Freedom, Spartan Style

Today, the highly anticipated film “300,” a Frank Miller graphic novel adapted into a “Sin City”-styled cinematic extravaganza, opens in theaters across the world. For fans who stood shivering in lines last night to catch a midnight showing, “300” is a worthy piece of modern art, blending Greek history and shed Persian blood. Some would argue it is little more than another desperate Hollywood attempt to prostitute for the mass media any meaning history has. But regardless of where you personally stand, the film’s contemporary portrayal of bygone epics reveals more about our times’ cultural and ideological biases than about the ancients’.

The movie tells a history-textbook classic: the battle of Thermopylae. Nearly all representations of this story, from Roman theater to celluloid, are based on the writings of Herodotus, allegedly the “father of history.” Back in August 480 BC, his “Histories” tell us that King Xerxes of Persia filled the Hellenic peninsula with his barbaric hordes, ready to conquer and command Greece. Vastly outnumbered and representing the alliance of Greek city-states, 300 Spartans—the movie’s namesake—held their ground for three days at the pass of Thermopylae, where numbers mattered less than in open ground.

Herodotus cites the Persian despot in the midst of the battle, a line that appears also in the highly stylized screen version: “I have so many archers that their arrows will blot out the sun.”

“Then we’ll fight in the shade,” Spartan king Leonidas replies nonchalantly. Thanks to their heroic last stand, the Athenians found enough time to prepare for a naval battle that would doom Xerxes’ invasion. Hard to find a better bedtime story, right?

Herodotus himself wrote his Histories “so that the great deeds of men may not be forgotten,” urging Greek unity when, after defeating the Persians, Sparta and Athens were at odds. But just as he is called “father of history,” Herodotus has also been called “father of lies.” Every audience must understand that each historian has an ideological agenda, and this film is no exception.

Illustrating that, despite time, nothing really changes, the film’s modern portrayal of Thermopylae diverges from Herodotus’ only to embrace our Western, 21st. century democratic biases. The heroic Spartan warriors fight for oddly modern Western values, in contrast to those of their actual society. At a climactic point in the film, Leonidas encourages his men: “A new age has come, an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it.”

Rather than philosopher-kings, Leonidas’ actual Sparta was a society of fighter-kings, where “equals” were the fearless warrior class bred to serve the hawkish state. In fact, the state provided hordes of slave workers, helots, to work the lands of “equals.” Sparta’s economic and social arrangement was built around the assumption that colonized cities would be enslaved and, thanks to their labor, Spartan armies would be fed and clothed. How is that for an “age of freedom”?

Leonidas’ passionate rallying call to freedom is a better reflection of what we like to think of our society and its values, rather than what those heroic 300 actually stood for. Like “human rights,” “freedom” is one of those terms we like to associate with anything considered positive, and we give its social impact for granted. As the Spartans were bred to bleed, we have been conditioned to associate those terms with the best traits of our culture.

I could be wrong—­perhaps the Spartans did love freedom. Just as much as we do. After all, isn’t ours a time of war on Persian terror, of diabolic foreigners threatening our precious freedoms? Next time you read or watch history, be ready to be told more than about yesterday. Today always seeps through.




Pierpaolo Barbieri ’09, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Eliot House.