HC_300 Spartans The Last Stand

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00:00:00In the narrow Thermopylae Pass in northern Greece, 7,000 ancient Greek soldiers await

00:00:10an onslaught of epic proportions. They will soon face the largest fighting force ever

00:00:17assembled at the time. Nearly 300,000 soldiers of the mighty Persian Empire. Leading the

00:00:25Greeks are 300 of the most ferocious warriors of the ancient world, the Spartans. The 300

00:00:33Spartans were the delta force of the ancient world. Their job was to hold that pass or

00:00:39to die trying. For centuries, the Spartans have been lionized for their courage, honor

00:00:47and sacrifice at Thermopylae, for none of them would leave the pass alive.

00:00:56The Battle of Thermopylae is one of the most famous last stands in history. It's like the

00:01:01Alamo of the ancient world. But Thermopylae is also remembered as the battle that determined

00:01:07the course of Western civilization and the fate of democracy. It was the defining clash

00:01:14between East and West when 300 courageous warriors made their last stand.

00:01:21In 480 BC, King Xerxes, ruler of the mighty Persian Empire, arrived in the northeast of

00:01:49Greece, leading the Persian war machine, the largest fighting force ever assembled in the

00:01:55ancient world. The Persian army was the largest and most sophisticated army in the world for

00:02:04its day. It was, it could routinely put a hundred thousand men field forces into a battle at any

00:02:11given time. But for this invasion, Xerxes is believed to have mustered an even greater force.

00:02:18Modern estimates suggest about 300,000 strong, but others believe it may have been as high as 2 million.

00:02:32This is the largest army that any Greek alive would have ever seen pass through this country.

00:02:39Escorting the massive land army was a fleet of about a thousand warships.

00:02:45The Persian Empire was enormous. Its borders stretched from the Indus River in India to the

00:02:54Nile River in Egypt. It was by far the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen,

00:02:59and it disposed of enormous amounts of wealth. For five years, Xerxes used that wealth to amass

00:03:09his army, build ships, and buy supplies and food for his invasion of Greece. His intention was to

00:03:16burn the Greek city-state of Athens to the ground. You have to stop and think of the incredible

00:03:22differences in size of the two adversaries. First, you have Greece with a population of about five to

00:03:27six hundred thousand. It's essentially nothing in the world stage. It's a backwater, almost a

00:03:33non-entity. Now compare that to the Persian Empire, which consisted of millions and millions of

00:03:38different people, and was literally the largest empire in the world at the time. It would be like

00:03:44every state in the United States ganging up on Cuba, for example. Historians are divided over

00:03:53Xerxes' reasons for invading Greece. Some believe it was all part of his expansion policy. Others,

00:04:00that it was a punitive expedition to punish Athens for supporting a rebellion against Persia 25 years

00:04:07earlier. Whatever the reasons for Xerxes' attack, this invasion comes at a crucial point in the

00:04:14history of Athens. The democracy, one of the fundamental foundations of Western civilizations,

00:04:21very young, and this invasion threatens to kill it in its infancy. Xerxes assembled his army in the

00:04:30Persian province of Lydia, now modern-day Turkey, and marched 850 miles around the Aegean Sea to

00:04:38Greece. In August 480 BC, he reached a narrow pass, Thermopylae, the site where the Greeks

00:04:47would stage their defense and where the three-day battle would unfold. It was thought at the time

00:04:55that the pass was only 200 yards at its widest. On the south side of the pass was Mount Kallidromos.

00:05:01Nearly 5,000 feet tall, the base of the mountain was about 300 feet of sheer vertical cliff. To

00:05:11the north of the pass was another cliff looming over the Aegean Sea. Geographically, Thermopylae

00:05:17is a natural choke point between the north of Greece and the mainland in the south of where

00:05:22the main cities are, and there was no other way to get from the north to the south. So Leonidas

00:05:27and the Spartans and all of the Greeks knew that this was the one place where a stand could be made.

00:05:32Xerxes sent a scout into the pass to see what lay in the way of Persia's advance towards Athens.

00:05:41What he reported back were 7,000 Greek soldiers blocking the east end of the pass. The Persians

00:05:51outnumbered the Greeks nearly 50 to 1. Despite their inferior numbers, the Greeks were in the

00:05:58perfect position to withstand the Persian attack. In a brilliant strategic move, they had taken away

00:06:06the Persian numerical advantage by choosing Thermopylae as the battlefield. If you look at

00:06:12the Battle of Thermopylae from a kind of an overhead view, what you see is a narrow pass

00:06:18in which the ground army has to come, and that plays to the Greek advantage because you can use

00:06:22a small amount of men to narrow the front and put up a good significant defense. What a pass does

00:06:28is reduce the strength of an army. It turns its strength into a weakness. Its size becomes a

00:06:35liability because you have to funnel everyone through the pass. So fewer men with greater

00:06:41flexibility can defend against larger numbers of men. The Greek fighting force was one that had

00:06:49never before been seen. Throughout their long history, Greeks had always fought against each

00:06:54other. Now, for the first time, they fought together. Greece was not yet a unified country,

00:07:01but a collection of small city-states that often battled each other for regional supremacy. The

00:07:07largest of the city-states, Athens and Sparta, were notoriously bitter rivals. But at Thermopylae,

00:07:14they set aside their differences and fought the common Persian enemy together. Leading the Greek

00:07:21coalition army was the great Spartan king and future hero of Thermopylae, Leonidas.

00:07:26Leonidas was one of the two kings of Sparta, and he was the man who was chosen by the allied Greeks,

00:07:33by all the city-states, to go and hold the pass at Thermopylae. He was the one who chose the troops

00:07:39who would go, and who was the general in charge of it. His job was to stand and fight to the death.

00:07:45The last stand at Thermopylae would turn Leonidas into a legend. From that moment,

00:07:54every Greek citizen would know his name and what he and the 300 Spartans achieved at Thermopylae.

00:08:00A Persian advisor informed Xerxes of the Spartan-led defense. His report is described

00:08:08by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his work The Histories, one of the earliest

00:08:14accounts of the battle.

00:08:15Listen to me. These men have come to fight with us for the pass, and are making themselves ready

00:08:23in the ways they need to. If you can trample these men down and subdue the army that remains

00:08:29behind in Sparta, there exists no tribe of men, O king, who would raise their hands against you.

00:08:35But Xerxes was not only relying on his army to defeat Leonidas and the Spartan-led land defense.

00:08:45Off the coast of Thermopylae, in a narrow waterway called the Artemisium Strait,

00:08:51the Persian navy was waiting, ready to sail behind Leonidas' army and surround him.

00:08:58If the Persian navy gets through Artemisium, then what happens is, as Xerxes' main force

00:09:06slams into you in the front, the land troops behind you, and come up and catch you in a

00:09:11pinch of movement. So in order to stand at Thermopylae, you have got to stop the Persian

00:09:18navy at Artemisium. To do this, 200 Greek warships would have to defend the narrow

00:09:25strait. On the Athenian flagship was the Greek military commander Themistocles,

00:09:31an Athenian politician and the man responsible for creating the combined land and sea defense

00:09:37against the Persians. If either Themistocles or Leonidas failed, tens of thousands of Athenians

00:09:47would perish, and the rest of the Greek city-states would be doomed to enslavement.

00:09:52Was Leonidas a fearless leader of men, or a suicidal lunatic?

00:09:59Xerxes struck first.

00:10:06About a hundred and fifty yards away from the Greeks,

00:10:12thousands of Persian archers launched a barrage of arrows.

00:10:23This was the moment Leonidas and the Spartans had waited for all their lives,

00:10:28for the Spartans were born for battle.

00:10:39Around 530 BC, fifty years before the battle at Thermopylae, Leonidas faced the first challenge

00:10:46of his life. The newborn baby was examined by a Spartan elder for any defects.

00:10:55At birth, the first act of the state, after you were out of your mama's womb,

00:11:01was to look at you and say, you are fit or you are not fit to live in the society.

00:11:06This was a hardcore warrior society. You couldn't have anybody that might be a weakling or be a

00:11:13weak link. If a baby had any imperfection at all, they didn't allow him to live.

00:11:18The child would be, quote, exposed. That is, it was a sacred hillside where the child would be

00:11:24taken and left there to die. The feelings of the parents were irrelevant. All that

00:11:30mattered was the benefit of the child to the state. Only two people in the Spartan state

00:11:36could have a tombstone with their name on it. One, a man who died in battle. The other,

00:11:44a woman who died in childbirth, because both acts were seen as giving your life for the state.

00:11:52If you reflect on that for a few moments, childbirth, child-rearing is for the state,

00:11:59not the family, not the individual. It's for the state.

00:12:02While strong babies like Leonidas were spared, many in this warrior cult were left to perish.

00:12:10The Spartans believed that such weaklings wouldn't even survive the unique Spartan

00:12:15training program, one which transformed ordinary boys into killing machines.

00:12:22The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that at the age of seven, every Spartan boy,

00:12:28including Leonidas, was taken from his family and placed in a military training camp.

00:12:34The life of a young Spartan boy would strike us as harsh today. Until about age seven,

00:12:40he would be left with his mother mostly, father would make visits, etc. He'd be a kind of a

00:12:44normal boy. At that point, he would be taken into a kind of state system of education,

00:12:49and there they would live a rough military life.

00:12:51Like all the other young Spartan boys, Leonidas was trained to kill.

00:12:57When a young boy was taken from his mother at age seven and entered the agoge, the upbringing,

00:13:04he never did anything except train for the next 12 years until he entered the army.

