Daniel Robert Epstein: 300 director Zack Snyder

300's a great movie! We got a sneak preview on base here, and man, it really struck a chord with Marines. I think it's probably because all we really want to be is just Spartans with guns.

I can't wait to see it. My roommate is going nuts with me talking me talking about it.

We're having a huge ass pizza and ice cream party, and then we're going to see 300.

I don't know why they have to fuck with one of history's most insane moments by throwing in mythical beasts, war elephants and bizarre plot changes, but I'm gonna reserve judgement until I see the movie because the comic book was still pretty cool for what it was.

I love the book so much. So I am excited to see it.

It's great that this guy at least seems to "get" some of Watchmen... I still think that it is unadaptable, though.

Isn't that good? He is vastly understating the awesomeness of this movie....

I saw it and thought it was one of the best movies I've ever seen.

I want to see it.

i want to see it sooo baddd

Me and my army are going to march into an IMAX and see 300. For Spartaaaaaaa!

Interesting interview. I still have my reservations for Watchmen...but maybe he'll be the guy who can pull it off.

it was all I hoped it would be.

I saw the movie today and I thought it was great. No offense to the director, or maybe this is a compliment, I don't know, but all I could think was, "This guy learned his chops from Ridley Scott." If I didn't know better, I would have just assumed Ridley Scott directed it.

You know, I totally understand. I am finishing my degree in history, and movies like this generally make historians cringe. Often people go into them not realizing that this is not the real story. In this case, it was adapted from a graphic novel that turned it into more of a mythology story than anything else. So what I hear often is the horrifying,"I learned some history from that movie!" (I heard that one after The Last Samurai. Gah! ) Anyway, what I really hope for is that movie will inspire people to look up the real history.

Just before I went to go see it at the midnight opening I was flipping through the channels and the History Channel had a documentary done in a very similar style about the real history and more indepth information about the people and the war. Didn't see much but it seemed pretty good.

As for the movie. AMAZING!!!!!! Great visuals. good comic book feel. Sometimes the blood looked like ink not real blood. Great action and all around great thriller.

A side note the Spiderman 3 trailer was awsome. I'm really excited for that one now.

And now to watch Frank Miller on G4TV Icons.

Yeah the History Channel did a pretty good job as well but even they screwed up some of the important details. Modern historians put the number of Persians at between 150,000 and 900,000 (most believe there were about 300,000), and Thermopylae was not bordered by two mountain faces: there was one mountain face, then a cliff drop-off into the Aegean, which is kind of a critical fact because the style of the fighting -- and the sheer number of men the Persians threw at the Greeks -- meant literally hundreds of men fell off that cliff into the sea as they got pushed back by the phalanx.

Also, the "three hundred" were accompanied by a battle train of at least another 300 to 600 Messenian helots who served as squires, and there was a Greek contingent of another 5,000 or so men who stayed through two days of fighting until Leonidas dismissed them. Only the Thespians and Thebans stayed on the last day with the Spartans.

And I don't know what the deal is with the movie's portrayal of the ephors, but the primary reason a main Spartan force wasn't sent to Thermopylae was because of a religious festival, not some wierd back-stabbing plot in Sparta.

The other thing is, the Spartans were scared shitless to send their entire military out of the Peloponnese because that left the door open for the Messenians to revolt back home, and if that happened, their society as they knew it would have been ruined. (Which happened anyway later on in history when Epaminondas liberated Messenia, after the Peloponessian War.)

That's kind of an inconvenient fact for the movie, because if you're going to portray Sparta as a great beacon of democracy and freedom, how can you explain the enslavement of the Messenians?

I'm gonna go see the movie tonight expecting entertainment, not history, so it should be all good. But, yeah, this looks like it's on the level of other Hollywood epics as far as faithfulness to historical fact.

