At the head of the army marched his guard, the Immortals, with wreaths of victory on their heads. Sitting on a throne made of white marble, Xerxes watched his host move to the Hellespont where a mighty bridge supported by ships would bring them to Hellas. He would not bother to send more envoys he would send his armies instead. The Greeks had won the first round against King Darius at the battle of Marathon, but Xerxes was determined to even the score. A story that would be told for over two thousand years.
And so begins the story told by the father of historians, Herodotus. Sparta had even thrown the Persian envoys into a well to get their water and earth from down there. Many had done so, but others, most importantly the two mightiest city states of Athens and Sparta, had refused. Bend the knee and offer the King of Kings what is rightfully his earth and his water. The Hellenic people had been given an ultimatum by Darius. This stream comprised Persians, Bactrians and Medes, men from the Caucasus and Arabia, men on horseback, camels and chariots, men from the mountains and the steppes, from the ancient cities and the sea, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, and contingents from places as far away as India, Ethiopia and Egypt.Īll were called to war against the people of Hellas by the King of Persia Xerxes, the King of Kings, the son of Darius the Great, their god-appointed ruler and King of the World. In 480 BC, an endless stream of marching feet made its way from Asia Minor westward. It is said that the king visited the Oracle at Delphi, which was consulted about important matters of state throughout Ancient Greece, and the Oracle delivered a grand verse that essentially told him that he must lay down his life to prevent his kingdom from being laid to waste by Persia. When the second Persian invasion of Greece began in 480 BC, Leonidas was chosen to lead the combined Greek forces, both because of the Spartans’ reputation as a superior military kingdom, and because of his own prowess as a general. She bore Leonidas a son and heir, Pleistarchus.
Gorgo is one of the only women named in Herodotus’ histories and was famed for her wisdom and political astuteness. Before he succeeded to the throne, Leonidas had married Gorgo, daughter of Cleomenes – marrying his niece like his father did before him. As well as his royal blood (his parents were both from the Agiad line), Leonidas would have considered his agoge training an important symbol of his worthiness to be king. It is likely that Leonidas, like his brother Dorieus before him, had studied the “ agoge” – the system of compulsory education, combat and hunting training that all young men, except the firstborn of the royal line, underwent in Sparta. Source: SAWg3rd, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons The crown was passed to Leonidas, the next eldest surviving son of Anaxandrias, when he was around 50 years of age. Ironically, if Dorieus has not left Sparta, he would have become king after Cleomenes, as the king was deposed in 490 BC – reportedly on grounds of insanity – and had no sons to succeed him. He is said to have travelled to Africa and then Sicily, where he was living when he died 10 years later.
Dorieus, who Herodotus described as the finest young man of his generation, was furious that his half-brother, the son of his father’s second wife, was preferred over him and left Sparta. When King Anaxandrias died in 520 BC, his eldest son Cleomenes was chosen as heir. One year later the first wife would also produce a son, Dorieus, followed by two more, Leonidas and Cleombrotus. The new wife quickly bore a son, Cleomenes. The King said the lack of an heir was not his wife’s fault, so it was agreed that he could marry a second woman without casting the first aside. King Anaxandrias was advised by his counsellors to put her aside and take another wife, as was common practice at the time for men whose wives were barren. According to the ancient historian Herodotus, who chronicled the lives of the Greek kings, his father and mother were uncle and niece, and the marriage initially failed to produce any children. His accession to the throne of Sparta was not straightforward: he was in fact the third son of his father, Anaxandrias II. Leonidas was the 17th king of the Agiad line, a ruling family that claimed to descend directly from the hero Heracles himself. Leonidas I was the most famous King of the city state of Sparta in Ancient Greece, best known for leading 300 of his warriors in a last stand against an overwhelming invading horde of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
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