At the Second Greco-Persian War, Leonidas led the allied Greek forces in alast stand at theBattle of Thermopylae (480 BC), attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army, and was killed early during the third and last day of the battle. Leonidas entered myth as a hero and the leader of the 300 Spartans who died in battle at Thermopylae. While the Greeks lost this battle, they were able to expel the Persian invaders in the following year.
According toHerodotus, Leonidas' mother was not only his father's wife, but also his father's niece and had been barren for so long that theephors, the five annually electedadministrators of the Spartan constitution, tried to prevail upon KingAnaxandridas II to set her aside and take another wife. Anaxandridas refused, claiming his wife was blameless, whereupon the ephors agreed to allow him to take a second wife without setting aside his first. This second wife, a descendant ofChilon of Sparta (one of theSeven Sages of Greece), promptly bore a son,Cleomenes. However, one year after Cleomenes' birth, Anaxandridas' first wife also gave birth to a son,Dorieus. Leonidas was the second son of Anaxandridas' first wife, and either the elder brother or twin ofCleombrotus.[2] Leonidas' name means "descendant of Leon", and he was named after his grandfatherLeon of Sparta.[citation needed] TheDoric Greek suffix -ίδας, with corresponding Attic form -ίδης, mainly means "descendant of".[3] But literally his name can also mean "son of a lion", as the name Leon means "lion" in Greek.
King Anaxandridas II died in c. 524 BC,[4] and Cleomenes succeeded to the throne sometime between then and 516 BC.[5] Dorieus was so outraged that the Spartans had preferred his half-brother over himself that he found it impossible to remain in Sparta. He made one unsuccessful attempt to set up a colony in Africa and, when this failed, sought his fortune in Sicily, where after initial successes he was killed.[6] Leonidas' relationship with his bitterly antagonistic elder brothers is unknown, but he married Cleomenes' daughter,Gorgo, sometime before coming to the throne in 490 BC.[7]
Leonidas was heir to the Agiad throne (successor ofCleomenes I) and a full citizen (homoios) at the time of theBattle of Sepeia againstArgos (c. 494 BC).[8] Likewise, he was a full citizen when the Persians sought submission from Sparta and met with vehement rejection in 492/491 BC. His elder half-brother, king Cleomenes, had already been deposed on grounds of purported insanity, and had fled into exile when Athens sought assistance against theFirst Persian invasion of Greece, that ended atMarathon (490 BC).
The Spartans throw Persian envoys into a well.
Plutarch wrote, “When someone said to him: 'Except for being king you are not at all superior to us,' Leonidas son of Anaxandridas and brother of Cleomenes replied: 'But were I not better than you, I should not be king.'"[9] The product of theagoge, Leonidas was unlikely to have been referring to his royal blood alone but rather suggesting that, like his brother Dorieus, he had proved himself superior in the competitive environment of Spartan training and society, thus making him qualified to rule.
Leonidas was chosen to lead the combined Greek forces determined to resist theSecond Persian invasion of Greece in 481 BC.[10] This was not simply a tribute to Sparta's military prowess: The probability that the coalition wanted Leonidas personally for his capability as a military leader is underlined by the fact that just two years after his death, the coalition preferred Athenian leadership to the leadership of eitherLeotychidas or Leonidas' successor (as regent for his still under-aged son)Pausanias. The rejection of Leotychidas and Pausanias was not a reflection on Spartan arms. Sparta's military reputation had never stood in higher regard, nor was Sparta less powerful in 478 BC than it had been in 481 BC.[10]
This selection of Leonidas to lead the defence of Greece against Xerxes' invasion led to Leonidas' death in theBattle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.[10]
Upon receiving a request from the confederated Greek forces to aid in defending Greece against the Persian invasion, Sparta consulted theOracle atDelphi. The Oracle is said to have made the followingprophecy inhexameter verse:
For you, inhabitants of wide-wayed Sparta, Either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men, Or if not that, then the bound of Lacedaemon must mourn a dead king, from Heracles' line. The might of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing strength; for he has the might of Zeus. I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these.[12]
In August 480 BC, Leonidas marched out of Sparta to meetXerxes' army at Thermopylae with a small force of 1,200 men (900helots and 300 Spartanhoplites), where he was joined by forces from other Greek city-states, who put themselves under his command to form an army of 7,000 strong. There are various theories on why Leonidas was accompanied by such a small force of hoplites. According toHerodotus, "the Spartans sent the men with Leonidas on ahead so that the rest of the allies would see them and march with no fear of defeat, instead of siding with the Persians like the others if they learned that the Spartans were delaying. After completing their festival, theCarneia, they left their garrison at Sparta and marched in full force towards Thermopylae. The rest of the allies planned to do likewise, for the Olympiad coincided with these events. They accordingly sent their advance guard, not expecting the war at Thermopylae to be decided so quickly."[13] Many modern commentators are dissatisfied with this explanation and point to the fact that theOlympic Games were in progress or to impute internal dissent and intrigue.
