I wrote this essay for English class. It's 3,657 words long, nearly a PT. I like it enough that I decided to post it here for you all, and feedback would be appreciated (seeing as the final copys not due till the 21st, I could incorporate any suggestions you have.
And for the record, this is historically accurate, other than I moved the messenger from before the battle to until just before the final assault.
Like all Spartans, I was raised to be a warrior from birth. My upbringing was hard, my childhood, nonexistent. At age seven I was forcibly taken from my mother and put into the traditional Military Boarding School, the Agoge. It was harsh, I will not lie. But it was calculated to turn us from boys into men. Our only food was black gruel- we were expected to steal in order to eat. If caught, we were punished severely- not for stealing, but for getting caught. Our training was brutal, not only the intense physical training designed to hone our bodies to physical perfection, but the military training we would need to serve our state, and the beatings used to build discipline. We drilled and marched all day, and oftentimes much of the night. Weakness was unacceptable, and if it was shown, it would be flogged out of you.
I stood out from the beginning. We were all strong, but I was stronger. We were all brave, but I was braver. We were all smart, but I was smarter. We were all clever, but I was cleverer.
After completing our thirteenth year in the Agoge, our training was complete, and the slow process of gradually reintegrating us back into Spartan society was begun. But first, the best were chosen for the traditional rite of passage, the krypteia. With no food, no shelter, and no clothing- nothing but a small knife- I and others given this sacred honor were sent off to roam Sparta’s hills during the fall season, searching for signs of helot (slave) revolts. After the first snowfall, those of us that survived- the strongest, the smartest, the bravest, and the most clever- returned home.
For a Spartan, the survival of the krypteia meant prestige. We received high standing in the army, and the very best of us received a position in the Three Hundred Knights: King Leonidas’ personal bodyguard unit.
I was one of those lucky ones.
King Leonidas was a powerful, inspiring leader. The kind that men would willingly die for. The kind who would willingly die for his people.
It was good that he would, because it wasn’t very long into his reign when King Xerxes of Persia set his sights upon Greece. In order to achieve these ends, he amassed the largest single army the world had ever seen or ever would see. An army so great it shook the earth with its footsteps, an army so great it drank rivers dry. An army a million souls strong, nearly one soldier for every fifteen Greeks.
Many city-states, particularly smaller ones such as Argos, immediately sided with the Persians without a fight. But not Sparta. When an emissary inevitably showed up at our gates, asking for nothing but a simple offering of “Water and Earth” in exchange for peace between the two powers, King Leonidas himself and all nearby soldiers dumped the diplomat and his bodyguards in a well with the retort, “Dig it out for yourselves.” And as if they themselves had seen our response to King Xerxes offer, our traditional rivals in Athens threw the diplomat sent to them into a pit.
To be honest, we weren’t really surprised. Lovers of men and philosophers they might have been, but they were also a fiercely independent breed and would fight if they thought they had a chance.
Against an army that mighty, no force in all of Greece, or in all the world for that matter, had any hopes of standing up to them. This was a force so mighty that it could compete with the gods themselves, should Xerxes find some way to transport them to the heavens.
It was fortunate that we had a god in our midst: King Leonidas. His family was believed to be descended from the son of Zeus himself, Hercules. If any man were to be able to turn back the Persian tide, it would be our great king.
It seemed that the gods conspired against Greece, however, for Xerxes chose to time his advance just when the Olympic games began, and the laws of all city-states forbade the deploying of their armies during this time or a period after, so that no blood would be spilled over honor lost or gained in the games.
Filled with questions about what to do, and desperate for answers, our king traveled to Delphi to consult the gods. The Oracle there spoke this prophecy, which gave Leonidas the courage to do what he believed right, even though the laws forbade it:
“O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon!
Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of Perseus,
Or, in exchange, must all through the whole Laconian country
Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great Hercules.
He cannot be withstood by the courage of bulls nor of lions,
Strive as they may; he is mighty as Jove; there is naught that shall stay him,
Till he have got for his prey your king, or your glorious city!”
And so he left Sparta with only us, his three hundred loyal bodyguards, who would follow him to the death and beyond if he asked it of us.
