The homosexual and pedophiliac talk about ancient Greece is almost always pretty widely exaggerated and misstated. It's not that ancient Greece had no homosexuals or pedophiles, it's just that that was never the standard. (Biologically, it
couldn't be. You can't talk someone into having a sexuality he doesn't have.) Modern people just tend to "Rorshack" sexuality into relationships that were more like "mentor & student" or "work partners" than sexual. The ancient Greeks sometimes did the same "Rorshack" thing themselves when dealing with the works of earlier phases of Greek development. For example, the man who fought Hector at Troy and lost while wearing Achilles's armor (whose name I don't recall at the moment) was originally described as Achilles's cousin, but relabelled as his lover by later Greeks. Sparta apparently saw Athens at one time through similarly distorted glasses. They probably did it for the same reason we do it now: sensationalism.
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Originally Posted by angrynight
Spartan commanders wore the crests on their helmets from side to side, not from back to front like all the other soldiers.
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The Greeks' superior armor is also among the advantages that somehistorians say they had that let them "prevail" (in a sense) in this case, whereas the "armor" in the comic book and movie was somewhat unimpressive.
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Originally Posted by angrynight
King Leonidas and the Greeks weren't stupid, the Spartans used more than 300 men, they mustered their full force which was still drastically outnumbered.
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Only 300 Spartans went there. A few other cities also contributed hundreds so the total force was about one and a half thousand to start. But the rest either were sent away or retreated or surrendered, leaving the 300 Spartans alone in the end. The movie did show what the others did, including their positive contribution before surrendering or leaving, and showed the Spartans meeting them on the way and the others commenting on how few Spartans there were.
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Originally Posted by angrynight
The warriors placed to protect the trail around to the back of the formation weren't slain, they withdrew for fear of Persian retribution.
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That's what the movie said, too.
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Originally Posted by angrynight
This sacrifice began the idea of a unified Greece, before the Spartans did this, Greece was still something of an abstract concept, so all of the talk about Greece as a high commitment may not be accurate, though I'll have to check.
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That is what the movie showed, also.
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I was interested in the sympathetic treatment of Ephialtes. Conventionally, he's not described as deformed, no motivation for him is given, or perhaps a bad one like bribery is. His name has since then been another word for "traitor" in Greek. But in this comic book and movie, the reader/viewer can feel sorry for him and understand how his desperation for acceptance would drive him to do what he did.