300 And The Battle Of Thermopylae

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I will analyze the movie 300 in comparison to the historical events at the Battle of Thermopylae. 300 is a collection of historical accounts and a creative narrative of the writer and director Frank Miller. The movie begins with the birth of a child that is being thoroughly inspected to ensure it is the correct size and the child is not deformities. If the child was found to be faulty, the child would be discarded and thrown off a cliff. This is a true fact, since Sparta was a military state and its emphases on the military began at birth. After birth a mother would bath the child in wine to see whether the child was strong. If the child had any visual deformities it would be cast off a cliff on Mount Taygetos. While Spartan males began military training at the age of seven, in the movie a young boy is seen hunting a wolf as a right of passage. This would be true in ancient Sparta with one major exception, instead of a wolf a male would be required to hunt a human slave because …show more content…

The movie does not mention that the Spartans had formed an alliance with other Greeks from other cities. The actual number of the Spartan was closer to seven thousand; many of these soldiers were slaves forced against their will to fight the Persians. Zack Snyder also presents the Spartans fighting partially clothed, wearing leather under garments and cape, this was inspired by Superman’s costume. According to Snyder, he based the movie on Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s 1998 comic series with the same name, rather than history. The typical Spartan warrior war equipment weighed several kilograms and was made of iron. The theory behind the Spartan warriors wearing red over their military uniforms, according to legendary Spartan legislator, Lycurgus, is the color red has a negative effect on their opponents, and if the Spartan warriors are wounded, it will the Spartan warrior blood. IS THIS A

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