Lecture: 300: Ideology

NTUT Undergraduate

I The Real History




At the time of the film Greece is dominated by two great and very different city-states, Athens and Sparta. However the film ignores Athens almost completely. I will come back to this later.



Athens. They boasted they were autochthonous (which literally means “born from the earth”, and which meant that they didn’t owe anything to anybody; not to God (like the Jews) and not to any other human). In the 7th century Athens was poor, troubled by unrest, poverty, slavery and the attempted tyranny by Cylon in 632. But in 594 Solon came to power and the future course of Athens was set. During his single year as virtual dictator he rescued Athenians held captive abroad, abolished agricultural debts, forbade bondage of the poor, reduced the luxury of the rich and limited the power of the aristocracy. Influenced by the writings of Hesiod (sometimes considered the first historian in Western history, although he is known to be very unreliable because he mixed history with myth), Solon formed the idea of a society based on justice, and his reforms were the first steps toward Athenian democracy. He was asked to continue as leader of Athens but he refuses based on his belief that no man should hold power indefinitely. He is succeeded by a reign of kings who upheld Solon’s reforms.

The succeeding tyrants established temples and beautified the city with art. From 566 on, every 5 years, a great festival was held which included a reading of Homer (in honor of the first Western epic poet). Every year a festival was held which included a dramatic choral performance. In 534, Thespis (from whom we get the word ‘thespian’, meaning ‘actor’), a director of the choral performances, separated a single actor from the chorus and drama was born.

After the reign of the tyrants, Chisthenes replaced Solon’s council with a new council numbering 500 members. Thus government became (if slightly) more popular and more democratic. After an attack on the city was repelled, the new, broader government was assured (that is to say, Athens becoming more democratic did not weaken the city), and Athens expanded its territory. But nevertheless Athens remained a relatively minor state compared to Sparta.



Sparta was traditionally ruled by two kings simultaneously. Music and choral poetry were esteemed. After the revolt of a colony Sparta resolved to remain militarily strong and to organize its society to be based on sheer rationality. This policy guided them for 200 years. Although there were two kings the real power is held by an assembly called the Rhetra which consisted of 30 men and also in another assembly of 28 men over 60 years old. This form of rule endured until the 4th century B.C.

At birth a Spartan child was inspected to see if he was physically fit. If he was not, he was killed on the spot. At 7 a boy left home for training in groups; at 20 he joined a brotherhood to perfect his military skills. A man could not live with his wife until he was 30 years old and until that time he met with his wife only at night. He was not supposed to see her, nor she him thus preventing jealousies among husbands and wives over the relative attractiveness of their mates. This was a part of Spartan rationality. There was no family life in Sparta. The state was the end of all human endeavors. By 500 BC, Sparta was the greatest military power in Greece. They lived by the slogan: ‘Come back with your shield or on it.’

Citizens of Sparta were forbidden to be farmers or businessmen. Those tasks were reserved for slaves. Instead, a Spartan was to live his or her life devoted solely to the defense of Sparta. Individual personality was repressed. Men were trained for battle. Luxuries were forbidden. Men ate together in a large hall and the food was deliberately bad tasting, again, for rational reasons. One visitor to Sparta said, after sharing a meal with them: “Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death!” In Sparta, victors in the Olympic games were rewarded by being placed in the front lines of battle in order to have the honor of being the first to defend their city and to be the first to die for their city. Spartans were expected to die in battle. To live a long life was considered cowardly.

The rest of Greece admired Sparta which was considered the ultimate rational and lawful society. Sparta provided a model for Plato when he set up his ideal city in his Republic. (Spartans however forbade philosophy from being practiced or taught because philosophers tend to disagree with each other.)



Meanwhile, the Persian Empire stood on the ruins of the old Assyrian empire and from 559-486 it expanded itself from Egypt to the Danube River to India and to parts of Russia. It is the largest empire the world has yet seen. It included: Babylon, Egypt, Asia Minor, Armenia, Azerbijan, Syria, Palestine, Northern Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of Germany and Russia. It was against this mighty empire that the tiny Greek city-states (led by Athens and Sparta) would stand alone. Early in the 5th century Persia endeavored to invade Greece.



