10 things the makers of '300' got right

300, the movie, is out on DVD this week. When it was first released in the cinema, I was as sniffy as most classicists (no, the Persians didn’t fight with rhinoceroses . . . and, sorry, wouldn’t Xerxes have had a beard . . .?). 

But taking another look, on the DVD, I decided that the movie-makers actually deserved a pat on the back for some of the things they did get right.

1) The ‘Three Hundred’. Yes there were 300 Spartans who tried to keep the Persians back at the pass of Thermopylae in 480BC. There were also, as it happens, about 900 Spartan slaves plus several hundred soldiers from the cities of Thebes and Thespiae. But the Greeks, like us, tended to forget about them.

2) Spartans fought for ‘freedom’. Well, it was a funny sort of freedom, a bit in the line of Soviet democracy. But freedom it was. In fact 50 years later, when freedom-loving Athens was busy enslaving the states of Greece in her nasty little empire, Sparta waved the flag of liberty. And that was what the next big war in Greece – the Peloponnesian War – was all about.

3) The Persians were Oriental  monsters. Not literally, of course; and that’s what a lot of fuss over the  movie was all about. But in Greek imagination indeed they were. This is where the ‘Orientalism’ that I was talking in my last post really starts. If you want an idea of how ancient Greeks themselves portrayed the Persians, try these pictures from a fifth-century BC vase. There’s a manly Greek on one side (here, the left), hands on his erect penis – all ready to do something . . . well something pretty rough . . . to the effeminate Persian (dressed in a clingy body suit) who’s bending down and waiting, on the other.

4) Spartan mothers used to tell their sons, “Come back with your shield or on it” (that is – either victorious, or dead, but not a fugitive whose thrown his shield away). I’m afraid this is probably true too. Or at least, according to the Roman writer Plutarch, one Spartan mother once made this threat. It’s quoted in an essay of his called “Sayings of Spartan Women” – which features plenty of other tough talk from mothers to sons.

5) The Spartans fought naked . . .

Well again, not in real life. But the movie does reflect quite closely how Greek artists represented warfare. Take a look at painted Athenian pots (just like the one before the jump) and you’ll find that ‘heroic nudity’ was often part of parcel of how they thought of military bravery.

6) Spartan women were powerful. That’s certainly what other Greeks thought. Athenian upper class  women were kept well hidden indoors. Spartan girls did gym, then later terrorised their sons and were the power only just behind the throne. At least in ancient stories.

7) The Spartan training of young boys was fearsome. Yes, all Spartan males (except perhaps the kings) went through the training called the agoge, which was a kind of wall-to-wall army assault course. That’s what we see Leonidas doing in the snow near the start of the movie.

8) When the Persian arrows rained down, blotting out the sun, one of the Spartans joked about fighting in the shade. Yes, this is taken directly from Herodotus’ account of the battle written in the fifth century (even if the line is given to a different soldier). Herodotus puts it like this: “One of the Trachinians said, "Such was the number of the barbarians, that when they shot forth their arrows the sun would be darkened by their multitude." Dieneces, not at all frightened at these words, but making light of the Persian numbers, answered, "Our Trachinian friend brings us excellent tidings. If the Persians darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade."

9) There was a decidedly homoerotic element to the Spartan army. Of course there was, this was ancient Greece (and it's nicely captured by David's version of the scene here; look at the figures centre right)

10) King Leonidas died, murmuring a slogan to obedience: "Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie." Well almost. That is the Greek jingle (by the poet Simonides)  that was inscribed upon the memorial erected to the 300 soon after the event.

It’s almost enough to make you forget about those silly rhinoceroses.

Comments

[Luke Smith]

This was a great movie. I understand it is highly popular with U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq. They likely value it for the same reason as all the untried civilians here pick nits with it: it reveres honor, valor, and undiluted, unapologetic masculinity. Just as a corrupt politician finds an honest one threatening, or a slut finds a chaste woman incomprehensible, so do these posters remind me of the lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy":

"...making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap".

