Warrior (? – 480 BC)
In 480 BC, the Persian army, consisting of 1.700.000 warriors crossed Thrace and Macedonia, passed from Thessaly and marched towards Athens. Their passage was halted in Thermopylae when they were met with resistance by the Greeks. Their army consisted of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, Demophilus and his 300 Thespians, 1000 Tegeans and Mantineans, 1000 from Arcadia, 120 from Orchomenos, 400 from Corinthos, 1000 from Phocaia, 400 from Phleius, 400 from Thebes, 80 Mycenaeans and a significant number of Locrians.
For two days, Xerxes watched helplessly as his army was being decimated by the Greek spears, until the secret passageway that bypassed the Thermopylae was breached by the Persians as a result of Ephialtes’ betrayal. On the third day, in the leaders’ meeting it was decided that all Greeks would leave the battle except Leonidas and his 300 Spartans because their laws forbade them to abandon the battlefield. Demophilus, however, rejected Leonidas’ order and preferred to stay with his 700 Thespians and die on the Spartans’ side. Leonidas tried to persuade Demophilus and the Thespians to leave, but his efforts were in vain. Demophilus had already chosen an honourable and glorious death for him and his people than to live a life of shame knowing that they had fled right in front of the enemy. Leonidas tried one more time to persuade him otherwise. Demophilus replied: “No, Leonidas, I’m not leaving, I will not let you take all the glory of the Thermopylae alone”.
In the morning of the third day, The Greeks, now comprised of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, the 700 Thespians led by Demophilus and 400 warriors from Thebes, who were held as hostages by Leonidas, marched to their death. In what was the last stand, the Greeks fought with tremendous faith and bravery and caused severe casualties in the Persians. Eventually, King Leonidas falls. Spartans and Thespians surround and defend their king. Xerxes offers them one last time to surrender but the only answer he gets is “We will die with our king”. Xerxes orders his archers to cover the sun with their arrows and spare none. All of them died.
Demophilus and the Thespians’ holocaust was equal, if not superior in value to that of Leonidas’ and the Spartans’. The Spartans’ sacrifice was bound by law. The Thespians, on the other side, were not bound by anything aside from their loyalty and love for freedom and their country, Greece. They willingly chose to stay and fight to the death, which they knew it was certain, chose not to abandon Leonidas and his 300 warriors and to pass to immortality in the pantheon of heroes, to the Elysian Fields, where all fallen heroes go.
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