Inaccuracies in 300

[Intranetusa]

Saying 300 is historically INACCURATE is an UNDERSTATEMENT. Roughly 90-95% of the movie is total fantasy.

-No, the Persians did not have grenades (Tang-Song gunpowder or Han saltpeter) in the 5th century BCE.
-The hoplites did NOT break the phalanx formation to fight.
-There were 300 Spartans + at LEAST 7500 other Greek soldiers at Thermopylae.
-There were 300 Spartans + at LEAST 700 Thespians and most likely 300 Thebans at the last stand.
-Persians did not have a million soldiers. They had 300,000 max by modern estimates, and only a fraction of that fought at Thermpyale. (logistically speaking, a million man army marching from Iran to Greece wasn't feasible)
-There was a huge Athenian navy preventing the Persians from flanking the soldiers at Thermopyale.
-Spartans wore heavy bronze muscle curiass armor.
-At Thermopyale, the Persians did not have giant oliphaunt like-war elephants nor giant armored rhinos.
-The Spartans were the biggest dictators of ancient Greece, and were not fighting for democracy. (2/3 of the Spartan populace were enslaved neighbors called Helots)
-It was part of Spartan trainning to go out into the countryside and murder a Helot
-Persians were not suicidial as portrayed in the movie.
-The Persian 10,000 immortals aren't ninjas with opera-masks.
-Xerxes is not a 10 foot tall, dark skinned metrosexual she-male with thousands of gold body piercings on his body.
-Xerxes was never at Thermopyale.
-Persians are not dark skinned Arabs. Their skin color was equivalent or even lighter than the tanned Mediterranean Greeks due to their Aryan background. Persians are Indo-Ianian-Europeans
-Spartans had 2 kings ruling simultaneously.
-Spartan males (even high ranking officals) lived in barracks, not the luxurous palaces you see in the movie.
-Oracle of Delphi did not say Sparta will burn to the ground.
-Spartans did not speak with Irish accents, and not all Spartans had 6 packs.

and hundreds of other inaccuracies I can't remember at this moment...



Anyways I thought the movie was awesome!

[Mormacil]

Very true, but you have some errors as well. Sparta was the first democracy in the world, before Athens. Their slaves weren't much different from the Athens and the Spartan women were far more liberated then most women in that time. They had possesions and the right to rule over their homes.

In Athens a women was married at the age of 12-14 in Sparta that was 18 because under that age she could not understand the pleasure of sex.

The Spartan kings had limited power, they could be unthroned by the Ephors who are really a group of veteran Spartans that served their time in the army. The Ephors were chosen by a council of Spartans. The ones that could not vote were women and all men that had no spartanfather. In Athens it was quite the same. Only free men could vote.

The Helots were conquered nearby citystates.They were slaves but this was nothing uncommen in those days. Athens stoned returning settlers to death.

[Intranetusa]

Thanks for the correction XD

Adding on:

Regarding the Helots, they were worse off than the other slaves in Greece.
As the Spartans became a military state solely in order to control the Helot population, and each year they would terrorize (and murder) the Helot population in order to instill fear and prevent rebellion.

[Mormacil]

Yeah very true. You know spartan goverment is unique. It's a rare mix of several different types of goverment.
democratic timocratic monarchical oligarchy
If you don't get that I can explain later.

And don't you mean Messenians? Heloths were I believe the entire region which wasn't under spartancontrol, the messenians were enslaved by Sparta.

[Intranetusa]

^ Yes, I meant Helots - although they were technically serfs, but they had no legal, political, etc rights - so they were essentially slaves.


"Helots" without an h, not "heloth"

Helots refers to the serf/enslaved Messenian/etc people.


Anyways, sucks to be a non-Spartan under Spartan rule... >_<

[Mormacil]

It sucked to be a spartan, I rather be one of the middle class, the ones that kept Sparta running. The shopkeepers, craftsman and artists.

edit:
Sparta goverment in short:
Sparta was ruled by two kings who together with a group of citizens ruled the daily business of the citystate. All controled by the yearly elected Ephors. The Ephors had all power but only for a year.

[Tlo1048]

lol.
About the six pack thing. I highly doubt every Spartan had a six pack, but I am almost positive that every Spartan warrior did. They were one of the most healthy races in history. It is said that every Spartan warrior had to be able to leap 11 feet straight jump from standing postion. Thats flippin' huge.

I agree with you on Xerxes, they made him too inhuman. In fact, they made him too demonic looking.
It didn't make sense that he was this 10 foot tall Persian, but no one else even compared, except maybe that monster thing.
I also think he looks like a flesh Atronach from SI.

Also the no bronze breastplate thing. I agree it isn't accurate, but it looks so much cooler without the armor. I mean, no man can jump that high with a bronze plate strapped to his chest.
Plus, Spartans did lots, if not most of their fighting either naked, or wearing light clothing.

[Mormacil]

Nope, Spartan hopolites (elite warriors ) wear bronze armor, later started by the Athenian league lighter leather are was favored especially with the increasing number of light skirmishtroops like slingers and archers.

[Psychotic]

The only thing I liked about the movie was the action so I'm not about to defend it, but I still don't understand why people try to measure its historic accuracy. The movie is based on a graphic novel (that's why it was made to look like a comic book) and both the movie and the graphic novel are clearly a part of the fantasy genre... they are only loosely based on historic events (not even the director of the movie claims otherwise).

However I agree that those very few and very weak parallels with real world history (like Spartans still being called Spartans in the movie) cause some confusion with viewers to what the movie was actually supposed to represent... history or fantasy.

The worst side-effect is that some people who know next to nothing about history think that the movie is an ACCURATE representation of historic events and because the movie is so much cooler than history class they accept the 300's version of events.

[Mormacil]

I don't want the movie to be accurate, I merely pointed out some errors in the man's list.