Artistic License History / 300

aka: Three Hundred Rise Of An Empire

Phalanx? What phalanx?

300 and 300: Rise of an Empire are obviously not meant to reflect true history. In fact, historical records of the event are already believed to be rather sensationalized and greatly embellished. Zack Snyder and Frank Miller also drew inspiration from ancient artwork, which, much like Hollywood, glamorizes battles of the past. Audiences have loved muscle-bound, half-naked supermen kicking the snot out of each other for a while, after all.

The embellishment is also heavily implied to be part of the Greek propaganda even during the first film, since Dilios verges on Unreliable Narrator.

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Culture

• Firstly of all, the Spartans were far from a rural, freedom-loving society they are portrayed as, and they definitely weren't against "mysticism and tyranny". In reality, they were a deeply religious, militaristic, desigual society where a minority lived by continually and ruthlessly repressing the majority of the population. The latter, called helots, were slaves who worked the land to produce the food so that the former could spend all their time fighting wars and oppressing them. Spartans were also allowed to kill helots without religious or legal repercussions (in most ancient societies, killing a slave was still considered murder, at least on paper), and ritually declared war on all helots each year, in which Spartans went out to murder any helot they thought were being too strong or independent. Helot killing was also part of the coming of age ritual at the end of the agoge training (that wolf Leonidas kills? that would have been an unarmed, untrained helot). At the end of the day, the Spartans fought the Persian empire not out of any altruistic or progressive political goal, but basically because they were in Xerxes's path just like the rest of the Greek states. Frank Miller himself acknowledged he omitted the nastiest aspects of Sparta in order to make it easier for the reader to root for them.
• 300 played a huge part in re-popularizing the memetic badassery of the ancient Spartan army, which was praised and echoed in ancient sources through centuries — only that a lot of what is known of their culture might be perfectly apocryphal and/or propagandistic in nature. Almost no first hand accounts from the period have survived, among other things because Spartans did not write their own history prior the Hellenistic period, and most of what we know of them comes entirely through the writing of other Greeks, especially those who were enamoured with Sparta's military success and wanted to paint them as an near-perfect warrior state (as well as the Spartan themselves towards their later days, when they were a shadow of its former selves, as they would have been keenly interested in playing up their reputation to draw people to visit and study there). Elements like a professional army and a strong military education were almost certainly true, as those two were enough to give Sparta a huge edge over most Greek armies of the time, but the most uncanny customs, like the ruthlessness of their eugenics program and the hardness of their Training from Hell, should be taken with an equally huge grain of salt.
• Leaving aside the debate about whether Xerxes was a tyrant, the films' contrast between the "freedom-loving" Greece and the "proslavery" Persia is an unrealistic coup of Black-and-White Morality. In reality, both countries supported and allowed for slavery in one form or another, just like every other nation in the world at the time, so the propagation of slavery per se was not among the Greeks' worries. Those who fought against the empire had the worry that they would be enslaved if they lost, but this again was common practice in Greece, Persia and just everywhere else. It was probably the undemocratic feudal nature of the Persian state, the high concentration of power in the monarch, and the description of his subjects as bandaka ("bonded") which gave the Greeks the impression that all Persian subjects were both nominally and substantially slaves of the king.^note Thus bandaka was translated doulos, "slave." The claims of some Greek writers that imperial troops were driven to battle by officers cracking whips probably only worsened the Greeks's already paranoid views on their empire.
• The Achaemenid Empire was not any less religiously tolerant than any other nation at the time and none of its kings ever demanded to be worshipped as a god. This characterization of Xerxes is entirely inaccurate, as such a belief would be blasphemous in Zoroastrianism, his personal religion. Achaemenid kings were known to present themselves as gods in Egypt, where that was the correct thing to do, or as pious devotees of other peoples' gods, as in the Cyrus Cylinder of Babylon—essentially, whatever was best for PR—but among themselves the King and the ethnic Persians venerated Ahura Mazda and the other subjects whatever divinity(es) they liked. This was another reason why Hebrews quite liked the Persian Empire, which liberated them from the clutches of the Babylonians in the process of conquering Babylon itself.
