Cyrus the Great, Xerxes, & “300” the movie
The offensive nature of this ridiculous distortion of history
As an Iranian I was very offended by the movie “300” (and the comic by Frank Miller, which in my opinion is a completely racist and inaccurate work). I have always been offended by the insistence of the West and, by effect the World to take Herodotus’ history as fact.
Now anyone who has ever read this blog will know that I am by no means patriotic. I have never held with love of nation, fatherland or any of that way of thinking. Nonetheless I am an Iranian. I am also deeply interested in history. It is my heartfelt belief that in misrepresenting and downright lying about history and in propagating falsehoods we do more damage to international relations than perhaps almost any other form of political propaganda.
Anyway the history of nations is often used to back up jingoism and lies for the purposes of political propaganda in the now.
The news is constantly filled with historical inaccuracies and falsehoods. We are told barefaced lies on a daily basis about the history of events, whether they be recent history or old.
Miller and as a result the movie, represent the Spartans as perfect and virtuous, and Iranians as degenerate, perverted and monstrous. They are shown to be effete and animal like, arrogant and cowardly. And the story here perpetuates the ridiculous western claim that the 300 men of Sparta stood again a horde of millions of degenerate and barbaric Persians. They were so effete that they could not win the battle without the help of a traitor.
The fact is that the Immortals of the Achaemenian military were called that because their number was never allowed to fall below 10,000 and they were famous as THE elite heavy infantry of the entire ancient world.
The 50 or so years of warring between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greek City States was a mere blip on the lengthy and close relationship the two peoples shared over many centuries. Xerxes, Darius and Cyrus were famed for their just and fair laws, mentioned even in the Old Testament and the Bible. Yet the West prefers to represent Iranians as barbarians and savages as it has always done to whoever they considered competition.
Anyway I don’t want to go on. Anyone interested can read the actual history of this and other battles in the ancient world. Suffice to say that Thermopylae was chosen by the Helenes because of the narrow pass between more or less impassable mountains taking away the advantage of size from the invading Persians. But the Greek forces were by no means only the 300 Spartans. There were a total of 7000 Greek troops from various City States plus their squires and retinue at the battle. It is true that Xerxes troops were estimated at around 70,000, but still it does not justify the victory of the Persian army being talked about as a result of betrayal.
Below is a very interesting article by an Iranian film maker trying to tell the history of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, through an as yet unfinished film to try and balance the books a little.