Author: Steven PressfieldIn honor of the release of 300 today, I thought I would share with you one of the best books ever written about the legendary Battle of Thermopylae.
It's 480 B.C. and the million-strong Persian army is set to lay the smackdown on Greece, thereby extinguishing the first fertile fires of Democracy. In order to buy time for the rest of Greece to get it's act togeather, 300 Spartans and their allies embark on a suicide mission to the pass of Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass above the Aegean sea. It is here that these crazy-brave warriors, led by King Leonidas, hold off more than 100,000 Persians for the better part of a week. It is one of the most valiant stands in military history, and it bought the rest of Greece the time it needed to rally it's armies and eventually repel the Persian host
Pressfield gets down and dirty with his prose as he describes this viscious battle in painstaking detail. Every tactic, technique and "dirty trick" employed by the Spartans in their desprate fight is lovingly detailed here. The narrative style is brilliant, adding a sense of suspense and immediacy to a battle with a pre-determined outcome.
When Xerxes, the leader of the Persian army demanded that the doomed Spartans lay down their arms, Leonidas' replied simply, with two words: "Molon labe". Roughly translated: "Come and get them". That, my friends, is the very definition of BALLS.
Here's the trailer for 300. If it even comes close to telling this story as well as Stephen Pressfield did in this amazing novel, I'll be first in line at the movie theatre....
300 - movie trailer
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Score: 11/12 ass-kicking Spartan monkeys!
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