Propaganda and the Battlefield of Thermopylae

Xerxes

When the sun rose on 21 August 480bc, the battle of Thermopylae was over but the campaign still had some way to run. Xerxes, King of Kings, was determined to exact revenge on those who had stood against him and to continue with the original object of the invasion: the destruction of Athens and Sparta and the reduction of the rest of Greece to the status of a province of the Persian Empire.

First, however, there was some tidying up to do and propaganda to take care of.

Exactly how many of the Great King’s soldiers had been killed it is impossible to say. Herodotus puts the total at 20,000, but this is probably just a guess. What is beyond question is that the casualties suffered by the Persian army were many, far more than those lost by the League army that had fought under King Leonidas of Sparta. But Xerxes wanted to present this battle as a great victory. He kept the bulk of his army and navy away from the battlefield while gangs of workmen dug large pits and hurriedly heaved the majority of the Persian bodies out of sight.

Only then was the rest of the vast army allowed to march through the Pass of Thermopylae. They will have seen the spiked head of Leonidas beside the roadside, the bodies of his men and the far fewer visible bodies of the dead Persians. Relays of boats brought over men from the fleet to see the battlefield. Xerxes wanted the battlefield presented as a stunning Persian triumph in which the impudent Greeks had been crushed by the overwhelming might of the Persian host. The battlefield certainly looked that way, but far too many people knew the truth.

from THE BATTLE OF THERMPYLAE by Rupert Matthews
Get your copy HERE