That was good, because he, willing to make the sacrifice called for to save Greece in the prophecy, didn’t plan on returning.
* * *
And so we set off for a place known as “The Hot Gates,” the Gates of Thermopylae. A canyon barely wide enough for a single chariot to pass through; it was the only passage through the mountains separating the coasts from the broad inner plains for hundreds of miles, and was deemed by our king to be the ideal place for us to hold the Persians from, since in the close confines of the canyon numbers would mean very little. Joining us in our defense of Greece were five thousand men from nearby city-states, particularly Thebes and Athens, also sent in defiance of the law because their cities leaders realized that there were bigger things to worry about than laws that didn’t quite apply to the current circumstances.
This, Greece’s defense, seemed trivial compared to what the Persians could throw at us. Some of the Athenians thought that we would be quickly and easily swept aside, like a house by a flood. Others, mainly those who had bought into rumors of the Persians inferiority out of desperation and hope, thought we might be able to hold them off here forever until they had either all been slaughtered or the Olympics ended and the cities of Greece sent their armies to reinforce us.
We Spartans didn’t bother to think about it. We had been sent here by our king to defend our people, to defend our way of life.
This explanation was good enough for us.
* * *
It wasn’t good enough for most of the other Greeks, however. A group of Athenians spent hours discussing the nature of conflict around one of the fires set up for warmth and for light.
Those Athenians are born philosophers.
* * *
The men there were brothers, fathers, sons, nephews, cousins, friends and partners. They were rich, they were poor, they were farmers, they were businessmen.
They were Greeks.
The next day, we roused ourselves and prepared for battle. We prayed, we sang, we did whatever we felt would help us prepare for the coming fight.
We didn’t have to wait long, fortunately.
Xerxes’ scouts noticed our presence in the canyon almost immediately. They sent back to him the reports that we were combing our long hair while waiting for him. Believing that we would be easily crushed, his sent in a wave of troops from recently conquered providence’s and Greek city-states that had surrendered without a fight rather than engage in what they believed would be a lost cause, and began observing the battle from a nearby hill.
As soon as they began advanceing towards our position, our scouts called out to us. After donning our armor and grabbing our shields and swords, we assembled in a deadly phalanx formation. By lining up in ranks, the front rank overlapping their shields and the ranks further backs jutting their pikes over or under them, we created a massive wall of deadly iron and bronze, a deadly wall that many a Persian would get a little too close to over the coming three days.
I remember where I was that first day. I was on the far right, only a few ranks away from the ocean to our side. To my left, stood my brother Democrates, and to my right, a man I had only just met, Sociocrates. The other Greek units, to the left of the Spartan block, were reverberating with fear and excitement at the same time. Some were almost paralyzed with fear, others ready to fight them here and now.
We Spartans stood only in disciplined silence.
Xerxes began the battle by attempting to soften us up with arrows. Wave after wave of arrows fell from the sky, shot by magnificent Persian archers. At our Captain’s order, we simultaneously ducked under our shields. And waited the hail of deadly steel and bronze out.
We emerged a minute later without a loss among us. Shouting and taunting, we reformed our formation.
And then it got messy.
Screaming like the wild, untamed beasts that most Greeks believed the Persians were, they ran towards us in a large, unformed mass, a sign of the troops inexperience, lack of training, or both.
The screaming was unnerving. Some in the Athenian section of the phalanx seemed to be deeply disturbed by it and wanted to run, but behind them their comrades whispered encouraging thoughts in their ears and blocked their attempts to flee.
And then we braced ourselves.
The collision between the great forces was as bloody as it was noisy, and believe me when I say there is no noise on earth or in the heavens that can compare to the sound of two great armies colliding. Hundreds of Persians were speared upon our jutting pikes, sometimes even two or three like pieces of meat on a shish ke bob in just the first few moments. Those that slipped through were stabbed by us in the forward ranks, wielding our short swords with deadly precision.
For hours the battle raged. The Persian soldiers threw themselves at our massive shield, wall, but to no avail. The ground was slick with blood, and to advance they were forced to climb over piles of their fallen comrades to reach us.
