I read it around somewhere that every indominatable culture in the world has a tale like Thermopylae or it has been subjugated or beaten by one that does. Jewish folk have Masada. The Greeks had theirs, the Romans borrowed it. The British have Agincourt, and Victorian Era stands against Zulu warriors. The Sikhs have the stand of Banda Singh at Gurdas Nangal,. The Soviets had Stalingrad to use against Germany. We have Bunker Hill, the Alamo, Bastogne and others large and small.
The tales serve as exemplars of courage, duty, and a willingness to pay the ultimate price for one’s society. Thermopylae is instructive as long as its essence is accurately conveyed. The precise details surrounding that essence have long been mostly lost.
The 300 is historically inaccurate? Well duh. No one really has a first hand written account. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey weren’t exactly documentary quality fare either, yet they remain central classics across Western Civilization.
Epic events get more fantastic with the retelling. As I understand it, there were between 7,000 and 10,000 Greeks at the battle in question, as well as an entire Athenian Navy protecting the ground effort.
So what? The Spartans were the ones who have long since captured the imagination. The Marines are evidently their PR descendents.
Then there is the nitpicking about how the oppressors of the Helots sound ridiculous spouting off about freedom. Well, that’s no more ridiculous than Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay popping off on the subject. Perhaps no one has a greater appreciation of freedom than a slave holder? I would imagine that one who subjugates others would, with particularity, have no taste for being subjugated himself.
Again, so what?
The Spartans weren’t the ideal defenders of Western Civilization, but at Thermopylae, they, and other assorted Greek hoplites, were all that there was. I’ll take them as heroes, flaws real and imagined, over the alternative. I’d rather be the successor of Sparta and Athens than be the inheritor of “modern” Persia.
The movie was stylistically ripped right off of classical pottery and fueled by the dynamics and exaggerations of oral mythological storytelling. Anyone reading Goebbels or Bush into the film is trying too hard by half.
The 300 is a classic “us versus them to the last man” tale told tall, nothing more. That some quarters have overly complicated dismissals of it says more about them than it does about the central theme of the film.
The tales serve as exemplars of courage, duty, and a willingness to pay the ultimate price for one’s society. Thermopylae is instructive as long as its essence is accurately conveyed. The precise details surrounding that essence have long been mostly lost.
The 300 is historically inaccurate? Well duh. No one really has a first hand written account. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey weren’t exactly documentary quality fare either, yet they remain central classics across Western Civilization.
Epic events get more fantastic with the retelling. As I understand it, there were between 7,000 and 10,000 Greeks at the battle in question, as well as an entire Athenian Navy protecting the ground effort.
So what? The Spartans were the ones who have long since captured the imagination. The Marines are evidently their PR descendents.
Then there is the nitpicking about how the oppressors of the Helots sound ridiculous spouting off about freedom. Well, that’s no more ridiculous than Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay popping off on the subject. Perhaps no one has a greater appreciation of freedom than a slave holder? I would imagine that one who subjugates others would, with particularity, have no taste for being subjugated himself.
Again, so what?
The Spartans weren’t the ideal defenders of Western Civilization, but at Thermopylae, they, and other assorted Greek hoplites, were all that there was. I’ll take them as heroes, flaws real and imagined, over the alternative. I’d rather be the successor of Sparta and Athens than be the inheritor of “modern” Persia.
The movie was stylistically ripped right off of classical pottery and fueled by the dynamics and exaggerations of oral mythological storytelling. Anyone reading Goebbels or Bush into the film is trying too hard by half.
The 300 is a classic “us versus them to the last man” tale told tall, nothing more. That some quarters have overly complicated dismissals of it says more about them than it does about the central theme of the film.