00:13:10Their education focused on military skills and discipline and toughness.

00:13:19They were often not fed sufficiently, so they'd be hungry all the time. This would

00:13:25encourage them to steal in order to eat.

00:13:32You were taught not to cry. You were taught to conceal pain.

00:13:40Their whole society was set up to try and strip you of individual identity.

00:13:52Another very bizarre ritual that they engaged in to make sure that their guys were tough

00:13:57is that they would be flogged until they bled in groups, and whoever was the toughest

00:14:04and stood the longest was very highly honored.

00:14:09And the families would stand around and yell and scream at the boys,

00:14:22don't you pass out, don't you pass out.

00:14:28There does seem to be some indication that there was an increasing level of violence

00:14:32as you got older. Of course, one suspects that this is aimed toward ultimately the experience

00:14:37of battle, where you're going to have blood and brains and everything all over you.

00:14:42In some ways, you really want to see the Spartans as a dysfunctional fraternity,

00:14:48where the hazing and the other aspects of fraternity life go awry.

00:14:56As the boys got older, the training became more and more intense.

00:15:00Do honor to your family, do honor to your Spartan heritage,

00:15:08you will get strong or you will die. Push Spartan, push.

00:15:17By the time Leonidas and the Spartan boys had reached their early teens,

00:15:21weapons like wooden swords and tipless spears were added to the military training.

00:15:26But the consequences of these war games could be deadly.

00:15:46Youths were killed in the course of this fight.

00:15:49It's a preparation. You're going to see your comrades and your youth mates being killed.

00:15:56One of the final tests of all young Spartans was also one of the most brutal.

00:16:01Leonidas had to sneak out of his barracks at night and murder a local slave called a helot.

00:16:08Think about this for a second. Every culture throughout history has its own version of a

00:16:12male's rite of passage, when a boy crosses that threshold and becomes a man. In the Spartan

00:16:18society, you didn't become a man until you strangled someone to death.

00:16:22The practice of killing a helot was already centuries old by the time Leonidas was ready

00:16:27to become a man. The key to the ritual, however, was not the murder itself.

00:16:36What you were not supposed to do was get caught doing it, and you would be punished severely

00:16:41for being caught doing it. Because what the institution was meant to train you in

00:16:47was the art of evasion, the art of being a good soldier, the art of being stealthy.

00:16:56By the time Leonidas was 18, his education was complete.

00:17:00He had survived a Spartan training designed to weed out the weak,

00:17:06and he'd learned to kill or be killed. Now he could be inducted into the army.

00:17:12For Spartan parents, this was one of the proudest moments of their lives. It signified the

00:17:18transformation of their son from being a child into being a man. This is especially true of

00:17:25mothers, because it validated the sacrifice that they made for the state. She would send

00:17:33her child off at the age of seven or so to become a warrior. And now at 18, she was sent

00:17:42him off to battle. One of the most telling stories is of a Spartan mother sending her son off to war.

00:17:49And as she was handing him the shield, she would tell him in Greek,

00:17:53tauton e epitautas, with this shield or on it. And what this means is come back victorious with

00:18:01your shield, or come back a corpse carried on it. Basically, you either win the battle or you die.

00:18:09Spartan mothers believed in tough love.

00:18:13In this Spartan warrior cult, the women were also renowned for their physical strength.

00:18:29A Spartan man could try to forcefully take a wife, but if he was not to her liking and she

00:18:34was strong enough to fend him off, the man would fail.

00:18:39If the Spartan male was a worthy and attractive warrior like Leonidas, he would succeed in winning

00:18:48a wife. Home life for a Spartan warrior was anything but typical, as he was frequently away

00:18:55fighting. The Spartans were really the first professionals in warcraft among the Greek city

00:19:03states. Every summer they would have wars. The Greek city states, they would go over whatever

00:19:07path separated them from the next town, they would just beat the hell out of each other.

00:19:11The guys had, you know, their swords, their spears were up over the fireplace,

00:19:16the shield was there, they'd take them down. In the summer, they're going to beat each other's

00:19:19brains out. The regional conflicts Leonidas fought were all in preparation for the ultimate battle.

00:19:29The battle against the Persians at Thermopylae.

00:19:38In 481 BC, a year before the battle at Thermopylae, a Greek spy reported that the Persian king Xerxes

00:19:47was mobilizing his army, a force estimated to be nearly 300,000 strong.

00:19:54To a Greek eye, looking at this, it would look like the whole world was coming down to devour you.

00:20:00The numbers would have been immense. They would have been in the hundred, if not hundreds, of

00:20:05thousands. And it really would have looked like the end of the world.

00:20:10Xerxes' intention was to raise the Greek city-state of Athens to the ground.

00:20:15When the Athenians discovered Xerxes' plan and the enormous force he'd put together,

00:20:18they quickly realized they're going to need help. So they sent out a general call to their allies

00:20:23to come and defend Greece. But the call falls on deaf ears. And the reason for that is,

00:20:28is that nobody has a concept of what Greece as a nation is yet.

00:20:32So remember, what we think of as Greece at the time was just a bunch of city-states

00:20:37who fought each other more often than they fought together.

00:20:46Despite their poor relations, the Athenians turned to one of their

00:20:50major regional rivals for help, the Spartans and their king Leonidas.

00:20:57By now, Leonidas is a well-seasoned military man. Remember, he has spent his entire childhood

00:21:02enduring the harsh training that all Spartan boys go through to learn how to become a ruthless

00:21:06warrior. And now he's one of the kings of Sparta. So when the Athenians come and ask for help,

00:21:15they're not stupid. Leonidas is a skilled warrior. But for Leonidas personally,

00:21:21this request from the Athenians, it's going to seal his fate.

00:21:26Before deciding whether to help the Athenians, the Spartans consulted an oracle.

00:21:32The Spartans were a very religious people. One of those common ways of interpreting the

00:21:37will of the gods is through oracles. So they were devoted to the oracle at Delphi.

00:21:44Dating back to about 1400 BC, the oracle at Delphi was one of the most sacred Greek shrines.

00:21:51In a temple erected over a small chasm, the oracle greeted information seekers

00:21:55by slipping into a trance-like state.

00:22:00It's thought that ethylene vapors emanating from the intersection of three major fault lines

00:22:05deep within the earth might account for the oracle's behavior.

00:22:11Modern scientists have examined the earth beneath the temple,

00:22:14and all studies have been inconclusive.

00:22:16When the question was posed to her by one of the priests,

00:22:19she would babble something pretty much incoherent,

00:22:22and the priest then would take her answer and deliver it to the person who asked.

00:22:29Oh men of Sparta, either your glorious city will be taken by the sons of Persia,

00:22:34or all Sparta must mourn for the loss of a king as an exchange.

00:22:39A king.

00:22:41Leonidas believed he was a descendant of Heracles,

00:22:44and that the gods had chosen him to save Sparta.

00:22:49He told the Spartan elders that he would help the Athenians battle the Persians.

00:22:54Leonidas comes to believe the oracle is referring to him.

00:23:00His death, his sacrifice, his death, his sacrifice,

00:23:05to believe the oracle is referring to him.

00:23:09His death, his sacrifice saves Sparta.

00:23:16But was there another reason why Leonidas decided to go to battle against the Persians?

00:23:24Whether Xerxes himself intended to occupy Greece or not,

00:23:27in the minds of the Spartans, that's what they saw as the threat.

00:23:30So the enemy of my enemy is my friend,

00:23:33and so what happens is they throw in their lot.

00:23:36With the Athenians.

00:23:38Moreover, if you're going to have a combined arms defense against the Persians,

00:23:41you might as well have the best soldiers in Greece lead it.

00:23:47The Spartan council wasn't convinced, however,

00:23:49and allowed Leonidas only a minimal force, a force of just 300 men.

00:23:56I'm convinced that when the 300 were selected,

00:24:01that the other Spartans, there were about 9,000 others in the army,

00:24:04I'm convinced that they felt like they were being cut out of a great party.

00:24:09That was what they were born to do,

00:24:12and they knew that that would create immortality for them,

00:24:15for their families, for their children, not to mention, of course, saving Greece.

00:24:21Leonidas chose his finest warriors,

00:24:24but only those who had already fathered sons to ensure their bloodline would survive.

00:24:31Did Leonidas think it was a suicide mission to begin with?

00:24:35Maybe so, maybe not.

00:24:37What he did understand that it was,

00:24:38it's a great opportunity for one hell of a military fight

00:24:42and a chance for Spartan and personal glory,

00:24:44which is what motivated the Spartans to begin with.

00:24:49The challenge for Leonidas was overwhelming.

00:24:52He was about to take on the world's most powerful fighting force,

00:24:55a war machine that had dominated the world for nearly a century,

00:24:59the mighty Persian Empire.

00:25:04In 549 BC, 70 years before the last stand at Thermopylae,

00:25:09Cyrus the Great unified all the tribes in what is now central Iran.

00:25:16He stormed out of the mountains with an army

00:25:18that consisted of light and heavy infantry, as well as cavalry.

00:25:23It was Cyrus who realized the importance of cavalry,

00:25:27and by hiring essentially horse-born tribes,

00:25:30began the tradition of cavalry in the Persian Empire.

00:25:35The cavalry was a part of the Persian army.

00:25:39When a Persian army took the field,

00:25:41it was usually made up of 80% infantry and 20% cavalry.

00:25:45This combination made the Persians unstoppable on the open plains in Asia.