To us, they looked like simple piles, but to the Persians, they seemed as tall and hard to climb as mountains.
But still, they kept coming.
Oh how loyal to they must have been, to keep running towards certain death! How much they must have loved king Xerxes, what a ruler he must have been.
And they kept coming.
By the end of the first day, we had slaughtered over ten thousand of them.
* * *
It is said that several times during the battle Xerxes, observing from a nearby hill, jumped up from his seat in sheer amazement at the number of troops we were killing.
Having witnessed the mass slaughter myself, I am sure it was true.
Sometimes, they say, he went into fits of rage, and screamed insults at his troopers that no one but he, his slaves and his advisors could hear for their poor performance.
I wish I could know just what haunted his dreams that night, the spirits of his men, or the terrors of our destruction.
Throughout that first day of the battle, not a single Spartan fell.
* * *
On the second day, the Persian soldiers did not feel up to fighting us- they had either observed or heard about the great slaughter we had wreaked upon their former comrades. But Xerxes was not about ready to give up, and therefore he had his commanders flog their troops from behind to keep them advancing towards us, all twenty thousand of them.
But in the hot gates, numbers didn’t matter. The only thing he achieved by doubling the number of troops he sent against us was the doubling the number of troops we slaughtered. The more he sent, the more we could kill.
It was here that Xerxes made perhaps his most critical mistake of the battle: He sent in his own personal, elite bodyguard unit: the Immortals. Traditionally used as guards and shocktroops by the Persian Kings, they were the best Xerxes had to throw at us, and he was confident that they would best us.
Each Immortal was, like us, raised from childhood to be soldiers. At a young age, each man was tough how to handle their weapons (A bow, a short sword, and a spear), how to march, how to ride on horseback, and more. The unit contained exactly ten thousand men, and every time one fell in battle, was seriously wounded, or became sick, a new member was immediately inducted, maintaining the exact number of troops at ten thousand and the cohesion of the unit.
They were worthy adversaries, yes, but they weren’t Spartans.
Normal Immortal tactics called for half of them to advance head on against us, while the other half remained behind and covered the first unit with their bows. However, the flat ground of the canyon prevented this: They would only be able to fire into the backs of their comrades, and Persian scouts had not yet found any route to the top of the canyon walls. Therefore, the entire unit charged in one single mass towards our position.
It was the worst thing they could have done. For the last two days other units, even if they were not elite ones, had tried the same strategy against us and had only met with death and destruction.
The Immortals, no matter how well trained they were, no matter how praised a fighting force they were, no matter how long they might have trained for this day, didn’t stand a chance against us. Rank after rank of the elite shock troopers fell in the dust to be trampled as we advanced over them, driving further into the Immortal’s ranks.
Before their they withdrew, we had slew over five thousand of them. These men were quickly replaced, following the Immortal’s practice of immediately replacing lost men and the unit once again reached it’s pre-battle size of ten thousand men, but the greatest wound we inflicted here was perhaps not on the soldiers we had killed, or the army we faced, but on the moral of the Persian troops. For two days they had watched us decimate everything thrown against us, including Xerxes finest.
Their morale was low and their hearts heavy as they wondered if they would ever see their families again.
* * *
Doubtlessly the greatest flaw of the human soul is it’s unquenchable thirst for money and power. Greed has made a monster out of many a good man, and every person has a thirst for both, whether they admit it openly or flat out deny it. It is our instinct, our nature, to only want more, to never be satisfied. Men might be able to speak and think and explore the wonders of the world, but when it comes down to it, we are truly no better than the beasts that roam this Earth, for we all, when it comes down to it, want the same thing.
Many a man has betrayed his country, his family, or his gods for a chance at quick wealth or power. Isn’t it ironic that the common men, while the foundation that a state is built on are also, when it comes down to it, it’s greatest threat?
No Spartan would ever betray his home, thanks to the rigorous discipline and indoctrination imposed on them from birth, but the same was not true of the other Greeks fighting alongside of us. To them, money was more valuable than their comrades, and cheap power more wonderful than the fruits of one’s own labor.