Similiar: "You sleep safe in your beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do you harm."
~ George Orwell

The combat (e.g., real) military in the West is often made in large part of better men than those they protect. Not many of those posting here have a Franklin, Peliliu, or the like in them. Thank God some American men still do. America would die in short order once that ceased to be.

[David Weir]

The Learned Prof's depiction of the Greek and Persian about to get Ugandanly acquainted is capable of more than one glossing. There may be an unsuspected differance lurking here.
Was it not Aristophanes in The Acharnians whose Persian ambassador was portrayed as Pseudartabas or "False-Arse"?
Now lets get to the bottom of that one.
Was it because the Persian men dressed to accentuate their rear ends in the manner of the Falsies of the '50s and '60s before enlargement surgery?
Or was it that the canny Persians had developed a protective/prophylactic device to frustrate the lascivious intents of the homo-erotic Greeks?
I think we should be told!
Ok Ok its a Bum Rap.

[Mary]

I bow to Michael Bulley (and James Davidson) on the exact state of the penis on the Eurymedon vase; but left to myself I'd stick to what I said.

[Tony Francis]

It looks like "Beowulf" is getting the "Comic Book - Video Game" treatment, similar to "300", in a new movie opening November 16. Angelina Jolie is some sort of creepy She-Creature lurking in some really dirty water. The dialogue is in English, not Saxon.
http://www.beowulfmovie.com/
I won't be seeing it anytime soon. But the trailers are worth watching once.

[F.Gamberini]

So what to make of this? Indeed, what to make of this whole tradition that, like a curse, we bear forever? Thermopylae -or is it Salamis?- the battle that changed/preserved Western history/civilization.... -among whose glories, no doubt, we would have to include the heights achieved by the Western art of rhetoric.
300 Spartans they never were -even the figures given here refer only to the final phase on the third day, after the departure of all the other Hellenes. Just as the memorial to the Spartans was not the only one -there was another one celebrating the participation of 4,000 from the Peloponnese alone (and we don't know whether that would have included the Helots).
Likewise, the "Persians" would nowadays be referred to as "Persian-led forces" -the Persian element being minimal even if we were to reduce Herodotus's absurd figures by as much as a factor of 10 (as we probably must) while preserving the 10,000 "Immortals".
The film was interesting mostly in the first part (up to the departure of the 300), illustrating the harshness and simplicity of the Spartan way of life; after that it was a comic book. The clashes at Thermopylae were realistic perhaps for the first 30 seconds, after which they became a videogame.
As a whole, the film was mostly successful in restating the western tradition about Thermopylae -but precisely because of that, it was a most impolitic enterprise in view of the current situation. Fortunately, its influence sems to have been short-lived: people on both sides of the divide must have realized it was really just a comic-book.

[Tony Francis]

An entertaining and educational site is:
http://www.300spartanwarriors.com
There are photos of the actual battle site from 480 BC, BCE, BDE, (etc.); actual shield decorations, drawings of the soldiers, etc. They are also selling things and asking for donations, both of which I ignored. There is a plea for recognition for the 700 Thespains who were also killed there. Apparently the Thespians were warriors and not actors. There is a statue of a Thespian who is headless and armless. What is left does not appear to be erect, or semi-erect. There are some photos of re-enactments from both sides. It is worth a look. I am dropping my proposed dating system. While this may be one of Foska's best ideas, it is one of my worst. I predicted it would offend everyone. It has: even the person who proposed it (me) is offended by it and will no longer be using it. I learned that "BC" in Greek is the letters "pi. chi". Maybe we should start using this: "PC" for BC, BCE BDE, etc. (Or would it be "PX"?)

