300

He's meant to look like a gay, make-up's queer because in Frank's vision of the world the Persians represented chaos, degeneracy, barbarism and lack of morality when contrasted with with the rigid and conservative structure and values of the Spartan society. He really played up the Persians as hedonistic and sexual degenerates, as well as their bodies being twisted and mutant to really portray them as complete chaos and loss of purity compared to the Greeks.

You’re a retard.

Ah, ok
>person who didn't know anything to begin with

WE

Ancient battle customs.

Organising attacks to happen continuously is very difficult bordering on impossible with ancient communications.
You have to manouevre disoriented and retreating forces out of the way with very limited C2, while moving fresh forces forward. At Thermopylae that is made even harder by lack of space

>why didnt the xerxes attack without pause for a few days in a row,
In the movie? Because the Hot Gates was a very narrow corridor and there was no feasible way for his forces to actually advance if they just keep dying. They couldn't shoot arrows because they'd just mow down their own guys, and they couldn't just send an endless wave at the Spartans because how would they get passed the dead that piled up at the front? Also the bulk of the army was camped miles away in a large open area and had to march to the pass because that's what armies do, they need to camp somewhere away from the battle.

In reality, obviously that's not how things went, the battle lasted two days and it was the 300 Spartans and about 5-700 (and probably like 1000 or so Helots) Thespians covering the retreat of the much larger Athenian army. At the time, the Spartans were guarding what was essentially the only real road inland and Xerxes couldn't just travel over the mountains because there's no feasible way for him to get his animals and supplies over that kind of terrain.

Also remember that Leonidas lost the battle and the Persians took the pass, and eventually conquered the evacuated Athens. He was only actually driven back because the Athenian navy attacked his flotilla at Salamis and Xerxes had to withdraw or risk being stranded in Athens without any way of getting back to his country. The Greeks managed to unite a little later to push the Persians back completely at Platea and end the war.

very informative post, have a (you).

Cause the Persians were disorganized? It also doesn't make sense to just send wave after wave of your soilders if they just keep dying.

>I haven't actually seen these movies but I assume this takes place during the retreat, so the Spartans were actually completely alone
The movie is a fictionalized version of events where 300 Spartans march alone to intercept the Persian landing fleet at Platea, and are joined begrudgingly by what I suppose is a few hundred (even though we only see a handful) of Thespians who help fight before retreating. The fictional story by Frank Miller doesn't have any Athenians present at all, and is functionally entirely about Leonidas personally stopping the entire Persian army for a weekend before dying. Ironically, the ending is kinda close to being accurate. Kinda.

What was the point of having Leonidas kill the messenger? That seemed so out of place.

Well it wouldn't have been much of a movie then, would it, you stupid twat.

You mean the black guy with the skulls he kicked into the pit? I'm not sure what you mean by out of place, but narratively it was likely to symbolize the moment when Leonidas accepts that his fate will be to stand and fight the Persians. I think it's a pretty straightforwards scene, because he's letting his people know publicly that they won't bend like other nations have.

You'll have to be more specific.

Yeah, the black guy who was kicked into the pit. If the Spartans represent order and the Persian represent barbarism then this scene seems wrong. Like civilized nations don't shoot the messenger.

Spartans represent order, but they also represent honor and strength of will. Leonidas even says, "You insult my queen, you threaten my people with slavery and death" because all of these things are an affront to the Spartan way of life. They value their freedom and their honor as Spartan citizens above everything. Remember that not everyone who was born in Sparta was a citizen, citizenship was something you earned through accomplishing the feats expected of a Spartan and lots of people didn't make the cut and lived as second-class Helots and slaves. So demanding that Spartans, especially a king, bow to someone else is an insult to their entire way of life.

Killing the messenger wasn't just a reply, it was itself a message that even asking Sparta to surrender was itself a declaration of war.

Leonidas wanted to break the Persian army's morale and show them that Xerxes was a man and not a god. Killing him would have martyred him.

androgynous == god-like, because it feels unnatural

he fucking told him upfront "nigger watch your tongue, in sparta even a messenger is accountable"

>Killing him would have martyred him.
Well, that and it would have removed the ending of the story which is that the Greeks united a year later to drive the Persians out of their lands, which actually happened. The story is supposed to be historical fiction, but still at least based on real events and Xerxes dying at Leonidas' hand would have been a different time-line.

