One of the final images of Zack Snyder's 2006 box-office-hit film, 300, is of Leonidas, the Spartan king, lying dead on the ground surrounded by his fellow Spartans, having been shot to death by a vast number of Persian arrows.Footnote 1 The camera pans over the bruised and bloodied Spartan dead until it finally comes to rest on Leonidas himself, his arms spread out in a gesture that curiously imitates the iconography of the crucifixion of Christ. Whether done explicitly or not, this is not the only time in its reception history that the story of Leonidas’ last stand has been linked with Christ's sacrifice on the cross, or with Christianity more generally.Footnote 2 In this article, I will explore some aspects of the story of the battle of Thermopylae's reception by the Carthaginian Christian poet Dracontius.
Elizabeth Rawson's magisterial 1969 study on what scholars have come to call ‘the Spartan mirage’ surveys the influence of Sparta on European thought from the classical period until the twentieth century.Footnote 3 A substantial section of this study focuses on Sparta's sway over the intellectual culture of the ancient Mediterranean in the later Imperial period, and on into the Middle Ages. Rawson ably demonstrates the rich influence and interaction that Sparta exerted on both Hellenized Jews and Romans. She states:
two of the states near the head of the long procession of those eager to compare or even connect themselves with Sparta…were indeed perfectly chosen to keep her fame alive through the centuries. For they were, in the East, the Jews, and in the West, the Romans.Footnote 4
Spartans, the Jews claimed, were of the race of Abraham, and their poets, philosophers, and lawgivers were all inheritors of Jewish ideas and literature; Lycurgus, for example, was a mere imitator of the archetypal lawgiver, Moses.Footnote 5 Links between Sparta and Judaea, however, were not only in matters of intellectual or literary influence but, as Rawson clearly points out, were even exploited for political gains.Footnote 6 Likewise, Roman responses to Sparta were rich and varied also.Footnote 7 The story of the Battle of Thermopylae, and in particular Leonidas’ last stand, captured the Roman imagination and was retold, refigured, and reshaped in various ways.Footnote 8
One of the most sustained ways in which the Romans continued the tradition of the story of Leonidas’ sacrifice was by using the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, and in particular the bravery of the Spartans, as a rhetorical set piece in their exemplary literature. One such example is provided by Valerius Maximus, a Roman writer from the reign of Tiberius, in his handbook of rhetorical exempla. In a chapter on bravery (De fortitudine) in the Facta et dicta memorabilia, he mentions Leonidas’ bravery in death:
Hoc loci Leonidas, nobilis Spartanus, occurrit, cuius proposito opere exitu nihil fortius: nam cum trecentis civibus apud Thermopylas toti Asiae obiectus gravem illum et mari et terrae Xerxen nec hominibus tantum terribilem, sed Neptuno quoque compedes et caelo tenebras minitantem, pertinacia virtutis ad ultimam desperationem redegit. ceterum perfidia et scelere incolarum eius regionis [et] loci opportunitate, qua plurimum adiuvabatur, spoliatus, occidere dimicans quam adsignatam sibi a patria stationem deserere maluit, adeoque alacri animo suos ad id proelium, quo perituri erant cohortatus est ut diceret ‘sic prandete, conmilitones, tamquam apud inferos cenaturi.’ mors erat denuntiata: Lacedaemonii, perinde ac victoria esset promissa, dicto intrepidi paruerunt.
At this point Leonidas, the famous Spartan, comes to mind. Nothing could be braver than his resolve, his act, his death. With three hundred compatriots he had to face all Asia at Thermopylae and by determined valour he reduced Xerxes, that bully of sea and land, not only terrible to men but threatening even Neptune with chains and the sky with darkness, to ultimate desperation. But by the treachery and villainy of the inhabitants of that district he was deprived of the advantage of position, which was his mainstay. So he preferred to die fighting rather than desert the post assigned to him by his country, and so cheerfully did he exhort his men to the battle in which they were to perish as to tell them: ‘Take lunch, comrades, and expect dinner down below.’ Death was pronounced; the Lacedaemonians obeyed his word fearlessly, as though they had been promised victory.
(Val. Max. 3.2 ext. 3)Footnote 9Although the purposes of Valerius’ text, and the questions of who used it and why, are debated, the inclusion of the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in it does at least demonstrate that the story was a feature of exemplary literature at Rome, a fact corroborated by Leonidas and Thermopylae also appearing in the second book of Suasoriae by Valerius’ contemporary, Seneca the Elder, as well as in his son's moral letters on the subject of death (such as Sen. Ep. 82.20–1).Footnote 10 In fact, it seems that the story of Leonidas was so ubiquitous in rhetorical traditions at Rome that it even earned satirical mention by Lucian of Samosata, among others.Footnote 11
As Rawson notes, ‘It was inevitable that, given her place in Jewish apologetic literature and the Graeco-Roman ethical and rhetorical tradition, Sparta should occasionally attract the attention of the Fathers of the Church.’Footnote 12 For the purposes of this article, I narrow this claim to a specific focus on the Battle of Thermopylae, and furthermore I modify ‘the Fathers of the Church’ to a Christian poet from Late Antiquity.