490 B.C. 1st Persian Invasion: Marathon

480 B.C. 2nd Persian invasion: Thermopylae, Salamis, Platea, Mycale

431 B.C. Peloponnesian war commences

404 B.C. Fall of Athens/End of Classical Greece





The First Invasion: Marathon, 490 B.C. (Herodotus is the classical historian of these two invasions, and the film 300 is based almost entirely on his accounts.) On the one side, a mighty empire; on the other side, a handful of small communities. The Persian leaders Darius and Artaphernes moved their army across the Aegean Sea and sacked Naxos. Etera was then taken after a 6-day siege. Their army of 20,000 men was then disembarked onto the plains of Marathon. The smaller Athenian force faced them and they quickly dispatched their best runner, Philippedes, to Sparta to deliver a call for help. He covered 140 miles by the next day. (This is why today we have the word ‘marathon’ to describe a long distance run.) But the Spartans (who were in fact extremely superstitious in spite of their attempts to found city life on rationality) were at a religious festival and could not move until the festival ended. Out of time, the Athenians marched their army of 10,000 on to the plain under their greatest military commander Militedes (from which we get the word ‘military’). After 3 days the battle commenced while the Persians sent off their cavalry to attack the now unguarded city of Athens. The Persians fought bravely and broke the Athenian center, but the Greek wings enveloped them and won the day in a stunning defeat of a superior force. The remaining Persians withdrew from the plain and set sail for Athens to take up the fight there, but Militedes marched his army quickly home and vanquished the invaders yet again. The Persians withdrew from Greece. In all they lost 6,400 men to the Athenian’s 192. Those 192 are buried in a mound which dominates the Marathon plain to this day.

The Spartans, arriving too late for the battle, surveyed the scene and saluted the victorious Athenians. The tragic poet Aeschylus, whose play The Persians commemorates the wars, wished not to be remembered as a dramatist but as a “Marathon fighter.” In the film this Athenian defeat of Persia was referred to only once and very briefly. The film wishes to imply that the defeat of Persia was almost entirely due to the Spartan fighters and to Spartan leadership of assembled Greek armies. Why?



The Second Invasion, 480 B.C. The Greeks had ten years to prepare for the next Persian invasion, this time led by Xerxes. However, instead of preparing, the Greek city-states spent the time uselessly quarrelling amongst themselves. The Greeks at this time did not see themselves as Greek, but as a citizen of this or that city-state. Meanwhile, in Asia Minor, the Persians, mindful that they underestimated the Greeks (actually the Athenians) the first time, gathered huge forces as in the film. The Greek city-states banded together at the last minute under the leadership of Sparta and Athens. But it is not unanimous. The city-states of Argos and Thebes resolve to remain neutral and give up without a fight. Worse, the Delphic oracle (whom all the Greek city-states worshipped) delivered an ill-omen. By land and sea the Greeks were outnumbered 2 to 1. The Persian army was so large it had to march around the Aegean Sea rather than sail across as in 490 B.C. The Greek strategy was to emphasize their navy but the first line of defense was Thermopylae (meaning “hot gates”), a coastal road hemmed in by sea and mountains to a narrow pass 50 feet wide. As in the film 300 Spartans were deployed to delay (and merely delay—they knew they would be defeated and killed) the Persians at this pass. As Xerxes approached he was besieged by a storm that raged for 3 days and sank a number of ships. Yet another storm then sanks 200 more ships. Xerxes then launched his land attack at last and entered the pass at Thermopylae. The Spartans defended the pass valiantly against superior numbers, but there was treachery and the Persians learned of an alternate route which they then used to surround the Spartans. In fact, the Spartans detected the movement but, instead of retreating, they resolve to defend the pass against all odds. All of them were killed and their leader, Leonides, was put on a cross.

