Leonidas

Leonidas fought one recorded battle, and it made his name: the Battle of Thermopylae, where the Persian king Xerxes attacked the Greek line for three days. He did not live to see the Greek victories that ended the invasion, at sea off Salamis a few weeks later and on land at Plataea in 479 BC, where his nephew Pausanias led the Spartans.²

Foreigner, go tell the Spartans that we lie here obedient to their commands.³

What was Leonidas famous for?

Leonidas is famous for the last stand at Thermopylae in 480 BC. With a few thousand Greeks he blocked a narrow coastal pass against the army of Xerxes for two days. When a Greek guide led Persian troops around the mountain, he sent most of the allies away, stayed with his 300 Spartans and the Thespians, and was killed fighting.⁴

Who was King Leonidas before Thermopylae?

Leonidas was a son of King Anaxandridas of the Agiad house, which claimed descent from Heracles. He was not expected to rule: his half-brother Cleomenes and his full brother Dorieus came first. He became king around 490 BC, after Dorieus had died in Sicily and Cleomenes had died without a son, and he married Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo.⁶

Herodotus tells an unusual family story. Anaxandridas' first wife, his own niece, bore him no children, so the ephors made him take a second wife as well, something Herodotus calls not at all customary at Sparta. The second wife bore Cleomenes. The first wife, childless until then, then gave birth to Dorieus, to Leonidas and to Cleombrotus.⁷

Cleomenes, the eldest, became king. Dorieus refused to serve under him, left to found colonies and died in Sicily. When Cleomenes died without a son, around 490 BC, the crown passed to Leonidas, who was older than Cleombrotus and was married to Cleomenes' daughter. Herodotus gives his line of twenty ancestors back to Heracles.⁸

How old was Leonidas at Thermopylae?

His age is an estimate, because no birth year is recorded. Herodotus says he was born after Cleomenes and before their father died, and Cleomenes reigned from about 520 BC, so Leonidas was at least about 40 years old in 480 BC. No ancient writer gives his age at death.⁹

How such a man was raised in a city of soldiers is part of our Sparta vs Athens comparison, and how Spartans compare with Japan's warrior class is the subject of Spartan vs Samurai.

Who was Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas?

Gorgo was the only child of King Cleomenes I, Leonidas' half-brother, and became Leonidas' wife. Herodotus tells two stories about her judgment: as a girl of eight or nine she warned her father against a bribe, and later she worked out how to read a secret warning of the Persian invasion hidden under the wax of a writing tablet.¹⁰

In the first story Aristagoras of Miletus came to Cleomenes as a suppliant and raised his offer from ten talents to fifty. Gorgo told her father that the stranger would corrupt him unless he left, and Cleomenes went into another room. The second story, about a tablet sent by the deposed Spartan king Demaratus, stands in a chapter that several scholars, as How and Wells note, regard as a later addition to Herodotus' text.¹¹

Plutarch's collection of Spartan sayings has Leonidas, as he left for Thermopylae, tell Gorgo to marry good men and bear good children. He left a son, Pleistarchus, who was still a boy in 479 BC, so the boy's cousin and guardian Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, led the Spartans at Plataea in his place.¹²

The stand at Thermopylae, 480 BC

1. c. 490 BCBecomes king after the death of Cleomenes, in the Agiad house, one of the two royal families of Sparta.¹³
2. August 480 BCXerxes invades Greece. The allies send an advance force under Leonidas to hold the pass at Thermopylae while their fleet holds Artemisium.¹⁴
3. 480 BC, days one and twoAfter waiting four days, Xerxes attacks. The Greeks throw back the Medes and then the Persian Immortals in the narrows.¹⁵
4. 480 BC, night after day twoEphialtes, a Malian, guides Persian troops under Hydarnes over the mountain path called the Anopaea.¹⁶
5. 480 BC, day threeLeonidas sends most of the allies away and fights on with the Spartans, the Thespians and the Thebans. He falls, and the Spartans and Thespians are killed on a hillock behind the wall.¹⁷
6. September 480 to August 479 BCThe Greeks defeat the Persian fleet at Salamis and the Persian army at Plataea.¹⁸

How many Spartans fought at Thermopylae?

Three hundred Spartan citizens, but they were not alone. Herodotus lists 3,100 men from the Peloponnese, including the 300, plus 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, 1,000 Phocians and the whole levy of the Opuntian Locrians, about 5,200 named men in all. Modern totals run to about 7,000, and Diodorus adds 1,000 more Lacedaemonians.¹⁹

The Peloponnesian contingents were 500 men each from Tegea and Mantinea, 120 from Arcadian Orchomenus, 1,000 from the rest of Arcadia, 400 from Corinth, 200 from Phlius and 80 from Mycenae. The epitaph at the pass speaks of four thousand from the Peloponnese. How and Wells explain the gap with the 1,000 Lacedaemonians of Diodorus, whom they take to be perioeci, free Laconians who were not Spartan citizens.²⁰

Herodotus says Leonidas picked 300 men who had sons. On the last day, he writes, the Thebans stayed only because Leonidas kept them as hostages. Plutarch rejected that, as How and Wells note, and Bury called the contrast between the loyal Thespians and the treacherous Thebans an invention made after Thebes went over to Persia.²¹

How did so few Greeks hold Thermopylae?

