King Leonidas I of Sparta came from a bloodline so tangled that his own birth was something of a miracle. For years, his father, King Anaxandridas, and his first wife failed to produce a child, and the ephors, the powerful council of officials who helped rule Sparta, grew anxious. They ordered the king to set aside his wife and take a new one. Anaxandridas loved his wife too much to abandon her, but he knew the ephors could be dangerous enemies.
He struck a compromise: he took a second wife while remaining married to his first. This satisfied the ephors for a time, especially when the second wife bore a son, Cleomenes. But then the king’s first wife also gave birth to a son, Dorieus, and soon the household had too many heirs. Leonidas, born third in line, grew up in a court where succession rivalries rarely ended peacefully.
When Anaxandridas died, Cleomenes took the throne, and the people of Sparta overwhelmingly supported him. Dorieus, furious at being passed over, left Sparta in disgust. He attempted to found a colony in Africa, failed, then tried again in Sicily, where he crossed the wrong enemy and was killed. That left Leonidas with only one older brother, King Cleomenes.
But he would not have to wait long, for Cleomenes’ rule quickly unraveled. Sparta traditionally had two kings ruling at once, and Cleomenes shared power with a co-king named Demaratus. The two became bitter enemies, and when Cleomenes was caught plotting against his rival, the Spartans exiled him. Cleomenes began amassing an army to retake his throne by force, and the Spartans, fearing civil war, allowed him to return.
But when he came back, he was clearly insane. Leonidas, his own brother, ordered him thrown into prison, and Cleomenes soon took his own life. Leonidas took the throne in his place. Leonidas had been raised in the agoge, the brutal Spartan training program, since the firstborn sons of kings were exempt but he was not so lucky.
He thrived in it, becoming one of the deadliest men in Greece. When the Persian king Xerxes marched his massive army into Greece, the leaders of the Greek city-states gathered to decide who would command their forces. They unanimously chose Leonidas. Even a dark prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi could not sway him.
The oracle warned that if Persia invaded, either Sparta would be laid waste or a Spartan king would die. Leonidas marched off to face Xerxes anyway, seemingly determined to make the prophecy come true. He marched with only a small force. According to the historian Herodotus, the prophecy may explain why Leonidas brought so few men.
Knowing death was likely, he chose only soldiers who had living sons to carry on their names. He left Sparta with 300 of his finest warriors, but contrary to popular legend, his army was much larger than that. Along with the 300 Spartans came 900 helots, the Spartan slaves, and thousands of other Greek allies. In total, Leonidas commanded as many as 7,000 men at Thermopylae.
Still, even that force was tiny compared to Xerxes’ army, which modern historians estimate at anywhere from 70,000 to 300,000 men. Leonidas had reason to be there at all. Many Spartans wanted to defend only the Isthmus of Corinth, leaving the rest of Greece to the Persians. But Leonidas ignored them and marched to Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass in central Greece whose name means “hot gates.
” The pass was the perfect place for a small force to hold off a much larger one, with the ocean on one side and sheer cliffs on the other. It had one fatal flaw: a hidden path through the mountains that led around the pass. Leonidas posted 1,000 Phocian soldiers to guard it, and his entire plan rested on them. Xerxes tried diplomacy first.
He offered the Greeks peace if they would simply take the title “Friends of the Persian people,” and even offered them more fertile land. Leonidas refused. Xerxes then sent a message: surrender your arms. Leonidas’ reply became legendary: “Come and take them.
” According to Plutarch, when one soldier complained that the Persians had so many archers their arrows would blot out the sun, Leonidas replied, “Won’t it be nice if we shall have shade in which to fight them. ”
Xerxes waited four days, expecting Leonidas to lose his nerve and flee. When the attack finally came, it did not go as the Persians expected. The first wave of Persian troops was cut to ribbons, with the Greeks losing only two or three men.
Xerxes, watching from a throne set up to view the battle, shocked his own commanders as he leaped from his seat three times in disbelief. He sent wave after wave of men against the Greek formation, and each one was destroyed. Finally, he unleashed the Immortals, the most feared soldiers in the Persian army. The Greeks fought them off with ease.
After two days of slaughter, 10,000 Persians lay dead, including two of Xerxes’ own brothers. Then a Greek man named Ephialtes wandered into the Persian camp and told Xerxes about the hidden mountain path. His name would come to mean “nightmare” in Greek. Greed, not deformity as the movies suggest, drove him to betray his homeland.
Ephialtes personally led Persian forces around the pass, and the Phocians guarding it failed utterly. When they saw the Persians approaching, they assumed they would attack and formed a defensive circle, leaving the path completely open. The Persians simply shot a few arrows at them and kept marching. At dawn on the seventh day, Leonidas learned he had been outflanked.
He called an emergency war council and made a shocking decision. He sent the vast majority of his Greek forces home, knowing they were better off living to fight another day. But the Spartans would never retreat. Leonidas and his men stayed.
The 700 Thespians refused to abandon them and stayed as well. A force of 400 Thebans also remained, but they would not share the Spartans’ fate with honor. Leonidas’ last stand was not merely a matter of pride. By staying to fight the Persian cavalry, he and his men bought time for the Greek forces retreating around them.
Many of those men would be present when the Greeks finally repelled Xerxes for good. In the final Persian assault, every last Spartan and Thespian was cut down. Leonidas was shot down by Persian archers. When he fell, both sides fought desperately to claim his body.
The Spartans managed to recover it in a valiant final effort, but it was for nothing. They were soon overwhelmed, and the Persians seized the fallen king’s remains. Xerxes was in no mood for honoring an enemy leader. He ordered Leonidas’ head cut off and mounted on a stake, then had the body crucified.
It was an act of sacrilege intended to humiliate the Spartan king. It failed to stop his legend from growing. Almost immediately, Sparta began worshipping Leonidas as a hero. Forty years after the battle, the Spartans managed to bring his remains home and buried him with full honors.
His cult persisted for centuries. But Leonidas’ family history remained as twisted as his father’s. His mother, whose name is lost to history, was his father’s niece. When it came time for Leonidas to take a wife, he followed his father’s dark example: he married his own niece, Gorgo, the daughter of his late brother Cleomenes.
Today, visitors to Thermopylae can see a stone lion standing where Leonidas made his last stand, bearing an inscription in Greek: “Come and take them. “