Whatever the reason Sparta's own contribution was just 300 Spartiates (accompanied by their attendants and probablyperioikoi auxiliaries), the total force assembled for the defence of the pass of Thermopylae came to something between four and seven thousand Greeks. They faced a Persian army who had invaded from the north of Greece under Xerxes I. Herodotus stated that this army consisted of over two million men; modern scholars consider this to be an exaggeration and give estimates ranging from 70,000 to 300,000.[14]
Xerxes waited four days to attack, hoping the Greeks would disperse. Finally, on the fifth day the Persians attacked. Leonidas and the Greeks repulsed the Persians' frontal attacks during the fifth and sixth days, killing roughly 10,000 of the enemy troops. The Persian elite unit known to the Greeks as "the Immortals" was held back, and two of Xerxes' brothers (Abrocomes and Hyperanthes) died in battle.[15] On the seventh day (11 August), aMalian Greek traitor namedEphialtes led the Persian generalHydarnes by a mountain track to the rear of the Greeks.[16][17] At that point Leonidas sent away most of the Greek troops and remained in the pass with his 300 Spartans, 900 helots, 400Thebans and 700Thespians. The Thespians stayed entirely of their own will, declaring that they would not abandon Leonidas and his followers. Their leader wasDemophilus, son of Diadromes, and as Herodotus writes, "Hence they lived with the Spartans and died with them."
One theory provided by Herodotus is that Leonidas sent away the remainder of his men because he cared about their safety. The King would have thought it wise to preserve those Greek troops for future battles against the Persians, but he knew that the Spartans could never abandon their post on the battlefield. The soldiers who stayed behind were to protect their escape against the Persian cavalry. Herodotus believed that Leonidas gave the order because he perceived the allies to be disheartened and unwilling to encounter the danger to which his own mind was made up. He therefore chose to dismiss all the troops except the Thebans, Thespians and helots and save the glory for the Spartans.[12]
Of the small Greek force, which was attacked from both sides, all were killed except for the 400 Thebans, who surrendered to Xerxes without a fight. When Leonidas was killed, the Spartans retrieved his body after driving back the Persians four times. Herodotus says that Xerxes' orders were to have Leonidas' head cut off and put on a stake and his bodycrucified. This was consideredsacrilegious.[18]
Ahero cult of Leonidas survived in Sparta until theAntonine era (2nd century AD).[19] Leonideia (λεωνιδεῖα) were solemnities celebrated every year in Sparta in honour of Leonidas and only Spartans were allowed to take part. The contest was held opposite the theatre at Sparta where there were the two sepulchral monuments of Pausanias and Leonidas.[20]
A bronzestatue of Leonidas was erected at Thermopylae in 1955.[21] A sign, under the statue, reads simply: "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" ("Come and take them"), which was Leonidas'laconic reply when Xerxes offered to spare the lives of the Spartans if they gave up their arms.[22]Another statue, also with the inscription ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ, was erected inSparta in 1969.[23]
Another monument to Leonidas was erected in Brunswick, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in November 2009. Brunswick is known as "the suburb of the Spartans" due to an influx of migrants from the Laconian region of Greece during the 1950s and 1960s.[24]
Leonidas was later adapted into the popularanime andmanga,Record of Ragnarok (Japanese:終末のワルキューレ,Shūmatsu no Warukyūre) by Shinya Umemura and Takumi Fukui, in which he is depicted as a fighter for humanity.
p. 263 "not before 480, and perhaps before rather than after 470 B.C."
p. 266 "We named the statue 'Leonidas' almost as soon as it was discovered, and no reasons have come to light to make us change this attribution, which seems to rest on a solid basis, and indeed to be the only one possible." (snippet)
^MINON, S. (2013). Names, Personal, Classical Greece . In Roger Bagnall, Andrew Erskine Et Alii (Ed.), Wiley's Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 4686–4687.
^Plutarch on Sparta, Sayings of Spartans, Leonidas son of Anaxandridas, #1
^abcOman, Charles (1898)."The death of Leonidas".A History of Greece from the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great. Longmans, Green, and Company. pp. 199–206.
^Jack Johnson, "David and Literature," inJacques-Louis David: New Perspectives (Rosemont, 2006), pp. 85–86et passim.
^Herodotus (ed. George Rawlinson) (1885).The History of Herodotus. New York: D. Appleman and Company. pp. bk. 7. Archived fromthe original on 17 December 2009. Retrieved21 March 2010.
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