The Spirit Of Thermopylae

"...In the morning, after a short meeting of the war council, it was decided that Thermopylae was an undefendable outpost. Leonidas and his army of 7,000 were ordered back south to Athens before they were encircled and it became too late to leave; but, although it was even acceptable in the martial Spartan tradition to abandon a post that was undefendable, he refused. He ordered all of the allied forces under his command back south to Athens; he had decided this is where he and his Spartans would die. The allied forces complied, and all that was left was the obedient 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians who said they would fight to the end, and 400 Thebans. That night, it is recorded that Leonidas toasted to all of his troops during their last meal: "Tonight, we shall Sup with Pluto!" In other words, "this is our last meal before we feast with the Dead!"

As the first light from Sol Invictus began to shine down upon the fatigued Hellenic forces, Leonidas and his men prepared for war. With the pan-Hellenic forces of 7,000, Leonidas had stood on the defensive; however, his only desire now was to make as great a slaughter as possible, so as to inspire the enemy with dread of the Greek name.

Without fear, and without waiting to be attacked, he and his small force of 1,400 went on the offensive. The 300 Spartans butchered Persians by the droves; Thespians fought with vigor; the Thebans fought for their lives. Leonidas was one of the first to be cut down, and the battle for his corpse would leave two Persian princes, Xerxes' brothers, dead; the Spartans refused to allow their dead king to be displayed as some trophy piece.

It was obvious the Greeks were superior soldiers man for man, but the tremendous numbers of their enemy soon began to wear them down: their spears broke from excessive use, and their swords began to dull. Before their final collapse, the Spartans and Thespians made their way to a little hillock within the wall, and there they made their last stand; the courage displayed by the Thebans vanished, and they surrendered to the Persians. They were given quarter, but all were branded with the king's mark as untrustworthy deserters.

The Greek historian Herodotus in his History recorded the final moments of the battle:

... the small desperate band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last, some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands and teeth, till not one living man remained amongst them when the sun went down. There was only a mound of slain, bristled with arrows ... those with weapons still clutching them.

Twenty thousand Persians had died before that small number of men!

After the battle, Xerxes asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like the 300. He was told there were 8,000 more like them. Xerxes was not enthralled with this answer, and ordered more reinforcements.

Leonidas' body was cut up and displayed to deter the Greeks from resisting, but the warning did not work. The Spartans would clash shields again with the Persians many more times, and Persian defeat would eventually come when a Spartan named Aristodemus, who was evacuated at Thermopylae with the allied forces (he was deathly ill, but called a "coward" nonetheless by his fellow Spartan citizens) fought in the name of Leonidas and crushed the Persians one last time and drove them ingloriously from Greece.

It is this Western spirit of determination that gave the 182 at the Alamo the courage to resist an overwhelming Mexican Army of 4,000, slaughtering 1,400 Mexicans before being taken. It is this battle hardness that allowed 105 British Soldiers to repel an attack of 4,000 Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift, who after the battle were honored by the Zulus for resisting overwhelming odds. It is this innate legacy that gave the Totenkoph Division of the Waffen-SS -- bruised, battered, and battle fatigued -- the spirit which refused to surrender. They held their ground for 73 days against impossible odds in the Demyansk Pocket against a Red Army many times their number. And it is the same unwavering dedication that gave the 1st Marine Division in Korea the determination to duke it out with 10 Red Chinese divisions at Chosin; outmanned 10-1, they fought vigorously, finally making their way back to sea after breaking through an entrapment of insurmountable odds. Like those at the Alamo, Rorke's Drift, or the Waffen-SS at Demyansk, the United States Marine Corps stayed dedicated to their one commandment: Semper Fidelis! -- Always Faithful! [Image: Athena mourning a dead Greek hero; fifth-century marble relief in the Acropolis Museum.]

Today, however, Western man's life is out of balance. The unwritten codes of honor, values thousands of years old, seem to be no more: the courageousness of his spirit has been siphoned to near extinction from his soul. On the modern battlefield, too many fail to speak up because they are afraid of the PC Hit Squad calling them "fascist," "racist," or "neo-Nazi." Of the great feats recorded in our history, our most disgraceful is not defeat by the hands of the enemy, but in modern times our servile acceptance of such words, which have become a wall that we must surmount to regain our cultural sanity. Such cowardliness was not a trait of our ancestors, and although many of us call ourselves descendants of these heroes, I will continue to doubt it until I see legions upon legions of Euros marching to defend the West."