Perhaps the clearest rebuttal of the super-warrior myth is found in the 120 elite Spartans who fought at the Battle of Sphacteria (425 B.C.) when their Athenian enemies surrounded them, they opted to surrender rather than “conquer or die.” There is Callicratidas, whose pragmatism secured critical funding for the Spartan Navy in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), but who foolishly ordered his ship to ram the Athenians’ during the Battle of Arginusae (406 B.C.), a move that saw him killed. There is the famous Admiral Lysander, whose glorious military career ended with a rash decision to rush into battle against Thebes, probably to deny glory to a domestic rival-a move that cost him his life at the Battle of Haliartus (395 B.C.). There is King Agis II, who bungled various maneuvers against the forces of Argos, Athens and Mantinea at the Battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) but still managed to pull off a victory. They were fallible men of flesh and bone whose biographies offer important lessons for modern people about heroism and military cunning as well as all-too-human blundering. The super-warrior myth-most recently bolstered in the special effects extravaganza 300, a movie in which Leonidas, 60 at the time of the battle, was portrayed as a hunky 36-blinds us to the real ancient Spartans.
The 300 or so Spartans helped hold off an enormous Persian Army for three days.Īctually, Spartans could be as cowardly and corrupt, as likely to surrender or flee, as any other ancient Greeks. Outflanked and hopelessly outnumbered, Leonidas and his men fought to the death, epitomizing Herodotus’ pronouncement that all Spartan soldiers would “abide at their posts and there conquer or die.” This singular episode of self-sacrificing bravery has long obscured our understanding of the real Sparta.Ī scene from Thermopylae by the Italian novelist, painter and poet Dino Buzzati. In the battle, the Persian Army crushed more than 7,000 Greeks-including 300 Spartans, who are widely and falsely believed to have been the only Greeks fighting in that battle-and went on to capture and burn Athens.
The myth of Sparta’s martial prowess owes much of its power to a storied feat of heroism accomplished by Leonidas, king of Sparta and hero of the celebrated Battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.). This view, as ingrained as it is alluring, is almost entirely false. A monument in Thermopylae to King Leonidas.Īncient Sparta has been held up for the last two and a half millennia as the unmatched warrior city-state, where every male was raised from infancy to fight to the death.
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