.980 to admire about the spartans in their role in that battle well i i don't think any other greek state

00:42:52.240 apart from sparta in 480 when almost all the greeks to the north of athens had gone over to the persians

00:43:02.720 when within the peloponnese their main enemy sparta's main enemy argos was pretending to be neutral

00:43:11.960 in other words not joining the spartan resistance and in effect being on the persian side herodotus is

00:43:19.180 very rude about such people who tried to be neutral in effect they were on the persian side i don't think

00:43:26.460 any other state would have been up for what happened at thermopylite they made that demonstration

00:43:34.100 and then they sufficiently allowed the effects to run things on the naval side that that combination

00:43:44.040 worked and then they themselves did the business in the decisive battle so if sparta deserves our

00:43:51.920 admiration and there are an awful lot of features of it that i find pretty distasteful today but i would

00:43:59.020 say that had the greeks that is the resisting greeks lost in 480 479 had the persians won

00:44:08.000 then well the world would not be the same today because we somehow look back to the achievements of the

00:44:18.940 ancient greeks we we speak collectively democracy science medicine theater you name it but they're not

00:44:28.060 actually spartan achievements they're largely athenian achievements but it was because of the spartans

00:44:36.460 that the athenians were able to go on and make those amazing achievements in the fifth later fifth

00:44:44.940 and in the fourth centuries well paul this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn

00:44:49.220 more about your work well you mentioned right at the beginning what is my i think most accessible

00:44:55.660 book on sparta but um i did once edit a collective volume it's called the cambridge illustrated history

00:45:05.360 of ancient greece very nice paperback and there we cover all aspects of ancient greek not just spartan

00:45:13.660 civilization including war politics medicine gender family life religion so if you want a balanced

00:45:22.780 overall view of what was it like to be an ancient greek or what was life like in ancient greece in

00:45:30.340 the classical fifth or fourth centuries i would recommend that as a one-stop shop as it were thank

00:45:36.620 you brett my guest name is paul cartledge he's the author of several books in sparta today we discuss

00:45:41.300 his book thermopylae it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can check out our show

00:45:45.480 notes at aom.is slash thermopylae where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into

00:45:49.520 this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Spartans at Thermopylae

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