300 ---can anyone guess what this movie will be about?

I have spent some time studying the Spartans, so this movie interests me. First off, I wish the 300 Spartans had armor. Then there is the fact where we seem to hear the Spartans giving long speeches. This was not the case in Sparta.

To defend the movie, Greeks had a nack for exaggerating victories. If you study Greek historians of the time, you cannot rely on such figures as numbers because they were fudged to make the victory more inspiring.

My gut says who ever created this movie has added hollywood dramatics to a story which needs no added dramitics. Many of the Persian units showed in the trailors simply did not exist in the Persian Army. Maybe I will be proven wrong.
 
I have spent some time studying the Spartans, so this movie interests me. First off, I wish the 300 Spartans had armor. Then there is the fact where we seem to hear the Spartans giving long speeches. This was not the case in Sparta.

To defend the movie, Greeks had a nack for exaggerating victories. If you study Greek historians of the time, you cannot rely on such figures as numbers because they were fudged to make the victory more inspiring.

My gut says who ever created this movie has added hollywood dramatics to a story which needs no added dramitics. Many of the Persian units showed in the trailors simply did not exist in the Persian Army. Maybe I will be proven wrong.

Good observation. :santa:

I suggest this book if you are really interested to know more about Persian army of 2500 yrs ago.

Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World

by Paul Cartledge (Hardcover - Nov 2, 2006)
 
I have spent some time studying the Spartans, so this movie interests me. First off, I wish the 300 Spartans had armor

Doody, I'm not sure if I'm correct about the Spartans at Thermopylae. I thought they frought in nude for real at 480 BC. They only has red cape, corinthian helmet, sheild, sword, and spear. Correct me if I'm mistake.
 
Doody, I'm not sure if I'm correct about the Spartans at Thermopylae. I thought they frought in nude for real at 480 BC. They only has red cape, corinthian helmet, sheild, sword, and spear. Correct me if I'm mistake.

The Spartans fought with their Cuirass, body armor, until somewhere around 450-425 BC. They would go back to the cuirass in 360 BC. The Spartans also had greaves, leg armor, which they wore until about the same time they shed the cuirass. At the time of Thermopylae, the Spartan greave covered the knee and a good potion of the ankle

A Spartan warrior at Thermopylae might look like this guy...I am not sure if they were fighting nude at this point
274887a.jpg
 
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Ahh...alright. I know it sound strange that anyone fought in nude but I've been told. But they may be mistake. I'm not sure about that. If I'm Spartan, I'd rather wore the armor like that pic than unprotected attire or nude.

Did Sparta or Spartans disappeared after Alexander The Great's death or crushed by Romans? If not, how did Sparta disappear or what?
 
The demise of Sparta is definately confusing. The start of the decline happened in 371 BC at the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartans suffered 1,000 dead and their male adult population was cut in half to 1,000. What is really messed up is the families of the survivors were looked down upon their returning men while the families of those who died celebrated.

From there, the Spartans were extremely weak. There is where it gets real confusing. War between the Greeks really hurt the Spartans. At one point, Sparta's Greek enemies freed 6,000 helots (slaves). If you know anything about Spartan culture, the helots were the economic backbone to Sparta. Rome entered the picture around 190 BC. Sparta was too weak to fight to fight either its Greek enemies or Rome at this point. Sparta would continue to decline, but its traditions would be adopted by the Romans.

To me Sparta as an independent city state ended in 190. Sparta still had some fight in her and caused the Romans problems. However, she would become part of the Roman empire. Paul Cartledge's history of the Spartans ends in 14 AD.

as for the nude bit, I know for a fact that they conducted all physical training, to include Spartan women, in the nude.

Can you tell I have too much free time???
 
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I have an interest actually, but mostly on Knossos and Crete.

Seeing the trailer, I would say that its no where near real world, in alot of aspects even. Or maybe because I dont know much about Spartans at that time. So please enlighten me if I am mistaken :smil:
 
As I recall Sparta itself was little more than a village, none of the grand stone structures found in Athens and yet every scene in the trailer shows very large and ornate stone structures.
 
I just got done reading Gates of Fire last week. It's really inspirational, coming from a military standpoint (Take a stance, Marine Corps!) one can relate to the story in the book.

The book is on the Commadants reading list, it looked interesting so I bought it.
 
300 the movie will not be on the list of crappy movies I want to waste my money on and I encourage others not to spend their hard-earned money on that too. 300

The truth is that Spartan society left nothing behind but stories of its vicious battles. No art, no knowledge, no invention, nothing to enlighten the future men came from Sparta- only the clash of arms and violence. Sparta was overwhelmed in the end by an outside world Spartans couldn't even begin to understand because of their culture's innate xenophobia and hatred.

That so-called Spartan courage had no impact on the Persian army. The Persians took losses, but kept right on down the Greek coast to Athens and burned it in one piece. What stopped the Persians was the subterfuge of Themistocles and the Athenian navy at the naval battle of Salamis which was quite a small loss for Persia.