• Dilios and the Spartan soldiers show an utter disdain for the Ephors and the supernatural in general. However, by ancient Greek standards, Spartans were exceptionally religious and would have never dared to mock Hellenic priests or festivals, which is why they observed Carnea to a fault. Dilios's attitude towards religious traditions could have been believable in a Greek philosopher,^note by the point of the film is set, during the Pre-Socratic age of philosophy, almost every major philosopher had already left conventional theism behind but not a soldier, and much less a Spartan.
• The real Ephors weren't priests or any kind of oracular staff as portrayed in the film, but a council of secular Senators who ran the Spartan government. They were also citizens elected by popular assembly, not an endogamic caste as Dilios labels them. This is particularly odd since the Sparta from film also showcases a secular, more normal-looking citizen council which would have been a good portrayal of the Ephors from real life. The closest the Spartans had to the Ephors in the movie were the Pythians, officials who had the duty of acting as emissaries to the Delphi Oracle... and these were appointed by the kings.
• Sparta was run by two hereditary kings who held equal power and were in turn judged by the Ephors. There were two royal families descended by the twin brothers Evrysthenes and Proklis, who were the leaders of the Dorians, a Greek tribe, who had invaded Sparta some 600 years before the Graeco-Persian Wars. Going to just one of them is pointless, and even if he did accede, he'd probably be branded a traitor and thrown out of the city immediately.
• In the scene after Leonidas was born, the film shows an elder examining him on a clifftop while the narrator states that he would have been discarded if he was "small, or puny, or sickly", and then pans to the bottom and shows a number of baby bones. While Ancient Sparta did commit eugenic infanticide, or at least it was claimed so, they reportedly tested the baby by bathing him in wine and exposing him to the elements on a mountain, and babies that failed the test would be left to die there rather than being thrown off a cliff. Some children didn't even die, and instead were adopted by and raised as helots.
• The film shows Leonidas having his agoge hunting alone in the mountains as a young boy. In real life, boys in the Spartan training regime weren't sent alone to hunting trips, but in small groups, as they were expected to care for each other and learn how to function as an organized team just like they would do on the battlefield. They weren't sent into the wilderness either. They were sent out to villages to rob and murder helots without getting caught, and if they were caught, they'd be punished.
• The fact that a Spartan used "boy-lover" as an insult against an Athenian (as in the first film) or vice versa (as in the second) would be ironic at least, as both cities were solidly into the Greek concept of boy love. The main difference is that Spartans apparently saw it in a more spiritual light (according to Xenophon, they believed that relationships between men and boys should be based on love and friendship, not only on physical attraction or political interest) while Athenians considered it an educational and political tool (they enforced the erastes and eromenos, a homoerotic form of Student–Master Team). However, sources like Plutarch and Aelian state young male lovers were legal in Sparta regardless of the city's opinion about it, and it is even believed that Sparta was actually one of the first cities to formalize this, so it is kind of a moot point.
• The second film features a fistfight in midst of the Athenian assembly, something that would have been disgraceful to both parties in real life and not casually dismissed as in the film.
• Spartan culture forbade citizens from working at all (including weaving and cooking), and all such work was done by slave labour. We never see any of those helots in the movie. We rather see them around camp fires with the implication they are doing it themselves.

Military

• The film's treatment of Greek military tactics is inconsistent at best and fantastical most of the time. The portrayed Spartans occasionally do execute their historical phalanx formation, most notably at the first moments of the battle, when pushing the Persians off the cliff, or when extracting the maddened Artemis from the battlefield. However, barring these instances, they usually break formation completely and engage their opponents in stylized individual duels with yards of space between each other. In real life, phalangic teamwork was not only the Greeks' main strength at Thermopylae (aside from the natural terrain), but also one of the lead factors of their victory in the Greco-Persian Wars. Had they chosen to fight the way it is choreographed, the Battle of Thermopylae would have lasted a single day and guess who would have won.