At Salamis there was a naval battle won by the Athenians in which the Persians lost 200 ships to the Athenian 40. At the same time, on land, the Persian forces were decimated by combined Greek armies.

At Platea (the very end of the film) the Spartan army of 100,000 faced a slightly larger enemy army that now includes fellow Greeks who defected from the city-states of Thessaly and Boethia. The battle was haphazard but Sparta eventually overcame the Persians. On the same day the battle of Mycale takes place at which the Greek forces also win. The Persians abandoned the invasion and returned home.

The Delian League of Greek city states was then formed which, from 477-449 wisely waged continual war on the Persians to prevent a third invasion. The “Golden Age”, “The Greek Miracle” was then secured.



Athens under Pericles. After the Persian wars there was security and expansion of influence. Pericles, Athens’ leader, is remembered as being incorruptible, a brilliant speaker and a clear thinker. He associated himself with Sophocles, Anaxagoras and other poets and philosophers. He introduced pay for public service and jury duty so that the poor might participate in government. He instituted a democracy which included the Assembly for which all males over 18 were eligible and which convened several times a month. (Are these democratic reforms not the “new age of freedom” referred to in the film? But, if so then why not give Athens a more prominent role in the movie?) Ruling the Assembly was the Five Hundred of male citizens 30 years or older who prepared the agenda on which the assembly voted and which then carried out the will of the Assembly. No citizen could serve more than 2 terms in a lifetime and no one could serve two terms consecutively. This prevented power from becoming concentrated in the hands of one person. In addition there were magistrates and a board of generals numbering 10 to which Pericles was elected several times. The historian Thucydides (the first true historian, in the sense that he was critical and adhered to factual knowledge) wrote that this democracy was merely nominal and that in fact Athens was ruled by Pericles alone. Nonetheless, limited or not, the general concepts and structures of modern democracy were inaugurated here at this time.

In this very brief age (only about one generation) we find (among others): Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the school of Pythagoras, Pindar, Socrates, Plato, and the young Aristotle—they were responsible for what we call Western culture. The “Greek Miracle” was that in a single generation, after having won two improbable victories over a vastly superior empire, these handful of men invented (in the West) science, mathematics, philosophy, history, stage drama, comedy, tragedy, and basic democratic principles.



Thence followed the calamity of the Peloponnesian War. (Thucydides was the classical historian of this era.) After the city-states again fall into squabbling amongst themselves, Sparta on land and Athens at sea battle each other to a stalemate with victories and disasters arriving pell-mell. The Athenian city wall withstood the Spartan siege, but within the city there was plague. Alcibiades (450-404), who was the student and lover of Socrates as well as a popular aristocrat, hatched a plan and allied with Argos to invade and capture Syracuse in a large 50,000 man, 200 ship operation. All was lost in one frightful disaster after another. He then betrayed Athens and went over to the Spartan side. Sparta then allied with its old enemy the Persians (whom they had just defeated about 50 years before !!!) and acquired a navy. Meanwhile, so confused was Athens at this time that when the traitor Alcibiades returned some time later, he was again given a military command! This alliance marked the beginning of the end, and in 404 Athens succumbs to Sparta. The great city fell and the old democratic order ended.

In the aftermath of this war Sparta ruled Greece until she too suffered a defeat at the hands of Thebes—her first military defeat ever—leaving Greece in disarray. Plato and then Aristotle taught during this period while, in the west, Philip of Macedon began a series of brilliant and shrewd military conquests. He then died and was succeeded by his son, Alexander who conquered must of the known world and began the age called Hellenism when the Greek (actually Athenian) cultural achievements were introduced to much of the world. This era was then superceded by the rise of Rome and the enormous growth of the Roman Empire.