>he fucking told him upfront "nigger watch your tongue, in sparta even a messenger is accountable"
While this is true, I tend to believe the outcome would have been the same no matter what he said.

ok :)

Jojo

>an obvious bait thread instead turns into a civilized discussion on the warfare of Classical antiquity and its portrayal in popular media
Today you are all men of culture and understanding

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because in that period it would have been nigh on impossible to co-ordinate *large scale* army movements, and also likely very difficult to supply them.

Attacking at night was rarely even a thing in WW1, let alone the classical period.

the whole story is hyperbole and just hot air. the first time the story was told about thermopylae it blows my mind that the person listening wasn't immediately like "don't listen to him, he's a pathological liar". but no they wrote it down and considered it history

this has to be bait. No one is this dumb. NO - ONE.

It would have been kino to watch them fight over leonidas’s corpse

What is your profession?

I guess? I mean they never actually fought over it, considering the Spartans lost the battle. From what I remember, Xerxes had the body taken, decapitated and crucified or impaled. I believe the body was reclaimed, whatever state it was in, at the battle of Platea and was buried in a simple grave on the hill nearby, before it was returned to Sparta a few decades later.

trans activist (internet based)

>Leonidas wanted to break the Persian army's morale and show them that Xerxes was a man and not a god.
How would killing him not achieve that?

Who won in real life?

xerxes was a non-binary legend

>very limited C2
That sounds like some faggy video game term, nerd

It's a reference to showing that a God-King could bleed.

It meant that he had too live with the injury, proving to all that followed him that he was not a God, and that no man could be. By staying alive he showed many more people he was only human, destroying the illusion for himself as well as others than might try and claim his throne.

If he just died, it would have been too easy to create a new legend around his battle with leonidas and insert a new "GodKing" in his place. He thus fatally shattered the morale of Xerxes whilst keeping him in command of his army, fatalling weakening it.

Depends what you mean. The battle of Thermopylae? The Persians won, the Spartans stayed behind along with some Thebans and helots (slaves) to cover the retreat of the larger Athenian force, and everyone died except the Thebans who were said to have surrendered. The retreat and defeat of the Spartans allowed Persia to advance all the way to Athens and occupy it, before being pushed back by a naval blockade, and the Persians eventually lost the war a year later at the battle of Platea.

If he killed him then it'd prolong the conflict by having Xerxes son wanting revenge.

>Who won in real life?

The Jews.

It's likely that had he died, he would be believed to just reincarnate or reappear somewhere else. Being wounded, however, was not something that happened to gods, especially not a wound that would have to be tended to by megi and physicians.

After leonidas died the other spartans fought to protect his body so that xerxes couldnt desecrate his corpse, which is exactly what xerxes did as you mention.

Oh, yeah I guess. That doesn't really feel like it would add anything to the actual story, though. I mean we get to see them fighting despite the clear futility of it at the end anyway, and they all die in the end, so it's not like an extra scene of them doing that while also trying to guard his body would change much. In fact, the comic is specifically supposed to show that Leonidas was the last to die on the field (which makes no real sense) because it's a little bit more dramatic that way.

No, it would have sent the army into disarray and provided the retreating Greeks with even more time to reorganise and maybe they wouldn't have been conquered in the first place. If you think a "God-King" being unceremoniously slaughtered, not even in a battle, would result in an immediate restructuring of the Persian army and an even more ferocious counter attack instead of instantly crippling and demoralising troops more than an easily-hidden scratch would, I'm sorry but that's just post-hoc rationalisation and mental gymnastic with no real thought behind it.

Listen, youre right. HOWEVER, fuck you it would still be kino to see

>he would be believed to just reincarnate or reappear somewhere else.
Oh well yeah I didn't think of that. But is that actually what they believed? Pharaohs didn't get reincarnated I don't think, but that's the only 'God-King' style of rulers I know much about.