• Gerard Butler, Sullivan Stapleton and company fight in leather underwear, while the historical Greek hoplites didn't step on the battlefield without some kilograms of body armor. This is actually Adaptational Modesty from the comic book, where the Spartans occasionally fight completely naked except for their cape and helmet. Miller took this from Greco-Roman art, where gods and heroes were often depicted nude to symbolize their inherent power, beauty and badassery. Greek art occasionally shows hoplites fighting naked or even in only armor (which would chafe mightily), but this was probably artistic license even at the time, and otherwise they are shown in tunics.
• All the Spartan helmets sported plumes in real life, not only Leonidas's. This was another deliberate stylistic choice done by Miller in the graphic novel, as he wanted them to be easily distinguishable from each other (which is also why he had them losing their helmets very often).
• While the historical Spartan soldiers did have their reasons to be derisive towards the rest of the Greek armies (most of them were neither professional nor as disciplined as theirs), the films give the impression that they were the only Greek nation skilled at frontal war: out of the rest, the Arcadians are lightly-armed skirmishers only good for ambushes, while the Athenian soldiers are tough but decidedly inferior to their Spartan homologues. Actually, most Hellenic nations were capable of forming competent phalanges, and some of them, like Thebes and Macedon, were or became better at it than Sparta. In fact, Leonidas was happy to trust the front lines to their many allies at Thermopylae in a rotating movement, as by doing so they avoided attrition and he allowed for some rest for his own troops.
• The Spartans are shown fighting with a falcata-like sword probably meant to be the historical Greek kopis. In real life, Greek soldiers more often used a small, straight sword called xiphos, which was more useful behind a shield wall than a curved saber, and Spartans were notable for using xiphoi smaller than other Greeks for increased practicality.
• The dory spear, the primary weapon of Greek hoplites, was NOT thrown. Despite Leonidas and his men shown throwing theirs with ease, these spears were too heavy and long to be thrown comfortably and with the hope of actually hitting the target. They did use regular javelins, but those were shorter and lighter.
• Greeks did have a kind of double-headed battle axe, the labrys, as it is shown at the Battle of Marathon in the second film. However, it seems that its usage was mostly ceremonial and limited to the Minoan territory; it had no place in the type of warfare waged in continental Greece.
• The aspis shield was not a single piece of bronze as portrayed in the film. It was composed of a wooden base with only a thin bronze, fabric or hide facing.
• Athenian shields are portrayed as having a very plain metal finish in contrast to the lambda-decorated Spartan ones, and also come equipped with a metal boss that makes them look remarkably like Celtiberian roundshields. In real life, Athenians used the same kind of shield and were way more artistic in their decorations than Spartans: they often painted Athena's little owl or Medusa's head on them in order to symbolize their city and scare enemies away. Actually, only the Spartans' shields were identical because they were given to the new soldiers by the state, when they completed their Agoge, while in every other Greek city the citizens ordered and purchased their shields by themselves. The shape and size were standard and the same for any shield, but the decorations varied.
• Persian marines in the second film's flashbacks of Marathon can be seen wielding khopeshes, a kind of Egyptian saber that fell out of use around 1300 BC.
• The films follow pop culture by portraying the Greek ships as smaller and more maneuverable than their Persian equivalents, which exactly the opposite of the real situation: the Greeks ships were big, cumbersome and manned by less experienced sailors, so they typically put their trust more in their ship-borne hoplite marines to board and capture the enemy ships than in any inherent sailing advantage.
• While Persia did use war elephants (though not war rhinos), these were never deployed at Thermopylae, among other things because the narrow terrains would have screwed them the exact way it is shown in 300 shortly after their arrival.
