Alcidamas lamented the notion of slavery. Aristophanes, Sophocles and Plato questioned the subordinate position of women. Most importantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition of unfettered expression and self-criticism. Sparta turned the region of Messenia into a dependent serf state.īut in the Greek polis alone, there were elected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy at Sparta to much broader-based voting in states like Athens and Thespiae. And all relegated women to a relatively inferior position. True, 2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterranean world had slaves. The film has actually been banned in Iran as hurtful American propaganda, as the theocracy suddenly is reclaiming its "infidel" ancient past.īut that good/bad contrast comes not from the director or Frank Miller, but is based on accounts from the Greeks themselves, who saw their own society as antithetical to the monarchy of imperial Persia.
How accurate is the movie 300 free#
And the filmmakers omitted the mutilation of King Leonidas, whose head Xerxes ordered impaled on a stake.įinally, some have suggested that "300" is juvenile in its black-and-white depiction — and glorification — of free Greeks versus imperious Persians. Some of the film's most graphic killing — such as Persians being pushed over the cliff into the sea — derives from the text of Herodotus. Almost all the Spartans and Thespians were killed, along with hundreds from other Greek contingents. Some reviewers think the film is gratuitously violent. The audience understood that dramatists reworked common myths to meet current tastes and offer commentary on the human experience. They chanted in set meters, broken up by choral hymns. Similarly, Athenian tragedies that depicted stories of war employed contrivances every bit as imaginative as those in "300." Actors wore masks. Instead, they used "heroic nudity" to show the contours of the human body. Ancient vase painters sometimes did not portray soldiers accurately in their bulky armor. The Greeks themselves often embraced such impressionistic adaptation. In other words, director Zack Snyder tells the story not in a realistic fashion — like the mostly failed attempts to recapture the ancient world in recent films such as "Troy" or "Alexander" — but in the surreal manner of a comic book or video game. The warriors of "300" look like comic-book heroes because they are based on Frank Miller's drawings that emphasized bare torsos, futuristic swords and staged fight scenes. Many of the film's corniest lines — such as the Spartan dare, "Come and take them," when ordered by the Persians to hand over their weapons, or the Spartans' flippant reply, "Then we will fight in the shade," when warned that Persian arrows will blot out the sun — actually come from ancient accounts by Herodotus and Plutarch. The defenders claimed their fight was for the survival of a free people against subjugation by the Persian Empire. A small contingent of Greeks at Thermopylae (which translates to "The Hot Gates") did block the enormous Persian army for three days before being betrayed.
Still, the main story line mostly conveys the message of Thermopylae. But these non-Spartans are scarcely prominent in the movie. When the Greeks were surrounded on the battle's last day, there were 700 Thespians and another 400 Thebans who fought alongside the 300 Spartans under King Leonidas. And neither the traitor Ephialtes nor the Spartan overseers, the Ephors, were grotesquely deformed. Their king, Xerxes, was bearded and sat on a throne high above the battle he wasn't, as in the movie, bald and sexually ambiguous, and he didn't prance around the killing field. Indeed, at the real battle, there weren't rhinoceroses or elephants in the Persian army. Instead, it is an impressionistic take on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, intended to entertain and shock first, and instruct second. And, second, remember that "300" does not claim to follow exactly ancient accounts of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. I wrote an introduction to a book about the making of "300" after being shown a rough cut of the movie in October. Yet many critics, in panning "300," have alleged that the film is essentially historically inaccurate. you all might like it.Ĭrowds are flocking to see the film "300" about the ancient Spartans' last stand at the pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army.
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