300 Rise of an Empire Review

Sparta was not governed by a single king but was a strange case of a two- headed monarchy in which Leonidas was in charge of the military and where some ephors (chosen by the gerousia of thirty elders) controlled the sovereigns. The ephors of 300 are shown as a group of inbred and corrupted carcamals, who allow themselves to be bribed by the Persian ambassador to manipulate the prophecies of the Pythia and prohibit the call to arms with the excuse of the celebration of the Carneas , a festival of purification during which everything was paralyzed and that had already prevented the Spartan troops from reaching the battle of Marathon on time.

It was a state where free citizens hardly worked because for that they had a pseudo-slave population, the helots , and where women enjoyed a little more power compared to the rest of Greece because, as Plutarch puts it in the mouth of Queen Gorgo “we are the only ones who give birth to real men” . She would say it in general terms, not in reference to eugenicsthat was allegedly practiced, consisting of abandoning sick, deformed or retarded babies on Mount Taygetus (I say allegedly because there are historians who consider it more legend than real, based on the fact that prisoners were also executed in that place). But the fact is that the tremendous Spartan wives required their husbands, when they went to war, to return with their shield or on it; losing the shield meant endangering the entire phalanx and thus falling into dishonor.

This leads us to a couple more considerations in this regard. In 300 , the traitor Ephialtes is one of those unfortunate children who managed to survive Taygetus. His appearance is baroquely monstrous, thus unable to protect his companions in formation, hence he is rejected a second time and, resentful, goes over to the enemy, leading him down a mountain path. It is not mentioned that the Persian fleet could not surround Thermopylae because it was prevented by the Athenian ships, which, under the command of Themistocles, continued the line of defense by water and that they would be defeated shortly after, at Salamis. That's told in 300: Rise of an Empire , the inevitable film sequel, lacking the grace of the first.

Returning to this, the Spartan hoplites are represented naked, without the classic thorax -type breastplate (bronze), although they do wear the iconographic Corinthian helmet and the red chlamys . To fight without protection was to risk being wounded or killed at first, unthinkable in a phalanx whose strength lay precisely in cohesion, although some Celtic warriors did so as a demonstration of personal courage. But in battle the hoplites took off their cloak, which was a hindrance. And since uniforms did not exist, there would be a variety of helmets and decorations on the shields; in the film you only see the lambda of Lacedaemon, which together with the above is once again a stylistic resource to give an image of unity.

The Persian army is, on the contrary, colorful, picturesque and dehumanized, as happened with the Indians in old westerns . Apart from the different bodies, the animals (the cavalry then was almost testimonial), the archers (a type of combat that the Greeks despised) and the strange beings that add an even more fantastic touch, the Immortals (an elite body whose name comes from that it was always composed of the same number of troops, ten thousand, since when one fell another took his place) are the most curiously represented, with a kind of tight black ninja jumpsuit and a Japanese mask; nothing to do with reality and its aesthetic is due to Miller's admiration for Japanese culture.

As for the characters, Leonidas appears in all his abdominal splendor but in reality, although he considered himself a descendant of Hercules, he was over sixty years old (otherwise he could not have been part of the gerousia). His wife, Gorgo , was his niece and she was a unique case in Hellenic history: king's daughter (Cleomenes), king's wife (Leonidas) and king's mother (Plistarchus). She herself assumed the regency while her son was a minor, confirming the cunning that she had already shown on previous occasions and it is said that she collaborated enthusiastically with Herodotus in the stories he wrote.

Finally, Xerxes The critics point out that he looks more like a drag queen , young (he was barely in his thirties), shaven, full of piercings , half-naked and perched on a strange carriage. The real one would not even remotely resemble it, since it is supposed to follow the fashion of that time, with curly hair and a long beard, but it must be recognized that here it is perfectly integrated into the story and manages to create an aura of exoticism and mystery; I wouldn't be surprised to see him ordering those bizarre lashes at the sea for destroying the bridge of boats built to transport his army over the Hellespont.

Herodotus was responsible for his bad image, forged with many prejudices; No one could maintain power for a long time in that vast empire if they did not credit merits for it. Xerxes was the son of Darius , who had already suffered a monumental setback at Marathon in his own attempt to conquer Greece. On this occasion, although the scion managed to break the Greek resistance, in the end he would be defeated; by armies, yes, but above all by legend .