It was on the evening of the second day that Xerxes received a blessing from his gods, whoever they might have been. A Greek traitor from the city of Malian named Ephialtes, hoping for money and power, sneaked out of the Greek camp and then informed the Persians about an old Goat path that led around Thermopylae and offered to lead his troops through it. Xerxes acted immediately, having realized by now that a head on confrontation with the Greek force in the narrow confines of the canyon was only a recipe for disaster. He assembled a force of forty thousand men, including much of his restrengthened corps of Immortals, and sent them on their way. Commanding the force was his commander Hydarnes, and the traitor Ephialtes, having received a great fortune in exchange for the knowledge, guided the Persian soldiers.
Before the battle, Leonidas had been informed about the pass, and it was guarded by a thousand soldiers from the city-state of Phocia. They had not been expecting an attack, and were caught off guard. At the sight of the vanguard force of Immortals, they gathered their weapons and then retreated to the crest of a nearby mountain to make their stand, allowing the Persians to neatly bypass them and begin their encirclement of our force.
* * *
Before mighty Apollo had begun to pull the sun across the heavens, King Leonidas had been informed that the Phocians had not held and held a council of war at sunrise. Greek commanders from all the cities represented by the untied force convened and decided on the proper course of action for the situation. Most argued in favor of an immediate withdrawal before the encirclement was complete, but some pledged themselves to stay and fight to the end, sacrificing themselves so that the others might escape, and for the good of all of Greece.
The first to pledge his forces to this course was Leonidas himself, ready to do his part in fulfilling the Oracle’s prophecy. Ready to stand beside us to the end were seven hundred Thespians led by General Demophilus.
There is no finer man to die beside than a man willing die beside you.
At dawn, Xerxes messengers rode out to meet us, demanding our surrender. Asking us to “Put down our weapons,” Leonidas replied, “Come and get them.” Screaming in rage, he demanded our surrender, then proceeded to threaten us and attempt to scare us with descriptions of what their army could do to us. “Our arrows will blot out the sun,” was one of the things he said, to which our king wittily replied “So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.”
And then it all went straight to hell.
After giving his Immortals sufficient time to descend the mountains they’d had to cross to flank us, Xerxes’ troops slowly marched towards the pass which we occupied. They marched the slow, solemn march of those condemned to die.
This time, however, instead of waiting for them to charge us, we sallied forth from the restricting walls of the canyon, aiming to kill as many foes as possible before we were inevitably crushed by two mighty walls of men and steel, like a bug beneath foot and earth, as soon as the encirclement was complete.
And fight we did. We stabbed them with our spears until our spears were broken. We slashed them with our swords until our swords were lost. Some, left with nothing but their hands and teeth, fought like the beasts of the earth.
Leading us to death, glory, and honor was Leonidas himself. He fought like one of us, his loyal men, in that final assault, with a spear and sword like any other man in the ranks.
He was a great king, a great soldier, and a great general. And if one must die, there is no one I would rather have died for than him.
* * *
Even then, our ranks thin as we spread out to confront them, the Persians could not defeat us. They stumbled over one another trying to get themselves away from the slaughter.
Their ranks, packed tightly as men in front as men tried to retreat and behind as they tried to advance, were inviting targets for those with spears. Men who still had theirs charged them, others, like myself, picked new ones up off the ground, which was slick with blood. Seeing us charge towards them in a reformed line, they clawed or stabbed at their own men to get away from us, their faces covered with expressions seen on those looking death in the eyes.
The slaughter was cut short by messengers, running to inform us that the Immortals had successfully flanked us and were advancing down the canyon. With little time to spare, we pulled back and took refuge on a small hill.
The Persians all but admitted our superiority here, for they did not press on to face us like brave men, but showered us with arrows and missiles like cowards!
I was among the first struck. With arrows falling from all around, it was impossible for one to take cover behind one’s shield. Lying on the ground in a pool of blood and an arrow embedded in my chest, I watched my comrades fall one by one around me.
Kind Leonidas was the last to fall, standing defiant and proud until the life finally left him, and he was called to Hades by the fates.