[Michael Bulley]

I've had another think about the Eurymedon vase, though I haven't got a good image of the words here at home and can't find one on the web. I should mention, too, that I am in no way an expert on classical Greek art. The word "euruproktos" means "wide-arsed" and, though having a sexual basis, can be used as a general insult, just as similar words can in English. So maybe there's some other "wide-" word that's part of a pun here. I know next to nothing about ancient Greek gestures and don't know whether anyone has written about them (a tough subject, I'd have thought), but if the vase were a modern British one, I think you'd interpret the oriental figure's gesture as one of mockery rather than, as some commentators have suggested, of surrender. If that is the case, it's a reason for liking Davidson's suggestion that someone is being made fun of, maybe the person who's receiving the wine from the vase (strangely, to my mind, Davidson makes no comment on the unusual gesture). Also, I should have mentioned that the words slope down from the first character's head to the second's feet. So that gives more force to the idea that the person reading them will end up with his head bent over (kubda). And, just by the way, I feel that, for the sake of collective male honour, I should say I prefer Davidson's description "half-erect" to Mary Beard's "erect".

[Barbara Lightfoot]

I agree it is sad that what ten year olds once knew now has to be presented as in-depth, esoteric knowledge from on high.
300 presents a *Spartan* view of Thermopylae. It does not aim to be objective. It therefore does not have to be balanced, use hindsight, or be forensically accurate.

[Mary]

Thanks to Michael Bulley for raising some of the controversies about the Eurymedon Vase. There are, I admit, all kinds of ideas about the interpretation -- and about who exactly the bent over figure is meant to be.(Thre really is no other Greek vase quite like this). All the same, I still basically go for the simple one I suggested.
But do all read James Davidson's piece in this week's TLS -- on Greek priestesses (and much more besides),

[Tony Francis]

I think I owe beloved Foska an apology. The suggestion of DE scared me at first. But now I am beginning to see the advantage of it. I am proposing a new dating system. First of all, people are saying the birth of Christ was either 3 BC or 7 BC or maybe 4 BC:
http://www.versebyverse.org/doctrine/birthofchrist.html
This throws a pall over the whole "Anno Domini" concept. So let's look at all the dates they say the universe/world began:
Big Bang: 20 to 13.5 billion years
Earth: 4.5 billion years
Hindu/Brahma Cycle: 155 trillion years
Hebrew Calendar: 3760 BC
Maria de Agreda/Traditional Catholic: 5199 BC
Protestant I: 4000 BC
Protestant II: 5500 BC
Ussher: 4004 BC
Maya Calendar: 3114 BC
Chinese Calendar: 2600 BC
Quran I: 50,000 BC
Quran II (newer version): 18.25 billion
Foska's DE system: ????

So Hatsheput died in:
1458 BC or 1458 BCE;
13.5 to 20 billion-3465 ABB (After Big Bang)
4.5 billion -3465 AE (After Earth)
155 trillion-3465 ABHC (After Brahma/Hindu Cycle)
2303 AHC (After Hebrew Creation)
3741 AMDATC (After Maria De Agreda/Traditional Catholic)
2542 APCI (After Protestant Creation I)
4042 APCII (After Protestant Creation II)
2546 AUC (After Ussher Creation)
1686 AMC (After Mayan Creation)
1142 ACC (After Chinese Calendar)
48542 AQI (After Quran I)
18.25 billion-1458 AQII (After Quran II)
Foska's DE System: ????
I propose all dates from now on be formatted in this way. It is a system inclusive enough to offend no one, but guaranteed to offend everyone. Comments/suggestions welcome.

[Michael Bulley]

The vase in (3) is called the Eurymedon vase and there is a nice theory about it from James Davidson (see whose article in the current issue) in his book Courtesans and Fishcakes. There is a considerable space between the two characters with words coming from the first character's mouth and reaching the second. They are "I am Eurymedon and I stand bent over". Davidson thinks that a reveller or diner receiving his drink poured from the vase will start to read the words and gradually have to bend over more and more to get to see final ones. We are fairly sure the ancient Greeks read aloud; so, by the time he gets to the end, he is saying "I stand bent over" and then sees the oriental figure going "Na na na na na!" There is probably some joke in the name Eurymedon, but we are not sure what it is.

[SW Foska]

BDE, Tony. It's that simple. I would have done what you asked and withdrawn this suggestion, but it's not one of my worst ideas (yet, anyway), and like the poet said, nescit vox missa reverti.