00:25:51As the infantry hit the front of the enemy line,

00:25:54the cavalry engaged the flanks, causing them to break away.

00:26:00Over the course of 20 years,

00:26:02the Persian Empire became one of the most powerful kingdoms throughout Asia.

00:26:07Media, Lycia, Lydia, and finally in 539 BC, he toppled mighty Babylonia.

00:26:16Cyrus now ruled an empire that stretched from India to Egypt.

00:26:21The Persian Empire was the largest and most successful empire

00:26:26in the long history of Near Eastern empires.

00:26:30Cyrus divided his empire into provinces called satraps.

00:26:38Instead of forcing the conquered peoples to adopt Persian beliefs,

00:26:41Cyrus allowed them to govern themselves and practice their own religion.

00:26:46And while you had to pay taxes to the central government,

00:26:48generally speaking, you could maintain your own way of life.

00:26:51And so there was no attempt to impose a single religion

00:26:55or to impose even a single civic code.

00:26:58Cyrus was considered by many to be a liberator.

00:27:01This form of governing was almost unheard of in the ancient world.

00:27:06But did it inadvertently lead to the Spartans' last stand at Thermopylae?

00:27:14In 546 BC, Cyrus conquered Greek colonies in the province of Ionia,

00:27:19now modern-day Turkey, and allowed the local governors to remain in power.

00:27:24About 50 years later, in 499 BC, the Greek colonists revolted.

00:27:31So here the Persians, trying to do the right thing by supporting the established government,

00:27:34end up alienating the population, and thus the result is called the Ionian Revolt.

00:27:40The Persian king was now Cyrus's great-grandson, Darius.

00:27:44At first, Darius allowed the local governors to deal with the uprising.

00:27:49But the rebels were about to receive outside help.

00:27:53When Ionia broke into full revolt against the Persians,

00:27:57it called on its mother country, Athens, for help.

00:28:01And then the Athenians made, perhaps, their greatest strategic mistake in a century.

00:28:05They sent troops to help the Ionian rebels.

00:28:09With Athenian help, the rebels burnt Sardis, the capital of Ionia, to the ground.

00:28:15Herodotus wrote of the rebellion,

00:28:17Almost instantly the fire began racing from house to house,

00:28:20until the entire town was on fire.

00:28:23And so Sardis was burned to the ground.

00:28:26In amongst its ruins was a temple of a native goddess, Kibibi.

00:28:30After the Persians saw it in ruins,

00:28:32they would later make it a pretext for burning temples in Greece.

00:28:36The Ionian Revolt is a very, very important event in the history of Greek and Persian relations,

00:28:42because it lays at the root of what was to happen over the next almost 80 years,

00:28:47and finally bring Athens and Persia into open conflict,

00:28:52something it had not done before.

00:28:54Athens had awakened a sleeping giant.

00:28:57Darius wanted revenge.

00:29:00This really got his goat.

00:29:01He used to have one of his servants at every meal.

00:29:04Before he would take his first bite of food,

00:29:06the servant would come into his ear and said,

00:29:08Sire, remember the Athenians.

00:29:10So Darius had vowed that he would pay these guys back.

00:29:15Greek soil was about to be drenched in blood.

00:29:24In 490 BC, 10 years before the Spartans' last stand at Thermopylae,

00:29:29the Persian king Darius sent a force of 30,000 across the Aegean Sea to annihilate Athens.

00:29:36The reason for the invasion is that King Darius is upset.

00:29:40Years earlier, the Athenians had helped a group of Greek rebels

00:29:43burn a Persian city to the ground.

00:29:45This was known as the Ionian Revolt.

00:29:48Now, it's payback time,

00:29:50and it will result in one of the most famous battles in Greek history,

00:29:54the Battle of Marathon.

00:29:56About 26 miles east of Athens, on the plain of Marathon,

00:30:00a Greek army of about 8,000 marched towards the coast to meet the invaders.

00:30:05The Greeks see the fleet offshore, transporting troops to attack Athens,

00:30:09and what they do is they deploy on the beach,

00:30:12threatening the Persians with a battle, and the Persians take the bait.

00:30:1930,000 Persians poured off their ships and charged the Greeks,

00:30:23who'd formed a defensive line in a narrow valley between two mountains.

00:30:28The massive Persian force smashed into the Athenians.

00:30:32Although the Greeks stood strong,

00:30:34the centre of their defensive line began to collapse.

00:30:37The Persians pushed forward, but it was a trap.

00:30:42While the centre of the Greek line retreated, the flanks remained strong.

00:30:46As the Persians pressed further into the valley,

00:30:49the Greek army invaded the Athenian front.

00:30:52The Greeks suckered the Persians in, and now they have them surrounded on three sides.

00:30:56The Persians can't manoeuvre, and it's a narrow combat box.

00:31:00The battle becomes an absolute slaughter.

00:31:03When the Persians retreated to the beach,

00:31:05the Greek commanders decided to risk it all.

00:31:08Greek infantry, they charged at the run, smashed into what was left of the Persian infantry,

00:31:14forced them back into the valley, and then they attacked the Persians.

00:31:18Smashed into what was left of the Persian infantry,

00:31:21forced them back onto the beach, and they scrambled to get aboard their boats.

00:31:26And as they did, they were slaughtered by the Greek infantry.

00:31:29Indeed, instances of people who were hanging onto the boats to get out,

00:31:34whose hands were chopped off by the Greeks.

00:31:37The Greeks sent a runner to Athens to report the great victory,

00:31:42a distance of about 26 miles.

00:31:46And that's why today the marathon race is 26 miles.

00:31:49What they don't tell you is the runner who ran into the square of Athens

00:31:52yelled, Nike, meaning victory, dropped dead from exhaustion.

00:31:56To commemorate the famous victory at Marathon over the Persians,

00:32:00the Athenians built the original Parthenon.

00:32:03The building and the battle sent shockwaves through the Persian Empire.

00:32:08To be sure, a great empire like Persia and a great king

00:32:12and a great king cannot allow an insult directly to his national prestige.

00:32:18And that's what the pinprick at Marathon did.

00:32:20I mean, it basically said to everyone who looked,

00:32:25look at this, this little power stood up to this great giant.

00:32:30Persia's first attempt at revenge against Athens had failed miserably.

00:32:35Darius planned another attack, but died before the invasion could be realized.

00:32:40Persian vengeance became the responsibility of Darius's son, Xerxes.

00:32:48One of the interesting things about the monarchs of the ancient world,

00:32:51whether you look at Egypt or Syria or Persia,

00:32:55is they groomed their sons to be warrior kings by sending them to school.

00:33:02While Xerxes no doubt spent time in the classroom learning philosophy,

00:33:06mathematics and military tactics,

00:33:09he was also taught how to fight his way out of the most extreme life or death situations.

00:33:15He took a fixed courtyard and the kids stood in the courtyard.

00:33:18They turned a lion loose on him.

00:33:20Kill the lion or be killed.

00:33:34Xerxes' pedigree and training helped prepare him to rule the world's largest

00:33:38and most dominant empire.

00:33:42But Xerxes had only one thing on his mind when he became king.

00:33:47Revenge against Athens.

00:33:49And for 10 years, he planned his massive attack.

00:33:53Xerxes was no pick, no hayseed.

00:33:57He was a man who was born to the purple and had been educated

00:34:01as both a warrior and a ruler.

00:34:03And he was a good ruler.

00:34:04I mean, no one...

00:34:05I mean, the only reason why we hold it against him apparently in the West

00:34:08is because he attempted burning of Athens.

00:34:11What a terrible thing to do.

00:34:14In 481 BC, when a Greek spy discovered Xerxes' plan,

00:34:18he saw not just a massive army,

00:34:20but a people technologically far superior to the Greeks.

00:34:25Xerxes was about to do the impossible.

00:34:28He was about to walk across water.

00:34:30Xerxes wanted to march his army of 300,000 across the Hellespont,

00:34:35a mile-wide waterway that connected Asia to Europe,

00:34:39just south of the Black Sea.

00:34:41If they were going to do this entirely by land,

00:34:44they would have to walk around the Black Sea,

00:34:47which would add about two years to their march

00:34:51and would require them to conquer a whole other set of people.

00:34:56To move his massive force across the Hellespont,

00:34:59Xerxes ordered his engineers to build a mile-long pontoon bridge

00:35:03constructed from old transport ships.

00:35:06At the time this was going on,

00:35:08there was a transition in the design of ships.

00:35:10New ships were coming online, lots of old ones,

00:35:13old cargo ships were available at cheap money.

00:35:16They were simply brought and strung together.

00:35:21Xerxes' engineers lined nearly 700,000 ships,

00:35:25probably using boulders,

00:35:27they anchored each ship to the sea floor

00:35:29from both the bow and the stern.

00:35:32Then they tethered the ships together

00:35:34with two different types of special cables,

00:35:37one made of flax or heavy linen, the other made of papyrus.

00:35:42Now, when we think of papyrus, we usually think of paper,

00:35:45but the Egyptians had come up with a way

00:35:47to turn the sticky center of the papyrus plant,

00:35:50called the papyrus, into a paper.

00:35:52They came up with a way to turn the sticky center

00:35:53of the papyrus plant, called the pith,

00:35:56into a strong, durable rope.

00:35:58And this is what Xerxes' engineers tethered the ships with,

00:36:01the papyrus rope and the linen ropes.

00:36:03This is the high-tech part of this whole operation,

00:36:06these long cables that would reach over a mile.

