Leonidas I

Leonidas I was one of Sparta's two kings at the time of the second Persian invasion of Greece, and he died in 480 BCE commanding the Greek rearguard at Thermopylae. His last stand with 300 Spartans made him a lasting symbol of courage against overwhelming odds. Almost everything known about him comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, writing a generation later, and from later authors such as Plutarch, so many details are as much legend as record.

Leonidas was born around 540 BCE into the Agiad house, one of Sparta's two royal families, which claimed descent from Heracles. Herodotus tells a colourful story of his birth: his father, King Anaxandridas II, was pressed by Sparta's magistrates to set aside his childless first wife, refused, and was allowed to take a second wife as well. The second wife bore Cleomenes; soon afterwards the first produced Dorieus and then Leonidas, possibly with a twin, Cleombrotus. As a younger son with little expectation of the crown, Leonidas would have gone through Sparta's harsh state training, the agoge.

Cleomenes became king, and Dorieus, bitter at being passed over, left Sparta and was killed in Sicily. Leonidas married Cleomenes's daughter, Gorgo. After Cleomenes was deposed amid claims of madness, Leonidas succeeded him around 490 or 489 BCE, sharing power, as Spartan custom required, with a king of the other royal line, Leotychidas II.

When the Persian king Xerxes prepared to invade Greece, the Greek states that chose to resist met in 481 BCE and placed Leonidas in command of their land forces. Herodotus reports that the oracle at Delphi warned Sparta it would lose either its city or a king descended from Heracles.

In August 480 BCE Leonidas marched north to the narrow pass of Thermopylae with only 300 Spartan citizens, plus helots and other troops, while Sparta celebrated a religious festival. Herodotus says the main army was to follow; modern historians have also pointed to the Olympic Games then under way and to quarrels at home. With contingents from other cities, the Greeks numbered somewhere between four and seven thousand. Herodotus put the Persian host at over two million, a figure no scholar accepts; modern estimates range from about 70,000 to 300,000.

For two days the Greeks threw back Persian assaults in the confined pass, even repelling Xerxes's elite guard. Then a local Greek, Ephialtes, showed the Persians a mountain path around the Greek position. Learning that he would be surrounded, Leonidas sent most of the allies away and stayed with his Spartans, along with Thespians who refused to leave, Thebans and helots. Herodotus offers two explanations: that Leonidas wished to preserve the rest of the army for later battles, or that he saw the allies were losing heart and chose to keep the glory for Sparta. He was killed early on the final day. His men fought over his body before being overwhelmed; Herodotus says Xerxes then had his head cut off and set on a stake.

Thermopylae was a defeat, but it delayed the Persians and became a rallying story for the Greeks, who defeated them at sea at Salamis later that year and on land at Plataea in 479 BCE. Leonidas's remains were later honoured at Sparta, where annual games in his name were still held in the 2nd century CE. The defiant reply "come and take them", which ancient writers attributed to him when Xerxes demanded the Spartans' weapons, appears on a statue raised at Thermopylae in 1955, and his story has been retold in poems, novels and films.

Our 500 BCE map shows Greece on the western edge of the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I shortly before the invasion. See the Greco-Persian Wars, the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Plataea, and modern Greece.