The number of Americanised illicit references to 'freedom' in the film 300 (which, by the way, isn't anywhere near as bad as I wanted it to be) made me want to remember more about the battle of Thermopylae. So I hunted down my copy of Herodotus' histories and found the following - The three hundred were pretty famous and yes, they were all Spartan warriors. But at Platea, the Spartan army numbered 45,000. Of those, 5,000 were Spartan warriors. So who were the other 40,000?Well who'd have though it. Slaves and peasants!
FREEDOM!
3 comments:
I liked the film too. And I like slaves. Damn Republicans and Lincoln and 14th amendment.
But on the plus side, we'll only need an army of 300 Greeks to defeat Iran when the war comes.
I also like how you said slaves and peasants. Like peasants are free people, but are still cannon fodder.
Well, they were peasants who worked the land owned by the free spartans and were occasionally killed by gangs of teenage boys whos job it was to keep them too scared to rebel... So basically slaves.
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