• The Immortals weren't disfigured masked men who dressed in black and fought with dual sabers. According to historians, they were just better-armored versions of the regular sparabara infantry, that is, dudes wielding wicker shields and spears (among other many weapons) and clad in the Persian empire's clear colors. Sources don't mention any mask, although the long earflaps of their felt tiaras could be wrapped around the lower face. (This point is less blatant in the graphic novel, where the Immortals at least wield shields and spears.)
• The Persian army has what seem to be Chinese gunpowder grenadiers, but the Achaemenid Empire didn't extend anywhere near China and gunpowder wasn't invented for more than a thousand years hence.
• The film shows tribal warriors from the Darkest Africa between the Persian forces. There is a mention by Herodotus that Xerxes' army brought black warriors from Ethiopia, but if this was the case, those would have been equipped with Egyptian armors and weapons, if not even Persian ones (in fact, there is piece of artwork, popularly called the "Negro Alabastrons", which shows what appears to be a black man in Persian warrior garments).
• The Athenians running into Marathon in a berserker-style open field charge is just as jarring as the Spartans dueling freely in the Thermopylae. In real life, they did charge in a move previously-unseen for a slow-moving phalanx, but it was a tight, controlled march in formation, likely designed to avoid being picked apart by the Persian archers, and not a wild individual race. Thanks to it, the heavy Athenian hoplites overpowered the light Persian infantry and provided no room for the Persian cavalry to maneuver on the crowded beach. Had the actual battle been fought like the one in the movie, the Athenian forces would have likely been swarmed and obliterated by the defenders. (It's somewhat justified by the narration saying that Themistocles has the Greeks charge while the Persians are still unloading their troops, leaving them without their horses and without a lot of their troops being able to get off. But historically, the Athenians and Plataeans charged at Marathon after an approximately five-day standoff, and one theory about why they charged when did is that the cavalry were actually re-embarking to go attack Athens, which left the Persian infantry vulnerable.)
• The word "hoplite" is only used at one point in the second film, where it describes the raiders who captured Artemisia. Themistocles talks about them as if they're just a group of Psychos For Hire not really associated with the Greek states. In reality, every Greek foot soldier was an hoplite. As in, it was one of the city states that were responsible for the raiding, not the hoplites themselves.
• In the film version of the Battle of Artemisium, the Athenian fleet executes an interesting-looking wheel formation to cut with their agile prows any frontal enemy advance. Considering that Greeks ships were actually the least experienced and maneuverable ones in real life, this tactic would have probably been suicidally complex for them to attempt, and would have only got them tangled and turned into easy targets for the expert Persian navy (which was crewed by more maritime peoples like the Phoenicians). Herodotus describes the Greek formation as a side-to-side crescent or circle, not a wheel, and they apparently broke it quickly in order to charge. The Greek defense was not as wickedly efficient as shown in the film, either; even although they did repel the Persians for the duration of the battle, the Greeks got technically the shorter end of the stick because the losses were happening in even numbers despite the vastly different sizes of their armies (the Persian navy was so numerically superior that it could afford much more losses than the small Greek fleet).

Characters

• Leonidas was around 60 when he died in Thermopylae, almost twice Gerard Butler's 37 at the time of the shooting.
• Gorgo's role is amped up in both films, particularly in the second, where she personally leads the Spartan fleet. Historical examples of Greek women assisting in wars do exist, like Hydna, who helped to sabotage the Persian fleet before Artemisium, but most Greeks didn't like females getting directly involved with warfare (not even the Spartans themselves, who trained their women to be able to manage their country with the only goal that every male available could be deployed for war), and this attitude would remain even after the Hellenistic age brought more than a handful of battling queens. In this case, they even offered a prize of 10,000 drachmas for Artemisia's capture only because she was a woman general.
• While Themistocles was really the mastermind of the war effort against Xerxes as portrayed in the second film, he was not in charge of the Greek allied fleet. The commander in charge was actually a Spartan representative, Eurybiades, who was an infamous Obstructive Bureaucrat and only followed Themistocles's orders kicking and screaming.
