Leonidas I

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Leonidas (Greek: Λεωνίδας - "Son of Leon","Lion's son", "Lion-like") was a king of Sparta, the 17th of the Agiad line. He was one of the sons of King Anaxandridas II of Sparta, descendant of Heracles. He succeeded, probably in 489 or 488 BC, his half-brother Cleomenes I, whose daughter Gorgo he married.

In 480 the ephors sent Leonidas with the 300 men of an all-sire unit (soldiers who had sons to carry on their bloodline) and 6700 allies to hold the pass of Thermopylae against the army of Xerxes of Persia. (see Battle of Thermopylae). According to a contemporary story, Leonidas took only a small force because he was deliberately going to his doom: an oracle had foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its kings. Instead it seems likely that the ephors supported the plan half-heartedly due to the festival of Carneia and their policy of concentrating the Greek forces at the Isthmus of Corinth.

Several anecdotes demonstrate the laconic matter-of-fact bravery that Leonidas and the Spartans were famed for even in the ancient world. On the first day of the siege, when Xerxes demanded the Greeks surrender their arms, Leonidas is said to have replied Μολών Λαβέ ("Come and get them"). And on the third day, the king is reputed to have exhorted his men to eat a hearty breakfast, because that night they would dine in Hades.

Leonidas' men repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians for the first two days, but when the Malian Ephialtes led the Persian general Hydarnes by a mountain track to the rear of the Greeks, Leonidas divided his army. He himself remained in the pass with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans. His intent was to delay the Persians, sacrificing himself and his men.

The little Greek army, attacked from both sides, was cut down to a man except for the Thebans, who surrendered and two of the spartans. Another theory is that Leonidas sent the remainder of the army home in an effort to preserve troops for the main battles of the war. The soldiers who stayed behind were to cover their escape so the Persian cavalry would not overrun the rear of the escaping troops.

Leonidas fell in the thickest of the fight; the Spartans attempted to retrieve his body, but given the numbers they faced, the king's body was taken by the Persians. Herodotus says that Leonidas' head was cut off by Xerxes' order and his body crucified. This was considered sacrilege towards Leonidas, and unusual action on Xerxes' part. It was said that the Persian king was furious that Leonidas and his three hundred had killed so many of Xerxes' soldiers, including two of his own relatives. Immediately after he ordered the desecration of Leonidas' body, however, Xerxes felt remorse and, forty years later, Leonidas' corpse was returned to the Spartans.

He was buried with full honours, including a very un-Spartan display of wailing and mourning (Spartans normally accepted death in battle as a matter of course and disapproved of outward grieving, but the oracle at Delphi had ordered this along with the sacrifice of a Spartan king to preserve Sparta). A carved lion monument bearing the inscription below was dedicated at his death site commemorating the sacrifice of him and his men:

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,

That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. — epitaph at Thermopylae (Simonides's epigram)

Our knowledge of the circumstances are too slight to enable us to judge Leonidas' strategy, but his heroism and devotion secured him an almost unique place in the imagination not only of his own time but also of succeeding times.

On a sidenote two of the spartans who were present at Thermopylae survived the conflict on the third day. One who suffered an eye injury was sent behind the lines and was taken back to Sparta with the retreating allies. He later killed himself for being considered a coward by his people. The other regained his "honour" by charging the persians at Plateau 479B.C., dying like a true hero.

[edit] Popular culture

The life of Leonidas is described by author and artist Frank Miller's 1998 graphic novel 300. Miller had previously used the Battle of Thermopylae as a strategic inspiration for his character Dwight McCarthy in Sin City: The Big Fat Kill. Miller has mentioned that the film The 300 Spartans made a big impression on him as a child.

The movie version of Frank Miller's 300 casts Gerard Butler as Leonidas.

In the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans", Leonidas was protrayed by actor Richard Egan. This was the film which inspired Frank Miller's graphic novel 300.

The story has also been written into a novel by Steven Pressfield called Gates of Fire, and used as part of the novel Atlantis: Gate by author Greg Donegan, pen name for Bob Mayer.

The Battle of Thermopylae is referenced in the 2003 film The Last Samurai. Nathan Algren, an American, relates the story of his Leonidas's fall to the title character, Katsumoto, who takes inspiration from it, and also likes the story of Custer's last stand.

In the HBO Original Series Rome, Caesar encourages Marc Antony by likening their actions to that of Leonidas at Thermopylae.

Like other Greek names, "Leonidas" passed into Russian as well as Ukrainian (shortened to "Leonid"), and remains a fairly common male name among the speakers of these languages. Among the prominent persons of that name could be mentioned Soviet leader Leonid Breznev as well as Leonid Kuchma, president of the post-Soviet Ukraine, and Wikipedia has pages for quite a few other Leonids as well.

The Halo universe makes several references to Leonidas and the Battle of Thermopylae. The SPARTAN children are taught about the Battle of Thermopylae at Reach, and two tracks on the Halo 2 Original Soundtrack, Volume 2 are called 'Leonidas' and 'Thermopylae Soon'. The latter track is the one played at the end of the game, signifying a Thermopylaesque battle in Halo 3.

In the video game Spartan: Total Warrior, the King of Sparta is named Leonidas, who was also killed in battle fighting against overwhelming odds (the Roman Empire in place of the Persian Empire under Xerxes I).

In the comic (and movie), as a 10 year old, a cold and starving Leonidas fights an equally hungry wolf and kills it by first luring it into a trap (the wolf pounces and gets stuck between two rocks) and then thrusting a sharpened stick through its mouth and out the back of its neck.