Not content to deny the Holocaust, Iran’s government now denies the wars between the Persian Empire and the Greek states. Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham complained about the movie 300, which pits heroic Spartans against bad-guy Persians. According to Iran’s official news agency:
The movie has fabricated the history with depicting a war between Iran and Greece, whereas, no Greek king dared to stand up to the Persian Empire or the Emperor Xerxes.
Though Sparta’s King Leonidas cherished such a dream, but, he lost his head and Iranian fighters threw his head before Emperor Xerxes’s feet and told him that he had attempted a suicide attack to Persian Army.
Leonidas lost at Thermopylae, but the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis and then defeated the remaining Persian army at Plataea. In the first Persian War, the Athenians defeated the Persians, under Darius, at Marathon.
I highly recommend Mary Renault’s historical novels about ancient Greece and Macedonia, especially The Last of the Wine, which takes place during the wars between Athens and Sparta. The Persian Boy tells how Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek, destroyed the Persian Empire.
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Could it be that the current regime is defending a non Islamic Zorastrian regime?. I thought the pre-islamic history of Iran would not be of interest to the clerical Iranian government. It only shows Persian weakness without Islam.
I recommend Pressfield’s Gates of Fire for an great novel on Thermopylae
Thanks for the book references… I ordered both of those books.
I love historical novels.
Leonidas suffered a tactical defeat, but as a delaying action it was a strategic victory. One could draw parallels to the Battle of the Alamo, altho it is much harder to measure the morale impact.
The sad thing is that students are not being taught the history of Western civilization. Our history shows the development of the ideals of freedom. We can learn that all values are not equal, that cultures are the same in how they treat people. I suspect that most of us would prefer Athens over Sparta but I hope we would all stand with the Spartans against Persia. We need to resist the PC efforts of the multiculturalists who ignore the tyrants of the past and present.
Perhaps one of their hairs split is the Alexander was a Macedonian hegemon, not a Greek King. one might even hedge that Themistocles was a strategos, not a king. but a war there was.
Did they issue a statement when Oliver Stone’s travesty on Alexander the Great hit the screen, or is it that they only dislike the idea of being beaten by Greeks?
MKStach:
The sad thing is that students are not being taught the history of Western civilization.
The sad thing is that students are, and really never were, taught to look at civilizations and compare them to find out why Western civilization is the best. Pre-modern educators drilled into the students that WestCiv is good; post-modern (PC) educators intone that WestCiv is bad. No real difference here.
Our history shows the development of the ideals of freedom. We can learn that all values are not equal, that cultures are the same in how they treat people. I suspect that most of us would prefer Athens over Sparta but I hope we would all stand with the Spartans against Persia.
While I agree that Athens had the seeds of positive Western values, I wouldn’t rate Sparta so highly. Sparta was proto-fascist; Persia was just a standard empire built on oriental despotism. The best thing that the Spartans did was fight and die to keep the Persians out of the Aegean region, and thus save Athens from having to fight them. Second front, anyone?
And mostly, ancient pre-Islamic Persia was an improvement over what came afterward.
After Thermopylae, the Persians took Athens, which had been evacuated, and sacked it. However, they were defeated by the Athenians and their allies in a huge sea battle, which persuaded Xerxes to go home to Persia. The army he left behind was defeated at Plataea by the Greek allies, led by the Spartans.
All Spartan males were raised to be soldiers. I think those who were physically unfit were killed. Helots (slaves), who made up most of the population, did all the farming and other non-military work of the society. Sparta is no model, but they were great fighters.
Pressfield’s “Gates of Fire” is interesting, although he’s too sympathetic to the Spartans in other aspects of their society.
Hanson, in “Soul of Battle” considers the Spartans more like the Nazis. But the fight at Thermopylae was important, no matter who was fighting it.
Richard Aubrey:
But the fight at Thermopylae was important, no matter who was fighting it.
True, for the same reason that Stalingrad and Kursk were important.