All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Warriors.S01E05.The.Spartans.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

The most feared
warriors of their time...

When you've got a Spartan
warrior in your face,

your days are numbered.

Elite soldiers,
trained from childhood...

They are brutalized.

Like Boy Scouts from hell.

Destined to be the
most dominant fighters

in ancient Greece.

They have tenacity
that other armies lack.

It is bloody and brutal,

and the Spartans
never surrender.

It's hell.
It's hell on Earth.

Warriors aren't born...

They're built.

Understanding how

reveals the true nature of
their greatness.

From the cradle
to the grave...

These are the steps
to creating...

History's Greatest Warriors.

A lifelong journey
of intense drilling

and brutal discipline...

...creates the
most feared warrior of

the ancient Greek world.

Master of the
spear and shield,

the Spartan is bound by
law and honor to defend

his homeland and bring
glory to Sparta.

On the classical
Greek battlefield,

the story of the Spartans
looms largest

for many centuries.

No other army...

can match the Spartans.

Sparta introduces training
from the age of seven...

to make them the
ultimate soldiers

in service to the state.

You take
the individual boy,

and you scrape and grind and
beat away his personality

until he comes out on the
other side a Spartan warrior.

You're talking about
professional soldiers.

The discipline...

The obedience...

The focus...

All will be there
in ways that...

you can't expect from

ordinary citizens
turned soldiers.

Their skill in combat
enabled the Spartans to

multiply the power of their
own city state for...

over 150 years.

Sparta's growth...

into a military superpower

demands an elite warrior.

He must endure brutal
training from childhood...

Master the use of his bladed
weapons and iconic shield...

And overwhelm all enemies
with the most precise

and lethal tactics
of his day.

It is a path that begins
in the 9th century...

The Spartan city state
begins in

early Archaic period
of Greek history.

If you look at
a map of Greece,

you'll see to the southwest,

there's a very
large peninsula.

It looks like a big tooth,

with three points
pointing south.

Towards the bottom of that
is the city of Sparta.

Ancient Greece is
a world of seafarers.

But Sparta is
constrained by land.

During the
Archaic period...

Sparta grows in power,

and the Spartans
are conquering

and taking control of
the southern Peloponnese.

As its
territory expands,

Sparta covets the rich
farmland of Messenia,

its neighbor to the west.

Messenia had a
lot of flat plain.

Flat plains means
good farmland.

And, the Spartans
decide to conquer Messenia.

It's a very hard war.

It lasts 20 years.

And when they defeat
the Messenians,

most of the Messenians
are turned into

national slaves,
called helots.

The helot slaves
work the land

for their Spartan masters...

But often revolt.

The helot slaves
may outnumber the

Spartan citizens by
a count of 7 to 1.

And, if the slave
population rebels,

the Spartan state
goes into crisis.

Constant slave
revolts threaten to destroy

Sparta, but King Lycurgus
creates a new code of laws

and remakes Sparta as
a militarized state.

Lycurgus,
he is the...

originator of what
the Spartans

consider their constitution.

Lycurgus went
to the Delphic oracle,

which is the most sacred
religious center

in the Greek world.

And there is
a priestess there...

who prophesies.

And, he gets the approval

of the oracle for his laws.

With that sort
of endorsement...

it makes it much easier for
Lycurgus to get these vast

reforms that completely
remake Spartan society

accepted by the Spartans.

According to
the plan of Lycurgus,

it is illegal for a Spartan
to practice any trade.

In Sparta, the only
acceptable work for

a male citizen is
being a soldier.

The first duty of
these new citizen-warriors

is to crush slave revolts.

When you have a much
larger population enslaved,

your primary goal:
keep the slaves enslaved.

And that slave
population, the helots,

takes on all of the
agricultural work,

all of the domestic work.

Now, the Spartans,
they have this free time

to do nothing but
train for war.

At that point,
Sparta becomes

a very unusual
Greek state.

No other Greek state
had a standing army.

In many armies
in history,

their primary job
is to be a farmer,

or a carpenter,
and they are called to

military service
as and when needed.