And for the record, this is historically accurate, other than I moved the messenger from before the battle to until just before the final assault.
~*~
For Honor, For Glory
“For the passion, for the glory
for the memories, for the money
You're a soldier, for your country
what's the difference, all the same.”
* * *for the memories, for the money
You're a soldier, for your country
what's the difference, all the same.”
Like all Spartans, I was raised to be a warrior from birth. My upbringing was hard, my childhood, nonexistent. At age seven I was forcibly taken from my mother and put into the traditional Military Boarding School, the Agoge. It was harsh, I will not lie. But it was calculated to turn us from boys into men. Our only food was black gruel- we were expected to steal in order to eat. If caught, we were punished severely- not for stealing, but for getting caught. Our training was brutal, not only the intense physical training designed to hone our bodies to physical perfection, but the military training we would need to serve our state, and the beatings used to build discipline. We drilled and marched all day, and oftentimes much of the night. Weakness was unacceptable, and if it was shown, it would be flogged out of you.
I stood out from the beginning. We were all strong, but I was stronger. We were all brave, but I was braver. We were all smart, but I was smarter. We were all clever, but I was cleverer.
After completing our thirteenth year in the Agoge, our training was complete, and the slow process of gradually reintegrating us back into Spartan society was begun. But first, the best were chosen for the traditional rite of passage, the krypteia. With no food, no shelter, and no clothing- nothing but a small knife- I and others given this sacred honor were sent off to roam Sparta’s hills during the fall season, searching for signs of helot (slave) revolts. After the first snowfall, those of us that survived- the strongest, the smartest, the bravest, and the most clever- returned home.
For a Spartan, the survival of the krypteia meant prestige. We received high standing in the army, and the very best of us received a position in the Three Hundred Knights: King Leonidas’ personal bodyguard unit.
I was one of those lucky ones.
King Leonidas was a powerful, inspiring leader. The kind that men would willingly die for. The kind who would willingly die for his people.
It was good that he would, because it wasn’t very long into his reign when King Xerxes of Persia set his sights upon Greece. In order to achieve these ends, he amassed the largest single army the world had ever seen or ever would see. An army so great it shook the earth with its footsteps, an army so great it drank rivers dry. An army a million souls strong, nearly one soldier for every fifteen Greeks.
Many city-states, particularly smaller ones such as Argos, immediately sided with the Persians without a fight. But not Sparta. When an emissary inevitably showed up at our gates, asking for nothing but a simple offering of “Water and Earth” in exchange for peace between the two powers, King Leonidas himself and all nearby soldiers dumped the diplomat and his bodyguards in a well with the retort, “Dig it out for yourselves.” And as if they themselves had seen our response to King Xerxes offer, our traditional rivals in Athens threw the diplomat sent to them into a pit.
To be honest, we weren’t really surprised. Lovers of men and philosophers they might have been, but they were also a fiercely independent breed and would fight if they thought they had a chance.
Against an army that mighty, no force in all of Greece, or in all the world for that matter, had any hopes of standing up to them. This was a force so mighty that it could compete with the gods themselves, should Xerxes find some way to transport them to the heavens.
It was fortunate that we had a god in our midst: King Leonidas. His family was believed to be descended from the son of Zeus himself, Hercules. If any man were to be able to turn back the Persian tide, it would be our great king.
It seemed that the gods conspired against Greece, however, for Xerxes chose to time his advance just when the Olympic games began, and the laws of all city-states forbade the deploying of their armies during this time or a period after, so that no blood would be spilled over honor lost or gained in the games.
Filled with questions about what to do, and desperate for answers, our king traveled to Delphi to consult the gods. The Oracle there spoke this prophecy, which gave Leonidas the courage to do what he believed right, even though the laws forbade it:
“O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon!
Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of Perseus,
Or, in exchange, must all through the whole Laconian country
Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great Hercules.
He cannot be withstood by the courage of bulls nor of lions,
Strive as they may; he is mighty as Jove; there is naught that shall stay him,
Till he have got for his prey your king, or your glorious city!”
And so he left Sparta with only us, his three hundred loyal bodyguards, who would follow him to the death and beyond if he asked it of us.
