Notoriuswun wrote:
I watched a 3 hour doc on this on Discovery yesterday...several prominent PhD's actually presented pretty clear evidence that if not for the Battle of Thermo, there is a good chance there would be no democracy today. There are many reasons for this...first and foremost is the decline of the city state, and the rise of the nation state in Greece after said events. Democracy was also borne in Ancient Greece (ie Plato, Aristotle, etc), and would have probably been wiped out like Nazism had the Persians beat them.
The battle of Thermopylae was an important part of the saving of democratic ideals. Sadly Nazism ideas still exists because of the written word.
Also, most put the Persian deaths more around (minimally) 500,000 - 1,000,000.
I doubt that this number of deaths occurred. The largest defeats in ancient military history (such as the Roman battles Cannae, Arausio etc) only got up into the 80-90,000 death range. The Gallic battles with Marius and Caesar and such may have extended into the 100-125,000 range). I really doubt the death rate is as high as 500,000. Death rates on the scale of 500,000 weren't seen in actual battle form until World War I.
Also, during the last 2-3 days, most of the army left in small increments. The army was outflanked, and so they knew they would eventually be defeated. After most of the fighting force was gone, the 300 stayed with about 1,000 other soldiers and killed many Persians for a day or two before being killed.
Yep, the Greeks knew they couldn't holdout forever, so Leonidas sent as many troops away to fight another day while the Spartans and the Thespians laid another whooping on the Persians. It was actually a Greek sheperd who betrayed the Spartans and showed the Persians the mountain pass that allowed them to flank the Spartans.