Mama was a Spartan
If you think stand up comedy is in a rut, you should try Gholamhossein Elham, an Iranian government spokesman. Old Gholam had me in stitches when he stood up and screamed foul over the blockbuster 300 a couple of weeks ago. He called 300 an insult because it portrays the Persians as slobs back in 480 B.C.
Well, I got news for Gholam. They were terrific slobs back then, and many of them continue to be slobs today. They wear tablecloths on their heads, sit on the floor to eat, and eat funny-smelling food with their hands. They also scream a lot, beat themselves to a pulp with chains, and think Uncle Sam is the great Satan. Persians, as they used to be called before the Shah decided to call them Iranians--it means Aryan, but if the Iranians are Aryans I’m Monica Lewinsky--are not very popular with the neocons, which makes them very popular with me. Sure they’re slobs, but so are many people in Hollywood and Noo Yawk.
Back in the old country we’ve been making jokes about the Persians since 480 B.C. But we also like them because they made heroes out of us Greeks. We only lost once to them, in Thermopylae in 480 B.C., but they were 400,000 of them and 300 of us. A fool like Victor Davis Hanson calls that a defeat, but a far greater historian, Taki, calls it a resounding victory. Mind you, we never lost to them before or after. In 490 B.C., general Miltiades wiped the floor with them in the battle of Marathon. Ten thousand Athenians routed 100,000 in close corps-a-corps fighting. Miltiades then ordered a fat hoplite who had not mixed it up and was fresh to run like hell back to Athens and tell the locals not to burn down the city as was the plan in case of a barbarian victory.
The fat hoplite ran the 42 kilometers 385 yards (or 26 miles), and dropped dead as he entered the city walls and pronounced “Enikikamen”: “We won.” Legend, however, gave the credit to Pheidippides, a renowned runner, but Pheidippides was a general and generals are not messenger boys. In any case, he was on his way to Sparta, a good three days away, to enlist Spartan help. The Spartans sat on the fence, so to speak. But back to the blockbuster 300 and Gholam the angry.
The historian Herodotus recorded Xerxes’s army as one million strong, but it now seems to be an over inflated number. Old Herodotus may have gotten carried away. The number of barbarians was closer to 400,000, or more than 1000 to I against. The Spartans were not neocons, however. They relished a fight, as long as they were the ones doing the fighting. A jerk by the name of Donald Kagan wrote a book about the Peloponnesian War and called Sparta a “fascist place." Thank God it was, otherwise it would not have survived as long as it did. My mother was a Spartan, as were both her parents, and our ancestral home is now the Spartan museum. When the Italians invaded Greece in 1940, my mother had five brothers and a husband fighting in the front . For some strange reason I suspect no Kagans ever did any fighting, but then I could be wrong.
Sure, helots worked the fields and performed all manual tasks. So do Hispanics today in America. Male Spartans were forbidden any profession, trade or business except the business of war. Had the barbarian hordes overrun the Spartans quickly, Western civilisation would have never taken place. Today we’d be wearing tablecloths on our heads and have even worse table manners than we do. Spartans threw sickly babies down Mount Taygetus, figuring they’d never make good soldiers--a cruel thing to do but it ensured a tough army. (A theory has it the sickly ones thrown down the ravine were the first neocons, but I believe it’s a theory like any other).
When the Spartans left their home to go up north and intercept the Persian hordes, most Greeks accepted they would fight bravely then retreat in good order, surviving to fight another day. Not the Spartans. They actually fought to win, and could have pulled it off in the narrows of Thermopylae if it weren’t for a traitor, Ephialtes, (the very first chickenhawk) who showed the barbarians another path which enabled them to come around and encircle the Greeks. “The Spartans, reckless with their own safety and desperate, since they knew their destruction was nigh at hand, exerted themselves with the most furious valor against the barbarians,” writes Herodotus.
A simple inscription marks their sacrifice. “Passerby, tell the Greeks that we have done our duty." Athens was the cradle of democracy and birthplace of western thought, but it was Sparta, 100 miles to the southwest, which made it possible. Their heavily armed foot soldiers used eight deep shield walls moving in perfect step, like Panzer tanks, to bulldoze the enemy off the field of battle. In the battle of Plataea, where they threw the Persians out of Greece forever, these Spartan formations broke through the enemy stockade and massacred everyone in sight. Never again would a Persian army invade the Greek mainland. Alexander the Great took care of them later in their home field. Gholam, you’re lucky to be living in the present.
