Ephialtes (/ˌɛfiˈæltiːz/;Greek:ἘφιάλτηςEphialtēs)[a] was a Greek renegade during theGreco-Persian Wars. Born to Eurydemus (Εὐρύδημος) ofMalis,[1] he revealed the existence of a path around the Greek coalition's position atThermopylae to theAchaemenid Empire.[2] His efforts allowed the Persian army to overrun the Greeks' defensive formation and thereby win theBattle of Thermopylae in September 480 BC. Ephialtes had hoped that he would be rewarded by the Persian kingXerxes I, but no such reward was bestowed upon him and he was instead forced to go into hiding when a bounty was placed on his head by the allied Greeks in their pursuit of punishing his act of treason. According toHerodotus, this bounty was collected by Athenades (Ἀθηνάδης) ofTrachis approximately a decade after thesecond Persian invasion of Greece was repelled; theSpartans paid Athenades although his motivation for carrying out the killing apparently had nothing to do with Ephialtes' status as anoutlaw.[citation needed]
The allied Greek land forces, whichHerodotus states numbered no more than 4,200 men, had chosen Thermopylae to block the advance of the much larger Persian army. Although this gap between the Trachinian Cliffs and theMalian Gulf was only "wide enough for a single carriage",[3] it could be bypassed by a trail that led over the mountains south of Thermopylae and joined the main road behind the Greek position. Herodotus notes that this trail was well known to the locals, who had used it in the past for raiding the neighboringPhocians.[4]
The Persians used the trail to outflank the defenders. TheSpartan king,Leonidas, sent away most of the Greeks, but he himself remained behind with a rear guard composed of 300 of his men, theThespian contingent, comprising 700 Thespians, and aTheban detachment, composed of 400 men.
Ephialtes expected to be rewarded by the Persians, but this came to nothing when they were defeated at theBattle of Salamis. He then fled toThessaly; theAmphictyons atPylae had offered a reward for his death. According to Herodotus, he was killed for an apparently unrelated reason by Athenades (Greek:Ἀθηνάδης) ofTrachis, around 470 BC, but the Spartans rewarded Athenades all the same.[5]
Herodotus notes that two other men were accused of betraying this trail to the Persians: Onetas, a native ofCarystus and son of Phanagoras; and Corydallus, a native ofAnticyra. Nevertheless, he argues Ephialtes was the one who revealed this trail because "the deputies of the Greeks, thePylagorae, who must have had the best means for ascertaining the truth, did not offer the reward on the heads of Onetas and Corydallus, but for that of Ephialtes."[6]
In the 1962 filmThe 300 Spartans, Ephialtes was portrayed byKieron Moore and is depicted as a shady farmhand who worked on a goat farm nearThermopylae. He betrays the Spartans because he was spurned by the Spartan maiden, Ellas, thinking he could win her over by dangling riches he thought he would later have.
Frank Miller's 1998comic bookminiseries300, the2006 film adaptation of the same name, and the2014 sequel, portray Ephialtes (played in the films byAndrew Tiernan) as a severely deformed Spartan exile whose parents fled Sparta to protect him from the infanticide he would have surely suffered as a disfigured infant.
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