Thermopylae

"Go tell the Spartans, Passerby,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie"

Thus did the poet Simonides remember the three hundred elite Spartan warriors who, led by their king, Leonidas, faced the vast, inrushing Persian army at the 'hot gates' of Thermopylae and fought to the death for an ideal dearer to them than life itself - the ideal of freedom.

Paul Cartledge's offers a compelling re-examination of this crucial moment in history, a epic clash of civilizations that helped shape the identity of Classical Greece and our own cultural heritage.