• Themistocles wasn't single as he tells Artemisia in the films; by the time of those events, he was already married and had several children, possibly as many as ten already. She, also, was a widow and had at least a son.
• Although the legendary tragedian Aeschylus did serve under Themistocles, he wasn't his second-in-command or anything more than a mere soldier. Him saving Themistocles's life at Artemisium is funny too, as Artemisium was the only major battle of the conflict Aeschylus didn't fight in (he was present at Marathon, Salamis and even Plataea, but not Artemisium, or at least he never mentioned it among his battle exploits).
• Scyllias was a real life person, apparently the father of the aforementioned Hydna, and his own swimming feat apparently happened as well, but his character and circumstances were a bit different. He wasn't an Athenian lieutenant in an undercover mission as portrayed in the film, but a mercenary from Scione who deserted from the Persian army and brought information about their fleet to the Greek camp. Sources did say he was a renowned diver who swam all the way from a Persian ship in Aphetae to the coast of Artemisium, which amount to ten miles, nothing less (although Herodotus believed he actually came on a stolen boat). Him having a male son named Callisto is another addition.
• As noted, the real Xerxes was a Zoroastrian, meaning that he would have considered the idea of declaring himself god-king blasphemy. Similarly, his court of magi and priests being ordered to "turn him into a god" would have been confused, if not downright offended at the request. The idea of Xerxes being a god was actually born of a misunderstanding of the process of proskynesis, which the Greeks viewed as only being acceptable for a deity. In other words, the Persians didn't treat their ruler as a god, but the Greeks thought they did.
• The historical Xerxes is depicted in ancient artwork as having a long beard and hair and wearing elaborate royal robes, as Zoroastrian tradition demanded. Making public appearances while shaven of face and head, nearly naked and wearing body piercings would have been savagely offensive, especially in a culture like that of Persia, where nudity or merely showing a lot of skin was a huge taboo.
• The real Ephialtes was neither a Spartan nor deformed, but just a greedy Malian who sold out the Greeks out of opportunism. He wasn't even a warrior, but a shepherd or a farm worker.
• Artemisia wasn't a warrior brought up from slavery, but the queen of Halicarnassus, a Greek city in western Turkey under Persian rule. Also, while she really served at Artemisium and Salamis and was in charge of a large part of the Persian fleet (the forces of Cos, Nysiros, Calyndos and her own personal ships), she was not the fleet's supreme commander, but shared command with Xerxes's younger brothers, Achaemenes and Ariabignes. The film is accurate in showing her a close advisor to Xerxes' though.
• Most of Xerxes's court was Adapted Out, including his field general Mardonius, his adviser and future murderer Artabanus, the Immortal commander Hydarnes, the vengeful exiled Spartan king Demaratus, and Xerxes's other brothers Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, who fell at Thermopylae. Their roles in 300 were all given to either Artemisia or Ephialtes. Still, those omissions are odd considering that the 1964 film The 300 Spartans, in which Frank Miller based 300, did feature Mardonius, Hydarnes and Demaratus in rather important roles.
• Likewise, historical Sparta was ruled by a complex system which has been streamlined in the movies. The movie portrays Leonidas as the single ruler of the city, while Sparta was actually co-ruled by two kings from two parallel dynasties, the Agiads (the branch Leonidas belongs to) and the Eurypontids. Leotychidas, the Eurypontid king of the period, is never mentioned. Like the Persian example above, Leotychidas is one of the characters featured in The 300 Spartans. Ironically,while neither king claimed godhood, both were given a lot of honor due to their Divine Parentage: for Leonidas, Herodotus gives the whole lineage all the way to Heracles.
• Another important character from The 300 Spartans that gets Adapted Out, again on the Greek side, is Demophilus, the leader of a contingent of 700 Thespians (more than twice Leonidas' forces) who refused to retreat and died there along with the Spartans. This point is somewhat of a filmic deviation from the 300 graphic novel, though, as a small Thespian force do appears in it guarding the mountain pass before being butchered.
