Persia was met at Thermopylae not by 300 Spartans but by some 7,000 Greeks, about 300 of them Spartans.

480 BC

Hundreds of Thespians and Thebans also stayed with Leonidas to the end.

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The event

• Battle of Thermopylae480 BC · Thermopylae. The Spartan king Leonidas and an allied Greek force held a narrow pass for three days against the vast army of Xerxes. When the Persians outflanked them by a mountain path, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans died, becoming a byword for self-sacrifice.

5th century BC

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