Classical historian Professor Stephen Hodkinson considers the historical accounts of The battle of Thermopylae to determine why the battle is impossible to portray accurately in film.
The martyrial sacrifice of King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae is central to The 300 Spartans (1962) as well as 300 (2007). Likewise, both films have been scrutinised over the accuracy of their respective portrayals.
Snyder’s 300 understates the size of Greek forces, and uses fantastical elements in its depiction of Spartan armour and combat techniques. Rudolph Mate’s The 300 Spartans has, too, been criticised for depicting the battlegrounds of Thermopylae as an open plain rather than a narrow coastal path.
Prof. Hodkinson defended the films and said: “Historically, there were no eyewitnesses and no surviving accounts from immediately after the battle.
“Herodotus, our main source, was writing a good generation or more later and had to rely on people who had heard about the battle.
“The poet Simonides, the nearest contemporary source, wrote celebrating Thermopylae as he did with the other battles in the Persian wars, but we only have a fragment of his poem, even if we did have the entirety it would probably be distorted by pro-Greek or pro-Spartan propaganda.”
Entirely documented through secondary-interpretive accounts, the truth of The Battle of Thermopylae has become the subject of much debate between historians. One such example comes from the writing of Greek historian Diodorus Siculus 400-years after the Greco-Persian Wars.
“Diodorus had the battle end in a very different way. He wrote later in the first-century BC but drew upon earlier sources, which are now lost to time.
“After they had learned that the Persians were encircling them, rather than staying and being massacred, the Spartans decided to make an armed raid on the Persian camp to kill Xerxes; it’s in the context of that raid that Diodorus depicted the Spartans meeting their end.”
This uncertainty has even prompted modern authors to attempt to divulge intimate knowledge of the Spartans last stand.
“In his novel from 1998, Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield had to create a survivor from Thermopylae in order to give an account of the battle.
“I don’t think that one could ever create a fully historical account of the Battle of Thermopylae, because there are no eyewitness accounts.”
