A brilliant Movie with some Historical Flaws

Rating: 10/10 (24 November 2008)

The setting is in the late summer of 480 BC as the Persian King of Kings Xerxes' vast army invades Greece and his fleet dominates the Aegean Sea. This happens ten years after the decisive defeat of King Darius'army and marines at the Battle of Marathon on the east coast of Attica).
The Spartans in the movie are depicted as hormone boosted muscular-bound grunts wearing diapers. In truth the classical heavily armed Spartan hoplites would have been muscular, lean and sinewy with beautifully proportioned bodies. As hoplites they would have been heavily armed with their weapons, helmets and shields but they would also have sported breastplates, shoulder protection and metal greaves on their limbs plus a short kilt. The Spartan women in the film are all beautiful. The Spartan Queen is particularly lovely.
One of my minor gripes is that although the audio is available in Spanish it is not offered in Modern Greek. It would have been very convincing for me to hear Leonidas speaking in Greek instead of English with a Scottish accent. Leonidas is much closer to Adidas when pronounced correctly with the emphasis on the last syllable.I winced every time it was mispronounced.
When the various states of central Greece appealed for help it was the magistrates who instructed Leonidas to lead a single army unit of 300 hoplites to scout out the Persian and if possible to stem their advance until a larger military force could be mustered from Sparta and other allied Greek states. The festival of Carnea was being celebrated in Sparta and it would have been risking the Gods' wrath I it had been abandoned.
The Spartan army unit 300 of heavily armed infantry (hoplites) were joined, as shown in the film by some of the citizen armies of the Arcadian Greek and others, including Thebans (whose bias is in favour of Xerxes was suspected) plus contributions from hoplites and other warriors who dwelt in central Greece regions close to the Hot Gates. Altogether there were 10,000 Greek warriors present at Thermopylae when the Persians first attacked and before the betrayal. When the situation became hopeless because of the betrayal , Leonidas told the non-Spartan Greeks they could return home. Most went but a few stayed to support the 300.
As to Ephialtes (a name derived from a mythical demi-god and the Greek for "nightmare"). He was not a Spartan but a local from the Malian Gulf. According to Herodotus his motive was the gold the Persians offered him because he was reputedly very familiar with the local mountains and it was he who revealed the hidden back path to them.. There 's nothing in history to suggest that Ephialtes was a ugly hunchback, except perhaps his name.
Another rare distortion of the facts in the film is the presumed ability of the Spartans at Thermopylae to witness the destruction of much of the Persian fleet by violent late summer storms. Because this actually occurred off the coast of Magnesia (after the modern town of Volos) Leonidas could not have seen it happen even if he had a powerful pair of modern binoculars. However, he probably did receive news of the disaster as Magnesia although out of sight is not that far away.
After Thermopylae the Persians went on to suffer a dramatic navel defeat at Salamis near Athens in the same year. After that Xerxes had had enough and neither he nor any other Persian king was ever seen in the European part of Greece again .The final battle was at Platea in 479 in which the Spartans participated and the Persians were completely routed. While Greece suffered many subsequent civil wars and conquests from Alexander the Great, the Romans and the Crusaders, they were all European conquerors. The Spartans' heroic stance at Thermopylae some 2500 years ago was a major factor in this. Not until 1453 with the fall of Constantinople (Istanbul)was Greece invaded and occupied by any Asiatic nation again.
In short I highly recommend this film as entertaining , and maybe instructive, for most adults. It is probably too graphically violent for young children. The soft-core sexual and nude scenes are more likely to simply puzzle them and embarrass their parents but the violence, including very explicit decapitations and amputations with simulated Persian "monsters" will give most young children nightmares.