I bet your movies are way cleverer yeah?
>post-hoc rationalisation
wow, so smart

Not him but hes right. The whole “do you bleed?” shit is a played out genx trope

Why bother commenting if you're just gonna bitch about how dumb you are?

IRL they killed the messengers too. One was sent to Athens and decapitated I think and I can't remember what the Spartans did to theirs.

No they believed in Zoroastrianism. They liked fire, telling the truth, and thought incest was a-ok. They called their ruler the King of Kings(basically a fancy way to say emperor.) because Cyrus The Great conquered other kings.

The whole God King stuff is dramatization for the movie and comic. In reality Xerxes wasn't that bad of a guy. It's thought that the Book of Esther is about him or his son Artaxerxes.

>But is that actually what they believed?
A quick google shows no

>In reality Xerxes wasn't that bad of a guy.
He was about the same as anyone else back then. They all thought they were the shit and fought other people to prove it. Frank Miller's story is what happens when you pick one side as the "good" guys, but in reality they were all basically the same shit.

Yeah I'm reading a bit now looks like his son accused his heir of the murder after he was killed. Doubt that would have happened if leo killed him. Maybe the whole future of the world would be different? Whereas history as it stands now doesn't seem like he actually did anything, since the Greek fleet was what pushed the Persians back after they'd already taken Athens anyway

>but in reality they were all basically the same shit.
The people that need that explained to them aren't the people that care

Didn't Xerxes build a giant column covered in the flayed skins of enemy leaders he had killed?

imagine your whole life being either brutal and rigid military training or actual war itself with such legendary difficulty that your people are synonymous with extreme difficulty and discipline even 2000+ years later and then getting BTFO by some faggots from Thebes lmao

""""""GASP"""""
It's almost like the movie is an absolute homoerotic fanfic of a real historical event that likely saw, after days of battle leading up to a Greek defeat, see a rearguard action of Spartan hoplites lead by one of their two kings be destroyed to a man at Thermopylae in 480 BCE.

Hes actually based as fuck. He gave up his title of King of Babylon after that defeat.

I don't know offhand, but stuff like that wasn't particularly uncommon. War was war and humiliating and desecrating enemies was a common practice by everyone throughout history. Spartans would regularly declare war on their own sub-class of Helots just because they believed butchering them every few years would keep revolts in check. Spartans regularly sent the organs and severed heads of killed soldiers and commanders back to their encampments to demoralize their enemies. It's pretty important in history to not look at some of the barbaric things that happened in wartime or to enemies and say that any one nation or group was better with that stuff than any other.

Yeah they should have just pumped out a million shit kids and swarmed them like you huh shitskin

>""""""GASP"""""
Stopped reading there. Kill yourself you flaming fucking faggot

and people complained about snyders costume he did chicken out on the gold plated nipples though

>BCE
Stopped reading there. Kill yourself you flaming fucking faggot

I mean, to be fair that was like a full 100 years after Thermopylae. A lot of stuff changes in that much time.

I can look at current history and easily decide that the West is less barbaric than the sandniggers, even if they do mutilate their children and convince them to cut off their dicks

>Stopped writing there
ftfy flaming samefag

>480 BCE.
What exactly makes it "Before the Common Era"? Surely if people wanted a more secular dating system, they wouldn't have still used the birth of Christ as their cut-off

who else would have betrayed the douchebag Spartans for some sweet brown sugar?

you mean the nubs girl?

>I can look at current history and easily decide that the West is less barbaric than the sandniggers
I'm generally referring to pre-Enlightenment history. We broadly understand that torture, mutilation, and public humiliation of enemies was mostly phased out of society by then (though obviously not entirely as the French Revolution made clear), but even today there are obviously some cultures that hold different value for human life and lots of backwards practices and yeah obviously they're barbarians.

But when we're talking about historical warfare, we tend to demonize one side or the other (depending on who you're learning from) by talking about what they did that we would consider horrific today. My point is that every people and culture did stuff like that, so talking about the atrocities of one side and not the other is an incomplete and dishonest picture. There were no "good guys" throughout history.

any of em
brown girls are best girls

>have battering rams
>light battering rams on fire with animal fat
>stack them and ram them into spartan formation
>pour men in, battle over