00:36:09Dozens of these sections of cable,

00:36:11weighing nearly two tons each,

00:36:13secured the boats together and were anchored to either shore.

00:36:18The Persians then nailed wooden planks

00:36:20across the rails of each ship to create a flat surface

00:36:23over which men and animals could march.

00:36:27It was a remarkable engineering feat,

00:36:29and it would have, again, on the Greeks on the other side,

00:36:33it would have given pause,

00:36:34because these are not a people who simply have a large army.

00:36:38These are a people who understand

00:36:39the principles of engineering.

00:36:43The Persian army successfully crossed the bridge

00:36:45and began the march around the Aegean Sea.

00:36:48Nearly three months later,

00:36:50Xerxes and his Persian force of 300,000

00:36:53arrived in northern Greece.

00:36:55Thanks to the Athenian spy,

00:36:56the Greek coalition had already established two lines of defense.

00:37:01The first was in the southern part of the peninsula

00:37:04at the Isthmus of Corinth,

00:37:05to defend the city-states on the Peloponnese,

00:37:08including Sparta.

00:37:09The other was the advance team in the north

00:37:12at the Thermopylae Pass.

00:37:13Here, the Spartan king, Leonidas,

00:37:15led a coalition army consisting of 300 Spartan warriors

00:37:19and 7,000 soldiers from other Greek city-states.

00:37:25Off the coast, the Athenian general Themistocles

00:37:28led the Greek navy and prepared to confront the Persian fleet

00:37:31in the narrow Artemisium Strait.

00:37:35The Battle of Thermopylae was about to begin.

00:37:38On a cliff overlooking the Thermopylae Pass,

00:37:41Xerxes was poised to send his army into battle.

00:37:47He'd marched nearly 300,000 men,

00:37:50accompanied by 1,000 warships around the Aegean Sea,

00:37:55with the intention of sacking the Greek city-state of Athens.

00:38:00Xerxes was the first of his fleet to cross the Aegean Sea.

00:38:04With the intention of sacking the Greek city-state of Athens.

00:38:15Waiting in the Thermopylae Pass was Leonidas

00:38:18with nearly 7,000 Greek soldiers.

00:38:23They had blocked the east side of the pass,

00:38:25defending the route to Athens.

00:38:28In a brilliant strategic move,

00:38:30they'd chosen to fight at Thermopylae,

00:38:32where the terrain gave them the advantage

00:38:34over the Persian superior numbers.

00:38:36Passes are a marvelous thing.

00:38:38One might ask, for example,

00:38:39why has Switzerland never been invaded?

00:38:42Because of passes.

00:38:44One man with a rifle can hold a division down

00:38:48if the pass is narrow enough.

00:38:50In the ancient world,

00:38:51you can't fight with any more men

00:38:54than you can hit front on front.

00:38:57So if you can narrow that front on front

00:39:00to a few hundred men,

00:39:02or a few dozen men,

00:39:04then a number of hundred men can hold up a hundred thousand men.

00:39:09As often happened in the ancient world before the battle,

00:39:12Xerxes first tried to negotiate with Leonidas.

00:39:15He sends a message saying,

00:39:16you're grossly outnumbered.

00:39:18You're facing the best army in the world.

00:39:21Don't be stupid.

00:39:22Lay down your weapons and you will live.

00:39:24Otherwise, you're all going to die.

00:39:27And of course, Leonidas doesn't take too kindly to that.

00:39:31Then comes the most famous line right out of Herodotus.

00:39:35The messenger says, be prepared to die.

00:39:38Our arrows will block out the sun.

00:39:40To which Dionycus, Leonidas' lieutenant replies,

00:39:43then we shall have our battle in the shade.

00:39:46And that right there pretty much sums up

00:39:48what this battle was going to be about.

00:39:51The Spartans were the finest, toughest soldiers in Greece.

00:39:54The 300 Spartans who were sent to Thermopylae

00:39:58were the delta force of the ancient world.

00:40:01Their job was to hold that pass or to die trying.

00:40:08Leonidas and his warriors assumed

00:40:10their standard fighting formation, the phalanx.

00:40:17The Spartans fought in platoons of eight men across,

00:40:21four men deep, shoulder to shoulder,

00:40:24with one person kind of peeking underneath

00:40:27the other fellows to his right shield.

00:40:29So you have a shield wall in front.

00:40:33It's going to be essentially a wall of bronze and wood

00:40:37and muscle standing there sort of gleaming in the sunlight.

00:40:41All Greek soldiers were heavy infantry called hoplites,

00:40:45named after the large round shield they carried,

00:40:48called the hoplon.

00:40:51Made from a concave piece of wood

00:40:53and covered with a thin sheet of bronze,

00:40:55the shield was about three feet in diameter

00:40:58and weighed up to 20 pounds.

00:41:00The hand grip of this shield came in about the 6th century BC

00:41:04and it was called the argive grip

00:41:07and it revolutionized warfare.

00:41:10Older shields were gripped by a single handle in the middle.

00:41:13On the argive shield,

00:41:14the soldier passed his arm through a leather loop in the middle

00:41:17and held on to a handle near the rim,

00:41:19giving him more leverage.

00:41:21So you grabbed the end of the shield

00:41:23and the center of the arm held it.

00:41:25Now if you think about what you can do with that shield,

00:41:27much more force can be applied.

00:41:30The Spartans were known for painting personal images

00:41:33on their shield's face.

00:41:35There's a story of the Spartan who had a fly,

00:41:38a life-size fly on his shield

00:41:41and when his friends asked him why,

00:41:42he said he would get so close to the enemy

00:41:45that fly would look like a lion.

00:41:48Xerxes fulfilled his promise to block out the sun,

00:41:51ordering 5,000 archers to launch their missiles.

00:41:58His archers were tribesmen from all corners of the Persian Empire.

00:42:02They probably supplied their own bows,

00:42:04which tended to be constructed from date palm wood,

00:42:07a cheaper material that diminished its firing power.

00:42:13The arrows raining down on the Greeks

00:42:15were no match for the hoplite's heavy armor.

00:42:18The arrows are bouncing off shields,

00:42:20bouncing off helmets, doing almost no damage,

00:42:23largely because unless you took one in the eye,

00:42:25there's almost no place where an arrow could penetrate.

00:42:33As well as his shield,

00:42:35the hoplite's Corinthian helmet

00:42:37also protected him from the Persian arrows.

00:42:41The hoplite's shield was a shield

00:42:43that protected him from the Persian arrows.

00:42:48The helmet originated in Greece around the 7th century BC.

00:42:55Made from a single piece of bronze,

00:42:57the helmet offered maximum head protection for the hoplite.

00:43:02But the helmets were heavy, weighing about 10 pounds,

00:43:05and restricted the soldier's hearing and vision.

00:43:09While most helmets were adorned

00:43:11with a horsehair crest running down the center,

00:43:14Spartan officers like Leonidas

00:43:16would have worn a helmet

00:43:17with the crest running from side to side.

00:43:20Some historians believe that the Spartans

00:43:23wore a bronze cuirass for torso protection.

00:43:28Most hoplites at the time, however,

00:43:30wore sophisticated lamellar armor.

00:43:33Its strength came from its layered design.

00:43:36Made by gluing strips of heavy linen,

00:43:38leather, and thin bronze together,

00:43:40the lamellar armor formed a type of ancient kevlar.

00:43:44Believe it or not, multiple strips of leather and linen

00:43:48could withstand a spear thrust.

00:43:50It wouldn't penetrate a spear or arrow thrust.

00:43:53Abandoning the missile attack,

00:43:5510,000 Persian light infantrymen charged the Greeks.

00:44:00Over a million pounds of muscle, bronze, and wood

00:44:04was about to collide in the Thermopylae Pass.

00:44:14Inevitably, this mass crashes into the Greek phalanx,

00:44:19and it just doesn't move.

00:44:20I mean, it's just too heavy, it's too thick.

00:44:22The pressure from the back is holding it forward.

00:44:25The Greeks had withstood the crushing charge.

00:44:28Now they went on the offensive.

00:44:38Fighting in their disciplined phalanx,

00:44:40the front two lines launched a coordinated spear attack

00:44:44from above and below the shield wall.

00:44:48The hoplite's primary weapon was the dory,

00:44:50a six- to nine-foot-long spear.

00:44:53About two inches in diameter,

00:44:55the two- to four-pound dory featured a deadly iron spearhead.

00:45:00On the back of the spear was an iron buttplate,

00:45:02which provided balance and gave the hoplite

00:45:04a second weapon with which to kill.

00:45:07First clash, spears come down,

00:45:08and the spears come up from underneath,

00:45:10and the cries and the blood is everywhere.

00:45:14It probably killed 1,000 men,

00:45:16and most of the wounds would have been fatal.

00:45:18They would have been delivered to the chest or the face.

00:45:21The hoplite's secondary weapon was the xiphos,

00:45:23a two- to three-foot-long double-edged iron straight sword

00:45:27made specifically to thrust and hack at the enemy.

00:45:30But the Greeks would only use this if they lost their spear

00:45:34or if the phalanx broke rank, which didn't happen often.

00:45:39The fighting raged on and off for most of the day.

00:45:43What mostly happens is what we call battle pulses.

00:45:46The two sides would hack at one another

00:45:48and bang at one another for a few,

00:45:50maybe sometimes only a few seconds,

00:45:5210, 20 seconds, then they'd break off again.

00:45:54And the hoplite's secondary weapon was the xiphos,

00:45:5710, 20 seconds, then they'd break off again.

