Gun owner poll

[Dill]

(10-04-2019, 10:36 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Well for warriors in antiquity all the way through the middle ages, reputation and glory were everything.  I'd say he achieved that.

How many people did their small number kill and wound that wouldn't go on to fight tomorrow?

Not sure rep was supposed to trump survival of one's city state.  The Greek hoplites who stood at Thermopylae were more citizen soldiers than "warriors."  Not like the petulant, erratic and untrustworthy "heros" of Homeric legend.

But rep likely played a role at Thermopylae. 10 years earlier the Spartans, after much big talk, had arrived late to Marathon, leaving the victory largely to the glory of Athenians. Hence some motivation to make a show this time. Though honorable retreat would not likely have hurt their rep much. As I say above, the last stand may have bought time for a retreat of the (small) bulk of the Greek forces, but it played no discernible role in the later Greek victories which counted. It's not even clear a last stand was intended. It might have been a holding action, with Greeks surrounded before they could pull out of the trap.

Some place Persian losses as high as 20,000, but that's the damage of the entire Greek force of 7,000+ over the first two days.

The last stand on day three was probably about a thousand men, plus some 400 Theban "hostages" who may have surrendered rather than fight.

Interesting to me is how the story of this one group of Spartans lived on to be integrated with nationalist ideologies in the 19th-20th centuries.  In American versions, the Spartans are often imagined as defenders of "freedom" (not really a Lacedemonian value) and the Persians of despotism.