A battle fought over three days in early August 480 BCE at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae in central Greece, where a mixed Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas I attempted to hold the invading army of the Persian king Xerxes I. After a local guide showed the Persians a path around the pass, Leonidas dismissed most of the allied troops and held the position with a rearguard of about three hundred Spartans, roughly seven hundred Thespian volunteers and a contingent of Thebans, who were destroyed to the last man once surrounded. The delay bought time for the Greek fleet's own engagement nearby at Artemisium and for the withdrawal that preceded the eventual Greek victories at Salamis and Plataea. The Athenian and later Spartan tradition, following Herodotus, reads Leonidas's death as the fulfillment of a Delphic warning that Sparta would lose either its city or one of its kings, a reading later ages hardened into legend around the stand itself.
Facts
The Event
When It HappenedEarly August 480 BCE, over three days. 1 Where It HappenedThe narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae in central Greece, between the mountains and the sea. 1 Principal PartiesA mixed Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas I, reduced on the final day to roughly three hundred Spartans, seven hundred Thespian volunteers and a Theban contingent, against the much larger invading army of the Persian king Xerxes I. 1 Attestation
HistoricityWell attested by Herodotus's connected narrative and supported by later Greek and Roman sources and by topographical evidence at the site; the numbers engaged and some individual episodes are debated, but the battle's occurrence and its outcome are not. 1 This atlas records no death toll for the battle. Thermopylae, like Salamis, was fought to repel a Persian imperial invasion rather than over religious difference; the Delphic warning to Sparta shaped how the stand was later remembered, but consulting Delphi before a campaign was ordinary practice for Greek states at war in this period, not evidence that the war itself was religious. Scholarship
Where It Is RecordedHerodotus, Histories, Book 7, chapters 201 to 233. 1 Consequences
What It SettledA Persian tactical victory. Once the mountain path around the pass was found and used, Leonidas's rearguard was surrounded and destroyed on the third day. The delay slowed the Persian advance and bought time for the Greek fleet and the eventual defense further south. 1 Lasting ConsequenceBecame, in Athenian and Spartan tradition alike, the exemplary account of Greek willingness to die rather than submit, commemorated at the site with a monument and the epitaph attributed to Simonides, and read by Herodotus's own generation as fulfilling Delphi's warning to Sparta. 1 Origins
Defining MomentLeonidas's decision, once the Persians had found the mountain path around the pass, to dismiss most of the allied contingents and hold the position with the remaining Spartans, Thespians and Thebans rather than withdraw the whole force intact. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Greece directly: "coastal pass of Thermopylae in central Greece, where a mixed Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas I attempted to hold the invading army of the Persian king Xerxes I."
This source names Persians directly: "After a local guide showed the Persians a path around the pass, Leonidas dismissed most of the allied troops and held the position with a rearguard of about three hundred Spartans, roughly seven..."
The battle in which Leonidas died, read by the tradition as the oracle's warning come to pass.
Belongs to Tradition
Part Of
The defense of the pass at the start of Xerxes's mainland invasion, within the wider Greco-Persian Wars.
Related To
Sources
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