00:46:00Maybe the other side would drop back a little bit

00:46:02and these guys would move forward again.

00:46:04So it was not a continuous battlefield experience.

00:46:07It was not a continuous combat.

00:46:09It can't work that way.

00:46:10Wearing little or no armor and carrying flimsy wooden shields,

00:46:14the Persians were easy targets.

00:46:17The Persian light infantry are not designed for this kind of battle.

00:46:19They're built for speed,

00:46:20to attack disorganized tribal armies on the open plains of Asia.

00:46:24Stuck in the narrow pass, the Persians were unable to maneuver,

00:46:28nor could they utilize their cavalry.

00:46:32The steepness of Mount Kaledromos on one side

00:46:35and the Aegean Sea on the other

00:46:36prevented a Persian cavalry flanking maneuver.

00:46:40If you look at the two Greek battles that we study most often,

00:46:44which is Marathon and Thermopylae,

00:46:46what you'll see is the brilliance of Greek commanders

00:46:49in selecting terrain where the Persians could move.

00:46:54They did not bring their cavalry to bear.

00:46:56At Marathon, they never got it off the ships

00:46:58and even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference

00:47:00because the Greeks had wedged themselves into a narrow front.

00:47:03And same at Thermopylae.

00:47:04Cavalry would have been totally useless.

00:47:08With each battle pulse, more and more Persians were slaughtered.

00:47:15And it was just carnage the first day.

00:47:18The Spartans formed up shoulder to shoulder like a great rock

00:47:22and the waves of the Persians just break on them.

00:47:25The Persians began to get the message

00:47:27that maybe it wasn't such a great idea

00:47:30to launch themselves in wave after wave against these guys,

00:47:36each one of whom had the equivalent

00:47:39of our very best special forces training.

00:47:44At the end of the day,

00:47:46the 300 Spartans and their Greek allies killed any remaining Persians.

00:47:51Leonidas understands the tactical situation

00:47:53and after the first day of fighting,

00:47:55he said, I've got exactly what I set out to do.

00:47:58I'm holding up one of the largest land armies ever to attack Greece.

00:48:01I've got it funneled up here

00:48:03and so far, they can't do anything to stop it.

00:48:07But at the same time the land battle was being fought,

00:48:10the Persians were trying to gain access

00:48:12to the rear of the Greek defenses by sea.

00:48:16A great naval battle between the Greeks and Persians

00:48:20was bloodying the Artemisium Strait.

00:48:28In the Thermopylae Pass,

00:48:30the mighty King Leonidas and his Spartan warriors

00:48:33were successfully fending off an attack

00:48:35by the Persian light infantry.

00:48:38At the same time, just off the coast of Thermopylae,

00:48:40in the Artemisium Strait,

00:48:42a battle between the Persian and Greek navies was about to erupt.

00:48:45If you think of the Battle of Thermopylae in strategic terms,

00:48:48if you have a military mind,

00:48:50the first question you're going to ask is,

00:48:51yeah, the Spartans could hold this line here,

00:48:53but what about the sea?

00:48:54What about the ocean?

00:48:55Why couldn't Xerxes just land troops behind them by his ships?

00:48:58He had an armada of a thousand more ships.

00:49:01The Athenian navy was based at Artemisium

00:49:04while the Persians were based across the strait at Aphatai.

00:49:10The Persian goal was to break through the Greek line,

00:49:13sail down the narrow, six-mile-wide Artemisium Strait,

00:49:16and land troops behind Leonidas and his Greek warriors surrounding them.

00:49:25The man responsible for thwarting the Persian fleet

00:49:28was aboard the Athenian flagship.

00:49:32He is considered by many to be the mastermind

00:49:35behind the land and sea defense against the Persians

00:49:38and is widely regarded as one of the ancient world's

00:49:40most brilliant military tacticians, Themistocles.

00:49:45When most people think of the Battle of Thermopylae,

00:49:47they immediately think of the 300 Spartans or they think of Leonidas.

00:49:50But really, the unsung hero of the battle,

00:49:53the man who made it all happen, was Themistocles.

00:49:55Themistocles, in a way, was the Winston Churchill of his day.

00:50:00He was a great Athenian politician

00:50:02with great foresight for the coming struggle

00:50:04and a profound military thinker.

00:50:07If it weren't for him, there would have been no Battle of Thermopylae.

00:50:12The Persian navy attempted to surround the Greek fleet

00:50:15by sending 200 of their 1,000 ships southeast around the island of Euboea.

00:50:20By sailing around Euboea, the Persian naval commander

00:50:23is going to try to avoid wasting his energies with a direct assault.

00:50:27He figures the Greeks are not stupid enough to attack him,

00:50:30so he'll wait at his base until the smaller force sails around the island

00:50:34and surrounds the Greek fleet.

00:50:37But Themistocles made a bold and daring move

00:50:39that surprised the Persian commander.

00:50:42Late in the afternoon, the Greek fleet sailed from its base

00:50:46to provoke the Persian fleet, which was nearly six times its size.

00:50:50This surprises the Persian commander greatly,

00:50:52that Themistocles would have the gall to attack the mighty Persian navy is one thing.

00:50:58But he's also surprised by the timing of the attack.

00:51:01By starting in the afternoon, he knows the battle will be over soon

00:51:04because they're going to run out of daylight.

00:51:06You can't fight a naval battle in the dark.

00:51:09So Themistocles is trying to minimize his potential damages

00:51:12if the battle gets away from him by counting on nightfall to end it.

00:51:18The Persian commander ordered his 800 remaining ships into the strait.

00:51:24Despite being severely outnumbered, Themistocles was not surprised.

00:51:28Despite being severely outnumbered,

00:51:30Themistocles and the fleet attempted to sink the Persian ships in a ferocious attack.

00:51:36The name of the game was to sink the other guy's ship,

00:51:39to ram her in the side or to knock all of the oars off and render her out of commission.

00:51:46The Greeks definitely have an uphill battle here.

00:51:49But they do have one major advantage.

00:51:52They have the strategic brilliance of Themistocles.

00:51:59Themistocles was born the son of a merchant.

00:52:03Any earlier in Greek history and Themistocles would have been relegated to a lower status.

00:52:09But democracy was about to be born in Athens,

00:52:12allowing Themistocles to shed his merchant class shackles.

00:52:18Because of its natural harbor, Athens developed a strong seafaring tradition,

00:52:23becoming both an economic and a naval force in the Aegean.

00:52:27Many Athenian males, including Themistocles,

00:52:29became expert seamen, able to navigate the treacherous Greek coasts.

00:52:36While Themistocles' naval training no doubt shaped his future,

00:52:40it was on land in the Athenian government that he learned some of his most valuable lessons.

00:52:45What Themistocles learned growing up in a developing democracy

00:52:49was the art of manipulation and political strategies.

00:52:52These were not cutthroat politics like, say, in Rome,

00:52:55where people were literally killed.

00:52:56What Themistocles did was use his intelligence and guile

00:53:00to position himself in the government where one day he could be extremely influential.

00:53:05It was these skills that helped him create the Athenian navy,

00:53:08which he would need to battle the mighty Persians.

00:53:14In 490 BC, ten years before the last stand at Thermopylae,

00:53:19Athens owned only about a hundred warships,

00:53:22a fraction of what the Persians could muster.

00:53:26Themistocles knew this because he'd witnessed the Persian force at Marathon.

00:53:32Themistocles was one of the generals who had been at the Battle of Marathon,

00:53:36and there he had seen Persian tactics firsthand.

00:53:39So he was an experienced military man.

00:53:42He took away a different lesson from Marathon than the other Greek generals did.

00:53:47The other Greek generals saw it as a triumph of ground forces over navy.

00:53:54What Themistocles learned at Marathon was

00:53:58that you cannot use ground forces on the ground unless you have naval support.

00:54:05Themistocles knew that after their humiliating loss at Marathon,

00:54:09the Persians would seek revenge and be back to finish what they had started.

00:54:13He also knew they wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

00:54:17He expected the Persians to come by land and sea,

00:54:20bringing with them many more soldiers and ships.

00:54:24What Themistocles saw was a synergy between naval forces and ground forces.

00:54:31That is, the navy could only support ground forces as long as the coast was friendly.

00:54:35The ground forces had to make the coast friendly.

00:54:38Themistocles knew the Persians could not sustain an army in mainland Greece

00:54:47if they weren't able to supply it by sea.

00:54:51So if you had naval power, a significant naval power,

00:54:55and made yourself the dominant naval power in the Aegean,

00:54:58you could render the Persians impotent.

00:55:01Thus, he concluded, the future for Athens rested not in increasing the size of her ground force,

00:55:07which was fairly significant anyway, but, in point of fact, to increase her navy.

00:55:14The problem Themistocles faced was that no one believed him.

00:55:18Both the Athenian generals and the public were plagued by an overconfidence in the Athenian army

00:55:24and a disbelief that the Persians would return.

00:55:28Themistocles lived every day of his political life as if,

00:55:32we've got to deal with this now, we've got to deal with this now.

00:55:35And there were a couple of strategies that Themistocles followed

00:55:41that probably saved the Greek world.

00:55:45First, he had to convince Athens that they needed to invest in the navy.

00:55:49More importantly, he would be the one to have to find it.

00:55:54In 483 BC, three years before the last stand at Thermopylae,

00:55:59miners discovered a new vein of silver in the Athenian district of Lurinium.

00:56:05After a year of mining, they extracted nearly two and a half tons of the precious metal from the earth.

