Crowds are flocking to see the film "300" about the ancient Spartans' last
stand at the pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army. Yet many
critics, in panning "300," have alleged that the film is essentially
historically inaccurate. Are they right?
Here are some answers. But first two qualifiers. I wrote an introduction to
a book about the making of "300" after being shown a rough cut of the movie
in October. And, second, remember that "300" does not claim to follow
exactly ancient accounts of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Instead,
it is an impressionistic take on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, intended
to entertain and shock first, and instruct second.
Indeed, at the real battle, there weren't rhinoceroses or elephants in the
Persian army. Their king, Xerxes, was bearded and sat on a throne high above
the battle; he wasn't, as in the movie, bald and sexually ambiguous, and he
didn't prance around the killing field. And neither the traitor Ephialtes
nor the Spartan overseers, the Ephors, were grotesquely deformed.
When the Greeks were surrounded on the battle's last day, there were 700
Thespians and another 400 Thebans who fought alongside the 300 Spartans
under King Leonidas. But these non-Spartans are scarcely prominent in the
movie.
Still, the main story line mostly conveys the message of Thermopylae.
A small contingent of Greeks at Thermopylae (which translates to "The Hot
Gates") really did block the enormous Persian army for three days before
being betrayed. The defenders 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, or the
Spartans' flippant reply, "Then we will fight in the shade," when warned
that Persian arrows will blot out the sun - actually come from ancient
accounts by Herodotus and Plutarch.
The warriors of "300" look like comic-book heroes because they are based on
Frank Miller's drawings that emphasized bare torsos, futuristic swords and
staged fight scenes. In other words, director Zack Snyder tells the story
not in a realistic fashion - like the mostly failed attempts to recapture
the ancient world in recent films such as "Troy" or "Alexander" - but in the
surreal manner of a comic book or video game.
The Greeks themselves often embraced such impressionistic adaptation.
Ancient vase painters sometimes did not portray soldiers accurately in their
bulky armor. Instead, they used "heroic nudity" to show the contours of the
human body.
Similarly, Athenian tragedies that depicted stories of war employed
contrivances every bit as imaginative as those in "300." Actors wore masks.
Men played women's roles. They chanted in set meters, broken up by choral
hymns. The audience understood that dramatists reworked common myths to meet
current tastes and offer commentary on the human experience.
Some reviewers think the film is gratuitously violent. But Thermopylae was
no picnic. Almost all the Spartans and Thespians were killed, along with
hundreds from other Greek contingents. Some of the film's most graphic
killing - such as Persians being pushed over the cliff into the sea -
derives from the text of Herodotus. And the filmmakers omitted the
mutilation of King Leonidas, whose head Xerxes ordered impaled on a stake.
Finally, some have suggested that "300" is juvenile in its black-and-white
depiction - and glorification - of free Greeks versus imperious Persians.
The film has actually been banned in Iran as hurtful American propaganda, as
the theocracy suddenly is reclaiming its "infidel" ancient past.
But that good/bad contrast comes not from the director or Frank Miller, but
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 broader-based voting in
states like Athens and Thespiae.
Most importantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition of
unfettered expression and self-criticism. Aristophanes, Sophocles and Plato
questioned the subordinate position of women. Alcidamas lamented the notion
of slavery.
Such openness was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world.
That freedom of expression explains why we rightly consider the ancient
Greeks as the founders of our present Western civilization - and, as
millions of moviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy who
ultimately failed to conquer them.