300 Ban?

[keith99]

And, pray tell, how would the presence of archers have made it possible for 300 Spartans to defeat 150.000 Persians?

Don't bother the poor boy with facts. He thinks Sparta could have stood up to the Persian force! Persia would easily have wiped out Sparta. Or taken one at a time all of the Greek city-states. That was of course the big problem from the Greek side, working as a team when even working perfectly as a team would not give them a strong enough force to insure victory.

BTW why do 'the other guys' always get denegrated? Persia had a very impressive army and navy. There is nothing impressive in destroying an inferior force, that the Persians were effective and rolled over everyone else before meeting the Greeks is a big part of why Marathon and Thermoplae are so impressive.

 

[Futuwwa]

Portraying the Spartans as the heroes of the war is quite absurd too. The impressive Greek resistance at Thermopylae was not only conducted by 300 Spartans, but by 10.000 Greeks out of which a scant 300 were Spartans. After the other Greeks left to avoid being encircled, the Spartans were swiftly crushed.

While the Spartans acted macho and died with glory, the Athenians actually accomplished things by defeating the Persians at sea. Only because of that was Xerxes forced to withdraw the bulk of his troops, as loss of the sea made logistics difficult.

 

[keith99]

Portraying the Spartans as the heroes of the war is quite absurd too. The impressive Greek resistance at Thermopylae was not only conducted by 300 Spartans, but by 10.000 Greeks out of which a scant 300 were Spartans. After the other Greeks left to avoid being encircled, the Spartans were swiftly crushed.

While the Spartans acted macho and died with glory, the Athenians actually accomplished things by defeating the Persians at sea. Only because of that was Xerxes forced to withdraw the bulk of his troops, as loss of the sea made logistics difficult.

My understanding is that someone had to remain to allow the others to make an orderly withdrawl. The Thebans also stayed. Somehow they get forgotten.

Yes the work of the Athenian fleet was vital. Without the naval victory the Persian troops would not have been put at risk of being cut off. Also a Persian naval victory would have allowed an encirclement move much earlier, but the badly outnembered Greek fleet prevented that.