That was good, because he, willing to make the sacrifice called for to save Greece in the prophecy, didn’t plan on returning.
* * *
And so we set off for a place known as “The Hot Gates,” the Gates of Thermopylae. A canyon barely wide enough for a single chariot to pass through; it was the only passage through the mountains separating the coasts from the broad inner plains for hundreds of miles, and was deemed by our king to be the ideal place for us to hold the Persians from, since in the close confines of the canyon numbers would mean very little. Joining us in our defense of Greece were five thousand men from nearby city-states, particularly Thebes and Athens, also sent in defiance of the law because their cities leaders realized that there were bigger things to worry about than laws that didn’t quite apply to the current circumstances.
This, Greece’s defense, seemed trivial compared to what the Persians could throw at us. Some of the Athenians thought that we would be quickly and easily swept aside, like a house by a flood. Others, mainly those who had bought into rumors of the Persians inferiority out of desperation and hope, thought we might be able to hold them off here forever until they had either all been slaughtered or the Olympics ended and the cities of Greece sent their armies to reinforce us.
We Spartans didn’t bother to think about it. We had been sent here by our king to defend our people, to defend our way of life.
This explanation was good enough for us.
* * *
It wasn’t good enough for most of the other Greeks, however. A group of Athenians spent hours discussing the nature of conflict around one of the fires set up for warmth and for light.
Those Athenians are born philosophers.
* * *
The men there were brothers, fathers, sons, nephews, cousins, friends and partners. They were rich, they were poor, they were farmers, they were businessmen.
They were Greeks.
The next day, we roused ourselves and prepared for battle. We prayed, we sang, we did whatever we felt would help us prepare for the coming fight.
We didn’t have to wait long, fortunately.
Xerxes’ scouts noticed our presence in the canyon almost immediately. They sent back to him the reports that we were combing our long hair while waiting for him. Believing that we would be easily crushed, his sent in a wave of troops from recently conquered providence’s and Greek city-states that had surrendered without a fight rather than engage in what they believed would be a lost cause, and began observing the battle from a nearby hill.
As soon as they began advanceing towards our position, our scouts called out to us. After donning our armor and grabbing our shields and swords, we assembled in a deadly phalanx formation. By lining up in ranks, the front rank overlapping their shields and the ranks further backs jutting their pikes over or under them, we created a massive wall of deadly iron and bronze, a deadly wall that many a Persian would get a little too close to over the coming three days.
I remember where I was that first day. I was on the far right, only a few ranks away from the ocean to our side. To my left, stood my brother Democrates, and to my right, a man I had only just met, Sociocrates. The other Greek units, to the left of the Spartan block, were reverberating with fear and excitement at the same time. Some were almost paralyzed with fear, others ready to fight them here and now.
We Spartans stood only in disciplined silence.
Xerxes began the battle by attempting to soften us up with arrows. Wave after wave of arrows fell from the sky, shot by magnificent Persian archers. At our Captain’s order, we simultaneously ducked under our shields. And waited the hail of deadly steel and bronze out.
We emerged a minute later without a loss among us. Shouting and taunting, we reformed our formation.
And then it got messy.
Screaming like the wild, untamed beasts that most Greeks believed the Persians were, they ran towards us in a large, unformed mass, a sign of the troops inexperience, lack of training, or both.
The screaming was unnerving. Some in the Athenian section of the phalanx seemed to be deeply disturbed by it and wanted to run, but behind them their comrades whispered encouraging thoughts in their ears and blocked their attempts to flee.
And then we braced ourselves.
The collision between the great forces was as bloody as it was noisy, and believe me when I say there is no noise on earth or in the heavens that can compare to the sound of two great armies colliding. Hundreds of Persians were speared upon our jutting pikes, sometimes even two or three like pieces of meat on a shish ke bob in just the first few moments. Those that slipped through were stabbed by us in the forward ranks, wielding our short swords with deadly precision.
For hours the battle raged. The Persian soldiers threw themselves at our massive shield, wall, but to no avail. The ground was slick with blood, and to advance they were forced to climb over piles of their fallen comrades to reach us.