II Questions for the film



When a film based on facts or on history is unfaithful to the facts then we are allowed to view it critically. We may say that the film, although based on history, is really trying to advance an agenda of some kind. One kind of agenda is ideological. (Another would be moral.) An ideology may be broadly defined as a small set of ideas or beliefs which govern—whether consciously or not, usually not consciously—the way things are or should be. It is sometimes said that an ideology becomes most successful when people say, “well, that’s just obvious!” There is a famous joke in philosophy. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a historian: “How can people have been so stupid as to think that the sun revolved around the earth?” The historian said that, well, obviously because it looked like the sun revolved around the earth. Wittgenstein then responded: “Well, what does it look like when the earth turns on its axis and revolves around the sun?” The same; it looks exactly the same and it always has. The question of what was obvious depended on whether one was earth-centric or solar-centric. The point of the joke was to show that what seems obvious isn’t necessarily true; there had been an underlying ideology (in both ancient Greece and in Christian theology) that the earth was the center—and the most important—object in the sky and so, naturally—obviously—everything revolves around the earth. Would not someone in ancient times with a solar-centric ideology look into the sky and say that obviously the earth revolves on its axis and revolves around the sun? Each side would think that the other is obviously crazy!

One can say that in America there is an ideology of “individualism”. This would mean that the individual is almost a sacred concept; that the individual must be protected from the “collective”; that individual rights are always to be defended; and so on. Thus America has always been, for the most part, anti-communist; also this is why Americans like to reward “individual achievements”. So, a single concept—the sanctity of the individual—may be the root explanation for a great variety of American practices. Much of American law is based on the protection of the rights of individuals. Another underlying ideology may be a belief in “progress”; that history is always progressing toward a future which will or should be better than today. The film 300 partakes of this ideology. Leonidas thinks that a new era is beginning—he doesn’t know exactly what it will be like—which the Spartans must defend. But of course another culture may have an ideology that says that history repeats itself, that history is a circle (and not an arrow), that tradition is always being re-discovered, and that progress is a meaningless illusion and so while the Spartans may be brave, they are wasting their bravery on an illusion.

In Cross-Cultural communication, based on real understanding, one must try to get to an ideology that underlies another culture’s practices and that underlies one’s own culture’s practices in an attempt to achieve true understanding of and communication with each other in spite of differences. But this is itself based on an ideology: that it is worthwhile to communicate with other cultures, that cultural relativism is the Good and that cultural relativism should be the basic organizing principle (the basic ideology) of globalism in the contemporary world. Does this mean that it may be possible for all of us to escape our ideologies and then communicate directly? That is a highly debatable point. If we take our ancient earth-centric person and our ancient solar-centric person and bring them together it is possible that one may say “OK. I understand why you say you obviously see why the sun revolves around the earth; but, it doesn’t, it’s an illusion…” and vice versa. Then, if we take both of them into our century and have them talk to an astrophysicist, the astrophysicist might say “Well, it is now obvious to us that nothing is centric; there is no center; space is not what you think it is; your concept of space is based on a terrestrial geometry and there are other geometries, so your whole argument is really not very important. The real issue is…”



Favorite Quotes from the film with analysis:



Dilios: “A beast…an empire of slaves ready to devour Greece. Ready to snuff out the world’s one hope for reason and justice.” “A beast”, like the wolf Leonidas had to slay. So, Persians are not really human and so we ought not communicate with them and we are free to kill them with a clear conscience. And in historical fact, about 50 years after the film ends, Sparta and Persia become allies!



Leonidas: “Know that in Sparta everyone, even a king’s messenger, is held accountable for the words of his voice.” Individual responsibility is of greater importance than ancient customs and laws of hospitality which every civilization had adhered to such as never killing a messenger. In fact Sparta had no such ethic.



Leonidas: “If those philosophers and boy lovers [i.e. Athenians] have found that kind of nerve, then…” This is the only reference to Athens in the film; it is as if Athens is negligible; not even worth speaking about, which every Spartan knew was not true (I mean in historical reality), so why?...



