Ancient wars sparta hits ebay
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Leonidas’ plan worked well at first, but he did not know that there was a route over the mountains to the west of Thermopylae that would allow the enemy to bypass his fortified position along the coast. For two days, the Greeks withstood the determined attacks of their far more numerous enemy. Leonidas established his army at Thermopylae, expecting that the narrow pass would funnel the Persian army toward his own force. In the late summer of 480 B.C., Leonidas led an army of 6,000 to 7,000 Greeks from many city-states, including 300 Spartans, in an attempt to prevent the Persians from passing through Thermopylae. To reach its destination at Attica, the region controlled by the city-state of Athens, the Persians needed to go through the coastal pass of Thermopylae (or the “Hot Gates,” so known because of nearby sulfur springs). Under Xerxes I, the Persian army moved south through Greece on the eastern coast, accompanied by the Persian navy moving parallel to the shore. It was this fatal weakness to the otherwise formidable phalanx formation that proved to be Leonidas’ undoing against an invading Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
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If the phalanx broke or if the enemy attacked from the side or the rear, however, the formation became vulnerable. During a frontal attack, this wall of shields provided significant protection to the warriors behind it. In battle, they used a formation called a phalanx, in which rows of hoplites stood directly next to each other so that their shields overlapped with one another. Hoplites were armed with a round shield, spear and iron short sword. Like all male Spartan citizens, Leonidas had been trained mentally and physically since childhood in preparation to become a hoplite warrior. In 191 B.C., the Roman army defeated an invasion of Greece by the Syrian king Antiochus III at Thermopylae.Īs king, Leonidas was a military leader as well as a political one. In 279 B.C., Gallic forces broke through Greek forces there by using the same alternate route that the Persians did in 480 B.C. Did you know? The Thermopylae pass was also the site of two other ancient battles.