The 300: A DefenseMike Rappaport

Victor Davis Hansen defends the historical accuracy of the movie, the 300.  I enjoyed the movie, rating it good, not great.  Here is an excerpt:

Some reviewers think the film is gratuitously violent.But Thermopylae was no picnic. Almost all the Spartans and Thespianswere killed, along with hundreds from other Greek contingents. Some ofthe film s most graphic killing such as Persians being pushed overthe cliff into the sea derives from the text of Herodotus.

Finally, some have suggested that 300is juvenile in its black-and-white depiction and glorification offree Greeks versus imperious Persians. Butthat good/bad contrast comes not from the director or Frank Miller, butis based on accounts from the Greeks themselves, who saw their ownsociety as antithetical to the monarchy of imperial Persia.

True,2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterraneanworld had slaves. But in the Greek polis alone, there wereelected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy atSparta to much broader-based voting in states like Athens and Thespiae.  Mostimportantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition ofunfettered expression and self-criticism. Aristophanes, Sophocles andPlato questioned the subordinate position of women. Alcidamas lamentedthe notion of slavery.

Such openness was foundnowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. That freedom ofexpression explains why we rightly consider the ancient Greeks as thefounders of our present Western civilization and, as millions ofmoviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy whoultimately failed to conquer them.