It's interesting you should say that. You would think that a channel that devotes itself to history would go out of their way to get their facts straight. I have had professors complain about some of their shows, particularly when it comes to Medieval history. I myself have caught them citing outdated research. And of course, there is the question of what primary sources they are using, etc., but that's historiography, and if anyone wants to talk to me about historiography, then message me personally, and I'd be more than happy to talk about that. (I am a post-modernist).
:-D

The same way that "... all men are created equal" in the USA.

Not everything is conveniently applicable to the U.S. Sparta was a tiny village of 9,000 people, not an imperial power or a superpower, or even (at the time of Thermopylae) a pan-Hellenic power. Everyone had slaves in antiquity, and you can't apply 21st-century morals to 489 BC because people simply didn't think that way back then. That's what I was saying.

Yeah they generally do a pretty good job, but I think it's an issue of things getting "lost in translation," for lack of a better way to put it. The History Channel people are producers and script writers, but not academics or experts in every historical period, and while they consult historical experts, those experts usually get cut down to snippets among the re-enactments and voice-overs. Plus these guys are going for dramatic effect in a one-hour TV special, so some things are always abbreviated or sacrificed in favor of pacing. The way I look at it, History Channel is a great entry point for certain battles or historical figures, and then if you want to know more...well, that's what the original texts are great for. Did you see the recent Barbarian Week? Pretty cool stuff.

By ancient standards, Sparta was both an imperial power and a superpower. And was the major power in Greece when the Persians invaded in 490 BC

Nada. The term superpower doesn't apply to Greek city-states in that period of antiquity, and even if it did, it wouldn't apply to a village that could barely suppress its neighbors in the Peloponnese.

Sparta did not have colonies, and when it defeated rivals, with the exception of Messenia, it did not rule them or plunder them -- it simply forced them into leagues with guarantees of military aid if Sparta was threatened. It did not have proper ambassadors, it never had any mechanism for dealing with rule outside its own borders, and it had absolutely no money or method of persuasion outside of threatening other city-states by land only.

I think you're confusing post-Peloponessian war Sparta with the Sparta that existed before Thermopylae, which are two very different periods. Even during the period of so-called Spartan hegemony after the Peloponnesian War, Spartan influence in Athens crumbled after a few years and the rest of the Greeks got sick of the Spartans *very* quickly because the Spartans did not know how to deal with being the leaders of a pan-Hellenic "league." Proof is Agiselaus and his expedition into Asia Minor, which was universally condemned by the Greeks, or Lysandros and his appointed councilors in Attica, who were deposed almost as soon as they were installed.

It's funny, because even if you read Spartan cheerleaders like Plutarch and Xenophon, they admit Greeks at the time were annoyed with Spartan bullshit. (And I say this as a Spartanophile, if that's even a word.)

And Sparta could hardly be a superpower when it could barely muster a thousand Peers on the battlefield out of fear that losing more would mean a catastrophic end to its existence and freedom for the helots. When the Athenians captured the Peers on Sphacteria, the Spartans went absolutely fucking ballistic that they lost about 300 men. That shows you how scared they were to lose their troops. Through their history they couldn't -- and wouldn't -- cross the Hellespont with a main force, so how could they be a superpower?

Sparta is a fascinating culture, and there's a lot to admire, but a lot of stories make Spartans out to be more than they were.

You wouldn't call a 'village' (which was actually just the capital of a larger subjugated state) that controled the Peloponnesian; demanded and recieved submission and tribute from all their neighbours; conquered their only major rival in greece; had a period of hegemony; and was the unquestioned leader of the greek states at the time of Xerxes' invasion.....you wouldn't call that a superpower of the greek world?

The fact that it had no colonies was for religious and cultural reasons, as well as a serious disinterest in affairs beyond the Peloponnesian peninsula, not due to lack of ability. Spartans were not allowed occupations of a non-military nature, and debarred by law from trade or manufacture. It was a military state, with military interests. It did not seek to be the cultural beacon or economic power of the greek world, and was not interested in the accumulation of wealth or the riches of plunder; It demanded and recieved all that it asked for: Military forces in times of war.
Sparta, while not setting up it's own government within their conquered territories, still controled every aspect of their policy.
Because spartans did not place a permanent occupational force in the lands they conquered, did not deminish it's might, control, or influence; And was most definately one of the pan-hellenic powers.