When we look at the Spartan,
his entire job is to be a

professional soldier, and
his entire culture and the

government is set up to
support that institution.

That gives the
Spartans a tremendous

military advantage.

At its core,
the new law has

a singular purpose-

to create the greatest
warriors in all of Greece.

And the creation process
begins before the warrior

is even born.

The Spartans feel that
the best way to produce the

strongest soldiers
is for mothers

to be well-trained, themselves.

Girls are encouraged to
engage in athletic contests.

This is almost unheard of
in other Greek city states.

The Spartan
government wanted there to be

strong, healthy women
in order to

produce robust babies.

But they must
prove themselves worthy

from the day
they are born.

When a
Spartan boy was born,

government officials
inspect the boy.

If it looks robust,
it's allowed to live.

And if not, it's left at

the bottom of
Mount Taygetus.

Spartans are apprehensive
about blood guilt.

They don't smother
unwanted babies,

they don't strangle them.

They leave it
up to the gods.

It's as if the
Spartans are engaging in

a kind of primitive
eugenics program,

making sure that all children
are perfect in form.

The Spartan
child who passes

this first test is only
just beginning.

Standing between him
and his destiny

are years of blood,
sweat, and pain.

Training now begins.

The road to
building a Spartan warrior...

is long...

and brutal.

In all the stories of Spartan
battles we see a level of

discipline and organization
that is indeed different from

and better than other Greeks.

Well, you don't get there
in a vacuum.

To make great warriors you
need a training program.

For a Spartan,
the path to military glory...

begins in childhood.

According to Plutarch's
"Life of Lycurgus"...

he introduces reforms
to Spartan society,

and the reforms include
the famed agoge...

which is the upbringing that

begins training
the Spartans,

solely for war.

Agoge comes from the Greek
word for competition,

and it gives us
English "agony".

And that's a good name
for it, the agony.

The boys in the agoge,
they are brutalized

day in and day out.

Children are taken from
their parents at age seven,

and they are turned into,
I think the quote from

Aristotle is,
"brave little beasts."

I sometimes think
of the Spartan agoge as...

Boy Scouts from hell.

And what's hellish about it
is not just the toughness of

the training that the
boys have to undergo,

but the length of time
that it lasts.

I think the Spartans
would have a hearty chuckle

about modern-day
boot camps.

The United States
Marine Corps

has a 13-week boot camp.

The Spartans' boot camp
goes on for 13 years,

and then kind of persists
for the rest of

the adult male life.

Spartan training
begins with the

strengthening of the body.

Spartan boys
in the agoge,

they are woken up early
and forced to train.

Run for miles,
dance with armor on,

box, fight,
wrestle each other.

Boys are schooled
in the form of wrestling

known as pankration.

It's like Greek MMA,
ancient Greek MMA.

And pankration
has two rules:

don't gouge the eyes,

and don't rip the gonads.

Ripping off ears,
breaking fingers,

that's all fair game, and
they are taught to do that

from a very young age.

The grueling
regimen makes boys resilient

in the face of
humiliation and suffering.

You have to break
the ego of the boy down

through years of
degradation and

beatings and starvation.

The conditions in the agoge
are intentionally harsh.

The boys are not
given proper clothing.

They have to subsist on very
limited amounts of food.

They are implicitly
encouraged to steal food

in order to
actually survive.

Life in the agoge
combines the trauma

of being separated from
your family, with the

extraordinary miseries
of deprivation.

They're given one
tunic to wear

no matter how cold it is.

They are not given shoes,
and they are forced to

toughen the soles
of their feet.

So you have to
imagine these shivering boys

schlepping through the
mountains of Sparta,

leaving bloody
footprints behind them.

The aspects of training that
involve harsh conditions and

toughness are designed to
enable Spartan soldiers

to fight in any conditions.

To further
condition the boys to

overcome pain,
they take part in a violent,

competitive ritual.

The Feast of
Artemis Orthia is a...

strange, fascinating
element of their training.

The story goes that

there is a feast at
this sanctuary,

and there are
wheels of cheese

left on the altar.

Spartan youths are encouraged
to steal as much cheese

as they can from the altars,
but there are others

with whips waiting for them.