[Tony Francis]

Concerning Egyptians with false beards, check out Hatshepsut, the woman pharaoh. Images are with and without beard:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut
She ruled from 1479 to 1458 BC; or 1479 to 1458 BCE. One question: What would these dates be in Foska's DE configuration?

[anthony alcock]

Beards.
It may be worth considering the possibility that there are times when beards should be worn and times when not. The simple expedient of the false beard makes this possible. The Egyptian kings certainly used them, but I think for ceremonial occasions only. John Ray could set you straight on that.

[ABC]

And, yes, sorry for that quickly typed post. Did he leave any different from how he began? That too is ANOTHER image, I presume...Uff to be military or not to be military. It's a bit like knowing whether or not you'll be any good at the one-legged race. Most people don't put "I did the egg and spoon race" on their CVs anymore. That would be something! I'm just trying to think back to whether I was any good at the egg part?

[ABC]

Charles
Is not the treacherous depiction of Ephialtes (man to cripple) a reinforced projected view? Wasn't his disservice an inevitable consequence of the make-up of that reality? What came first - the chicken or the egg? He was a man but what was he turned into, and who ultimately did the turning? Did they ever say "Yes, you can hold your shield"?

[TM]

It's worth noting that all the Thermopylae stuff in the movie is, as it were, in reported speech. From that point of view, I don't see the accuracy problem (even if you wanted to be concerned with the histoical accuracy of a consciously styalised movie); after all it seems pretty likely that the kind of account you got of the Persians back at Sparta (by way of contrast to the cosmopolitan Herodotus we're all familiar with) would have been pretty over the top (rhinos, giant troll-blokes, underdressed kings with synthesised voices).

What is more of an accuracy problem (and a suspension of disbelief problem) is the bizarre portrayal of the ephors as druggie goblin lechers living on the top of a huge rock.

[Mary]

On beards:
http://persianperspective.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/httpmedia.putfile.combayrouxerxes.jpg

[anthony alcock]

On the subject of beards, the two coins that were used in the film, shown on the website www.yourprops.com and described as replicas of Xerxes coins, show two clean shaven male heads.
What does the fact this film is "based" on a comic book have to do with the film makers trying to incorporate some of the things that might have happened at the battle itself (not based on a comic book) ?
I haven't seen either film.

[Charles]

ABC: there were no women in the Spartan Army. There was a strict division of labor between the genders. The men fought and went out with the army while the women stayed home and managed the agriculture. They needed to be strong to maintain the level of control necessary to keep the slaves who did all the labor in line. It was made more difficult because Spartan slaves were a class of people called Helots, all of whom came from the conquered state of Messinia.

It was this condition, I believe, which led Sparta to sparingly use their military might and caused Athens to believe they could force peace on Sparta by protracting war and fermenting rebellion amongst Spartan slaves.

What the 300 also doesn't mention is how agoge training also included the clandestine murder of a Helot: proof that a Spartiate could take life.

Yeah, the 300 isn't historically accurate or anything... but it, both the graphic novel and the movie, capture what I feel what the emotional sense of the story must have been to the Greeks as the story passed into legend throughout generations. For example, the transformation of the traitor Ephialtes from a man into what he was represented as in the movie: a deformed, monstrous representation of the vice of treachery and deceit against one's homeland. The evils of treachery and deceit are quite popular in Greek myths, legends and histories.

[Matt]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but this movie was based on a COMIC BOOK by Frank Miller, all you great intellectual types who obviously have never picked up a comic in you life should really check it out and you might realize that this movie is “spot on the graphic novel” as you would put it.

[Francis Tuttle]

WhatI find at once sad and amusing is that Professor Beard has to tell us what many years ago most young children knew.

[Tom P.]

Curious. No comments of the present East-West clash of culture going on in Europe. The heck with history. What does this movie say about what's going on today?

