Opaque Lucidity

Sparta? Yeah...

Kelli and I saw '300' this past weekend, the graphic "re-imagining" of the battle of Thermopylae in which several hundred Spartans and other Greeks (more than 300, by the way) held off a Persian army for two days in a narrow mountain pass. An article in the Toronto Star speaks to the historical inaccuracies present in the film, which is, after all, based on a graphic novel (that's an expensive comic book for those of you not hip to such things).

I enjoyed the film as a work of art, not as an historical drama. What's important to remember is that the film never purported to be accurate---it only promised to be a gorefest with a moral center about sacrifice, honor and loyalty. The ancients, such as the Spartans, fought for many of the same things people fight for today: home, family, the right of self-determination, etc. But let's not get carried away with warm, fuzzy feelings for the Spartans or for ancient Greeks as a whole. Only a small percentage of the population knew any real freedom; the rest were slaves or vassals with no options other than a life of hard work and possibly an early death on the battlefield.

Regardless, what those early republics authored lives in us today. All modern democratic republics can trace their beginnings to the writings of ancient Greeks, but with a difference: we made it better and, after generations of struggle, included all people in the quest for personal freedoms. So in that, '300' is a good movie.