Ep. 24: Undying Glory
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2020
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This. Is. Sparta!!!! "300," the blood-soaked Zack Snyder movie adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel, is based on stories of the Persian War told by the first historian ever, Herodotus. But how accurate is "300" really, and does it matter? In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan tells the real story of the 300 at Thermopylae, and argues that "300" is a better take on the whole thing than you might expect.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm actually gonna say off the bat that I think 300 is an incredible movie. I love 300. |
| 0:11.2 | The minute that I say that, I'm sure that many people are going to become like that |
| 0:15.6 | actually guy on the internet who says like, what's this? Or there are a lot of his |
| 0:20.2 | narcole inaccuracies in the movie 300. Actually, that's an, yes, true. Correct. Yes, I'm going to get |
| 0:27.2 | to those. I'm gonna get to the historical inaccuracies. I'm gonna get to why I don't care about them. |
| 0:32.4 | In a sec. And in point of fact, this is not actually going to be an episode about the movie 300, |
| 0:38.8 | so much as it's going to be an episode about the Battle of Thermopylai and even also the Battle |
| 0:43.2 | of Marathon. And specifically about the way that Herodotus, who is the first great historian |
| 0:50.0 | of the West and really the first father of history as he was famously called the first historian |
| 0:56.1 | of the West and the great historian of the Persian Wars, the way that he tells these stories. |
| 1:03.1 | And in the course of describing that, I want to make an argument for 300 as one of the best |
| 1:09.9 | adaptations of classical history in my lifetime. And that does not mean that I think 300 is where |
| 1:16.0 | you should go to learn about what happened at the Battle of Thermopylai. That is not what I'm saying |
| 1:21.8 | at all. And I actually believe strongly that everybody should study the history of Thermopylai. |
| 1:26.8 | It's one of the great events in all of world history and all of Western history. It's probably one |
| 1:32.0 | of the top five or 10 events that I would say, even if you're not a history buff, you need to know |
| 1:38.4 | about the Battle of Thermopylai. And I don't think that the way you should do that is by going |
| 1:41.7 | and watching 300, I think that you should go and read Herodotus. But I am going to argue that once |
| 1:48.6 | you read Herodotus and as you get to know about this battle, 300 is a damn good adjunct. It's a |
| 1:54.7 | damn good way of connecting to this battle. And even watching it before you do Herodotus, |
| 1:59.6 | a damn good way of getting interested in the whole thing and the situation that the Greeks were in |
| 2:04.9 | and why they fought the way they did and what they were fighting for. And it's particularly important |
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