[ajz]

In many ways the 300 was more than a comic book. Ephialtes attempted to hold up his shield but could not get it high enough, for which he was rejected, but may be this was counterbalanced by his own wit, demonstrative of his worth, and this led to the 300s' ultimate failure. The story is meant to say something about homosexuality and some have argued that it is homophobic. Actually it presents a failed neutrality in both worlds (that of disability and homosexuality; societal sensitivities that are still irreconcilably causing harm and resulting in some acting out today). Hopefully someone bright spark, neutral to these camps, will find a solution (comic tales and games causing actual harm sometimes). Some just don't laugh at this book anymore. Perhaps this is because they have become intelligently aware of their own expression, and conscious of the very notion of society, wherever that society might be.

[Paracelsus]

It seems to me the massed ranks
of Persians represent Herodotus'
grasp of statistics rather well
- not to mention that of the
epigram which claimed they numbered
"thrice a hundred myriads".

[Comic Book Guy]

300 was based on a Comic book.
It was never meant to be historic in it's accuracy. If you can't get past that,you will never enjoy this film.

[ajz]

Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first National Socialist state, and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.

[S. Cuomo]

I thought '300' already was a lampoon: a sort of sub-Gladiator riff shot by Peter Jackson pretending to be Leni Riefenstahl, on acid. We certainly laughed ourselves silly - the bit at the end about the Spartans fighting to defeat tyranny 'and mysticism' literally had me in tears. Mind you, the Iranian government took a rather dimmer view of it...

[Jeff]

1962 version of this story does do a bit better in the historic department but the problem is the time in which it was made. The heroes are classic 50s-60s hollywood heroes and the fighting was terrible. It IS worth a watch though. On a final note, it is best to watch "300" in the right context. It should not be viewed as historical fiction but instead as a comic book adaption of superheroes.
Thanks,
Jeff

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Some forty years ago, H.D.F. Kitto's book on the Greeks (1951) intended for the general reader was commended by many. One telling anecdote from it has remained with me over the years. At one of the Olympic Games an old man wandered from section to section looking in vain for a seat; no one got up. But when he got to the Spartan section everyone did.
Plutarch gives an account of how systematically and pitilesslsly the Spartans let physically defective boys die.

[JS]

Mary, I await your analysis of the apparently forthcoming - National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. It seems likely that this will be in a fine classical tradition: a comedy, but unlikely to make anyone laugh...

I was rather disappointed with 300, nowhere near as amusing as Troy (I think I was at a showing chock full of classicists in Cambridge, complete with shouted references to Ovid when Patroclus was introduced!)

[ABC]

(a) I wonder what would happen to us today if women walked down the street and said "Come back with your shield or on it?"?

(b) What about sun gods/ Caligula? Despots...

(c) How did women fare in the Spartan army? Wasn't the whole point of the Spartan army that one was so loyal that the only point of departure was "either to return victorious or return dead"?

[Richard Rawles]

Since Herodotus does *not* tell us that Simonides composed the "Go tell the Spartans..." epitaph, where he does explicitly associate a different inscription with Simonides (a private one, for the prophet Megistias), it's almost certain that Simonides did not compose the more famous one, even though it is almost always attributed to him. Not that it matters very much for your point, since it was in any case inscribed at the site of the battle...
Best wishes,
Richard

[dr venables preller]

One may wonder whether modern politicians and military strategists fully take into account the historic provenance of determined belligerance in this part of the world.

The fate of many interventions in Afghanistan over the centuries and the genetic inheritance of populations in the surrounding area correlating with military hotspots in the ancient world can seem to the observer to have been sometimes overlooked.

The advice to give deep thought to the consequences of arousing a hornets' (or red soldier ants') nest can have other relevant application.

[Tony Francis]

As far as I am concerned, the 1962 version of this story, "300 Spartans" with Richard Egan and Diane Baker is the finest and most accurate historical episode ever put on film. The only possible exceptions to this may be "Scaramouche", "Jason and the Argonauts", and maybe "Sinbad the Sailor", (1947). Now I know some of you are going to quote movie revues that call the 1962 version "juvenile", "pedestrian", "sleep walking", etc. Those reviewers are wrong.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055719/
Of course, I saw this movie when I was 10 years old. But after seeing the 1962 version, I had no reason to see the newer version.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/300.html