Let’s be clear of one thing right from the word go: this is not in any useful sense a historical movie. It references a couple of major historical events but is not interested in ‘getting them right’. It uses historical characters but abuses them for its own dramatic, largely techno-visual ends. It wilfully commits the grossest historical blunders. This is in fact a historical fantasy-fiction movie and should be viewed and judged only as such. But in case any classroom teachers of Classical civilization or Classical history should be tempted to use it as a teaching aid: caveant magistri — let the teachers beware! Here are just five ways in which the movie is at best un-historical, at worst anti-historical.
(1) Error sets in with the very title: the ‘300’ bit is a nod to Zack Snyder’s infinitely more successful 2006 movie to which this is a kind of sequel, and there is not just allusion to but bodily lifting of a couple of scenes from the predecessor. But which Empire is supposed to be on the rise here? I suppose that it’s meant to be, distantly, the ‘Athenian Empire’, but that didn’t even begin to rise until at least two years after the events the movie focuses on: the sea-battles of Artemisium and Salamis that both took place in 480 BCE.
(2) The movie gets underway with a wondrously unhistorical javelin-throw — cast by Athenian hero Themistokles (note the pseudo-authentic spelling of his name with a Greek ‘k’) on the battlefield of Marathon near Athens in 490 BCE, a cast which kills none other than Persian Great King Darius I, next to whom is standing his son and future successor Xerxes. Actually, though Darius had indeed launched the Persian expedition that came to grief at Marathon, he was not himself present there, nor was Xerxes.
Themistocles, on the other hand, was indeed present, but rather than carrying and throwing a javelin he was fighting in a dense phalanx formation and wielding a long, heavy pike armed with a fearsome iron tip made for thrusting into the Persian enemy hand-to-hand.
(3) From the Persians’ Marathon defeat, which (historically) accounts for their return revenge expedition under Xerxes, the scene shifts to the Persians’ fleet — in fact, a whole decade later. Connoisseurs of 300 will have been prepared for the digitally-enhanced, multiply-pierced and bangled Rodrigo Santo reprising his role of ‘god-king’ Xerxes. (Actually Persian king-emperors were not regarded or worshipped as gods.) Even they, though, will not necessarily have expected the Persian fleet to be under the command of a woman, and a Greek woman at that: Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), who is represented (in the exceedingly fetching person of Eva Green) as the equal if not superior of Xerxes himself, with her own court of fawning and thuggish male attendants, all hunks of beefcake.
Here the filmmakers are indeed drawing on a properly historical well of evidence: Artemisia — so we learn from Herodotus, her contemporary, fellow-countryman, and historian of the Graeco-Persian Wars — was indeed a Greek queen, who did fight for Xerxes and the Persians at Salamis. She did allegedly earn high praise from Xerxes as well as from Herodotus for the ‘manly’ quality of her personal bravery and her sage tactical and strategic advice.
But she was far from being admiral-in-chief of the entire Persian navy. She contributed a mere handful of warships out of the total of 600 or so, and those ships of hers could have made no decisive difference to the outcome of Salamis one way or the other.
(4) For some reason — perhaps because they were conscious of the extreme sameness of most of their material, a relentless succession of ultra-gory, stylised slayings, to the accompaniment of equally relentless drum’n’bass background thrummings — the filmmakers of this movie, unlike of 300, have felt the desire or even the need to include one rather prolonged and really quite explicit heterosexual sex-encounter. Understandably, perhaps, this is not between say Themistokles and his wife (or a slave-girl), or between Xerxes and a member of his (in historical fact, extensive) harem.
But — utterly and completely fantastically — it is between Themistokles and Artemisia in the interim between the battles of Artemisium (presented as a Greek defeat; actually it was a draw) and Salamis. Cue the baring of Eva Green’s considerable pectoral assets, cue some exceptionally violent and degrading verbal sparring, and cue virtual rape — encouraged by Artemisia at the time but later thrown back by her in Themistocles’s face as having been inadequate on the virility front.
(5) The crowning, climactic historical absurdity, however, is not the deeply unpleasant coupling between Themistokles and Artemisia, but the notion that in order for Themistocles and his Athenians to defeat the Persian fleet at Salamis they absolutely required the critical assistance of the massive Spartan navy which — echoes here of the US cavalry in countless westerns — turned up just in the nick of time, commanded by another Greek woman and indeed queen, Gorgo (widow of Leonidas, the hero of 300), again played by Lena Headey.
Actually, Sparta contributed a mere 16 warships to the united Greek fleet of some 400 ships at Salamis, and like Artemisia’s they made absolutely no difference to the outcome, which was resoundingly and incontestably an Athenian victory. The truly Spartan contribution to the overall defeat of the Persian invasion was made in very different circumstances, on land and by the heavy-infantry Spartan hoplites, at the battle of Plataea in the following summer of 479. But that is quite another story, one in which the un- or anti-historical filmmakers show not even a particle or scintilla of interest.
Image credit: 300: Rise of An Empire. (c) Warner Bros. via 300themovie.com
History is rich enough with stories and character and deeds. The embellishment, fabrication, and corruption of history by Hollywood has been taken to new levels of absurdity in recent years. Anyone watching a movie based on history needs to keep that in mind: it’s a stylized representation of something that may have historical background. That doesn’t mean the movie depicts reality; it’s not the way it went down.
Nitpick.
Themistocles in the film picked up a bow and arrow off the ground and shot Darius with it, not with a javelin throw. But otherwise you’re right.
Commendable sense of duty to actually sit through the film!
I agree that every Hollywood historical movie is largely embellished and it should be stressed that the movies are not fact.
But I am a huge supporter of the movie as great entertainment with a solid story line and characters.
What I am not as happy about in this “matter-of-fact” article is the almost disdained note of the lead actresses. I felt that for women it was empowering to see strong, beautiful and goal achieving women. My hope is that more and more strong and independent roles for women become a regular. Eva Green is fantastic and again shows that to be a woman is to be strong and may the girls who watch this movie be inspired!
Good thing I don’t rely on fiction to get my facts.
They do show interest in the battle of Platea at the end of the first movie.
[…] Five Things 300 Rise of an Empire Gets Wrong […]
The biggest wrong thing about the story line, was that Persians prays one God- named Avesta- and there were no wizard or slaves of course.
It was truly looks like an Indian nation! Persian people didn’t have any elephant in battles at all! and soldiers were exactly looks like Arabs.
I don’t know what is wrong between Iran and Hollywood.
PERHAPS THE BIGGEST mishap of the movie and the list above is the lack of focus on the real leader of the Athenians at Marathon: Miltiades. Miltiades the Younger, (born c. 554 bc, Athens [Greece]—died probably 489 bc, Athens) Athenian general who led Athenian forces to victory over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490.
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] at Artemisium and Salamis, in the same year. Neither film is particularly concerned to stick to the historical facts, and audiences should not expect too much in terms of authenticity – although the Iranian […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
[…] wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old […]
Very interesting to see the differences between Hollyweird and historically accurate events. On a side note, did anyone notice in the 300 sequel the biker with sunglasses that was 100% out of place with Artemesia on her boat with her entourage just before the beginning of the bay of salamis battle ? I cannot find any explanation online as to why he was there. Somebody’s idea of a joke who worked on the movie I suppose. Hilarious looking nonetheless.
I was searching for some historical balance and you certainly got that right. Alas, your inaccuracies had to do with the film. Specifically, the unhistorical javelin throw in the movie did not kill Darius. An arrow did, and you should have reported that right. Themistokles did not fire said arrow in “real life” (archery was not all that popular among the ancient Greeks) but metaphorically it worked for the drama.