As for "the whole of Spartan society," what else is there to say? Sparta was a totalitarian and aristocrat community well over 20 centuries before the term was even invented, suppressing a vast helotry. (It also systematized homosexuality to a degree unknown in any other society) And, again, it created nothing to enlighten men who would come after- which is exactly what is meant by culture, no?
 
There is also what I would call the warrior culture and Sparta has had a tremendous legacy in this regard. Sometimes Phoenix, it is good to find honor in your enemy, especially when we are talking about a small band of highly motivated warriors who stood their ground an army as large and powerful as that of Persia.
 
http://300themovie.info/

Iranian cyber attack against American movie
March 9, 2007 11:42 PM

Tehran, March 11, Taliya News – Once again U.S propaganda machine raid another attack against Iran, its culture and civilization through a hateful movie:"300"

"300" is the name of an irresponsible, unethical and unscientific movie which portraits Persian Empire kings and soldiers as monsters and animals with body-piercing, armors, facial features and demonic behavior that seem to have sprung out from the dungeons of hell.

The inaccurate and derogatory depiction of ancient Persians that according to all historical data conducted warfare with mastery and dignity, and looked nothing like science-fictional monsters, is a depiction of how movie studios and authors sacrifice historical accuracy for would-be profits.

It is a proven scholarly fact that the Persian Empire in 480 B.C was the most magnificent and civilized empire. Established by the Cyrus the great, the writer of the first human right declaration, Persians ruled over significant portions of Greater Iran, the east modern Afghanistan and beyond into central Asia; in the north and west all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), the upper Balkans peninsula (Thrace), and most of the Black Sea coastal regions; in the west and southwest the territories of modern Iraq, northern Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, all significant population centers of ancient Egypt and as far west as portions of Libya. Having twenty nations under control, encompassing approximately 7.5 million square kilometers, unquestionably the Achaemenid Empire was territorially the largest empire of classical antiquity.

Based on the Zoroastrian doctrine, it was the strong emphasis on honesty and integrity that gave the ancient Persians credibility to rule the world, even in the eyes of the people belonging to the conquered nations (Herodotus, mid 5th century B.C). Truth for the sake of truth was the universal motto and the very core of the Persian culture that was followed not only by the great kings, but even the ordinary Persians made it a point to adhere to this code of conduct.

Some Iranians have written 2 petitions against that movie and Warner Brothers Studios (Here and here).

In 2005, Oliver stone, famous American director directed "Alexander" movie and insulted Persian Empire the same way.

Iranian Cyber counter-attack, Smart Google Bombing!

It is obvious that signing petition never force Americans to change their irresponsible behaviors. So an Iranian blogger suggests an interesting idea: Let's bomb the film through Google, in a different and smart way.
In his recent post, He writes down:

300 open today, and like many comic book fans I can't wait to see it for its stunning art. However, like many Persians I'm not thrilled with its portrayal of the great Persian army as barbaric snarling beasts.
In recent days some have talked about different forms of protest to this movie. A better idea (one which I have already proposed on my Persian weblog) might be doing a collaborative art project: 300 from a Persian perspective. Basically I have called upon all Persian artists to submit art with the theme of "ancient Persia", so we can gather all of these in one site and show the world (and comic fans) the face of ancient Persians from our own perspective. And to make sure that the world does really see it, I've orchestrated a campaign to bring up our gallery page to the top of search results (you can call it another Google bombing). The site is 300themovie.info. If you are an artist, or just think the idea is cool you can participate by either submitting your art (email it to submit@300themovie.info), or by helping to bring the page to the top of the rankings by linking to that page on your blog or website. Make sure you ONLY use the phrase "300 the movie" to link to it, like this: 300 the movie.
So, let's shake our body and show the world that Iranians never let anybody in the globe to insult them and falsify the history.

Source
 
Wow... stop. Take a breath and realise that this is no different than the Muslim overreaction to the Danish cartoons.

No one goes to movie theatres looking for or expecting to find truth. Its just a movie. Phoenix I'm surprised because you're one of the guys on here like me who hate this sort of PC crap. So what if the movie industry paints a stupid inaccurate picture of ancient Persia... no one believes that's how it really was anymore than anyone with a pulse believes Rambo is an accurate portrayal of Vietnam era US Army Special Forces troops.
 
Wow... stop. Take a breath and realise that this is no different than the Muslim overreaction to the Danish cartoons.

No one goes to movie theatres looking for or expecting to find truth. Its just a movie. Phoenix I'm surprised because you're one of the guys on here like me who hate this sort of PC crap. So what if the movie industry paints a stupid inaccurate picture of ancient Persia... no one believes that's how it really was anymore than anyone with a pulse believes Rambo is an accurate portrayal of Vietnam era US Army Special Forces troops.

Well, the difference is that we are not going on a rampage burn the buildings and stuff :eek: but i believe portraying persian empire as an evil thing is a bit of over stretch and I think it is within our rights to react to it in a civilized manner. However I realize that Hollywood itself is a real seperate entity from the US gov't or institutions and they do things to gain profit any way. But like I said protesting against an offensive thing in a civilized way is not bad. People have opinions...
 
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