Comments
Sparta might have made it possible, but Athens finished the job at the naval battle of Salamis. We shouldn’t play at empathising TOO much with the Spartans, whose habits were very alien even from the most disciplined European warriors of the past 2,000 years or more. But on the other hand, it’s just ridiculous and totally ahistorical for an intellectual wanker like Kagan to call the Spartans “fascists”. The Spartans wouldn’t have the slightest comprehension of Modern Age fascism.
On the other hand, the venal and chauvinistic, enervated, arrogant, merciless, bullying, spoiled,
weakling ancient Persians DID have quite a lot in common with many of today’s Israeli Defense Force. Bullies are pretty much the same in all countries and all ages.
Iran should take a close look at Israel as if looking in a mirror, and vice versa.
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The whole battle is subject to spin. The gorge was narrow so the Greeks were only able to post 300 in it. Their army was just under 9,000 and they worked in shifts. The Persians were able to outnumber them but not on the scale of 1,000 to 1. They probably could not have deployed the 3 to 1 considered necessary to overcome an entrenched position. But why let facts sully a racking good tale?
As for the martial valor of the Kagans, pressure was put on the US government to not publish available data as to the religious affiliation of serving military, combat deaths and non fatal casualties. Such records are easily compiled and were once public. Americans are entitled to full public disclosure of all details of our military.
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Ok, yea.
And look where it got ‘em,
dead’r than canned tuna.
Squandered valor is all I see.
But it makes for really profitable
movies! Oh boy!
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J Ball,
Xerxes was forced to return back across the Hellespont after the Battle of Salamis, but he still had sizeableforces on land. It took the Spartans at the Battle of Platea to rid Greece of Persians for good. After that battle, Persians started hiring Greek soldiers as mercenaries.
I do think it is not correct to simply call the Persians bullies… they were retaliating against the Athenian involvement in the destruction of the Persian cities of Ionia in Asia Minor.
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People of a patriotic mindset who are made aware of classical history inevitably come away with an admiration for the courage and valour of the Spartans. People like Kagan (perhaps a relation to Stalin’s henchman, Kaganovich?) seldom draw much of a distinction between patriots and fascists, and are likewkise suspicious of anything which patriots heartily approve, hence Sparta becomes a “fascist place.” My left-wing friends are always decrying neo-"conservatism" as the latest incarnation of fascism, to which I invariably respond that neo-cons are a completely separate historical phenomenon from fascism, and that the neo-cons are worse.
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I think this article is disgusting and I would love to see the person that wrote this article to say what he has written to an iranian person on the street. The only reason the greeks keep going on about this battle is because they have to compensate for their useless country and civilization and everyone knows that the Persian Empire was probably the greatest empire ever.
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The “Inspiring Words and Photos of Hellenic Civilization” post at the Greek site http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/koinonia/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=221 will further enlarge on Mr. Theodoracopulos’ essay with quotes and photos about great Lenonidas and others.
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Taki, I love you in Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative, but here you’re dividing people who should unite. It’s sad that Greeks and Persians ever fought. This comic book movie the 300 only drives a wedge between people who need to unite and fight the real enemy, the neo-con. In the era of nuclear weapons, valiant soldiers don’t mean much. Why attack the Iranians, Taki? The Persian Empire deserves some respect. Besides, the neo-con media does enough Persian bashing as is.
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Taki I love the article and I love most of the articles you have written. I’m tired of people who like to disrespect the great history of Greece and have no respect for our people and culture in general.
There’s a great range of opinions here from some coward who doesn’t have the balls to put his name after his post, but has the balls to challenge you to tell this story to an Iranian on the street. Apparently these days courage is required to re-tell a true story, even though in the case of this movie it is what I would call a mythologized version.
The Persian army by the way must have been massive by anyones account simply because of the numbers left over the winter to finish the job against the Greeks. Almost every source out there agrees the Persian army left behind after the defeat at Salamis was at approximately 300-350,000 strong. This army we all know (except for maybe anonymous) was completely wiped out at the Battle of Platea which was led by the Spartans.
Chris Nivo
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To The Anonymous Ayatolah:
You know you might want to have more respect for Greece. I mean
who knows? If Ahmadinejad was threatening Greece instead of Israel
the job might have been finished by now.
Hellas
Cowardly Islam’s Nightmare
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“The Move 300: Separating Fact from Fiction”
http://www.ghandchi.com/iranscope/Anthology/KavehFarrokh/300/index.htm
Down with Mullahs and Ayatollahs
Long live Iran and Greece
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Dear mr Mathew Cole. It was completely the opposite the reason that Persian invaded in Greece was that Greek city states of mainland Greece helped the Greek city states of Ionia (western Minor Asia) that were under Persian rule to rebel.I think you should read some books.No Persian cities in Ionia
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