The North African Christian poet Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, who flourished in the fifth century ce, is known to us mainly through his own works. His magnum opus, the De laudibus Dei (On the Praise of God), is a didactic biblical epic in three books offered as a poetic theodicy to his readers: in the words of Merrills and Miles, an ‘exposition of the Nicene Creed’.Footnote 13 His works also include the Satisfactio, written while he was imprisoned, as an apologia to the offended Vandal king, Gunthamund (484–96), and multiple epyllia on themes taken from classical myth, known collectively as the Romulea.Footnote 14 As a writer, Dracontius has been noted by scholars for his ‘originality’ and ‘extraordinary ability to vary style and literary genre’ (including those of Christian hymn and epic), making him one of the most accomplished Latin poets writing in the fifth century.Footnote 15 A lawyer (advocatus) by profession, his works demonstrate his high rhetorical training, and reveal the abilities of a learned author, fully conversant with his classical models (writers such as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, and Juvenal), as well as with Christian intellectuals such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Ambrose – both of which groups of authors formed a part of the curriculum in a North African schoolroom in the fifth century.Footnote 16
The De laudibus Dei's 2,327 hexameter lines are divided into three books. The central subject of the first book is an account of creation, closely modelled on the Book of Genesis, followed in the second by an account of humankind's fall with a description of Christ as saviour. The third book exhorts humans to respond correctly to Christ's act of redemption, which is self-sacrifice and devotion towards God. Examples of self-sacrificing individuals, both Christian and pagan alike, are recorded in support of this exhortation. But, as Alexander Arweiler has rightly noted, the poem as a whole consists of a largely ‘heterogeneous chain of various elements’, and attempts by scholars at a coherent content summary of the poem often result in frustration.Footnote 17 It is in the third book, in the catalogue of self-sacrificing exempla, following on from an account of Menoeceus’ suicide in the service of Thebes,Footnote 18 and Codrus’ self-sacrifice in service of Athens,Footnote 19 that Dracontius turns to the battle of Thermopylae and Leonidas’ daring exploits:
Let us read about the daring exploits of Leonidas and the battles he undertook by night. Attacking the enemy camp, he fell upon it during the silent night and with a single cohort protected only by darkness. Night was a shield for these men, this band confident of dangers, assuming with hope to die themselves; rejecting life, they attacked men in their thousands, spurning their own salvation. They fall upon the peoples, they make blood flow in dark carnage; while he does not know who he is striking, who is fighting back, he butchers a companion, he strikes down a dear friend, without recognizing him he mutilates a brother and slits the throat of a kinsman. While in the darkness of the night you think that you are defending your father, there he lies slain by filial devotion; he would be alive and be enjoying long years of life, if the sire did not have a scion with such great devotion. The bonds of nature are broken by a holy crime and yet I do not think that it is a sin for the Persians to kill their fathers, as their own laws allow them to receive their mothers into their marriage beds.
(De laudibus Dei, 3.279–95)Footnote 20Dracontius begins the section by referring to the so-called nyktomachia undertaken by Leonidas and his men against the Persians during the battle. Unknown in the Herodotean version of events (7.201–33), the story of the invasion of the Persian camp by night first occurs in Diodorus (11.8.4–11.10.4), whose probable source most scholars agree was Ephorus of Cyme.Footnote 21 Dracontius’ poetic version of this exemplum continues this alternative tradition, which was also taken up in antiquity by Justin (2.11.12–18), Plutarch (De malignitate Herodoti, 866a), and Orosius (2.9.10).Footnote 22
Dracontius’ account, as scholars have noted, makes much out of the fact that the attack occurred during the night, under the cover of darkness (nocturnaque bella; nocte silenti; cohors…munita tenebris; nox erat umbo; obscura strage; obscura…nocte), casting it in a negative light.Footnote 23 In his version, the Spartans, protected only by the darkness of night, which acts as a shield (et fuit una cohors tantum munita tenebris. / Nox erat umbo viris; 3.281–2), advance to their foreseen death (spe mortis praesumpta suae; 3.283). Following the common dichotomy of light/life with darkness/death, Dracontius has the Spartans ‘rejecting the light’ (luce repulsa; 3.283), that is, sacrificing their lives and spurning their salvation from death (spernendo salutem; 3.284). He then, in a passage reminiscent of Thucydides’ description of the Athenians’ disorientation in the night raid carried out by the general Demosthenes during the Peloponnesian War in an attempt to capture Epipolae, highlights the serious drawback of battles which take place in the dark: namely, that darkness conceals identity.Footnote 24 And so, while the darkness may hide the excessive violence of the battle (obscura strage cruentant; 3.285), soon the fight becomes a bloody massacre of father and friend and brother and son all slaughtering one another. Dracontius accentuates the confusion of battle through repetition of similar phrases (dum…quemcumque…quicumque… dum…; 3.286–92). The oxymoron (crimine sancto; 3.293) of the devoted son's parricide provides an opportunity for Dracontius to reflect on the morality behind Persian patricide, which he concludes, in light of their legal freedom to marry their mothers, is therefore not impious (nec reor esse nefas Persis occidere patres; 3.294), no doubt returning the reader's mind to the Theban myths concerning Oedipus and Jocasta already alluded to just prior to this exemplum.Footnote 25