• Artemisia didn't die during the Battle of Salamis. In fact, she escaped from the battle by attacking the ship of a Persian king under her command who was a personal enemy to her, which tricked the Greeks into letting her sail away in the belief she was deserting from Xerxes' army (and fortunately for Artemisia, the ally ship sunk and its entire crew drowned, leaving no one behind to tell Xerxes the truth). Ironically, this would have been perfectly in-character for her portrayal in the film.

Events

• Darius didn't invade Athens because he was "annoyed by Greek freedom" or something, but because Athens and Eretria had supported the Ionian Revolt in territories of his empire that were formerly Greek colonies, like Aeolis, Cyprus and Caria. There is a grain of truth in the claim, though, as previously to the revolt, Darius' brother Artaphernes had told the Athenians to ditch democracy and reinstate their deposed tyrant Hippias (who was exiled in Darius's court) as a condition for Persian help against Sparta, and it was only after hearing this that Athens broke negotiations and instigated the Ionian affair as a payback to Persia, which in turn led to Darius and Hippias to start their invasion as a punishment. However, it was more of a favor to Hippias than anything personal, and Persia wasn't opposed to democracy per se; after the revolt was defeated, Mardonius formally replaced the Ionian tyrants with democracies, probably surmising that there would be less trouble in the long run that way.
• Neither Darius nor Xerxes were personally present at the Battle of Marathon, where the Persian forces were commanded by Datis, and Darius certainly was not killed by Themistocles. He died well after it and in different circumstances, so Xerxes didn't invade Greece by the desire to avenge his father, but merely to follow up with his campaign.
• The incident in which the Spartans threw their Persian emissaries into a well did happen, at least according to Herodotus, but not during Xerxes's reign. It happened during his father Darius', and its outcome was hardly limited to Sparta, as Athenians did the same, although they were characteristically delicate enough to judge the messengers before tossing them to the pit (speaking of which, the Spartans realized they had gone a bit overboard, so they sent two of their people to be executed in Persia as a reparation, though Xerxes declined and sent them back). As Xerxes knew of these events, he omitted Athens and Sparta when he sent messengers to the Greek cities.
• The Battle of Thermopylae happened during the Carnea just as portrayed in the film, but the Ephors weren't secretly working for Xerxes and had the right priorities, so they allowed Leonidas to send a military expedition. It was Leonidas himself who choose to take only his 300-man hippei force and a support team of helots. They did forbid him once to do so due to the Carnea, but that was during the Battle of Marathon, not Thermopylae, and modern interpretations of primary sources indicate that in either or both cases, this may not have been the whole truth; the Spartan heartland was in the very south of mainland Greece and an army would need to pass through the much more defensible isthmus of Corinth to threaten them. After Thermopylai, it took the Athenians threatening to defect to the Persians (who, by the way, had just sacked and destroyed Athens) to get the Spartans to turn out again for Plataia.
• In the film, the strategy to defend Greece through the Thermopylae pass is Leonidas' idea, who shows it to the corrupt Ephors before meeting with any other Greek ally. In real life, it was Themistocles' idea, and it came up after all the allied Greek cities had gathered to discuss the war.
• The storm that destroys part of the Persian fleet did happen, but it took place in the coast of Magnesia, which crosses into Artistic License – Geography for being just too far to be watched from Thermopylae as in the film. Said fleet had nothing to do with the battle, either, because the Persian army that attacked the pass actually came overland◊ after crossing Macedon and Thessalia, not from the sea, which was blocked by the Greek navy at Artemisium. In fact, this deviation constitutes a Plot Hole between 300 and Rise of an Empire: the presence of Persian ships in the Malian gulf would mean Themistocles' defense in Artemisium had been bypassed, but this never happens in the films, as Themistocles only loses his blockade the same day Leonidas and his people are killed.
