Chapter 36: The Brave Three Hundred

In the last chapter, Diogenes the Wise Man, we learned that the philosopher Diogenes lived simply in Corinth, sleeping in a tub and once wandering the streets by daylight with a lighted lantern, saying he was looking for an honest man. When Alexander the Great came to Corinth, Diogenes was the only man who did not turn out to praise him, so Alexander sought him out instead and offered to grant him anything he wished. Diogenes asked only that the king step out of his sunlight, an answer that impressed Alexander so much he said he would rather be Diogenes than anyone else, if he could not be Alexander.

• token: an outward sign that shows what is meant
• haste: great speed in moving or acting
• bidding: telling someone what they must do
• stir: a state of excitement and busy activity

This matches the map in your Lesson Guide.

This is a Kindred Thicket Enhanced Edition. Baldwin’s 1896 words are read exactly as he wrote them, and we add Teacher’s Notes with historical and literary context.

• About the whole bookFifty Famous Stories Retold gathers real history together with well-loved legends and traditions. These notes tell you, story by story, which is which.
• opening lineNo one here is named. The king is Xerxes I of Persia, the year is 480 BC, and his army came along the northern coast with the fleet beside it.
• the messengersAsking for earth and water was a real Persian custom, the tokens of surrender. Not every city was asked, though. Athens and Sparta were skipped, because they had thrown Darius's earlier messengers into a pit and a well.
• "No: we will be free."No one wrote down these words. The refusal was real, but the line is a summary rather than a quotation. The nearest recorded speech is a Spartan telling a Persian: you know how to be a slave, but you have never tasted freedom.
• the weeping womenSpartan women were remembered for composure, not tears. One handed her son his shield and said, come back with this or on it. Another, told her son had died bravely, answered simply, yes, he was mine.
• "only one way"The pass is Thermopylae, the hot gates. And there was a second way: a mountain path a local man named Ephialtes showed the Persians, which let them come round behind the Greeks. That is what decided the battle.
• "three hundred Spartan soldiers"Three hundred is the Spartan count, not the whole army. Several thousand Greeks held the pass, and at the end seven hundred men from the city of Thespiae stayed to die beside the Spartans when they could have gone home.
• "fight in the shade"Herodotus, writing closest to the battle, gives this reply to one man, a Spartan named Dieneces. Plutarch, four hundred years later, gives it to Leonidas instead. The earlier account carries more weight.
• "when the sun went down"The fighting lasted three days, not one. Everyone who stood in the pass did die, but two of the three hundred were not there. One had been sent away sick, one carried a message. Both lived, and both were shamed for it.
• "twenty thousand"Twenty thousand is Herodotus's figure, faithfully carried over. Modern historians think it is far too high. No one can give a better number, so it is best read as a very great many.
• closing line "And Greece was saved"The pass fell. The Persians came through, and Athens was taken. Greece was saved the next year, at sea off Salamis and on land at Plataea. What Thermopylae saved was Greek courage, not Greece.
• Parents may wish to preview this chapter. At the end every defender dies, fighting with broken weapons and bare hands, and twenty thousand of the enemy are said to have fallen. It is told briefly and without gore.

• Leonidas: The king of the Spartans.
• The three hundred Spartans: Leonidas's soldiers.
• The great King of Persia: The ruler of Persia; history knows him as Xerxes I.
• The narrow pass: The way into Greece between the mountains and the sea; history calls it Thermopylae.
• Greece: The country of the Spartans and the other Greek cities.
• Persia: The empire east of Greece.