A Comparative Analysis of the Movie 300 and Herodotuss The Persian Wars - Essay Example

A Comparative Analysis of the Movie 300 and Herodotus’s The Persian Wars Introduction In a morose, bloody, and unreasonably sensationalized depiction of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans as imagined by graphic narrator Frank Miller have captured the attention of the world in the movie 300. The movie recounts the tale of the legendary last stand of the Greek army against the massive Persian army at the Thermopylae pass in 480 B.C., a war of unmatched valor, and one which has been immortalized within Western civilization. Even though the movie was inspired by Miller’s detailed narrative rather than by the historical accounts of Herodotus, the rendition of Miller appears to take in several of the important episodes of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae that audiences would want to watch. However, the movie committed major deviations from Herodotus’s historical accounts of the Persian Wars. This paper attempts to discuss the differences between the film 300 and Herodotus’s account of the last stand at Thermopylae in terms of military tactics, naval engagements, and religion. In the movie, the King of Sparta, Leonidas, and his best soldiers confront Xerxes’s enormous army at the northern Greece’s narrow pass and courageously restrain the Persians. And the age-old motivating importance of sacrifice has been preserved. Hence, for people who think that the merit of a film is established firmly by its episodes, and that the value of its rhythm, visuals, acting, screenplay, and historical accuracy are merely icing in the cake, the 300 will be worth a watch. However, for people who think that rhythm, visuals, acting, screenplay, and historical accuracy represent the true success of film, that a setting is merely the objective, and that the objective should never be confused with the action, the 300 is a quite worthless film. Military Tactics In the film 300 Leonidas is depicted as planning to carry his 300 elite soldiers to Thermopylae to crush the Persian army and stand up for freedom. Leaving behind the unsophisticated principle of justice, rationality, and freedom—the Spartans, similar to other Greeks, had a history of trying to subjugate if not really colonize other populations when it served their goals—it is nonsensical to propose that an exceptional Spartan commander like Leonidas would think that his elite army of 300 could spoil the ambitious goal of tens of thousands of Persian soldiers. The enthusiasm of Leonidas is not convincing or believable. The real last stand of the 300 as a hold-back strategy is historical and plausible. Some of the depictions of the military strategy are historically inaccurate. For instance, the filmmakers chose to reduce the Spartan body armors to their symbolic and basic aspects: weapons, shields, cloak, and headdress. The outcome is superhuman images, hoplites stripped of body armors. Any Greek fighter would refuse to go to war without some kind of upper body shield. There are other historical inaccuracies. Ephialtes, the Greek who double-crossed the Greek army, is shown as a badly misshapen Spartan recluse whose betrayal stems from the refusal of Leonidas to permit him to take part in the battle. Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, who was trivially mentioned in the historical accounts, is granted with a very important role. The domestic political schemes in Sparta are entirely fictional. The route at Thermopylae is depicted as an extremely constricted crevice between upright rock faces. The Greek forces are depicted advancing south of Sparta but Thermopylae is located at the northern part of Sparta. Illusory creatures appear every now and then, like the giant elephants and rhinoceros, at the battle. These are imaginary additions. The documentary The Last Stand of the 300 accurately describes the military strategies at Thermopylae. Most of the descriptions are in line with Herodotus’s accounts. The Greek army positioned themselves in a phalanx, a fortification of encrusted spearpoints and overlying shields, covering the pass’s whole width (Shirley & Romm 2003, xiii). The Persians, equipped with spears and arrows, failed to penetrate the long spears, or ‘dory’, of the Greek phalanx. Due to the landscape, the Persians were incapable of flanking or enclosing the Greeks, hence making their massive numbers practically worthless. Massive fatalities on the side of the Persian army were documented by Herodotus as the regimented Spartans who attempted to take advantage of enemy losses devised a chain of fake retreats (Rawlinson 2004, 310). After witnessing his soldiers get slaughtered by the Greek army, Xerxes called on the famous Persian Immortals. Leonidas put up a mechanism of communications between the hoplites of the different city-states in order to continually have new soldiers on the forefront. However, in the peak of the combat the fierceness of the Greek warriors was such that the divisions did not exchange positions but kept on fighting and surpassing the limits of the war to slaughter large numbers of the selected Persians (Rawlinson 2004, 310-311). The Immortals also did not have the capacity to penetrate the resolute