00:56:14Themistocles wanted the money made from the silver to be spent on his navy.

00:56:18The challenge for him was to convince Athenians that they didn't need extra money in their pockets,

00:56:24but rather extra warships in their harbor.

00:56:27Each Athenian was due to get 10 drachma.

00:56:30That would be about 1,500, 1,600 dollars in today's money.

00:56:35It's a lot of money.

00:56:37Because most Athenians didn't believe in a second Persian invasion,

00:56:40Themistocles drew upon his political savvy to win them over.

00:56:45He lied to them.

00:56:48Themistocles told them that a small rival island off the coast of Athens called Aegina

00:56:53posed a threat to the safety of Athenian merchant ships.

00:56:59Finally convinced, the Athenians allowed Themistocles to invest in the navy.

00:57:04Greek civilization might be saved by a lie.

00:57:08What historians might call a lie or an untruth,

00:57:11a politician would call a clever misdirection of the populace to achieve a greater end.

00:57:18And that's what Themistocles did.

00:57:19He knew if he told the truth that the populace would never go for it.

00:57:24So he had a nice little ploy and a little story, a little cover story, and it worked.

00:57:29And so Themistocles got his ships.

00:57:33Athenian warships were called triremes.

00:57:37The trireme was about 90 feet long by about 18 feet wide and constructed mostly from pine.

00:57:47The best analogy of a trireme was a light boat that was more like a racing skull.

00:57:54It was not a heavy boat.

00:57:56And why?

00:57:57Because the object was to ram.

00:57:59And so the lighter it was, the faster you could make it go.

00:58:02Built for speed, the hull of the trireme was open.

00:58:05The deck consisted of one or two planks of wood running lengthwise,

00:58:09upon which the ship's commander and about four marines would stand.

00:58:15Despite possessing a small sail, the trireme was mainly powered by between 170 and 220 oarsmen,

00:58:22arranged in three banks of oars, one above the other.

00:58:27The front of the trireme was shaped like a boat.

00:58:30The front of the trireme was shaped like a rounded prow, probably made of heavier cedar,

00:58:35then covered with brass or copper, enabling the ship to ram enemy vessels.

00:58:40The fastest a trireme has ever been marked, and we've reconstructed them,

00:58:43in a 2,000-meter run is 15 knots.

00:58:46But on balance, that's a fast pulse in order to ram.

00:58:51By the time the Persians arrived at Thermopylae and Artemisium a year later,

00:58:55the Greeks had added over 100 additional ships to the fleet,

00:58:59but still the Persian fleet outnumbered the Greek fleet nearly six to one.

00:59:04Themistocles was about to discover whether his efforts to build the Athenian navy had been in vain.

00:59:20In the Artemisium Strait, he was ready to lead nearly 200 Greek warships into battle

00:59:25against 800 Persian warships.

00:59:29Themistocles is doing the unexpected.

00:59:31Late in the afternoon on the first day of the battle,

00:59:34he's actually attacking the much larger Persian fleet.

00:59:37It's a risky move.

00:59:38If he allows the Persians to sail through the Artemisium Strait,

00:59:41Leonidas and the 300 Spartans will be surrounded and cut to pieces.

00:59:48Using a flag to signal to the fleet, Themistocles ordered all the Greek warships

00:59:53to slowly back into a narrower part of the strait, forming a circle.

00:59:57At a second signal, the Greek fleet rushed from their formation and attacked the Persians.

01:00:08Greek naval battles were actually not about people getting off and fighting each other

01:00:13or even hooking up and trying to fight.

01:00:16They were about maneuvering the ships in such a way that you can ram and sink.

01:00:22The most common way was to come alongside at an angle and smash his oars.

01:00:27Because remember, they're not powered by sail, they're powered by oars.

01:00:31So if you could smash his oars, and what would happen as one ship came alongside the other,

01:00:35the attacking ship would pull in its oars and allow the side of its ship

01:00:39to smash in and run along this way.

01:00:41Now she's dead in the water.

01:00:44So in these battles, what is really consequential

01:00:49isn't so much the weight of your ship or the size of your ship,

01:00:55but rather the speed of your ship.

01:01:03In the confined space at Artemisium, the smaller Greek fleet

01:01:07inflicted damage upon several Persian ships,

01:01:09captured 30 enemy vessels, and took many prisoners.

01:01:13We're not exactly sure why the Greeks fared so well that first day at Artemisium.

01:01:18The Greeks and the Persians all had the same types of boats.

01:01:22Everybody had triremes, so nobody would have necessarily had any speed advantage.

01:01:30Whatever the reason, it was a great psychological victory for the Greek navy.

01:01:34And because Themistocles began his attack late in the day,

01:01:37he knew the battle would not last long,

01:01:40This has got to be a complete surprise to everybody.

01:01:43The Persians certainly weren't expecting to lose to the smaller Greek fleet,

01:01:46and I don't think the Greeks were expecting to come out so strong.

01:01:49And I think that's one of the reasons why Themistocles started this thing so late in the day.

01:01:54So you've got Themistocles winning the battle at sea,

01:01:56and of course Leonidas and the Spartans are winning the battle on land.

01:02:01On this first day of battle, Xerxes was deeply troubled by the situation.

01:02:07On this first day of battle, Xerxes was deeply shocked and embarrassed

01:02:11by Themistocles and the Athenian navy.

01:02:13He'd also lost nearly 10,000 infantrymen to Leonidas and the Spartans.

01:02:18After the first day's battle at Thermopylae and Artemisium,

01:02:23the Persians have been very roughly handled by the Greeks.

01:02:27They are back in their camp that evening,

01:02:30licking their wounds, and Xerxes is wondering what he is going to do about this.

01:02:36As night fell, a tremendous storm erupted, bringing thunder, wind, and rain.

01:02:45So you have to imagine the flashes of lightning illuminating the wrecks on the sea and the dead

01:02:51bodies. So a very disconsoling night maybe for the Persians.

01:02:55They probably weren't getting as good a sleep as they had wanted.

01:02:59They were going to need it for the next day's battle.

01:03:01The Persian fleet that had been sent around the island of Euboea

01:03:05was caught in the storm, and all 200 ships were swallowed up by the Aegean.

01:03:10It was an omen that the Persians could not ignore,

01:03:16and one the Greeks happily embraced.

01:03:21For the next day would bring more bloodshed.

01:03:32On the second day of battle,

01:03:33the Athenians and Spartans took their respective defensive positions.

01:03:39Themistocles in the Artemisium Strait,

01:03:42Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in the Thermopylae Pass.

01:03:49Both prepared for the second Persian attack.

01:03:54The sun comes up on the second day, and Xerxes says,

01:03:58well, enough with the junior level infantry. We're sending in the big boys.

01:04:06Xerxes sent in the hammer and fist of the Persian army,

01:04:09the silent and masked heavy infantry called the Immortals.

01:04:14Xerxes decided to send in the A-Team, the Immortals.

01:04:19He believed that once the Immortals were put into action,

01:04:25that that would end the resistance immediately.

01:04:31Here come 10,000 men assembled in a rectangle, in essence,

01:04:37right to you in silence. No matter what happens, they come right at you.

01:04:44They wore no helmets, but they had what's called a tiara on their head.

01:04:47The tiara was a wrapped cloth, a very thin cloth that they could see through.

01:04:5110,000 strongly were called the Immortals, because when one man retired or died,

01:04:56he was immediately replaced by another.

01:05:00The army stood some 50 yards apart in the Thermopylae Pass.

01:05:07The Persians, faceless and mute.

01:05:12But silence wasn't part of the Spartan psychological strategy.

01:05:22Finally, the Persians advanced.

01:05:48The Immortals slammed into the Greek line.

01:05:52As on the previous day, the 300 Spartans and the Greek soldiers held fast.

01:06:00The Immortals' spears could not penetrate the Greek armor.

01:06:04The Greek spears had no problem finding their mark.

01:06:10The Immortals wore thin-scale armor beneath their tunics.

01:06:13The overlapping metal scales were no thicker than playing cards,

01:06:16and powerless against the strength and precision of the Spartan dory.

01:06:21As for the Persian shields, they were made from wicker.

01:06:27That worked very well if you were simply warding off

01:06:30javelins, dagger thrust, or if you were warding off arrows.

01:06:34But a wicker shield, compared to the Greeks, of course, which was a brass or bronze shield,

01:06:39the spear of the Greek infantry could easily pierce the wicker shield.

01:06:45So, man for man, company for company, platoon for platoon,

01:06:50they were no match for the Spartans in close combat.

01:06:59It's fairly clear that they had never fought against a hoplite army

01:07:07that was as well-trained, as well-equipped, and as tactically flexible as the Spartans were.

01:07:16After two days, thousands of Persians had been killed.

01:07:20If you imagine an infantry line that's killing in front of it with the spears,

01:07:25okay, the dead themselves pile up.

01:07:29After every assault, there are dead men, there are men who are screaming in pain,

01:07:35men bleeding all over the landscape, but mostly men who were in the way.

01:07:39You have to get rid of them somewhere.

01:07:41So, what would happen during one of the lulls in the battle is that

01:07:45squads would go forward and pull the dead out of the way.

01:07:50At the end of the second day, the Persian body count was enormous,

01:07:54and the ground forces had once again been stymied.

01:07:57So, tactically speaking, after the first two days fighting at Thermopylae,

01:08:01Leonidas would have considered himself to be in a pretty good position.

01:08:04He had taken everything the Persians could throw at him,

01:08:06and he had lost only a few men himself.

