Comments on: “Go, Tell the Spartans!”

By: Ed Minchau

Ed Minchau — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:26:27 +0000

Don, further to what zenpundit said, the Spercheios river has deposited lots of alluvium into the sea over the last 25 centuries, and what was once a 14 meter wide pass near cliffs on the shoreline is now about two to five kilometers inland.

By: zenpundit

zenpundit — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:29:30 +0000

hi Don,

According to Cartledge, there has been significant changes to the topography of Thermopylae and the location of the shoreline.

The world was much, much warmer then -lions roamed Southern Europe; by contrast, the Middle-Ages and early modern period were cooler than now

By: Don

Don — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:24:46 +0000

Tangential. Google an image of Thermopylae today. Look well. Now calculate how many warriors stood in the pass, not shoulder to shoulder in a single file, but in a phalanx with depth of ranks*. The images suggests,

a) The battle was a greatly exaggerated incident evolved for social and/or political purposes. We are dealing with more of a myth than fact.
or
b) Massive erosion of the cliff faces have extended to shore line a great distance from the original smaller position that the Spartans stood upon.
or
c) Sea level where significantly higher in the time of Leonidas.

*giving a very generous width of 1 yard per individual with a 4 rank depth [though my reading is that 8 is the standard and Alexander's Macedonians were 16 in depth], that’s less than length of a football field. There appears to be a significant gap greater than 100 yards between the cliff and the shoreline. If b) is not a significant factor in this then that leaves another alternative which is

d) The Thespians who don’t get the press the Spartans did actually covered the bulk of the front and the fighting which sort of gets us back to a).

or the world was a lot warmer back in those days.