and tough phalanx, and they, as well, were compelled to withdraw with immense fatalities. Following the second day of the battle, as shown in the documentary film, Ephialtes committed treachery by informing Xerxes of a disconnected route through Thermopylae, which the Persian army could exploit to defeat the Greeks. The route was guarded by 1,000 Phocians who were assigned there when the existence of another path was discovered by the Greeks prior to the battle. Xerxes dispatched the Immortals to the alternate route. Unfortunately, the Phocians were missing from their posts when the Immortals marched through the pass. Ephialtes’s treachery brought about the defeat of the Greek army. Nevertheless, despite of the many similarities between the documentary film and Herodotus’s historical accounts, there are still some differences between them, such as the numbers of Greek infantry troops and Persian and Greek ships. According to the documentary film, there were 70,000 Greek soldiers, 300 Spartans, 200 Greek warships, 300,000 to 2 million Persians, and 1,000 Persian warships. These numbers are refuted in Herodotus historical accounts. According to Herodotus, there are 10,000 Greek soldiers (adding up the breakdown of the numbers of various Greek tribes who joined in the action), 300 Spartans, 271 Greek Triremes, 9 Greek Penteconters, and 1,207 Persian Triremes (Rawlinson 2004, 273). The documentary film also failed to clearly describe a hoplite. According to Herodotus, a hoplite “is an armed infantry soldier, wearing metal armor and helmet and carrying a spear and shield” (Shirley & Romm 2003, 142). He adds that it may appear strange that the Spartans, who were commanders of the united Greek infantry troops, dispatched only a small number of hoplites. As cited by Rawlinson (2004, 274), Herodotus clarifies that the 300 were vanguard soldiers and that additional forces were to be dispatched shortly. Naval Engagements The most important Greek leader was the Athenian commander Themistocles. The movie 300 and the documentary film briefly showed the effort of the Greek naval force to block the advance of the Persian fleet into northern Greece. Themistocles proposed that a defense force on land block the entrance of the Persians to Thermopylae while the naval force hampered the Persian fleet, prohibiting them from entering the Straits of Artemisium. By obstructing the Persian infantry and naval forces, Themistocles aimed to stop the Persians from assaulting the defenseless southern Greece cities. The biggest part of the navy was composed of Athenian warships, and large numbers of Athenians wished for their own commander, Themistocles, to command the armada (Gill 2011, para 7). Although the Persian army tried to push its entrance through the Thermopylae pass, the warships tried to advance through the Straits of Artemisium for reinforcement. A portion of the flotilla was dispatched to move around Euboea and encircle the Greek flotilla; however, several Persian ships were obliterated by the storm (Rawlinson 2004, 347). At long last, the Battle of Artemisium was inconclusive. When the Greek navy was informed of the fall of Thermopylae, they immediately retreated to the South to regroup. The movie’s depiction of the Battle of Artemisium is quite brief, since the focus of the movie is the Battle of Thermopylae, but historically accurate to a certain extent. However, the movie failed to adequately show the brilliance and courage of the Greek commander, Themistocles. It failed to show the most important events in the Battle of Artemisium, especially Themistocles’ naval strategies. In The Last Stand of the 300 and Herodotus’s histories, Themistocles has been revered as one of the greatest military strategist in history. If not for Themistocles Leonidas’s last stand would not have been possible. The documentary film shows how Themistocles devised remarkable strategies to turn their disadvantage in number over the Persian fleet to their advantage, such as engaging the battle in the afternoon to shorten the encounter, since a naval battle cannot be engaged at night, and thus reducing their possible casualties. The documentary film also mentioned of the psychological tactic that Themistocles used. In Herodotus’s account this psychological tactic was elaborated (Shirley & Romm 2003, 151): Themistocles, commander of the large Athenian contingent, tried a form of psychological warfare during the retreat: He stopped at water sources along the way to leave rock-carved messages, urging the Ionian sailors serving in Xerxes’ fleet to desert or at least to fight slackly in the next engagement against their countrymen. He hoped that, even if no desertions resulted, he might at least trouble Xerxes’ mind with the fear that they might. However, what the movie and the documentary film did not disclose about Themistocles’s naval engagements was the bribery he took for the protection of Euboea: “… Themistocles, the Athenian commander, to whom they gave a bribe of thirty talents, on his promise that the fleet should remain and risk a battle in defence of Euboea” (Rawlinson 2004, 319). Nonetheless, it is clearly recounted in the documentary film that Themistocles did everything, even lying to the Athenian council that they were facing