• The only forces depicted for Greece at the films' Thermopylae are the 300 Spartan hoplites, an Arcadian skirmisher contingent that contributes for a small part of the battle, and some Phocian forces that are referred to but never shown. In reality, the battle featured over 4,000 troops on the Greek side (according to Herodotus, which is almost surely a lower estimate). Aside from Leonidas and his 300 hippei, their army included large masses of Mycenaeans, Corinthians, Thespians and people from around Thermopylae. To be fair, several of those peoples are mentioned to have joined Leonidas and company in the graphic novel, but only the Thespians are ever shown on-page. Also note that those armies would have been accompanied by a train of slaves to carry supplies, food, and battle gear.
• Surprisingly to some, the now famous "then we will fight in the shade" line is real, though the Spartan soldier that said it was named Dienekes instead of Stelios. Also, he wasn't replying to a Persian emissary, but joking with an allied explorer from Trachis. This was Herodotus' version, at least; according to Plutarch, it was Leonidas himself who said the line when one of the soldiers became upset at the sheer number of Persian arrows.
• For what we know, Xerxes and Leonidas never had a face-to-face talk; most of Xerxes' lines from said scenes are recorded by Herodotus as coming from a simple Persian messenger. Similarly, Themistocles and Artemisia never met each other on the battlefield, although they could have possibly met in Artaxerxes I's court after Themistocles and his family were exiled from Greece.
• In the film, Xerxes tempts Leonidas with joining his empire and carrying his standard to the heart of Europe. It's unclear what does he mean geographically by that (Gaul? Germania?), but in any case, the real Xerxes never showed interest in expanding in that direction.
• Leonidas's Last Stand happened historically, but under different circumstances. He didn't sacrifice himself to inspire the rest of Greek states to mobilize to war like in the film, as they were all already fighting along with him and thus there was no need of any inspirational immolation. Instead, when Leonidas realized the Persians would flank them thanks to Ephialtes, he ordered the other city-states' armies to retreat while his own forces and Demophilus' remained behind to give them more time to escape (along with an extra Theban contingent that stayed because they wanted to surrender). The trope played there, thus, wasn't a Thanatos Gambit, but a You Shall Not Pass!. However, it's recorded in sources that the Oracle of Delphi told the Spartans their king's death would be necessary to win the war, so it's possible that Leonidas decided to offer his life at least partially out of religious fervor.
• There were actually two Spartan survivors of the 300: Aristodemus and Pantites. The former had an eye infection and was sent home along with another soldier suffering the same illness, Eurytus, while the latter was on an embassy to Thessaly and did not return in time for battle. Both were disgraced upon their return to Sparta, Aristodemus because Eurytus decided to return and fight despite his own blindness (he went to battle guided by a helot) and Pantites because he didn't hurry up enough. Aristodemus regained some degree of honor by dying in the Battle of Plataea in a berserk charge, while Pantites preferred to hang himself. Nothing of this happens in the film, where the only survivor is Dilios; he could be considered a Composite Character of Aristodemus and Pausanias, Leonidas's nephew and leader of the Greek forces in Plataea.
• Ironically, the film's rendition of the Battle of Marathon shows Themistocles at the head of the Athenians absolutely wasting Persians left and right. In real life, the Athenian center was indeed commanded by Themistocles and Aristides, but the troop arrangement planned by their general Miltiades gave them very thin lines, as most of their Greek forces were concentrated on the wings, and as a consequence, the center ended up being driven back; it was only when the more powerful wings crushed the Persian flanks that the Persian center was pushed back itself and routed. You could still consider Themistocles a badass for ensuring the Athenian center didn't completely collapse, though, and not any less for coming alive from such a dire situation.
• The second day of the Battle of Artemisium saw the Greeks attacking, not defending deep into the strait. Themistocles's tactic of running aground ships sideways to form sea barricades is entirely fictional.
