Mark Gagnon

And the ones who chose to resist, primarily Athens and Sparta, were vastly outnumbered.

Their first line of defense was a narrow coastal pass in central Greece called Thermopylae.

And this is the part that basically everyone knows if you've seen 300 or

you know, even ever heard about the story, or at least it's what people think that they know.

You see, King Leonidas of Sparta took a small force of roughly 700 Greek soldiers, including his famous 300 Spartans, and he held the narrow pass against Xerxes' massive army for three days.

The pass was so narrow that the Persians

even though they had this numerical superiority, they were basically meaningless against the Spartans and the other Greeks.

They could only send a few men through at a time.

And so the heavily armored Greek hoplites cut them down in waves.

But this is what's really interesting because the Battle of Thermopylae wasn't actually...

A Greek victory.

A Greek trader named Ephialtes showed the Persians a mountain path that actually allowed them to outflank the Greek position.

When Leonidas realized that they were surrounded, he dismissed most of the Greek army and basically stayed behind with, you know, his 300 Spartans in order to fight.

And unfortunately, they were annihilated.

The cost of resistance was made clear when Xerxes went on to destroy the city of

of Plateau and Thespe and the homes of the allies who stood with Sparta.

Now, Xerxes continued to march south and Athens was directly in the path.

But when the Persian army arrived, they found Athens

nearly empty.

The Athenians had already evacuated, so Xerxes ordered the city to be completely burned.