{"id":169,"date":"2006-12-09T08:18:31","date_gmt":"2006-12-09T08:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alephnaught.wordpress.com\/2006\/12\/09\/thermopylae-the-battle-that-changed-the-world\/"},"modified":"2008-11-02T13:42:12","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T21:42:12","slug":"thermopylae-the-battle-that-changed-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/2006\/12\/09\/thermopylae-the-battle-that-changed-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content_div-169\">\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Title: <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Thermopylae-Battle-That-Changed-World\/dp\/1585675660\/sr=8-1\/qid=1165680753\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1\/102-9361933-3700146?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books\" target=\"NewWindow\">Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Author: <\/strong>Paul Cartledge<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hardcover: <\/strong>376 pages<\/li>\n<li><strong>Publisher: <\/strong>Overlook Hardcover (November 2, 2006)<\/li>\n<li><strong>ISBN: <\/strong>1585675660<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Having studied ancient Spartan history in college, I just had to read this book when I found out it was available.<\/p>\n<p>The book is divided into three main sections: the lead-up to the battle, the battle itself, and the view of the battle of Thermopylae from later times.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the middle section on the battle itself is actually quite short.  The battle only lasted three days after all, and there isn&#8217;t that much to say &#8211; the Spartans killed lots of Xerces&#8217;s forces, got surrounded and died to a  man.<\/p>\n<p>The lead up to the battle is an apology for Herodotus, who is our major source for the Greco-Persian war of 480-479 BC.  This was worth reading because Cartledge did include other sources when available, and some of those were enlightening.<\/p>\n<p>Fully a third of the book is an analysis of how future generations viewed the battle &#8211; this wasn&#8217;t very interesting in general.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I&#8217;m glad I read the book, but I&#8217;d have enjoyed it more if some of the ending materials had been trimmed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"translate_block\" style=\"display: none;\">\n<hr class=\"translate_hr\" \/>\n<a class=\"translate_translate\" id=\"translate_button_post-169\" lang=\"en\" xml:lang=\"en\" href=\"javascript:show_translate_popup('en', 'post', 169);\"><span>Translate<\/span><\/a><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/google-ajax-translation\/transparent.gif?resize=16%2C16&#038;ssl=1\" id=\"translate_loading_post-169\" class=\"translate_loading colorbox-169\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World Author: Paul Cartledge Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (November 2, 2006) ISBN: 1585675660 Having studied ancient Spartan history in college, I just had to read this book when I found out it was available. The book is divided into three main sections: the lead-up to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[398,2344,362,399,2367,363,361],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-ancient-history","tag-books","tag-greece","tag-herodotus","tag-history","tag-persia","tag-thermopylae"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2w3Qj-2J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alephnaught.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}