It's a competition to see
which boy

is able to get away
with the most cheese.

But that boy is surely
going to bear the signs of...

the whippings that
he took on the way.

This competition is
designed so that they

throw themselves into the
grinder of pain,

in order to
achieve some goal.

The cheese is immaterial.

It's the willingness to
endure pain and

press on despite that.

The boys also
study legendary battles that

illustrate the willingness
to sacrifice one's life

for Sparta.

The Battle of the
Champions takes place

in the middle of the
sixth century BCE.

Herodotus tells us
it's a conflict between

Argos and Sparta.

The story goes
that they agree to have

a contest of champions.

300 men from each side
will meet.

Both armies will go away,
and whoever survives

the Battle of Champions
wins this engagement.

300 Spartans.

300 Argives.

They fight,
and they fight,

and it is absolutely
bloody and brutal.

Both sides
are ground down...

to nothing.

And two Argives survive,

and they leave the battle
thinking, "Fantastic.

We survived,
we won."

A single Spartan,
however, survives.

And what he does is
he strips the Argive dead of

their arms and armor and
builds what in Greek

we call a tropaion,
a trophy.

This is a traditional,
ancient Greek way of

claiming the battlefield
for the victorious.

When the Spartans
come to collect their dead,

they find this dying
Spartan and this trophy.

This expression of
Spartan duty until death.

This shows
Spartan tenacity.

Even left for dead,

this Spartan somehow
manages to recover...

and build a trophy.

The young Spartan
is taught to fight

to the end, even if
horribly wounded.

Sparta is
not only a cult of war,

it is also a cult of death.

Looking at
these stories,

we get a glimpse of the
basis of what Sparta values,

what they think a
warrior should be.

Whether the legends are
accurate or not

is really immaterial.

This is what the
Spartans believe,

and this is what drove them
to military excellence.

The final step
of the agoge is

teaching the warriors to
fight together.

The Spartans are best
when fighting in a group.

No other army...

can match the Spartans...

for unit cohesion.

They have incredible
discipline and organization,

and greater tactical
flexibility.

To achieve
success on the battlefield,

the boys must learn
to move in lock step.

And the specific
training is often a dance.

In dancing, what the boy
learns is to move in

coordinated formation with
a lot of other soldiers.

And many scholars
believe that the purpose

of war dance is to
provide movements,

the bashing with the shield,
the thrusting with the spear.

It also means that
a soldier can respond to

musical cues
without thinking...

to close up ranks,
to shift the lines,

to the beat of music.

As the boys near
the end of their training,

a select few are conscripted
into a special group.

Those who have
excelled are chosen for the

Secret Service,
known as the Crypteia.

It's a group of boys
who go out in secret and

murder enslaved people in
the middle of the night.

The Spartans fear
slave rebellion.

So, the goal is to make
the slaves fear them more.

Service in the
Crypteia gives boys

the experience
of a first kill,

which is an initiation
into manhood.

After 13 years of training,

the young warrior has earned
his place in the Spartan army.

The Spartan warrior must
now be armed with

the weapons he
will need...

to wage war.

13 years of
training transform

a Spartan boy into a
fearsome warrior.

Now, he must learn to master
the weapons of a hoplite,

the most heavily armed
soldier of the ancient world.

A hoplite is the standard
Greek heavy infantry.

The best translation for
hoplite is 'man at arms'.

All hoplites are
armed with a spear,

Called a "dory" in Greek.

These vary in
length somewhat,

but they might be around
8 or 10 feet long.

They have a leaf-shaped
iron bladed point on the end

that you're thrusting with,
but they have a

bronze spike at
the bottom end.

The tip and the butt
spike are unequally weighted

such that the butt spike
is heavier than the front.

It means that
you have greater reach,

because you've got
that counterbalance

at the back end.

The spear may be
wielded overhand...

Or underhand.

Obviously, those target
different parts of the body.

An over shot,
the throat.

Under shot coming up,
the groin.

One of the absolute
most important weapons of the

Spartan hoplite is
the shield,

known as the Aspis.

It is a convex
or domed shield.