To us, they looked like simple piles, but to the Persians, they seemed as tall and hard to climb as mountains.
But still, they kept coming.
Oh how loyal to they must have been, to keep running towards certain death! How much they must have loved king Xerxes, what a ruler he must have been.
And they kept coming.
By the end of the first day, we had slaughtered over ten thousand of them.
* * *
It is said that several times during the battle Xerxes, observing from a nearby hill, jumped up from his seat in sheer amazement at the number of troops we were killing.
Having witnessed the mass slaughter myself, I am sure it was true.
Sometimes, they say, he went into fits of rage, and screamed insults at his troopers that no one but he, his slaves and his advisors could hear for their poor performance.
I wish I could know just what haunted his dreams that night, the spirits of his men, or the terrors of our destruction.
Throughout that first day of the battle, not a single Spartan fell.
* * *
On the second day, the Persian soldiers did not feel up to fighting us- they had either observed or heard about the great slaughter we had wreaked upon their former comrades. But Xerxes was not about ready to give up, and therefore he had his commanders flog their troops from behind to keep them advancing towards us, all twenty thousand of them.
But in the hot gates, numbers didn’t matter. The only thing he achieved by doubling the number of troops he sent against us was the doubling the number of troops we slaughtered. The more he sent, the more we could kill.
It was here that Xerxes made perhaps his most critical mistake of the battle: He sent in his own personal, elite bodyguard unit: the Immortals. Traditionally used as guards and shocktroops by the Persian Kings, they were the best Xerxes had to throw at us, and he was confident that they would best us.
Each Immortal was, like us, raised from childhood to be soldiers. At a young age, each man was tough how to handle their weapons (A bow, a short sword, and a spear), how to march, how to ride on horseback, and more. The unit contained exactly ten thousand men, and every time one fell in battle, was seriously wounded, or became sick, a new member was immediately inducted, maintaining the exact number of troops at ten thousand and the cohesion of the unit.
They were worthy adversaries, yes, but they weren’t Spartans.
Normal Immortal tactics called for half of them to advance head on against us, while the other half remained behind and covered the first unit with their bows. However, the flat ground of the canyon prevented this: They would only be able to fire into the backs of their comrades, and Persian scouts had not yet found any route to the top of the canyon walls. Therefore, the entire unit charged in one single mass towards our position.
It was the worst thing they could have done. For the last two days other units, even if they were not elite ones, had tried the same strategy against us and had only met with death and destruction.
The Immortals, no matter how well trained they were, no matter how praised a fighting force they were, no matter how long they might have trained for this day, didn’t stand a chance against us. Rank after rank of the elite shock troopers fell in the dust to be trampled as we advanced over them, driving further into the Immortal’s ranks.
Before their they withdrew, we had slew over five thousand of them. These men were quickly replaced, following the Immortal’s practice of immediately replacing lost men and the unit once again reached it’s pre-battle size of ten thousand men, but the greatest wound we inflicted here was perhaps not on the soldiers we had killed, or the army we faced, but on the moral of the Persian troops. For two days they had watched us decimate everything thrown against us, including Xerxes finest.
Their morale was low and their hearts heavy as they wondered if they would ever see their families again.
* * *
Doubtlessly the greatest flaw of the human soul is it’s unquenchable thirst for money and power. Greed has made a monster out of many a good man, and every person has a thirst for both, whether they admit it openly or flat out deny it. It is our instinct, our nature, to only want more, to never be satisfied. Men might be able to speak and think and explore the wonders of the world, but when it comes down to it, we are truly no better than the beasts that roam this Earth, for we all, when it comes down to it, want the same thing.
Many a man has betrayed his country, his family, or his gods for a chance at quick wealth or power. Isn’t it ironic that the common men, while the foundation that a state is built on are also, when it comes down to it, it’s greatest threat?
No Spartan would ever betray his home, thanks to the rigorous discipline and indoctrination imposed on them from birth, but the same was not true of the other Greeks fighting alongside of us. To them, money was more valuable than their comrades, and cheap power more wonderful than the fruits of one’s own labor.
