50 Fun Facts About Battle of Thermopylae

In which formation did the Greeks block the pass at Thermopylae?

The phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and long spears, filled the pass from cliff to sea, so the Persians could not use their numbers or cavalry to get round it.

Herodotus says Xerxes delayed at Thermopylae expecting the Greeks to do what?

Flee: Xerxes found it laughable that so few would stand, Herodotus says, and on the fifth day he angrily sent his first wave with orders to bring them back alive.

Which naval battle was fought simultaneously with Thermopylae?

Artemisium was fought at sea on the same days, and a storm wrecked the Persian squadron sent to sail round behind the Greek fleet and trap it.

Which Athenian led his city's warships in the straits while the Greeks held the pass at Thermopylae?

Themistocles was later ostracised by Athens and ended his days governing the city of Magnesia for the Persian king.

Counting allies of the 300 Spartans, about how many Greeks marched to hold Thermopylae?

7,000 is the usual estimate: the 300 were only an advance guard, sent ahead to rally other cities, whose troops joined them on the march north.

Herodotus claimed Xerxes's vast army did what to rivers on its march to Thermopylae?

Drank them dry: Herodotus names the Scamander, at Troy, as the first river to fail Xerxes's men and animals, though modern historians think he vastly inflated the army's size.

Who showed the Persians the mountain path behind the Greek lines at Thermopylae?

Ephialtes hoped for a rich reward, but the Greeks put a price on his head instead, and he fled north and was later killed.

The wit of Spartan replies like "Molon labe" at Thermopylae gave English which word, from their homeland's name?

Laconic comes from Laconia, the region around Sparta: when an invading king sent a threat that began 'If I enter Laconia', the Spartans are said to have sent back one word, 'If.'

Which oracle warned the Spartans before Thermopylae that their city or a king must fall?

Delphi gave the warning in verse, and Herodotus believed it was why Leonidas sent most of the allies home and stayed to die himself.

Which Greek contingent at Thermopylae reportedly surrendered and was branded with Xerxes's royal mark?

The Thebans walked over with hands raised, saying they had fought under compulsion; Herodotus calls them hostages of Leonidas, a slur Plutarch later disputed.

After the pass at Thermopylae fell, the Greek fleet withdrew to which island?

Salamis took in the Athenians who had abandoned their city, and soon afterwards the Greek fleet lured Xerxes's navy into its narrow straits and destroyed much of it.

Which battle, the year after Thermopylae, ended the second Persian invasion of Greece?

Plataea was where Mardonius, the general Xerxes had left behind, was killed by a Greek army under Leonidas's nephew Pausanias, a death Herodotus counted as payment for the king's.

Why is the pass at Thermopylae, once a strip between cliffs and sea, now several kilometres inland?

River silt built up the shore: the Spercheios has filled in the gulf's edge since 480 BC, and the sea that guarded the Greek flank once reached where the modern road runs.

In 191 BC, which rising power won another battle at Thermopylae by sending men over the mountain path?

Rome sent a detachment under Cato over the heights to get behind King Antiochus III, whose army panicked and broke, much as the Persians had turned the pass three centuries earlier.

Which uprising of 499-494 BC, aided by Athens, provoked the Persian invasions?

The Ionian Revolt saw Athenians help burn Sardis, and Herodotus says the Persian king had a servant tell him three times at every dinner, 'Master, remember the Athenians.'

How did the Spartans treat the Persian heralds who came to demand "earth and water"?

Threw them down a well, telling them to fetch their earth and water there; Sparta later sent two volunteers to Persia to die in atonement, and Xerxes sent them home unharmed.

The first Persian invasion ended with which Athenian victory in 490 BC?

Marathon was won when the Athenians charged the larger Persian force at a run; the Spartans arrived after the fighting and could only tour the field and praise the victors.

Xerxes' army crossed into Europe over which strait on pontoon bridges?

The Hellespont had first been bridged when a storm smashed the work, so Xerxes is said to have ordered the water given 300 lashes and a pair of fetters thrown in.

Near which city did the Greek allies meet and decide to defend Thermopylae?

Corinth's Isthmus was where the allied deputies sat, from states that had agreed to drop their own wars, Athens and Aegina's among them, and fight Persia together.

Facing Xerxes, the Greeks abandoned a first stand at the Vale of Tempe after a warning from which land's king?

Macedon's king Alexander I, though a Persian subject, sent envoys urging the 10,000 Greeks at Tempe to leave before Xerxes's army trampled them, and they took his advice.

Which Spartan festival kept the main army from marching to Thermopylae with Leonidas?

The Carneia, a festival of Apollo, barred campaigning, so Sparta sent only Leonidas with an advance guard and meant to follow in full force once it ended.

Leonidas, who led the Greeks at Thermopylae, claimed descent from which mythical hero?

Heracles was the claimed ancestor of both Spartan royal houses, and the oracle given before the battle said the city would be spared only if a king of his line died.

Expecting to die at Thermopylae, Leonidas chose for his 300 only Spartans who had what?

Living sons were the test, Herodotus says, and the usual reading is that Leonidas expected no one to come home and wanted every family line to survive.

What did the Phocians guarding the path above Thermopylae do when the Persians came?

Climbed higher: under Persian arrows the Phocians took themselves for the target and made for the peak to die there, so the Persians simply hurried on past them.

Told that Persian arrows would blot out the sun, a Spartan at Thermopylae reportedly said his side would do what?

Fight in the shade: Herodotus credits the joke to a soldier named Dienekes, whom he calls the bravest Spartan there, while Plutarch gives the line to Leonidas himself.