Actually, i think you are confusing the two. Following the Peloponessian war was a brief period of Spartan hegemony, which actually was the beginning of it's decline. Before that, they were the most powerful city-state.
and all attempts by a greek city-state, even Athens, at hegemony of all Greece, was resented. Sparta was not unique, and it wasn't because it didn't know how to rule. That just made keeping it unlikely.
Also Lysandros was deposed due to policy by the Spartans themselves.
But that's neither here nor there, as it is a different point in history. Giving examples of the state of affairs after the Persian wars, isn't a description of the situation before the Persian wars.

the population of rival nations annoyance with Sparta after the Peloponessian wars, is no evidence that Sparta was not the most powerful hellinistic military force at the time of Xerxes' invasion of greece.

that is pure opinion, and not fact.
The most accepted reason sparta left behing the majority of it's army, was due to a religious festival, and in prudence so that the town could be defended in the event Xerxes came to Sparta after Athens.
I think that their fear of a helot revolt was real, but had little to do with the numbers sent to Thermopylae. Seeing as at Plataea, they sent 45,000 men; 5,000 of them Spartiates, around half of the citizen population.
The fact that their armies even reached the Hellespont is proof that the Spartans were a superpower in Greece

That's true. But a lot of the stories are also mostly true, just exagerated.
The Spartans were the only greek state to have a full-time army at the time. Well trained, and with a fighting system vastly superior to any greek force. I think it's entirely likely that this fact gave them dominating military might, and thus vast political power.
But you are right in that it is exagerated in some areas.

Meh. Whatever you may have read in Wikipedia entries or seen in 300, the truth is Sparta was *not* a superpower, and that includes the period before the second Persian invasion.

Sparta was a village. It was not a capital of Lakedaemon. There were Spartiates -- Peers, Similars, Equals, homoioi -- and there were perokoi and helots. Those people did not enjoy the same status as homoioi, and Sparta was not their "capital." And, according to the laws of Lycurgus, Spartiates could not possess money, so you're incorrect about "tribute." There was no central acropolis with a state stockpile of talents. There were only military guarantees. This is documented in the original historical texts and backed up by the scholarly work of Cartledge, Victor Davis Hanson, etc.

Again, you're confusing your time periods. The period of Spartan hegemony was AFTER the Peloponnesian War, not before it. Sparta did not conquer Athens before Thermopylae, and it only conquered Athens with Persian financial backing in order to build a fleet, thus Lysandros and the naval victory at Aegospotami.

Lysandros deposed? When? He was killed in battle after the Peloponnesian War, not deposed.

And it's not opinion that Sparta was weakened by its dependence on the helots, it is fact. That is the major, enduring reason why Sparta could not extend its military strength beyond the Hellespont, and in fact much beyond the Peloponnese. This is why the "Archidaman War" in the early years of the war with Athens was a failure -- the military had to be withdrawn seasonally, out of fear that a long campaign would spell ruin for the city-state back home if a revolt was sparked.

It's also the single biggest reason for the downfall of Sparta later in its history, when Epaminondas liberated the helots.

The bottom line is, Thermopylae set the bar ridiculously high and Sparta never lived up to it after that. It was a village and a local power, nothing more. If Sparta had the population of an Athens or a Rome -- impossible because of Lycurgan law -- it *might* have been on par with what we consider a superpower today, but it was just a village of a few thousand people, constantly dwindling.

I can see why the Iranian government is so annoyed by this - it's a thinly veiled metaphor for America and Iran that ridicules one of the biggest figures in Iranian culture and history. But, I don't like the Iranian government, so this didn't really bother me.

I thought it was a good movie ... although the story still wasn't as cool as Zulu/Rorke's Drift.