a threat from Aegina, to amass the resources needed to build his naval force. Themistocles’s fleet, as dramatically retold in the documentary film and by Herodotus, finally defeated the Persian armada in the Battle of Salamis and unified Greece as ‘one nation under one banner’. The movie 300 failed to depict how the naval engagements in the Battle of Artemisium became a turning point in the military history of Western civilization. Religion The movie’s portrayal of the ‘ephors’, the age-old priests of Sparta, is absolutely distorted. When Leonidas reached the shrine at the precipice, he is met by a priest-- “Welcome, Leonidas. We have been expecting you. I trust you didn’t come empty-handed?” (excerpt from the movie)—and was prohibited to enter the shrine until he pays a bag of gold. The ‘ephors’ are depicted as deformed and ugly. Leonidas viewed them as couriers of an archaic society that hamper his plan of rescuing Spartans from enslavement, calling them “moldy, rotting remnants of ancient, senseless, stupid tradition” (excerpt from the movie). Religion, through the presence of the ‘ephors’, is hence intimately linked to deceit and irrationality. Not a great deal was shown about the Persians’ religion. At a particular stage in the battle it has been stated-- “When muscles fail, they turn to their magic” (excerpt from the movie)—and the audiences witnessed how ‘sorcerers’ used their mystical powers in battle. One relevant matter which involves the Persians’ religion, nonetheless, is that fact that the Xerxes is viewed as a deity. This implies that when Leonidas turned down the bid of Xerxes, the messenger views this as profanity. At times audiences were introduced to another form of religion. This religion may be referred to as the Spartan warriors’ religion, because it simply emerged in that relation. As stated by the Spartan narrator, “training can make a man a good warrior, but a great warrior is crafted by the gods” (excerpt from the movie). The movie’s depictions of the Persian and Greek religions are grossly distorted based on the documentary film and Herodotus’s histories. Herodotus portrayed the Oracles of Delphi with much reverence and respect. Leonidas and the 300, and the other Greek soldiers were organized to safeguard the pass at Thermopylae, but they were double-crossed by a Malian who informed the Persians of the secret route to Thermopylae (Mikalson 2002, 63-64). Herodotus has a Delphic Oracle and a priest decide the strategy at this point: “The prophet Megistias, after looking at the sacrifices, first indicated to those of the Greeks at Thermopylae that death would come to them with dawn, and then deserters announced that the Persians had them surrounded” (Mikalson 2002, 64). The Spartan king observed that his allies were scared and downcast, and sent them away. The Persian religion of the movie 300 is an exaggeration of Herodotus’s historical account of Xerxes’s blasphemy. Herodotus narrates (Mikalson 2002, 65): Xerxes ordered that Leonidas’ head be cut off and affixed to a pole. There is lots of other evidence, but this incident especially makes it clear that King Xerxes felt a greater wrath at the living Leonidas than he did at any other man. For otherwise Xerxes would not have violated traditions in this way in regard to his corpse, since among the peoples I know Persians traditionally honor especially men who are good in military affairs. This deed of Xerxes was an evident transgression, an act that disobeyed Greek and, as claimed by Herodotus (Mikalson 2002, 65), the Persian religious beliefs. Conclusions Herodotus narrated numerous remarkable tales, and one of them is the last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae. A splendid tale, undoubtedly, and suitable for re-enacting, which in the contemporary period signifies a movie. To analyze the movie 300’s devotion to historical accuracy is to damage it, because the movie obviously deviates from historical facts. The filmmakers showed clear indifference to historical correctness. In other words, the movie 300 is a sensationalized rendition of the Battle of Thermopylae, employing all the ploys of technological wonder. In reality, the movie is an overbearing fantasy. There was a distinction between historical imprecision rooted in slapdash analysis and lack of knowledge, and historical inaccuracies rooted in the creative ideas of the filmmaker; the film 300 is perhaps a combination of both. References n.a. “Documentary: The Last Stand of the 300” Fanpop, (2011): http://www.fanpop.com/spots/documentaries/videos/21970/title/documentary-last-stand-300 n.a. “300” Letmewatchthis.com, (2011): http://www.1channel.ch/external.php?title=300&url=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5tZWdhdmlkZW8uY29tL3YvVjJCN0RXNU8=&domain=bWVnYXZpZGVvLmNvbQ==&loggedin=1 Gill, N.S. “Persian Wars Battle at Thermopylae—480 B.C.” About.com, (2011): http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/weaponswar/p/blpwtherm.htm Mikalson, J. Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Rawlinson, G. The Histories of Herodotus. New York: Neeland Media LLC, 2004. Shirley, S. & J. Romm. On the War for Greek Freedom: Selections from the Histories. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 2003. Read More