An Ephor: “Trust the Gods Leonidas.” Leonidas: “I prefer you trusted your reason.” Very clearly Lenidas is trying to institute a new ideology—one based on reason, not Gods. This is a distinct ambition of the film.



Dilios: The Ephors are “remnants of a senseless tradition…And no Spartan, man or woman, slave or king, is above the law.” Similar to the above, a new ideology is needed for the world: reason, utter respect for law, individual responsibility…These are actually Judaic (Jewish) principles. [The Jews are completely, not just partially (like the Athenians) excluded from the reasoning in the film.] In the Old Testament of the Bible, a human argues that not even God (Jehovah) is above the law—and he wins the argument against God!



Queen: “Come back with your shield or on it.” This is actually true. This was part of the Spartan code which is sometimes compared to Japanese Samuri.



Queen: “Ask yourself, my dearest love, what should a free man do?” … an ideology of freedom…see quotes below…



Leonidas: “We march for our lands, for our families, for our freedoms.” In reality much of their land was taken from others; there was no family life in Sparta; and they were free only to become soldiers, not farmers, not businessmen. Any Spartan of the time would have asked him: Families? Freedoms? What the hell are you talking about?



Queen: “Freedom isn’t free.” That’s a quote from an American politician!



Leonidas: “A new age has begun. An age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave there last breath to defend it.” Fascinating, Leonidas doesn’t really understand what he is fighting for…it’s new; Sparta had never been free, had never valued freedom or individuality…yet he’s ready to die for it. Is he fighting for something contrary to his own culture? This is one of the oddest things in the film and the most difficult to make sense of.



Xerxes: “There is much our cultures could share.” Interesting! Xerxes is Obama! This is the ideology of ‘cultural relativism’; i.e. any one culture is a good as any other, as interesting as any other, the world is a salad bowl, not a melting pot; no one ideology should be supreme…but of course in the film Xerxes is the “villain”; the film resolutely rejects cultural relativism.



Dilios (at Platea): “Today we liberate a world from mysticism and tyranny.” Well, in reality, just a few years later, Greece disintegrated, and new empire was born under Alexander and then another empire (Roman) that lasted a thousand years.







The fact is, from an ideological analysis, this film is just crazy. I’ll just bring up a few points.



Leonidas refers to the Athenians as “boy lovers” [i.e. homosexual, gay] which implies weakness and something distasteful that would never be allowed in Sparta. Well, the Spartans were “boy lovers”! and, from an aesthetic point of view, this is the most gay-friendly film I have ever seen made by a major movie studio. For most of the film we see beefy half naked men who obviously love each other (they fight virtually arm in arm and as one body), and who obviously spend all their spare time in the gym to get those great abs!



I see three different ideologies (but one is suppressed): the Spartan, the Persian, and the Athenian.



First: A possible Athenian ideology is never allowed to interfere with the others. In fact Athens’ importance at this time was indispensable in the Persian wars and all Sparta knew it. The Spartans themselves had saluted the Athenians at Marathon just ten years before our film takes place. The Athenians were hardly “weak” and distracted from the Persian threat by philosophy and homosexuality. So, why are they almost completely excluded from the film? Athens already was achieving the “new” ideology that Lenidas wishes to institute.



Second: Persia represents what is today intended to be taught in Cross-Cultural communication: each culture has something to say to, and learn from, each other culture. Yet in the film this ideology is represented by the hated, half animal Persians! Part of the ideology the Persians represent is also to take pleasure in what various cultures have to offer each other. This is also “cross-cultural communication”. In fact, what we see of the Persians is a sort of multi-cross-cultural paradise of wealth, strength, and pleasure. Consider Xerxes offer to Leonidas: Is it unreasonable? (Leonidas is proud of his belief in rationality.) All Leonidas has to do is swear a few words to Xeres and then the Spartans could retain their culture, their way of life, and they could contribute their ways to world culture. Is that so bad? Isn’t that an (ideological) ideal for us today? (Also, this film is one of many we shall see where the East (whether the middle-east, India, China, or Japan) is represented as a place were ordinary people indulge themselves in, and cultivate into an art form, pleasures which Westerners deny themselves. This is sometimes called ‘projection’: when you “project” on to the other (the other person, the other culture, the other way of life) pleasures—often imaginary pleasures—which you yourself desire but cannot admit are your own. It is a very common psychological phenomenon which often leads to violence: you must ultimately eliminate the other in order not to have to acknowledge your own desire, or, you must eliminate the other who has stolen your enjoyment and is able to indulge in it while you are in a state of repression. One famous ideological theorist says that in this way enjoyment is always a political factor.)