Quite large, about
3 feet in diameter.

It weighs
about 22 to 26 pounds,

comprised of overlapping
glued pieces of wood,

and a very thin
coating of bronze.

You've got an almost
impenetrable shield.

Normal arrows and spearheads

are never gonna go
through the shield,

but coming
at the cost of weight.

The most important
thing about the shield is

that half of it hangs
beyond the body.

In a phalanx, the left part
of your shield covers the

exposed right part of
the man to your left,

so the shield is what
connects, literally,

the Spartan army
to each other.

A phalanx is a
horizontal arrangement of

Greek heavy infantry,
about 8 ranks deep,

and shield, over shield,
over shield

across the entire
front line.

If the Spartans can just
get you into one engagement-

phalanx against phalanx-

that is where the Spartans
really shine.

The Spartan
phalanx is

a devastating superweapon,

as seen in the
Peloponnesian War

in the 5th century BC.

The scene is this:
We're in the middle of the

Peloponnesian War between
primarily the Athenians and

the Delian League
on one side,

and the Spartans and
their allies on the other.

So, on the plain below
the polis of Mantinea,

that's where the
battle commences.

The Spartans
march forward in silence,

hearing only the
sound of their flute,

giving them instructions
on tempo

as they move forward.

The moment of contact between
two phalanxes is horrible.

It becomes a fearsome,
bloody scrum.

Far more grisly and
literally in your face

than battles today.

People are stabbing
each other in the groin,

in the neck.

The smell of
death all around you.

It's hell on Earth.

Both sides crushing
the front ranks together.

As the spartan
phalanx presses forward,

long spears become
ineffective in

up-close engagement

And so, the frontline
soldiers will use the sword

that hoplites carried with
them to stab their foes.

The Spartans do
have back-up weapons.

And the two most common
swords that you see in the

Spartan phalanx are the
kopis and the xiphos.

The xiphos is a
straight leaf-bladed sword

that's sharp on both sides,
much better suited for

thrusting, but also
perfectly useful for cutting.

The kopis
is a nastier weapon.

Kopis is the Greek
word for cleaver.

The curved knife,
sharp on one side.

And obviously, this is
used for chopping.

So it's a
butcher's weapon

repurposed for
the battlefield.

The claustrophobic
sense of horror to see

your friends
trampled underfoot.

You see their blood spraying.

You might be
wearing their blood.

Because the Spartans
spend years of their lives

training to endure pain,
they have tenacity

that other armies lack.

Despite the chaos of battle,

the Spartan phalanx
remains intact...

as warriors respond in
lockstep to musical cues.

On the
field at Mantineia,

the Spartan right and the
Mantinean right each

overcome the left part of
their opposing army.

And then the
Spartans do something

typically Spartan.

It shows great discipline,
they remain in formation,

and they wheel to the left.

When they come upon
the disorganized Mantineans,

who are ransacking
their baggage train,

and they rout them...

and they break.

Because, they have
greater unit cohesion,

the Spartan army really
shines in comparison to

a lot of other
classical armies.

When we think about phalanx
warfare in particular,

and the Spartans
marching together,

it's the reason why the
shield is so synonymous

with Spartan culture.

The shield is for Spartans

what the katana is
for the Samurai.

Spartan mothers,
on sending their sons

into battle,
say to them,

"Come back with
your shield, or on it."

And of course, "on it"
means come back dead.

In other words,
be a hero

and bring glory to Sparta.

Trained and armed,
the young Spartan is

one step closer to becoming
a fully forged warrior.

But first, he must
face his enemy...

in combat.

The Spartan
warrior is built for combat.

What distinguishes the
Spartans in comparison to

other Greeks is
they spend their

whole lives
preparing for this.

One of the most popular
poets among the Spartans

is a man named
Tyrtaeus.

Tyrtaeus' poems
are very bloody,

describing people being
stabbed and their blood

pouring out all
over the field.

He exhorts Spartans
to face their enemies.

Never running,
never turning your back.

But the true test...

comes from
one-on-one combat.

For his opponent,
the Spartan warrior

is an intimidating sight.

