Leonidas I of Sparta came from a lineage so tangled that it would have tested even the most ruthless ruling houses. He claimed descent from the mythical Heracles, but his own path to the throne was shaped by a family drama that began before he was born. For years, his father, King Anaxandrus, and his first wife, whose name is lost to history, failed to produce a child. The ephors—the powerful council of officials who helped rule Sparta—grew anxious over the lack of an heir and demanded that Anaxandrus set his wife aside and take a new one.
That demand would have rewritten Greek history, but Anaxandrus refused to abandon the woman he loved. Instead, he found a compromise that satisfied no one completely: he took a second wife while remaining married to his first. The arrangement pacified the ephors, but it created a succession crisis almost immediately. The second wife bore Anaxandrus a son named Cleomenes, and Sparta finally had its heir.
Then, soon after, the first wife gave birth to a son of her own, Dorieus. Now there were too many heirs, and in a place as unforgiving as Sparta, that was a recipe for disaster. When Leonidas was born, he was third in line for the throne. Given how few Spartan men lived to old age, his brothers’ fates were grim.
When Anaxandrus died, Cleomenes took the throne, but Dorieus, the firstborn son of the first wife, believed he should rule. The people of Sparta overwhelmingly supported Cleomenes, and a furious Dorieus left the city in disgust. He tried to found a colony in Africa, was forced to abandon it, then attempted to establish himself in Sicily, where he crossed the wrong person and was killed. That left Leonidas with only his half-brother Cleomenes standing between him and the crown.
Sparta traditionally had two kings at once, and Cleomenes ruled alongside a man named Demaratus. The two were bitter rivals, and their feud would create the opening Leonidas needed. Cleomenes was a fierce warrior king, and his reign saw Sparta grow into a powerful and feared city-state. But his life took a dark turn when he was caught plotting against his co-king.
The Spartans exiled him, and he began amassing an army to retake his throne by force. Fearing civil war, the Spartans allowed him to return, but the man who came back was not the one they had sent away. Historical sources describe Cleomenes as utterly insane by the time he reached home. He could not be allowed to bring Sparta to ruin, so Leonidas made his move: he ordered his men to throw his own brother into prison.
Whether driven by madness or heartbreak at the betrayal, Cleomenes took his own life soon after. Leonidas took his place as king. He carried himself with supreme confidence. When someone sneered that, except for being king, he was no better than anyone else, Leonidas replied, “But were I not better than you, I should not be king.
” He had the credentials to back it up. While firstborn sons of Spartan kings were exempt from the agoge—the brutal Spartan training program—Leonidas was not so lucky. He had spent his childhood fighting for his life alongside the other boys and had thrived. By the time he took the throne, he was one of the deadliest men alive.
The Persians would learn that the hard way. When Xerxes marched his massive army into Greece, the leaders of the Greek city-states gathered to choose a commander. They unanimously selected Leonidas. Even a dark prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi predicted his doom: either Sparta would be laid waste, or its king would die.
For the Greeks, the oracle was a direct line to the gods, and her words were taken with deadly seriousness. Leonidas did not fear death. He marched off to face Xerxes and see the prophecy through. According to the historian Herodotus, the prophecy may have influenced how few men he brought.
Knowing he was leading his soldiers to certain death, he deliberately selected only those who had living sons to carry on their names. Xerxes arrived during the Carnea, a sacred religious festival so important that Spartan law forbade all warfare during it. In an unprecedented move, the ephors allowed Leonidas to leave early with an advanced guard to hold off the invaders. He marched out of Sparta with 300 of his finest soldiers, but contrary to the popular legend, that was not his entire army.
With him were 900 helots—Spartan slaves—and when the other Greek contingents joined, his force numbered as many as 7,000 men. Still, even at the lowest modern estimates, Xerxes’ army numbered somewhere between 70,000 and 300,000, meaning the Greeks were outnumbered by at least ten to one. Some historians believed Leonidas deliberately took so few men to shame the other Greeks into joining the resistance. Others in Sparta thought he should not go at all.
Many Spartans wanted to fortify the Isthmus of Corinth and leave the rest of Greece to fend for itself. Leonidas ignored them and agreed to defend Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass in central Greece whose name translates as “Hot Gates. ” It was the perfect place for a small force to hold off a larger one, but it had one fatal flaw: a treacherous path led around the main pass. Leonidas was warned about it and left 1,000 Phocian soldiers to guard it.
His entire plan rested on those men. Xerxes tried diplomacy first. He offered the Greeks their freedom if they would accept the title of “Friends of the Persian people” and settle on land far more fertile than their own. Leonidas refused.
Xerxes then sent a simple message: hand over your arms. Leonidas’ reply was famously laconic: “Come and take them. ” When one of his soldiers complained that the Persian archers were so numerous their arrows would block out the sun, Leonidas reportedly answered, “Won’t it be nice, then, if we shall have shade in which to fight them? ”
Xerxes waited four days, hoping Leonidas would come to his senses and flee.
When he finally attacked on the fifth day, he learned what kind of man he was facing. Leonidas had chosen his position well: the ocean on one side, sheer cliffs on the other, the only way forward straight through the Greek line. The first Persian wave was cut to ribbons while the Greeks lost only two or three men. Xerxes, watching from a throne set up within view of the battle, reportedly leaped out of his seat three times as his men were cut down before him.
When his regular troops failed, he unleashed the Immortals, the most feared soldiers in the Persian Empire. The Spartans fought them off with ease. After two days of slaughter, 10,000 Persians lay dead, including two of Xerxes’ own brothers. Then a single Greek man wandered into the Persian camp and whispered into the king’s ear.
His name was Ephialtes, and his name would come to mean “nightmare in Greek. Motivated by simple greed, he assumed the Persians would make him rich for betraying his homeland. He told Xerxes about the hidden path and personally led Persian forces behind the Greek lines. The Phocians guarding the path formed up in a defensive position, expecting the Persians to attack them directly.
Instead, the Persians shot a volley of arrows at them and simply kept marching past, leaving the path clear. The pivotal flank was lost. At dawn on the seventh day, Leonidas called an emergency war council. He made a shocking decision: he sent the vast majority of his Greek forces home.
They were better off living to fight another day. But he and the other Spartans stayed. The men of Thespiae refused to abandon them, and 700 of them stood alongside the Spartans when the end came. Their sacrifice was not just a matter of honor.
By staying to fight, Leonidas and his men bought the retreating Greeks time to escape. Many of those who escaped would be present when the Greeks finally repelled Xerxes for good. A force of 400 Thebans also stayed, but when the final Persian assault began, they surrendered. Every last Spartan and Thespian was cut down.
Leonidas fell, shot down by Persian archers. After his death, both sides fought desperately over his corpse. The Spartans managed to recover it in a valiant effort, but it was for nothing; the Persians soon seized it and brought it before Xerxes. Persian custom called for honoring the remains of enemy leaders, but Xerxes was in no mood for generosity.
Enraged after watching this small army kill tens of thousands of his men, he ordered Leonidas’ head cut off and mounted on a stake. Then he had the body crucified. Xerxes tried to humiliate Leonidas’ remains, but he could not stop the legend from growing. Almost immediately, Sparta began worshiping Leonidas as a hero.
Forty years after the battle, the Spartans brought his remains back home and buried them with full honors. The cult of Leonidas persisted for centuries. His family legacy was more complicated. Leonidas married his niece, Gorgo, the daughter of his half-brother Cleomenes, just as his father had married his own niece.
Today, a statue of a lion stands at Thermopylae where Leonidas made his last stand, bearing an inscription in Greek: “Come and take them. ”