A Critique of the Film 300

What is wrong with this picture: A scene from the
 film depicting Leonidas fighting the first wave of Persian infantry. 

There are many things historically that are wrong with the film 300. Because the focus of this blog is to critique the dress of the soldiers, I shall only briefly touch on the other historical innaccuracies. To begin, the Athenians, not the Spartans began the Persian Wars and fought a battle which they won about ten years prior to Thermopylae, which is known as the Battle of Marathon. The movie portrays the Spartans as these American Revolutionary-types who constantly talk about freedom, however the Spartans kept an entire tribe known as the Helots as slaves. Every Spartan boy, before he could be considered a man had to kill a Helot without being caught, and only after this could he be a man. The film replaces the Helot with a wolf, perhaps as an allusion to the old Mycenaean tradition of killing an animal bigger than oneself as we see indicated in the scar which Odysseus bears which comes from a boar which he had to kill as a youth. The Spartans talk about “Greeks” frequently, and that notion was completely unheard of in Greece. In fact, some of the Polises sided with the Persians because the Greeks were so divided. Themistocles, an Athenian, was the first one to talk about the Greeks as a whole working together. Finally, the oracle was at Delphi, and it was not some giant rock face which Spartan kings had to climb. Dephi was a nice city with places to relax and  wait for a few days, if not weeks, while the message from Apollo came through. These just scratch the surface of the errors which the movie holds, however I shall now continue on to the main critique, that of the dress of the soldiers starting first with the Spartans and then moving on to the Persians.

We see the Spartan wearing the bell cuirass and the Corinthian helmet. 

A painting from Greek pottery depicting the events. Note the
Persian sword and bow. 

The “Spartan Crimson” which is referenced in the film is accurate. Xenophon talks of Lychurgus, the founder of Sparta as we know it, prescribing this to be worn (Constitution of the Lacedemonians, 11.3). That said, Spartans did not go into battle wearing leather loin cloths, capes, and computer-enhanced abs. They  would have worn a red tunic called a Chiton, which would have been made out of heavy wool in the archaic period when these events took place (Sekunda, 20). While the tunics would have been similar, they would not have been exactly the same, as we see in the film. Mass production had not yet been invented, so as a result not everyone would have worn exactly the same thing. Along with the Chiton, they would have worn a cloak. The Himation cloak was the favored style of cloak at the time of Thermopylae. It was rectangular and was worn wrapped around the body. The film shows the Spartans wearing a cloak which more closely resembles the Clamys style of cloak which was not as widely used until the Classical period (Sekunda, 21). The cloaks would have been thin for the warriors at thermopylae because as adults, they would have worn thin cloaks to show their toughness (Sekunda, 22). The Spartans went barefoot in the summer and wore boots in the winter time. The film portrays the Spartans wearing sandals. This is innacurate because the battle took place in August. Xenophon tells us that men beyond their youth would be allowed to wear their hair long to make themselves look taller and more menacing (Constitution of the Lacedemonians, 11.3). It is likely that those who fought at Thermopylae would have worn long hair, including Leonidas himself, who resembles Pericles more than a Spartan. The Spartans preferred their hair long to show that they were freemen and not slaves (Sekunda, 24). Spartans wore beards like most Greeks, however they shaved their upper lips, one thing which the movie does not show at all. None of the warriors with beards who go with Leonidas (nevermind Leonidas himself) have shaved their upper lips. For weapons, the Spartan would have carried the basic weapons of a hoplite: a spear and a shield. The shape of the Spartan spears in the film is wrong. The spears have a very triangular shape with a spine in the middle. The Spartan spear would actually have been made of iron and leaf-shaped. It also would have had a bronze butt-spike to keep the rot out of it. The shield was the most important part of the hoplite panoply (The word for shield, ‘hoplon’, is where the word ‘hoplite’comes from). According to Plutarch, Spartan mothers would tell their sons “ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς” which means “Return with your shield or on it” (literally ‘with it, or on it’), as opposed to Leonidas’ wife telling him that before he goes off to battle. The hoplon was made by gluing pieces of wood together and then covering the wood with a sheet of bronze. It was held in place by two grips, both of bronze. One went around the forearm and the other was held by hand. The film shows the shields having a lambda on the shield in bronze, however the lambda was painted on the shield, most likely in red (Sekunda, 28). The Spartans did in fact wear a cuirass (breastplate). They did not go into battle with only their abs to protect their torso.  The cuirass they wore is known as a bell cuirass. It gets this name from the bell-shape which it bears. It had some imitation musculature, but not as much as was seen on the muscle cuirass. Spartan helmets did also were different than those in the film. The Spartans wore Corinthian helmets, as did most of the Greeks at the time. The film shows the Corinthian helmets worn by the Spartans to be very angular and sharp, however they were not like that. The Corinthian helmet had had oval-shaped eye-holes and a more round nose guard than those depicted in the movie. They were made of bronze and would have had a crest on it (Sekunda, 36 E). The Spartan swords were short so as to make them more accessible in the phalanx. They were not curved like the swords depicted in the movie which are from later times; rather they were straight and almost resembled modern military knives (Sekunda, 31).

