Re: The 300
Sorry guys, but I am going to be a bit anal here.
I was really looking forward to this film as the battle of Thermopylae was an absolute crucial event in the history of the Western democracies. There would have been no Britain or US without that battle.
The Greeks were a series of feuding city-states (Athens was democratic, but none of the others were. In fact Sparta was a fucking inhuman place that practiced institutionalised paedophilia, genocide, forced conscription, brutal laws and hardship. Cool)
Persia was the single largest superpower on the planet. The King,Xerxes, decided to expand his empire and marched to Greece with something like A MILLION strong army (only about a quarter were combat troops though, as logistics etc were all involved) In fact he could have mustered an army of over 10 million but saw this as a brief skirmish.
The Spartans were famous for their brutal and efficient hoplite fighting, in which they fought hand to hand with great discipline in phalanxes. The Persian army split and a smaller part of it was heading through the straits of Isthmus to invade Greece through a land bridge. The Spartans sent 300 finest volunteers to what they knew was a suicide mission. They were reinforced by some 3000 other troops from other Greek cities. When they heard that a second part of the Persian Army was threatening Athens, their King Leonidas sent all the other troops home and resolved to hold out against the Persians to the last man.
Amazingly, they held out for some three days, causing great casualties to the Persians, before they were outflanked and cut down. They fought seriously bravely.
BUT, the Persians won the battle, impaled Leonidas and advanced into Greece. Eventually the Babylonions (Baghdad) revolted and King Xerxes left to subdue them (a measure of how important his conquest of Greece really was to him)
Interesting how THE world superpower invaded a small motley country to restore order, was faced by suicide troops and eventually withdrew!!!! Those that fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Anyway, I saw the trailer ............ this is an amazing story, great courage and brutality, history-turning in its importance and yet Hollywood choose to make the King 10 feet tall, put monsters in the Persian Army and reinvent history.
I really think that the real truth is a greater story and would have made a better fim that just being a pale remake of Gladiator meets Lord of the Rings.
Anyway, rant over.
If God wanted us to be vegetarians, why are animals made of meat ?
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