I think it’s the case that most shields had little to no metal.
This appears to be the case in both the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
Metal was extremely expensive, and heavy. A shield made entirely of metal would have cost far more than a sword, which was often equivalent to a nice home in value, and would have weighed down any regular soldier severely.
Spartan shields were wood with a thin bronze face and still weighed nearly 30lbs. If made of solid bronze, they would be unusably heavy.
Xerxes’ storm troopers, the immortals, his best trained and equipped, had only leather armor and wicker shields well into the Bronze Age.

Herodotus (book VII) recounts Xerxes sending a scout to spy on the Spartan expeditionary force holding Thermopylae. The scout, ignored by the Spartans, returns to Persian lines, and reports that the Spartans - badly outnumbered - where combing their hair.

I've never understood what that looked like. I may now.

>> ^Kreegath:
Why must the heroes of today be such villains? Whatever happened to the old kind of heroes, who were actually promoting ideals and not cold-blooded murder?
Neither this nor the Sparta scene referenced sparked the kind of admiration in me that it apparently did in the majority. It just felt disgustingly nonchalant of human life.


Did you seriously just call Leonidas a "hero of today"? That was almost 2500 years ago and, yes, he really did have Xerxes' messengers thrown into the well.

Better than the real "300". Or at least healthier.

The orange-juice-bottle Xerxes was truly inspired.

Hold the phone, Mabel. Don't liberals roar that NO intelligence can be trusted?---e.g. the WORLDWIDE intelligence consensus that Saddam had WMDs, so why the sudden faith in those same intelligence entities? Well, does Halliburton secretly control the world or not?


The same liberals that demand gun control for law-abiding citizens see no problemo in letting a jihadist madman have nukes?

Tehran being scared sh;tless of being wiped off the map is the only way to guarantee compliance with nuke regs. Xerxes is no god, he bleeds.

Mediocre reading. Should coach the kid about inflection and slow it down, I know he's just a kid, but why not have him do better? Also teach him how to pronounce ennui and Xerxes.

"Maybe one of these days Hollywood will get it right and do their research and use the facts, which are even more interesting than the half truths they sell to get the average person to go and see this garbage."

As skrob says its best to think of 300 as a stylized story the Greeks would have told among themselves and in that respect the film is extremely accurate.

Much has been made of how the Spartans don't wear any armor in the film, which is of course completely ahistorical. In a stylized account of Thermopylae, the near-naked bodies of the Spartans is entirely Greek. Were it not for US homophobia I'm sure the film-makers would've filmed the Spartans without their loincloths. In Greek art there is something called heroic nudity. All Greek men worked out nude, daily, as a community in preparation for when they would have to fight shoulder-to-shoulder together in the phalanx. This obsession with physical fitness caused them to idealize masculine beauty. As a result, much of their more stylized art depicts heroic men as being nude and buff as hell. Hercules, for example, frequently shows up just wearing his lion skin cloak. Were the Greeks to have had access to film, and decided to make a movie about Thermopylae, I am certain that the Spartans and other Greeks would have been depicted naked, just like in 300.

Another issue that is often raised is the depiction of Xerxes. No, he probably wasn't 10 feet tall and probably didn't have the voice of god. That however isn't the point. Xerxes was treated as god-king by his subjects and he ruled the largest, wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world. The Greeks were well aware of how powerful and impressive a guy he was. In fact, they frequently referred to Xerxes, and his descendants, simply as the King, as if the Persian Emperors were the only rulers of all that wasn't Greece. Given all of this, it is entirely appropriate for Xerxes to have the appearance of a god in the movie.

Another interesting thing they did with Xerxes was gold imagery. This goes back to Aeschylus's Persians where the imagery of wealth permeates the entire play, shifting in meaning to symbolize Persian wealth and power in the beginning of the play, to symbolizing Persian weakness and downfall. Ancient Greece was not a wealthy land by any measure. The great public works projects of Classical Athens were payed for by imperial tribute, not some inherent money-making ability of the Athenians. The Greeks, therefore, viewed extreme wealth with suspicion. They felt that a man that doesn't work for his living isn't fully a man. Wealth and leisure was therefore associated with effeminacy. Going back to 300, note how Xerxes wears golden chains over his body and has both golden nail polish and eye shadow. The effect the filmmakers were clearly trying to acheive was the association of gold with makeup, and therefore the feminine. Xerxes, despite his god-like stature, strikes the audience, with his makeup, as being much less manly than Leonidas. This is of course exactly how the Greeks viewed it.

I could go on, there are plenty of interesting examples of "Greekness" in 300. The point is that while 300 is not completely historical, it is very, very Greek. The filmmakers clearly did their research and read their classical texts.

"The film is deliberately left open to interpretation - thus, whatever baggage you bring into 300 is what you will bring out.

American hawks will see Bush as Leonidas, anti-war types will see Bush as Xerxes, and the rest of us will note such parallels yet still enjoy the film on its own. "

Snowflakes must be falling in Hell, because I actually agree with you.

The film is deliberately left open to interpretation - thus, whatever baggage you bring into 300 is what you will bring out.

American hawks will see Bush as Leonidas, anti-war types will see Bush as Xerxes, and the rest of us will note such parallels yet still enjoy the film on its own.

ehem... as the resident female expert on balls-to-the-wall action films I have to argue that it's not a chick thing to dislike the action movies, I think it's more of a personal preference (although I am, admittedly, a rare bird)...

However, I do have to agree with bizinichi... the dialogue was HORRIBLE!!! as was most of the acting, and several subplots (undoubtedly added to pad the length of the film and have more opportunities for Gorgo to slink about in her gravity-defying costumes).

Frankly, as a fan of Frank Miller and a student of the classics to boot, I was highly anticipating this film, and turned out to be terribly disappointed... some of the decisions that were made seem totally inexplicable to me (ie, several awkward and unnecessary sex scenes, a 9-foot tall Xerxes, and the inclusion of a lobster-lad like monster to name a few)... and don't get me wrong, I am not one of those closeted scholar types who gets pissed off at historical misrepresentations in film, I likes me a good sword-and-sandal free for all probably more than most people, and I did enjoy Frank Miller's take on Thermopylae, have for several years now. But this, by movie standards, was BAD... I actually dozed off towards the end!