• The film shows the Greek fleet destroyed in Artemisia's bombing tactics the third day of the battle, and they only avoid a Persian victory because Artemisia's own fleet is affected too by the attack. It is underlined by this way that both Leonidas and Themistocles fail at containing the Persian invasions in their respective terrains. In real life, although suffering hard losses, the Greeks actually held at the straits of Artemisium while Leonidas failed at the Hot Gates. They only retreated when the Thermopylae pass was taken and thus defending the nearby sea became irrelevant. (That said, Themistocles and company did realize the much larger Persian fleet would end up overpowering them by sheer attrition sooner or later, so they were already considering the option of retreating, waiting for news from Leonidas, when they heard of the latter's defeat.) The Greek fleet then sailed to Athens and helped evacuate it.
• In the film, Xerxes leaves the Spartan corpses out in the sun to be consumed by the crows, and letting his soldiers see those who defied him to the end. While in line with the historical Xerxes' reputation for rage, this goes against Persian tradition that valiant warriors, regardless of being friend or foe, should be treated with great honor, and thus the Spartans would have been buried by the Persians. The only exception was Leonidas, whose body was ordered to be decapitated and crucified. Herodotus claimed this could have been in response to Xerxes having lost two of his brothers, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, on the third day.
• The film version of Xerxes burns Athens to the ground after his victory at Thermopylae and Artemisium, which is in historical sources, but modern historians greatly theorize that it might have been Greek propaganda, as Xerxes had no reason to destroy a city of significant strategic value (which is noted by Artemisia herself in the film). On the other hand, Herodotus himself claimed that burning the city was the entire objective of the campaign, a punitive action over Athenian's role in the aforementioned Ionian Revolt, which is why Xerxes preferred to withdraw with most of his forces after losing at Salamis (leaving Mardonius to continue the effort) instead of risking his own skin.
• The scene with Artemisia insisting that she be allowed to pursue the Greeks to Salamis, with Xerxes trying to dissuade her and noting that it's tactical suicide, portrays both characters exactly backwards from how it was recorded in history. It was Xerxes and his general Mardonius who wanted the big push to crush the Greeks, as they had been deceived by a Greek emissary named Sicinnus (actually a spy working for Themistocles) into believing the allied fleet was imminently breaking up. The wary Artemisia proposed to wait for such breakup to happen in order to be sure, but she was ignored, and the result was history. Herotodus claims that Xerxes thought very highly of Artemisia's advice in this instance, but went ahead with the battle because that was what the majority of his advisors recommended.
• In real life, Sparta didn't save the day in a huge Big Damn Heroes moment at Salamis. Not only they had been a part of the allied fleet since the beginning, they had almost no navy at the time and their contribution to the Greek fleet had been less than 5% of the forces present according to Herodotus (ironically, Sparta wouldn't have a proper fleet until the Persian themselves gave them one in order to fight the Athenians during the Peloponnesian Wars). The victory at Salamis was a team effort, and it was accomplished by capitalizing on the Persian Attack! Attack! Attack! approach to lure their ships into the straits. Xerxes' admirals believed they were cornering the Greeks by blocking the straits' exits, but they were really getting into a trap where they were pinned and destroyed.
• The first film ends with the impression that the Battle of Plataea will be a Curb-Stomp Battle for the Greeks, but the reality was almost the opposite: the Greek side screwed up big time and only won because the Persians screwed up even more. To explain, Pausanias and his army had started forming a defensive line on the field, but some skirmishes convinced them to retreat to higher terrains. However, their retreat maneuver was so awkward that their army broke down in several uncoordinated masses, which from away looked like they were disbanding. Believing the Greeks were running away, Mardonius charged carelessly with all his forces in an attempt to finish them, a decision that naturally became a Mass "Oh, Crap!" when they discovered the Greeks were simply repositioning and not forfeiting the battle. With the Persians having placed themselves in an inferior position, Pausanias and company hacked the way through them, and when Mardonius himself was killed by a Spartan slinger, the battle was over.

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