The Persian Standard.

The movie shows the most inaccuracy in regard to the Persians. In terms of general errors, they have many units which probably would not have existed and if they did exist, they would not have brought them to Greece. The bomb throwers seem to be more of a Hellenistic-type unit, as do the elephant riders and the Rhinoceros riders. Overall, the proportions of the creatures and the status of the army is generally overestimated. Historically the Greeks knew that the Persians were limited. The Persians were not able to defeat the Scythians. Out of frustration, the Persians sent a letter to the Scythians telling them to come out and fight and to stop running away all the time (Herodotus, 4). The Persians were a horse culture so it is likely that their primary cavalry would have been horses. For dress critique, I shall begin with the Immortals. The immortals were a division of 10,000 men. They were not called the immortals because of their fighting capabilities as the film suggests, but rather they were called that because they always kept up their unit’s size (Herodotus, 7.83.1). The film makes the Immortals out to be some hard-bitten warrior class who are brutal in everything. We see this especially in the skull standards they carry into battle. The standards of the Persian army were simple. They were a staff with a cross piece and from the cross piece, there would hang a banner which bore the Persian symbol on it. Unlike in the film where the Immortals look like Ninjas with Hannibal Lector masks, the immortals rather would have worn Persian-style dress. They would have carried spears and bows, based upon a relief at Persepolis. The colors of their clothing would be tans and whites, colors which would blend in with the regions in and around what is now Iran and Iraq. They also would have worn purple, a color which was very hard to come by at that time. The Persian king hoarded purple cloth and distributed it to show his great wealth, so it is likely that some soldiers would have gotten this as well. (Sekunda, the Persian Army, 32). The immortals wore robes, as opposed to the black ninja costumes portrayed in the film (particularly strange considering that the Persian Empire only extended as far as western India), however most soldiers wore trousers. Xerxes, and many of the higher-up Persians tend to look less and less accurate. Xerxes, for example, looks Middle Eastern, however he does not look like an ancient Persian. Relief carvings of Xerxes show him having a long, curly beard and wearing long robes. He looks like a Persian king should, unlike in the film. The Persian swords that were carried were of a Bronze Age design. They resemble swords from Mesopotamia rather than the Persian weapons. Persian swords looked much more like Middle Eastern swords of today. The most common weapons, however, were spears and bows. Overall, this movie is very stylized and takes liberties with the story of what actually happened. They change it to make all the characters appear as gods, and stretch things to make it more epic. Personally, I enjoyed the movie as a whole, however only because of its epicness, not because it portrayed Thermopylae well. 
For Further Reading:
Herodotus, and Sélincourt Aubrey De. Herodotus: The Histories;. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1954. Print.
Sekunda, Nick, and Richard Hook. The Spartan Army. Oxford: Osprey Pub., 2004. Print.
Sekunda, Nick. The Persian Army 560-330BC. London: Osprey, 1992. Print.