The ground did most of the work. Herodotus says the road in front of and behind Thermopylae was only one cart wide, between a steep mountain and the marshes and sea, and the Greeks rebuilt an old Phocian wall there. In that space the Persians could not use their numbers, and their spears were shorter than the Greek spears.²²

• Fighting in turns. Herodotus says the Greeks stood in ranks by city and fought in turn, and that the Spartans would pretend to flee and then turn on their pursuers.²³
• The weak point. A thousand Phocians guarded the mountain path. Surprised at dawn by the Persian column, they fell back to the summit, and the Persians went on down behind the Greek line.²⁴

How did Leonidas die?

Leonidas was killed on the third day of fighting. Knowing that Persian troops were coming around behind them, the Greeks advanced into the wider part of the pass and fought there until most of their spears were broken. Leonidas fell in that fight. His men recovered his body and made a last stand on a hillock behind the wall.²⁶

The other ancient accounts differ in detail. Diodorus, who according to How and Wells followed the historian Ephorus, has Leonidas lead a night attack on the Persian camp, and the summary of Ctesias preserved by Photius says the Spartans were surrounded and died fighting to a man. Herodotus adds that Xerxes jumped up from his throne three times in fear for his army.²⁷

Herodotus reports a Delphic oracle that either Sparta would be destroyed by the Persians or a king of Heracles' line would die, and he believed Leonidas stayed with that answer in mind. How and Wells judged the oracle a prophecy written after the event. In their view the dismissed allies may have been sent to block the Persian column, and Bury suspected the same.²⁸

Set the stand beside other doomed defenses in our guide to the greatest last stands in history, or see the wider war in the greatest battles of ancient Greece and the greatest battles of the Persian Empire.

Who betrayed Leonidas at Thermopylae?

Herodotus names Ephialtes son of Eurydemus, a Malian, who told Xerxes about the mountain path and guided the Persians along it. He mentions another story naming Onetes of Carystus and Corydallus of Anticyra but rejects it. Diodorus speaks only of a local Trachinian guide, and the Ctesias summary names two Trachinian leaders, Calliades and Timaphernes.²⁹

What happened to Leonidas' body?

After the battle Xerxes walked among the dead and, when told which body was the Spartan king's, ordered the head cut off and set on a stake. Herodotus took this as proof of how much the king hated Leonidas, since the Persians, he says, honored brave enemies more than any other people he knew.³⁰

A year later, after the Greek victory at Plataea, an Aeginetan named Lampon urged Pausanias to repay the insult by impaling the body of the Persian general Mardonius. Pausanias refused: such acts, he said, suited barbarians rather than Greeks, and the countless dead of Plataea were vengeance enough for Leonidas. How and Wells read the story as Herodotus contrasting Greek and barbarian.³¹

The bones came home later. The travel writer Pausanias, not the general of the same name, saw the tomb of Leonidas in Sparta, opposite the theater and beside the general's tomb. He says the bones were brought from Thermopylae forty years after the battle, that speeches and a contest open only to Spartans were held there every year, and that a slab listed the men who fought at Thermopylae. How and Wells date the move to 440 BC.³²

What does "Molon labe" mean, and did Leonidas say it?

Molon labe is Greek for "come and take them." In the Spartan sayings in Plutarch's Moralia, Xerxes writes "Hand over your arms" and Leonidas writes back these two words. The exchange is not in Herodotus. Diodorus has a Persian demand that the Greeks give up their arms, but with a longer reply, so the famous line is tradition.³³

The same collection gives an earlier letter in which Xerxes offers to make Leonidas sole ruler of Greece if he changes sides, and Leonidas replies that dying for Greece is better than ruling his own people. It also credits Leonidas with the remark about fighting in the shade, which Herodotus gives to another Spartan, Dieneces.³⁴

The legend that outlived the man

Herodotus records three inscriptions set up at the pass: one for the four thousand Peloponnesians, one for the Spartans and one for the seer Megistias. The Amphictyons set up the first two, and Simonides paid for the third; How and Wells thought he probably wrote all three. Herodotus also says a stone lion stood on the hillock in honor of Leonidas.³⁷

Myke Cole argues that the popular image of Leonidas, renewed by the film 300, is a myth, and that ordinary Spartan soldiers are easier to understand than the legendary king. How and Wells, for their part, praised Herodotus for telling the death of Leonidas with restraint.³⁸

Set Leonidas beside other generals in the greatest military commanders in history, see which commander your own instincts match in our Which Commander Are You quiz, or test yourself on the pass and its battles in the Greek battles quiz.