Thermopylae Film!

[Ghostmojo]

I...sort of love you now haha :S Though I disagree rather strongly about the bit about Classical culture flourishing/rest of the world etc etc...I would definitely call that the pop view rather than the (growing) specialist one since we've moved on from that.

In what respect? Surely the glory that was Greece came in the period following the Persian Wars? Would we have had the finery of the rebuilt Acropolis (influencing architecture righ until the modern day)? Would the later Hellenisation of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East have happened? Would we have had the great Library of Alexandria? Would the myriad instances of the explosion of Greek thought, science, literature, politics, etc. etc. have occurred in the same way? Unlikely.

The Spartans didn't fight to save the future of the western world - or even the whole of Greece - but unwittingly they did. Not so much Thermopylai (which was a Dunkirk moment of inspired resolve) but Salamis, Plataia, Mykale etc. later basically said - this is where it stops (the western expansion of Persia) and this is where it starts to reverse.