• callouscomic@lemmy.zipEnglish
      24·
      17 hours ago

      I think they’re poking fun at how we obsess over the story of Leonidas and the infamous few Spartans that defended against an onslaught of far more Persians for 3 days at the Battle of Thermopylae…

      versus probably the Siege of Gaza (332 BC) where few Persians held off Alexander the Great for a much longer period of time before eventually succumbing to the siege.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.socialEnglish
          4·
          10 hours ago

          Yeah it’s not great without further context, like how the Greeks thought the Spartans would hold the pass because it was considered an invincible defensive position.

          The Spartans were supposed to hold out long enough for the other Greeks to mobilize. Their failure resulted in the burning of Athens and would have doomed the war if the Greeks, under Athenian leadership, didn’t win the Battle of Salamis at 1:2 odds after forcing a stalemate at the straits by Thermopylae with even worse odds.

          Tl;Dr phrasing Thermopylae as anything but a devastating defeat is the single most effective example of war propaganda in history.