Third: those Spartans. Sparta was hardly free. It was what we today call a fascist state: All human endeavor ends with the State, with its strength, and its freedom from any other state. Never mind whether daily life is comfortable or even worth living…what matters is the state and its leader. All else is repressed and considered as of lesser or of no value. Yet, the film is clearly championing this ideology, a fascist ideology—and the film was and is popular. This is very, very strange in supposedly “multi-cultural”, “tolerant” England and America. Somehow a fascist discipline now in defense of a Freedom yet to come seems to be the vague ideology underlying the film. It is as if, deep down, the filmmakers (and the audiences who flocked to the film) distrust both liberal Athenian style democracy and also Multi-cultural, Cross-cultural style globalism. So, in such a situation, the “brave” thing to do is reject both and die for a “freedom” no one can imagine.



I don’t see how, from this ideological perspective, we should not see Sparta as trapped between two ideologies: the Athenian and the Persian (the one represented by Athens and the other represented by Persia). They cannot even acknowledge the Athenian because it is in fact already a partial realization of Leonidas’s dream of the future “free of mysticism” (the Athenians were developing science and philosophy, they were already experiencing the death of their gods on the stage in dramas while the real Spartans remained highly superstitious) “and tyranny” (the Spartan’s tyrannized themselves by their own rational and fascist way of life). Then, on the other hand, they must defeat the Persians who, at this time, are the whole western world (except for tiny Greek city-states). In fact the city-states were poor, backward, and barbaric compared to Persia; the Persians would not have been greatly enriched by including Greece within their domain of influence; on the contrary, Greece would have profited by being included within the Persian sphere. Also, in historical fact, the Spartans allied with the Persians just 50 years after the film takes place, yet there is no hint of this possibility in the film where the hated traitor is killed by the Queen. The film does nothing to imply that there may be other traitors.



How can we reconcile all this and account for the popularity the film has enjoyed? The film is clearly distrustful of an Athenian ideology, so much so that the film barely acknowledges that they exist when in fact it was as much Athenian strength and courage that repelled the Persian as it was Spartan. And it vilifies what is in fact perhaps the ‘ruling’ ideology of globalism today: cultural relativism and cross-cultural communication. So what’s the answer?

If this film had been made during the Battle of Britain (before America entered the war) then I could see it as an allegory. The Spartans would be like the people of Britain who must forego much of their traditional and quiet way of life in order to mobilize. The Athenians (in the film, not in real history!) would be like the Americans who are so preoccupied with political squabbling as not to see the enormous danger coming from the East (from Nazi Germany). And then the Persians would be like the Nazi’s whose armies had just swallowed up Europe and appeared invincible.

However the film was made recently…so I don’t know how to account for its popularity, and it is important to do so. It is easy to point to or laugh at various “liberties” taken with the real history. But the response to the film has been different. There is something positive in the film, something “good” that appeals to many people. That is what analysis has to dig up. One way out, a very common one, is to say that “it’s a good story.” But that is called begging the question: including in the answer what was in the question. In this case, the question remains: OK, it’s a good story, but what makes it a good story? And if you get the answer, “well, it’s obvious!” then we have the right to suspect something ideological is at the bottom of this film’s popularity, or something psychological: something people are not fully aware of or something people don’t want to admit.