01:08:08Meanwhile, off the coast, Themistocles again led the Athenian navy

01:08:12against the Persian fleet in the Artemisium Strait.

01:08:19The massive storm the night before had destroyed the Persian ships

01:08:23that sailed around Euboea in an attempt to surround Themistocles.

01:08:28With no Persian ships bearing down behind him,

01:08:30Themistocles could concentrate his force to the front.

01:08:33But he was still outnumbered five to one.

01:08:39While exact details of the battle are unknown,

01:08:42the Greek triremes were again able to destroy many of the Persian warships.

01:08:49So, by the end of the second day at sea, a similar scenario was working out.

01:08:53The Persians had again kind of tried to throw themselves at Themistocles at sea,

01:08:57and they hadn't done any better the second day.

01:08:59So, the front was holding, the Greek front was holding,

01:09:01It was another psychological victory for the Greeks,

01:09:05and another blow for Xerxes.

01:09:09But a solution would soon become clear to the Persian king,

01:09:13leading to one of the most famous and heroic last stands in history.

01:09:24Up in the narrow Thermopylae mountains,

01:09:27Up in the narrow Thermopylae pass,

01:09:307,000 Greek soldiers, led by Leonidas and his elite group of 300 Spartan warriors,

01:09:36prepared for another day of fighting.

01:09:41So far, they'd withstood and repelled the Persian army,

01:09:44the largest land force ever assembled at the time.

01:09:49You're stuck with the cork in the bottle,

01:09:51and you've got to get the cork out of the bottle.

01:09:53What had happened till now,

01:09:55they'd tried a light infantry attack and suffered badly.

01:09:57And so they crossed with their best troops,

01:09:59which was the heavy infantry, and suffered just as badly.

01:10:02So, now what to do?

01:10:04Things are getting a little dicey, the army is being held up,

01:10:07it has to eat every day, it's consuming supplies, it's getting nowhere.

01:10:10The answer is to find a way around the Spartan position.

01:10:18Xerxes discovered the answer.

01:10:20Xerxes discovered the answer.

01:10:23A small trail led from the Persian camp around Mount Kallidromos,

01:10:27and continued behind the Greek line.

01:10:31Historians are unsure as to when Xerxes had become aware of the pass.

01:10:35It's thought that a Greek spy had told him of it after the second day of battle.

01:10:40Seeing that he could not penetrate the Greek defense,

01:10:42and knowing his food supply was running short,

01:10:45Xerxes decided to use the pass.

01:10:48What he did is, at the nightfall of the second day,

01:10:53after the heavy infantry attack had failed in the center,

01:10:56began under the cover of darkness to move 10,000 men up that road,

01:11:00and to flank the Spartan position.

01:11:04But this pass was not unknown to Leonidas.

01:11:10Before the first day of the attack,

01:11:12Leonidas had stationed 1,000 men at the top of the pass.

01:11:16The force was made up of a people called the Phocians.

01:11:21But as the Persians approached the Phocian line,

01:11:24the defending force was missing.

01:11:26There's an intersection at the top of that ridge.

01:11:29What leads down to the Pho ship,

01:11:31and for some reason the Phocian troops think

01:11:33the attack is going to be on their homeland, and they withdraw.

01:11:39Fearing their homes would be attacked,

01:11:41the Phocians had retreated to defend their families.

01:11:44Leaving the Persians a clear path.

01:11:49At this point, Leonidas is doomed.

01:11:51Above and behind them are 10,000 infantrymen

01:11:54who can come scrambling down the hill at any given time.

01:11:57In the middle of the night,

01:11:59Greek scouts delivered the news to Leonidas

01:12:01that the Phocians had deserted.

01:12:04Knowing he'd been outflanked,

01:12:06Leonidas ordered the retreat of the Greek infantry.

01:12:10You can't just order 4,000 people to turn around and leave.

01:12:13There are a lot of reasons for that.

01:12:14One, the enemy knows immediately what you're doing

01:12:16is going to attack you from the front.

01:12:18You can't wait until you're completely enclosed in the back.

01:12:23What do you have to do?

01:12:24You've got to get relatively small units out

01:12:27in a phased withdrawal, hopefully quietly,

01:12:29so the enemy doesn't know essentially

01:12:31that the front has been thinned.

01:12:33Otherwise, he'll attack you.

01:12:35By dawn, all of the Greek troops had retreated.

01:12:38All except Leonidas, the 300 Spartans,

01:12:42and about 1,000 soldiers from the Greek city-state of Thespia.

01:12:47Very few people know this bit of information about the battle,

01:12:52but around 1,000 Thespians,

01:12:55soldiers from the city-state of Thespia,

01:12:58stayed behind with Leonidas.

01:13:01They could have left,

01:13:02but they decided to stay and fight with the Spartans to the end.

01:13:06Now, the reason this gets lost is that the Battle of Thermopylae

01:13:10has been mythologized throughout history and in movies today

01:13:15in such a way that only 300 Spartans took on millions of Persians,

01:13:22but it's not so.

01:13:25Still, this force of just over 1,000

01:13:27was surrounded by tens of thousands of Persians.

01:13:30Leonidas and his men were about to make their last stand.

01:13:35There was a great moment

01:13:38when the Spartans were going forward to the front lines to die

01:13:43and their allies were going back to live,

01:13:46and that, to me, is in many ways the most emotional moment of the fight.

01:13:53So the question is, why did he do this?

01:13:57Why did he do this?

01:13:58Why didn't Leonidas pull his groups out and go with them?

01:14:02Okay, and I think there are a couple of answers to that.

01:14:05You know, some people will say he was fulfilling the prophecy of the Oracle.

01:14:11Either your glorious city will be taken by the sons of Persia

01:14:15or all Sparta must mourn for the loss of a king.

01:14:19The sacrifice in his mind is about saving Sparta,

01:14:23and that's why he stays,

01:14:26and that's why he engages in a quixotic battle

01:14:30that he knows he's destined to lose.

01:14:34It's not because he wants to be a martyr.

01:14:36It's not because as a Spartan soldier he's been trained he must stand and die.

01:14:43Quite the opposite.

01:14:44As a Spartan soldier, he's been trained to sneak, to steal, to evade.

01:14:49But as a Spartan, he believes in the Oracles.

01:14:54As a Spartan, he believes in the religion.

01:14:56And as a Spartan, it's his duty to stay and die for the state.

01:15:01It may have been Leonidas' faith which kept him in the Thermopylae Pass,

01:15:06but from a military perspective,

01:15:08his presence provided a covering force during a tactical retreat.

01:15:13Every day he can delay these guys.

01:15:16Every minute he can delay these guys,

01:15:17give the Greeks behind him opportunity to assemble the army

01:15:20and get new defensive position.

01:15:22The guys who are pulled out of the pass

01:15:25still have a distance to go before they can link up with the other armies.

01:15:29And so, essentially, he decides to stand to the last man to buy the extra day or two.

01:15:34In short, he becomes, he turns himself and his bodyguard

01:15:37into a covering force for a strategic or tactical withdrawal.

01:15:43We still don't know why Leonidas decided to stay behind.

01:15:51But this last stand has gone down as one of the most famous in history.

01:15:59THE GREEK DEFENSE

01:16:05After two days of failing to penetrate the Greek defences at Thermopylae,

01:16:09the Persians had discovered a way to surround the pass.

01:16:13The Spartan king, Leonidas, ordered a tactical retreat of most of his fighting force.

01:16:18About a thousand Greek troops remained, including 300 Spartans and Leonidas,

01:16:24trapped by tens of thousands of Persian soldiers.

01:16:29Leonidas is making his last stand at the Thermopylae pass.

01:16:34And for two days, he successfully repelled the Persian advances.

01:16:37But now the Persians have him trapped.

01:16:39They've finally figured out how to outflank him,

01:16:42and they've got him exactly where they want him.

01:16:45Despite this knowledge, the Spartans calmly prepared for battle,

01:16:49as a Persian scout secretly watched.

01:16:54The Persian scout saw the Spartans exercising in the nude

01:16:58and pouring oil on themselves afterward,

01:17:01and cleaning themselves and arranging their hair,

01:17:04their long hair, and combing it out.

01:17:06The Persians look at that and don't understand.

01:17:12They look at that and they see vanity,

01:17:14or they look at that and they see bathroom behaviour.

01:17:19They don't know that the Spartans are preparing their bodies for death.

01:17:22Cleaned and prepared for battle, the Spartans took to the field, one last time.

01:17:28These were professional warriors.

01:17:30This is how they defined themselves,

01:17:32this is how their status in the society was defined.

01:17:36My guess is they would have welcomed the battle

01:17:38in the same way that Custer probably welcomed the battle.

01:17:40You know, that is to say, we're outnumbered, but we're better guys.

01:17:44They would probably welcome the battle from a psychological and social perspective.

01:17:47In his histories, Herodotus described the final battle.

01:17:51On the one side, the barbarians around Xerxes were marching forward.

01:17:55On the other, the Greeks around Leonidas,

01:17:57perceiving that they were about to exit the stage and die,

01:18:01advanced much further than they had before into the wider part of the pass.

01:18:10Indeed, knowing that death was coming for them

01:18:13with those who were moving around the mountain,

01:18:15they showed against the barbarians all the strength they possessed.

01:18:19And fought like madmen, devoid of care for anything but the moment.

01:18:22We can't be certain what happened during the battle,

01:18:25but I'm sure that after the Persians had attacked from both front and back,

01:18:28the Greeks broke ranks and the phalanx fell apart.

