Most Historically Accurate Films/Documentaries/Video

[Intranetusa]

Do the Immortals look like they did in 300? I mean, the Spartans from 300 were in the show twice.

Saying 300 is historically INACCURATE is an UNDERSTATEMENT. Roughly 90-95% of the movie is total fantasy.

-There were 300 Spartans + at LEAST 7000-8000 other Greek soldiers at Thermopylae for the first two days.
-There were 300 Spartans + at LEAST 700 Thespians and most likely 300 Thebans on the last day (probably also Spartan slaves/helots)
-Persians did not have a million soldiers. They had 70,000-300,000 max by modern estimates, and only a fraction of that fought at Thermopylae. (logistically speaking, a million man army marching from Iran to Greece wasn't feasible)
-There was a huge Athenian navy preventing the Persians from flanking the soldiers at Thermopylae. Thermopylae was a tactical and strategic failure since the Greeks had to abandon almost half of Greece.
-Spartans wore heavy bronze muscle curiass armor, not speedos.
-At Thermopylae , the Persians did not have giant LoTR oliphaunt like-war elephants nor giant armored rhinos.
_Persians had already abolished slavery
-The Spartans were the biggest dictators of ancient Greece, and were not fighting for democracy. (2/3 of the Spartan populace were enslaved neighbors - Helots)
-It was part of Spartan training to go out into the countryside and murder a Helot
-The Persian 10,000 immortals aren't mutant-lizard ninjas with East Asian masks.
-Persians didn't have giant Doom-esque bald fat guys with saw blades attached to their arms
-Persians had many Greek city states and Greek mercenaries fighting on their side
-Xerxes is not a 10 foot tall, dark skinned metro sexual she-male with thousands of gold body piercings on his body.
-Persians were not suicidal as portrayed in the movie.
-Xerxes wasn't personally present at Thermopylae iirc (?)
-The Persians did not have grenades (Song gunpowder weaponry) in the 5th century BCE.
-The hoplites did NOT break the phalanx formation to fight in one-on-one barbarian brawls
-Persians are not dark skinned Arabian looking people or black sub-Saharan Africans. Their skin color was equivalent to the tanned Mediterranean Greeks due to their Aryan background. Persians are Indo-Iranian-Europeans
-Spartans had 2 kings ruling simultaneously.
-Spartan males (even high ranking officals) lived in barracks, not the luxurious palaces you see in the movie.
-Oracle of Delphi did not say Sparta will burn to the ground.
-Spartans did not speak with Irish accents, and not all Spartans had 6 packs.
-Persia did not just randomly decide to invade Greece - they the Greeks had supported various Greco-Persian colonies in Turkey in a rebellion against Persia.

Regarding the Helots, they were worse off than the other slaves in Greece.
As the Spartans became a military state solely in order to control the Helot population, and each year they would terrorize (and murder) the Helot population in order to instill fear and prevent rebellion.

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In regards to Spartans vs Immortals:

The battle of Thermopylae involved 300 Spartans AND over 8000 Greek hoplites defending the narrow pass. They defended against the Persian for 2 days. On the 3rd day the 300 Spartans, several hundred Spartan slaves, 300 Thespians, 700 Thebans stayed behind as the rear guard.

Herodotus, who we get the story from, never said the Spartan/Thespian/Theban beat the Immortals in any meaningful manner. We only know that the Persians were unable to break through the Greek line - and before long, the Persian king sounded a withdrawal because he had found a way around the mountains.




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whew, that felt better...