It was on the evening of the second day that Xerxes received a blessing from his gods, whoever they might have been. A Greek traitor from the city of Malian named Ephialtes, hoping for money and power, sneaked out of the Greek camp and then informed the Persians about an old Goat path that led around Thermopylae and offered to lead his troops through it. Xerxes acted immediately, having realized by now that a head on confrontation with the Greek force in the narrow confines of the canyon was only a recipe for disaster. He assembled a force of forty thousand men, including much of his restrengthened corps of Immortals, and sent them on their way. Commanding the force was his commander Hydarnes, and the traitor Ephialtes, having received a great fortune in exchange for the knowledge, guided the Persian soldiers.
Before the battle, Leonidas had been informed about the pass, and it was guarded by a thousand soldiers from the city-state of Phocia. They had not been expecting an attack, and were caught off guard. At the sight of the vanguard force of Immortals, they gathered their weapons and then retreated to the crest of a nearby mountain to make their stand, allowing the Persians to neatly bypass them and begin their encirclement of our force.
* * *
Before mighty Apollo had begun to pull the sun across the heavens, King Leonidas had been informed that the Phocians had not held and held a council of war at sunrise. Greek commanders from all the cities represented by the untied force convened and decided on the proper course of action for the situation. Most argued in favor of an immediate withdrawal before the encirclement was complete, but some pledged themselves to stay and fight to the end, sacrificing themselves so that the others might escape, and for the good of all of Greece.
The first to pledge his forces to this course was Leonidas himself, ready to do his part in fulfilling the Oracle’s prophecy. Ready to stand beside us to the end were seven hundred Thespians led by General Demophilus.
There is no finer man to die beside than a man willing die beside you.
At dawn, Xerxes messengers rode out to meet us, demanding our surrender. Asking us to “Put down our weapons,” Leonidas replied, “Come and get them.” Screaming in rage, he demanded our surrender, then proceeded to threaten us and attempt to scare us with descriptions of what their army could do to us. “Our arrows will blot out the sun,” was one of the things he said, to which our king wittily replied “So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.”
And then it all went straight to hell.
After giving his Immortals sufficient time to descend the mountains they’d had to cross to flank us, Xerxes’ troops slowly marched towards the pass which we occupied. They marched the slow, solemn march of those condemned to die.
This time, however, instead of waiting for them to charge us, we sallied forth from the restricting walls of the canyon, aiming to kill as many foes as possible before we were inevitably crushed by two mighty walls of men and steel, like a bug beneath foot and earth, as soon as the encirclement was complete.
And fight we did. We stabbed them with our spears until our spears were broken. We slashed them with our swords until our swords were lost. Some, left with nothing but their hands and teeth, fought like the beasts of the earth.
Leading us to death, glory, and honor was Leonidas himself. He fought like one of us, his loyal men, in that final assault, with a spear and sword like any other man in the ranks.
He was a great king, a great soldier, and a great general. And if one must die, there is no one I would rather have died for than him.
* * *
Even then, our ranks thin as we spread out to confront them, the Persians could not defeat us. They stumbled over one another trying to get themselves away from the slaughter.
Their ranks, packed tightly as men in front as men tried to retreat and behind as they tried to advance, were inviting targets for those with spears. Men who still had theirs charged them, others, like myself, picked new ones up off the ground, which was slick with blood. Seeing us charge towards them in a reformed line, they clawed or stabbed at their own men to get away from us, their faces covered with expressions seen on those looking death in the eyes.
The slaughter was cut short by messengers, running to inform us that the Immortals had successfully flanked us and were advancing down the canyon. With little time to spare, we pulled back and took refuge on a small hill.
The Persians all but admitted our superiority here, for they did not press on to face us like brave men, but showered us with arrows and missiles like cowards!
I was among the first struck. With arrows falling from all around, it was impossible for one to take cover behind one’s shield. Lying on the ground in a pool of blood and an arrow embedded in my chest, I watched my comrades fall one by one around me.
Kind Leonidas was the last to fall, standing defiant and proud until the life finally left him, and he was called to Hades by the fates.