01:18:37Because the phalanx was the basis of the Greek defense,

01:18:40once it shattered, the Spartans were not nearly as strong

01:18:42as they had been over the last two days.

01:18:49The battlefield would have become chaotic at this point,

01:18:52and it was pretty much every man for himself.

01:18:56Many would likely have turned to their swords in such close quarters.

01:19:02Herodotus tells us that all of the Greek spears were broken

01:19:06and that they were fighting with anything they could.

01:19:08Herodotus mentions the bravery and valor of a few of the Spartans by name.

01:19:13In addition to Leonidas, there was his lieutenant Dionycus,

01:19:17who seems to have stood out in the battle.

01:19:22But despite the valiant effort and the years of intensive, brutal military training,

01:19:26it would only be a matter of time before these soldiers would be ready to fight.

01:19:30The Spartans would be ready to fight.

01:19:32The Spartans would be ready to fight.

01:19:33The Spartans would be ready to fight.

01:19:36It would only be a matter of time

01:19:37before these soldiers of the Spartan warrior cult were slaughtered.

01:19:47And indeed, it seems the Oracle's message to Leonidas was soon to be fulfilled.

01:20:05Herodotus writes that at some point early in the battle,

01:20:09Leonidas is struck by Persian arrow fire.

01:20:18One can only imagine the great king lying there dying

01:20:25and watching his Spartan brethren fall one by one.

01:20:35NARRATOR Leonidas fell in this fight,

01:20:41having shown that he was a man of quality, like the heroes of old.

01:20:50There was a great battle over the body of Leonidas.

01:20:56Four times the Greeks beat back the enemy

01:20:59and finally recovered the body by their valor.

01:21:02Herodotus wrote that Dionyches rescued Leonidas' body

01:21:06and with the few remaining Spartan soldiers retreated into a narrower part of the pass.

01:21:12The Persians called out to their archers one last time.

01:21:17They were easily able to find their targets.

01:21:23Every Spartan was slaughtered.

01:21:32After the massacre, Xerxes walked the battlefield.

01:21:35He'd lost almost 20,000 men in three days.

01:21:38He ordered his soldiers to be buried

01:21:41so that the rest of his army would not be demoralized by the sight of rotting corpses.

01:21:47Xerxes also ordered the head of Leonidas to be cut off and fixed to a stake.

01:21:54In this catastrophe, what do we find that's good?

01:21:56And the answer is the heroic death of people who held the pass

01:21:59so that their comrades may live to buy time for their country.

01:22:03It's a great heroic story.

01:22:04It's exactly the kind of thing that they would remember.

01:22:07In the same way that we tend to remember in our culture

01:22:10those men and women who die while performing heroic sacrifice and win the Medal of Honor.

01:22:16And we hold it up as an example to the next generation.

01:22:20If this happens to you, this is what we expect you to do.

01:22:22The Greeks do the same thing.

01:22:26Xerxes now had a clear path in front of him.

01:22:30The Greek city-state of Athens was doomed.

01:22:40Nothing now stood between him and Athens.

01:22:43The Persian revenge was complete.

01:22:47He marches in force through the pass of Thermopylae,

01:22:51essentially scattering Greek forces before him.

01:22:54Some of the Greek city-states that had been allied with Athens

01:22:57now go over to the Persians out of self-interest.

01:23:02Off the coast at Artemisium, Themistocles again held off the Persian fleet,

01:23:07but this time sustained significant casualties and lost some of his fleet.

01:23:12Because of the collapse of the Greek land defense,

01:23:15there was no longer any reason for Themistocles to defend the strait.

01:23:19He led the surviving fleet south to regroup and fight another day.

01:23:24Knowing that the sacking of Athens, the cradle of democracy, was inevitable,

01:23:28the Athenians visited the oracle at Delphi, seeking her guidance.

01:23:34Why do you sit, you who await doom?

01:23:37Flee to the furthest parts of the earth.

01:23:40Zeus, the all-seeing, gives to you a wooden wall,

01:23:44the only thing to be indestructible, a benefit to you and your children.

01:23:49As usually happens with oracles,

01:23:51As usually happens with oracles, the meaning is cryptic.

01:23:55And there are lots of Athenians who believe that the oracle is telling them

01:24:00to stay behind the walls of the Acropolis.

01:24:03But Themistocles believes that the wooden walls refers to the ships of the navy,

01:24:10and that the city should be evacuated.

01:24:13Two months after the last stand at Thermopylae,

01:24:16Xerxes fulfilled his promise to avenge the burning of the Ionian capital Sardis

01:24:22and the loss at Marathon.

01:24:24It had taken 20 years, two major cross-continental invasions,

01:24:29and the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

01:24:32Xerxes finally raised Athens to the ground.

01:24:37But the great loss of lives was averted.

01:24:40The only fatalities were those who refused to abandon their temple

01:24:43and their god at the Acropolis.

01:24:46There are a few people who stayed, not many.

01:24:48And he raises everything to the ground on top of the Acropolis,

01:24:52which are the most sacred temples of the Athenians.

01:24:56Basically, that's the payback for Sardis.

01:25:01A month after Xerxes had destroyed Athens, the Greeks exacted their own revenge.

01:25:07Themistocles lured Darius into the Strait of Salamis,

01:25:11where many of the Athenians had fled,

01:25:13and where his rejuvenated navy was waiting.

01:25:16While scholars debate the exact details,

01:25:18it seems that a Greek double agent fed false information to the Persians

01:25:22about the Greek position.

01:25:24The Persians sailed directly into the Strait of Salamis,

01:25:28where they were surprised and broadsided by the Greek fleet.

01:25:32Themistocles destroyed much of the Persian navy.

01:25:36The naval battle at Salamis is probably the most important strategic moment

01:25:40of this Persian and Greek war.

01:25:42Yes, the Persians defeated the Greeks at Thermopylae,

01:25:44and yes, they burned Athens to the ground.

01:25:46But the Greek navy inflicted so much damage to the Persian fleet at Salamis

01:25:51that Xerxes has to withdraw.

01:25:53Eventually, he's got to sail home,

01:25:55and if he doesn't have enough warships to defend his transports,

01:25:58then he's doomed.

01:26:01Xerxes left Greece and never returned.

01:26:06Many historians believe this was the beginning of the end of the Persian Empire.

01:26:11For the Greeks now began to attack the Persians on their own soil,

01:26:17scoring major military defeats at Plataea,

01:26:22Mycaleae,

01:26:23and Cestos.

01:26:26The Greeks chased the Persians back to Asia,

01:26:29and they burned that great pontoon bridge that had been built across the Hellespont.

01:26:36They let it burn into the Aegean.

01:26:38But before they burn it, they remove those cables,

01:26:42the ones made of flaxen and papyrus that tethered the ships together,

01:26:47and they keep them as trophies.

01:26:49In fact, the Athenians so prized these cables as trophies

01:26:52that they put them in their newly rebuilt Parthenon.

01:26:58The different Greek city-states like Athens and Sparta

01:27:01abandoned their internal differences

01:27:04and ultimately joined together to fight Persia as a unified country.

01:27:10A strategy first employed at the Thermopylae Pass.

01:27:15Sometimes we don't appreciate how important Thermopylae was,

01:27:19perhaps not from a military perspective,

01:27:20but from a symbolic and cultural perspective.

01:27:24Greece was becoming what it had never been.

01:27:27It was moving away from being a hodgepodge of small city-states

01:27:33into a nation that had a sense of being one,

01:27:37of being Greek more than Athenian, Greek more than Spartan,

01:27:41and to begin to identify its own values and cultures

01:27:45not as individual city-states, but as a nation as a whole.

01:27:52Philip of Macedon took this one step further

01:27:55and unified the Greek city-states into a single country.

01:27:58With this unified country, Philip's son, Alexander,

01:28:02finally destroyed the Persian Empire,

01:28:05exported Greek culture throughout the world,

01:28:08and introduced the vanquished to Greek politics,

01:28:11law, literature, philosophy, and art.

01:28:15And the culture he spread became the very basis of Western civilization.

01:28:20All of that would have been impossible,

01:28:22would have been completely impossible had Greece remained in the Middle East.

01:28:28Greece remained nothing more than a set of separate city-states,

01:28:32but it had become one nation, its sense of nationalism.

01:28:37And that sense of nationalism began at one important place,

01:28:42and that place was at the pass of Thermopylae.

01:28:52It was the last stand for Leonidas and the 300 Spartans,

01:28:56soldiers who stayed behind and fought to the death

01:28:59while their Greek brethren escaped to fight another day.

01:29:05Wars are won by breaking the will of your enemy to fight on.

01:29:11And at Thermopylae, Leonidas and the Spartans

01:29:16began to break the will of the Persians.

01:29:21It would take another 150 years,

01:29:25but the memory of the 300 Spartans

01:29:27would eventually spur the Greeks to victory over the Persians.

01:29:31If the Persians had been victorious,

01:29:34democracy would have been stopped in its tracks.

01:29:37And it is, I think, inconceivable that democracy would have arisen anywhere else

01:29:45in either the Near East or the Greek world.

01:29:48And that would have been the end of democracy.

01:29:51For centuries, military scholars have examined the Spartans' valiant efforts,

01:29:56where the few stood against the many,

01:29:58and death was the ultimate sacrifice.

01:30:02The story of the 300 is one of history's most acclaimed battles,

01:30:07one of civilization's greatest last stands.

01:30:20you

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