What does "Molon labe", Leonidas's reply at Thermopylae to a demand for his weapons, mean?

'Come and take them' is how Plutarch records Leonidas's written answer to Xerxes, and the two Greek words are now carved beneath his statue at the pass.

Herodotus claimed Xerxes brought about how many fighting men to Thermopylae?

2.6 million was only the fighting force: Herodotus doubled it to count servants and camp followers, a total modern historians reject as impossible to feed.

The "Thermo" in Thermopylae refers to what at the site?

Hot springs rise beside the pass, and Herodotus says the Phocians had once channelled their water across the road to flood it against invaders from the north.

In which war did British Empire troops defend Thermopylae?

World War II: in April 1941 New Zealand and Australian rearguards held the pass against German tanks for a day, buying time for Allied troops to reach their evacuation ships.

Which Persian corps took over the failed first-day assault at Thermopylae and fared no better?

The Immortals got their name, Herodotus says, because any man lost was replaced at once, keeping the corps at exactly 10,000, but in the pass their shorter spears and numbers counted for little.

Herodotus says the Spartans in the pass at Thermopylae repeatedly caught the Persians out with which tactic?

Feigned retreat: the Spartans would turn their backs as if fleeing, then wheel round on the shouting pursuers, a drill Herodotus offers as proof of trained men facing untrained ones.

To spare his fleet a cape where storms had wrecked an earlier Persian armada, Xerxes had a canal cut near which mountain?

Mount Athos: Xerxes's men spent about three years digging through the neck of its peninsula, though Herodotus thought it was done for show, since the ships could have been dragged across.

The Burt Lancaster film Go Tell the Spartans borrowed the Thermopylae epitaph for a story about which war?

The Vietnam War: its American advisers find the line over a graveyard of French soldiers killed at the same outpost a decade earlier, a hint of what awaits them.

After the battle at Thermopylae, what did Xerxes order done to the body of Leonidas?

Beheading: Herodotus took the order as proof of how much Leonidas had enraged Xerxes, since Persians usually honoured brave enemies more than any people he knew.

Which 1939 find on Kolonos Hill at Thermopylae marked it as the site of the Greeks' last stand?

Persian bronze arrowheads lay thick on the hill, matching Herodotus's account that the last defenders died under a rain of missiles, and moved the site from a smaller mound nearer the wall.

Herodotus puts the Persian dead at Thermopylae at about how many?

20,000 is his figure, and he adds that Xerxes had all but about 1,000 of the bodies buried in covered trenches before letting his sailors tour the field, a trick that fooled no one.

After Leonidas's bones came home from Thermopylae, Sparta honoured him yearly with what?

Funeral games: the travel writer Pausanias says the bones came home 40 years after the battle, and the yearly contest, open only to Spartans, was still held in his day, six centuries on.

The famous epitaph on the Spartan burial mound at Thermopylae is usually attributed to which poet?

Simonides is the usual attribution, though Herodotus, who quotes the lines, credits him only with a different epitaph there, for his friend the seer Megistias.

Whom does the Spartan epitaph at Thermopylae address?

A passing stranger is asked to carry word to Sparta that the dead lie there, obedient to her orders.

Which queen worked out that Sparta's warning of Xerxes's invasion was hidden under the wax of a writing tablet?

Gorgo, wife of Leonidas, told the puzzled Spartans to scrape off the wax, Herodotus says; the exiled king Demaratus had written his warning on the bare wood beneath to get it past Persian guards.

The 700 Thespians who died at Thermopylae came from a city that honoured which god above all?

Eros was the god Thespiae honoured most, Pausanias says, at first as a rough unworked stone; after the battle the Persians burned the emptied city for refusing to submit.

Asked by his wife what to do if he did not return from Thermopylae, Leonidas told her what?

Marry a good man and bear good children, Plutarch has him answer, a reply that took it for granted he would not be coming home.

Before the fighting at Thermopylae, a Persian scout reported the Spartans doing what, to Xerxes's amusement?

Combing their long hair was, the exiled Spartan king Demaratus told Xerxes, what Spartans did before risking their lives; Xerxes refused to believe so few meant to fight.

After Thermopylae, deserters told Xerxes the other Greeks were at the Olympics competing for what prize?

An olive wreath was all a victor won, and Herodotus has a Persian noble cry out in alarm at being led against men who competed for honour and not for money.

Which invader of Persia was held up at a mountain pass, in a reversal of Thermopylae?

Alexander the Great was checked at the Persian Gate by the satrap Ariobarzanes until captives or a shepherd, accounts differ, led him along a path to the defenders' rear.

Who directed 300, the hit film in which Gerard Butler played Leonidas?

Zack Snyder shot it almost entirely against a blue screen, adding the landscapes and weather later, and built his storyboards from cut-out frames of the comic.

The film 300 was based on a 1998 comic series by whom?

Frank Miller traced the comic to a childhood trip to the cinema to see The 300 Spartans, a Hollywood epic about the battle.

Which 1998 novel by Steven Pressfield retells the Battle of Thermopylae?

Gates of Fire began, Pressfield says, when Herodotus's line on Dienekes, the bravest Spartan, leapt out at him; he feared nobody would care about the battle, yet the book made US military reading lists.

The two Spartans who missed the last stand at Thermopylae came home to what?

Disgrace: no Spartan would speak to Aristodemus or give him fire, and he was called 'the coward', while Pantites is said to have taken his own life.

Xerxes' father, who launched the first Persian invasion, was which king?

Darius I died while raising a second, larger army for Greece, so the invasion he had planned for years fell to his son.