Hello everyone this is Nitten sill from the Flashpoint History podcast

Ryan has graciously allowed me to do the introduction to this episode and I got to thank him for it because of all the different episodes that one can come in on it is

after all thermoply it's one of those moments in history that the defiant essence of

human nature really comes to life.

It captures the human imagination as this last stand of a patriotic army defending its native

soil, courage under overwhelming odds. It's the type of thing that historians persevered about,

that poets write poems about, that Hollywood cranks out tons of money over because the drama is just so good that an entire movie can be made

in Sepia over it.

This is the type of battle that is not only just immortalized, it's glorified.

You know, if you take the dramatic view,

it's the story about how the King of the Spartans,

Leonitis, decided one day to take a stroll

with his 300 elite hoplight warriors and take on a Persian army of about

one million people.

Q the soundtrack and or catchphrase at this point.

Now of course the reality of the situation was that Leonidas,

along with the 300, had about 7,000 Greek allies

and the Persian army that he took on

was about 120 to 300,000 strong, which is still extremely formidable and was overwhelming odds.

But he managed to meet them and fight them at a geographical bottleneck in northern Greece, known as the

Hot Gates, hence the term Thermopyli.

And it was here that he held up this army for three days. But what's so impressive is that even with these

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