Themophyle Battle

The Graeco-Persian Wars: The Battle of Thermopylae
The King with half the East at heel is marched from land of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
- AE Housman
Thermopylae is a legend. There is no better way todescribe it. The battle fought there two and-a-half millennia ago has sent ripples through the corridors of time to the present day. While it was not as important as the other battles of the Graeco-Persian Wars in the driving out of the Persians from Greece, its cultural influences are wide-ranging. It immortalised the 300 Spartans who died in the pass1, and since then the Spartan myth has capturedthe imaginations of countless individuals. The most famous last stand ever made held up the vast army of the King of Persia for several days. It could be argued that without the time this bought the rest of Greece for preparations of the eventual defeat of the Persian expedition, Greek victory could not have been achieved.
Prelude
Greece was in turmoil in the spring of 480 BC. News was spreadingof the King of Persia's advance, accompanied by the greatest army ever seen, with the goal of pacifying the area and turning it into a new satrapy, a western outpost of the gigantic Persian Empire. A group of Greek city-states, the Hellenic League, resolved to fight against the invasion. This had been formed the previous year, and now the allies were congregating at the Isthmus of Corinth in theheart of Greece for a council of war.
The Spartan delegation, representing the most powerful city in Greece and generally acknowledged leader of the League, probably included Leonidas, one of the city's kings. They were undoubtedly worried. The Spartans had consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi for a prediction of the successes of the League, and had received this typically cryptic answer:
Yourfate, O inhabitants of the broad fields of Sparta,
Is to see your great and famous city destroyed by the sons of Perseus2.
Either that, or everyone within the borders of Lacedaemon,
Must mourn the death of a king, sprung from the line of Heracles3.
A delegation from Thessaly arrived in the congress. They painted a picture of the perfect place to hold the Persian advance. It was a narrowpass with sheer walls beneath Mount Olympus on the border with Persian Macedon. It was called Tempe. Ten thousand hoplites4 were duly assembled and marched north, commanded by Euainetus the Spartan, but with Themistocles the Athenian in the ranks as well. When the army reached Thessaly, however, it became clear that things were not as they had seemed. Tempe was not the only pass the Persians coulduse, and the whole area was swarming with Persian agents and traitorous Greeks. They were forced to withdraw as the Persian horde crossed the mountains by another pass at Sarantoporo.
This setback was humiliating to the Hellenic League. In Athens, unease was growing about Themistocles's reforms, which had seen vast amounts of resources invested in a new navy, and the diversion of manpower awayfrom the land army to the ships. It had been the Athenians who had defeated a Persian expedition in a pitched battle at Marathon ten years before, and some expressed the wish to meet them in the field again. To have any hope of even matching the Persians at sea, every Athenian who could be mustered would be needed, leaving it to the Spartans and men from the other cities of the League to fight onland.
Themistocles returned to the Isthmus and a second congress was held, during which he drew out his battle plans. During the march up to Tempe, he had scouted the land extensively and located the perfect place to hold off the Persian advance, both by land and sea. At the northern tip of the island of Euboea there was a narrow strait barely six miles across; and 40 miles to the west lay the...