Encouraged by such Spartan actions, the other surviving Greeks fought with greater dynamism against the Persians. Even though almost all of the 300 Spartans (two men had defected) had died, they had fought vigorously and valiantly, refusing to merely submit to the Persians. It marked the beginning of several important Greek victories against the Persians and represented a morale shift among the Greeks. While the Battle of Thermopylae was technically a defeat for the Greek coalition, it was also a conquest. Before the Spartans and others died, however, they had slain twenty thousand Persians. The Persian assault began on August 17 and lasted for three days before the Persians finally killed the 298 Spartans who had defended the mountain pass with another small Greek contingent of roughly three to four thousand men. Leonidas sent the local contingent to defend Anopaea, a single-file pass near Thermopylae, while the 300 Spartans and others remained on the narrow, yet somewhat larger pass of Thermopylae.
Because the Olympic games were occurring at the same time as the expected Persian invasion, the Greek alliance sent only a small advance guard.
The loose coalition of Hellenes (ancient Greeks) identified the mountain pass of Thermopylae and the cape of Artemisium as the key defense land-and-sea points respectively and sent a conglomeration of Greeks headed by King Leonidas of Sparta to protect Thermopylae. In order to achieve hegemony over the Greek mainland, Xerxes planned to attack by land and by sea. A group of Greeks, including Spartans, Athenians, and others, banded together to fight against the Persian menace. This great battle in 480 happened during the Greco-Persian Wars in which King Xerxes of Persia was attempting to gain more territory. Spartans hold back Persian forces at Anopaea, a single-file pass near Thermopylae. Thus, even though Aristotle had not yet described the Greek ideal of freedom, all the city-states defended their independence against enemies foreign and domestic, particularly in the case of the Battle of Thermopylae. While the governments of poleis sometimes differed (Athens had a democracy while Sparta had an oligarchy) and even fought against one another, almost all the Greek city-states did agree in at least one aspect: the Persians were authoritarian, had no concept of freedom, enslaved its people, and must be defeated.
Each city-state zealously guarded its autonomy, desiring the freedom to live according to its own dictates, not another city-state’s, or more importantly, authoritarian regime’s, opinions. A plethora of poleis existed throughout Greece since about the eighth century B.C. happened about one hundred years before the great philosopher and defender of freedom Aristotle was born, the Greeks still had a concept of defending the city-state, the polis. Of course, such a defense could have happened, but it might have been harder knowing that the Spartans and other Greeks defending freedom at the Battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Platea had not been able to do it.Īlthough the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
Authoritarian monarchy would have been the norm, and it would have taken a group of people much like the Spartans to champion again values like protection, free will, and freedom over imperialism, coercion, and authoritarianism. If the 300 Spartans had stayed home and if Persians had won the Greco-Persian Wars, the Western concept of freedom most likely would not exist. Three hundred Spartans, joined by a small force of Greeks, defend the mountain pass of Thermopylae against the invading Persians.