In contrast to Dracontius’ account of Thermopylae, which casts the Spartans’ deeds in this negative light, Herodotus’ version (7.201–33), as well as the ensuing tradition, presents their actions positively.Footnote 26 In his account he also provides the following motivating factors for their actions: first, that Leonidas wished to shore up his own glory (kleos), and second, that the Spartan king sacrificed himself for Sparta's ultimate salvation and prosperity (eudaimoniē). Herodotus explains this second point with reference to a Delphic oracle, which had foretold that either Sparta would be ruined or that one of its kings must be sacrificed:
Whether or not this oracle was produced after the event as a means of propaganda, it does establish in the tradition the need for a king's self-sacrifice in service of the state, or devotio. Michael Clarke situates this prophecy within a mythical pattern of ritualized death by a member of the royal household in order to stave off imminent disaster to the land, which he, like Dracontius, also links to the narratives of Menoeceus and Codrus.Footnote 28 He states:
Against this background in mythopoeic story-patterns, it emerges that in the Herodotean version the reasoning behind Thermopylae cuts across any question of military advantage, whether strategy or propaganda: the kernel of the whole is that the king offers himself up to death as a substitute for the destruction of his country… From Herodotus’ point of view, the significance of this chain of cause and effect is only deepened if one points out that the real ‘meaning’ of Thermopylae was that it inspired the allies to similar heroism in the later engagements of the war.Footnote 29
Clarke also suggests that, while absent from Diodorus’ summary of Ephorus’ account, the Delphic prophecy probably featured in the original source in relation to the night attack made on Xerxes’ camp by Leonidas, who undertook the attack in the hope of achieving his own death as quickly as possible.Footnote 30
Dracontius, it seems, situates himself within this tradition, but also critiques it. For him, heroic self-sacrifice becomes suicide. He reinterprets traditionally positive pagan exempla in negative ways, and so, while in classical literature Menoeceus and Codrus are cast heroically, Dracontius in turn presents their deeds negatively.Footnote 31 The bravery and sacrifice of Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae, traditionally interpreted positively, here lose their glory, as Dracontius emphasizes the indiscriminate killing that takes place during the night, specifying neither Spartan nor Persian. In his moral universe, not only does he regard self-sacrifice as suicide and therefore as sinful, following on from Augustine and Tertullian, but he also negatively contrasts the motivating factors of the deeds carried out by the Christian examples with the pagan ones.Footnote 32 For, while his Christian exemplars undertook their heroic feats with the hope of eternal glory, the pagan ones, in his view, looked forward only to their earthly fame.Footnote 33 As Chiara Tommasi Moreschini has pointed out, with his emphasis on negative aspects, Dracontius’ ‘ideologically orientated’ distortion of classical culture ‘could act as a device to reassert the superiority of the Christian faith’ over its secular alternatives.Footnote 34
The phrase in the title of this article, ‘Christ, our Leonidas’, is taken from the writings of that celebrated Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale. Among her papers from the years 1850–1 is a record of a ‘vision’ – an essay she wrote – which she is likely to have composed during her travels in Greece; in the manuscript it is given the title ‘A Vision in Thermopylae’.Footnote 35 In the essay, Nightingale pictures herself standing at the pass of Thermopylae addressing the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ to a shadowy spirit. The spirit in reply states that ‘life is a fight’, and that the ‘kingdom of God is coming, but like other kingdoms, it must be won with the sword, Christ, our Leonidas, this world our Thermopylae, we the brave swords which keep the pass between heaven and hell’. Nightingale assimilates Leonidas to Christ, and the Spartans’ bravery at Thermopylae to the Christian cause. Through this allegory, she uncritically superimposes her Christianity on to the traditional reading of the Battle of Thermopylae as a heroic struggle against the Persians. Unlike Florence Nightingale, however, Dracontius used the exemplary tale of Leonidas and the sacrifice of the Three Hundred Spartans not as a model for his own Christian belief (‘Christ, our Leonidas’) but rather as a point of departure – one that signalled, for him at least, the supremacy of Christianity over pagan culture.
