1. The Battle of Thermopylae
The hot gates
The Battle of Thermopylae
The Last Stand of the 300
Idaho State Content Standard: World History
Goal: 1.6 Objective: 6-9.WHC.1.6.3

2. Setting the battleground
480 b.c. Xerxes and his Persian Empire which numbered around 300,000 men, set out to conquer all of Greece.
Greeks were heavily outnumbered and came to the strategy to halt the Persian land advance at the pass of Themopylae.

3. The Spartans
The Greeks assemble under King Leonidas and his personal bodyguard of 300 Spartans.
The rest of the Spartan Army was prevented from marching into battle due to strict adherence to religious laws that prohibited going to war during the rituals.

4. Prelude to Onslaught
The Persian Army had assembled and sent an envoy to accept the Spartan’s surrender. The Spartans refused to submit, the Persian envoy remarked “You fools! Our arrows will blot out the sun” to which a Spartan replied “Then we will fight in the shade”

5. The First Day
As the massive Persian army approached the assembled Greeks led by the Spartans they were given another chance to surrender, they were asked to lay down their weapons to which they replied in defiance “MOLON LABE

6. The Second Day
After the brutal defeat by the smaller force on the first day, Xerxes perplexed by the defeat of even his elite Immortals, accepted the traitor Ephialtes who knew of a way around the pass to surround the Greek formation
After further advances to the Greek Front, Xerxes sent a force through the path indicated by Ephialtes.

7. The Third Day
At dawn the Persian force had followed the path and surrounded the Greeks. Upon seeing the Persians surrounding them withdrew, only the Spartans and a small contingent of Greeks remained.
The Spartans were overrun, but the past few days bought the rest of the Greek armies time to regroup and broke the back of the Persian invasion.

8. Legacy
A monument was raised to honor Leonidas and the Spartans at the battle site. The battle has been used to inspire courage in the face of extreme odds. To this day the monument reads “Go tell a Spartan passerby, that here by Spartan law we lie.”