Free The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson

gates”) really did block the enormous Persian army for three days before being betrayed. The defenders, as they are portrayed in the history of Herodotus and canonized in lyric poetry, claimed their fight was for the survival of a free people against subjugation by the Persian Empire.
    Many of the film’s corniest lines—such as the Spartan dare “Come and take them,” when ordered by the Persians to hand over their weapons, and the Spartans’ flippant reply, “Then we will fight in the shade,” when warned that the cloud of Persian arrows will blot out the sun—are literal translations from ancient Greek accounts by Herodotus and Plutarch.
    The warriors of 300 look like comic book heroes because they are based on Miller’s drawings, which emphasize bare torsos, futuristic swords, and staged fight scenes. In other words, director Zack Snyder tells the story not in the fashion of the mostly failed attempts to recapture the ancient world in costume dramas, such as Troy and Alexander , but in the surreal manner of a comic book or video game. Overt suspension of belief at the outset relieves the viewer from wondering whether the usual British-accented actors playing Greeks are all that close to their ancient counterparts.
    The movie also demonstrates surprising affinity with Herodotus in two other areas. First, it captures the martial ethos of the Spartan state, the notion that the sum total of a man’s life, the ultimate arbiter of all success or failure, is how well he fought on the battlefield, especially when it becomes clear at last that bravery cannot prevent defeat.
    Second, the Greeks, if we can believe Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus, saw Thermopylae as a “clash of civilizations” that set Eastern centralism and collective serfdom against the idea of the free citizen of an autonomous polis. The ancient morality tale emphasized that a haughty imperious Xerxes was punished by the gods for trying, in hubristic fashion, to subjugate self-reliant and rather pious Greeks, whose creed was moderation, not superciliousness. That Hellenic-centric view comes through in the movie, especially in the fine performances of Butler and Lena Headey (who plays Leonidas’s wife, Gorgo). If the Spartans seem too cocky and self-assured in their belief that they are the more effective warriors of a superior culture, blame Herodotus, not necessarily Zack Snyder or the influence of cardboard comic heroes like Superman and Batman. The cinematography, acting, and computer-generated special effects are often quite stunning. The Spartans’ mood of defiance is chilling, especially when we remember that their gallant last stand ended in the greatest defeat in the history of Greek city-states—until Alexander ended their freedom 140 years later, at Chaironeia.
    Some reviewers argue that the film’s graphic violence is gratuitous and at times revolting. But Thermopylae was no picnic. Almost all the Spartans and Thespians were killed, along with several hundred from other Greek contingents. Some of the film’s most graphic killing—such as Persians being pushed over the cliff into the sea—derives also from the text of Herodotus. And the filmmakers omitted the mutilation of King Leonidas, whose head Xerxes ordered impaled on a stake.
    Some have suggested that 300 is juvenile in its black-and-white plot and character depiction—and glorification—of free Greeks versus imperious Persians. Yet that good-bad contrast comes not entirely from Snyder or Miller, but again is based on accounts from the Greeks themselves, who saw their own society as antithetical to the monarchy of imperial Persia.
    True, 2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterranean world had slaves. And all relegated women to a relatively inferior position. Sparta turned the entire region of Messenia into a dependent serf state. But in the Greek polis alone, there were elected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy at Sparta to much