The 300 is a spectacular movie designed to provide the viewer with a sense of excitement and anticipation. The movie is mostly based on past events with Sparta and their conflict with Persia, back during the year 480 BC. And while the movie is founded on a historical event, there are many historical inaccuracies throughout the film. These inaccuracies are created to add depth and new excitement to the movie, but also gives the viewer a false understanding of the events that took place.
As the movie begins, it displays the harsh customs of the Spartan civilization. Its shows how Spartans inspect their infants for deformities, and if they were found with a deformity, they were thrown off a cliff, ending its life. A child that lived through its first examination would be raised by their mother until the age of seven. At this time in the child’s life, he would be taken from his mother and be grouped together as a “pack”.
These packs would be sent to a military boot camp known as the Agog (Connelly 39). This is where the boys became stronger with their survival skills and wiser with more responsibilities. This was no daycare, it was a boot camp. These boys are being trained by soldiers to never back down, be very competitive, and fight (Connely 38). They received whippings as a way to prove their toughness. They were still young, but this was just the beginning of their future to train. At the age of twelve, boys were considered as a youth.
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The youth’s physical education is intensified, discipline became harsh, and they were loaded with extra tasks. Youths have to go barefoot and only dressed in a tunic (underwear) both winter and summer (Connelly 39). Their training never ended, the fighting continued, and they would be placed with a mission to go out and kill a slave without getting caught (Sundae 12). If they got caught they would endure a harsh punishment. The youth became a young adult at the age of eighteen. Many of these young men served as trainers for the boys.
At the age of twenty Spartan were eligible for military service and would join a messes which included fifteen men of various ages (Sundae 12). This doesn’t mean that all men were able to join; some were rejected and fell to a lesser form of citizenship. Most of the men rejected or not, would spend most of their day in the barracks with their unit until the age of thirty (Sundae 12). Soldiers remained part of the military until the age of sixty. The Spartans are very serious people that do not play around. Bravery is in their soul and they just kept training until it was time to battle.
In their soldier typed culture, there are three classes of citizens. Full citizens are known as Expatriates that received land as a gift to their military service. The second class are the Periodic and they were free non-citizens that consisted of merchants, craftsmen and sailors. The third class Helots, are slaves owned by the Spartans (Connelly, pg). Spartans were powerful so they had more slaves than the first of second classed people. Although the movie 300 portrays them as being “good” people, they were not as good as people think.
Spartan are soldiers and they would steal neighboring land just to build to their slave labor force. This is why there were more slaves than Spartan. The movie 300, produced in 2006 and directed by Zack Snyder, portrays the Battle of Thermopile and the social structure of the Spartan. This battle took place around 480 BC at a small coastal pass in Thermopile (Cassini-Scott, 11). King Leonidas and three hundred Spartans fought to their death against King Xerxes and his massive Persian Army.
Xerxes structured a huge army and navy with the verge to conquer all of Greece. In a seven day war, approximately seven thousand Greeks (including Spartan) held off around two hundred-thousand Persians from invading their territory. A three day battle began when the army of King Leonidas and his troops blocked the only path the Persian army could pass and continue their invasion of Greece. Unfortunately, a Greek resident named Philters betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path that led behind Greek lines (Cassini-Scott 11).
The bulk of the Greek army was dismissed and Leonidas stayed to guard his city with three hundred Spartans, seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebe’s. The Greeks were defeated although they left an example of the courageous power of a patriotic army defending native soil. The movie three hundred is a very entertaining film. The name of the people, the setting, the time it took place and the culture of the Spartans in this film are accurate. The narrator tells of how newborns would be inspected which would determine whether they live or be discarded which was very true.
The truth follows the story telling how a boy was taken from his mother and put in groups where they began their education and training. King Leonidas did consult with the Oracle at Delphi which led the King and Spartans fighting until death with the belief that the King’s death would save Greece. History shows that all of these events happened, but Hollywood pulled some strings in this film possibly to make this event more interesting so they could make more money. One without historical knowledge of the movie would not be able to point out the inaccuracies but here are few that were noticed…
The Spartan soldiers went fighting without any form of body armor but history shows body armor was a valuable asset to real Spartan soldiers. In the movie only Leonidas wore a plumed helmet when in actuality all Spartans wore this helmet (Hollywood just made Leonidas stand out). The Spartan youth was not to go out and kill a wolf but was to kill a slave without getting caught. There were no charging rhinos or elephants, only horses fought in the battle. Was it true that only three hundred Spartans attacked the Persians?
No, and this was the biggest problem in the movie because Athenians helped the Spartan battling the Persians. There are a few more inaccuracies (the hunchback Philters was not a hunchback and King Xerxes was not nine feet tall) but these were just added to the film to help sales go up. In conclusion, the movie is a spectacular one based on The Battle of Thermopile. It brought a piece of history to viewers showing how warriors really battled back in their days. The film plays a great role sharing how the battle went down and with whom it occurred with. The Greeks eventually won the war although this battle was lost.