The Spartan is
kind stony-faced and silent,

which is probably to
psych out the enemy.

When you've got a
Spartan warrior in your face,

with a 7 to 9-foot spear,
your days are numbered.

Both sides
try to poke, prod,

stab at the weak points
of each other.

Try to get under the
shield, over the shield,

in between the eye slits
of each man's helmet.

So, if you can picture
a Y or almost T-shaped slot,

that's the part of your
face that's exposed.

Can you get a
spear in there?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

When a warrior
loses his spear,

you draw your sword.

Plutarch tells us
a story that a Spartan

complains to his mother,
"Mom, the sword you gave me,

it's so short." And his
mother leans forward,

and says,
"Then add a step."

In other words,

get closer to the enemy
so you can use it.

The kopis, it's almost
like a giant cleaver.

Think about big,
sweeping movements

that can take limbs
off at a chop,

or hopefully,
knock shields down.

The Spartan
warrior scans the

enemy's posture and
foot position...

...waiting to
identify any opening.

You have to keep your
shield up, and you can stab,

try to exploit a gap,
maybe in the neck.

What you want to do is

the so-called
"Hormodious Blow".

From the
left shoulder,

you have your sword,

and you bring it down in
a chop or a cleave.

That shield is
rubbing your arm raw.

All of that bronze...

and leather.

That shield alone
is 20 to 22 pounds.

You hang 22 pounds
of your shoulders!

That wears someone out.

The Spartans show enormous
stamina in battle.

Some of it, of course,

comes from the
rigorous training.

But some comes, also,
from the Spartan ethic

of fight to the death,
never surrender.

Finally, the
Spartan finds an opening...

and seizes the opportunity .

The Spartan hoplite shield
can be used in

close combat for striking.

And, in the
moment of stunning,

in the moment of
dazed confusion,

you were able to
capitalize on that.

What we see represented
in art is

the moment of the kill.

Right before
the victory is had,

right before the
enemy is killed.

Argh!

There has to
be a moment where

first blood is drawn.

And once that coppery
smell hits the air,

if you're used to it,

you can hold on longer.

You can endure this...

horrible moment
longer than others.

That's, that's the
Spartan strength.

But the Spartan
warrior is built to fight

as part of a group...

To the death.

The Spartan
warrior has trained from

a young age to defend his
land and people.

Now, he must
confront the greatest threat

Greece has ever faced...

the Persian Empire.

The great King of Persia,
Xerxes,

has decided that the Persians
are going to add Greece to

the long list of conquests
of the Persian Empire.

And Xerxes comes to Greece
with an enormous army.

The Spartan warrior
is enlisted to join 300 of

his fellow Spartans,
to lead a coalition

against the Persian army.

The Greeks have
decided that the best place

to stop them is at this
narrow pass in

central Greece
called Thermopylae.

The Spartan legend
is formed at Thermopylae.

Because it's at Thermopylae
that the Spartans

demonstrate the
greatest courage.

In charge of this is one
of the two kings of Sparta,

Leonidas.

He is in charge of

about 7,000 Greek hoplites.

The Persians arrive
with a larger army than the

Greeks have ever seen,
hundreds of thousands.

Xerxes' goal is simple:
punch through and

get his men moving as
quickly as possible.

Leonidas and the Greeks'
goal is also simple:

hold the Persians in place.

Why?

That big of an army is
extremely vulnerable because

armies don't carry that
much food with them.

Leonidas' plan is to hold
and starve them.

At Thermopylae,
the mountains

come down almost
to the sea.

And so, there's this
very narrow stretch...

where a small force
can plug up the gap.

Despite being
outnumbered more than

20 to 1, the Spartans
prepare for battle.

The traditional
Persian way of

softening up infantry is
a rain of arrows.

One Spartan
warrior at Thermopylae,

when being told that
Persians will shoot arrows

in great numbers...

so many arrows that the
sun will be blocked,

one Spartan warrior
supposedly laughs, and says,

"Well, then we'll
fight in the shade."

The Persians
are just...

carpeting the ground
with arrowheads.

Now, if you're
lightly armored,

that's a death sentence.

But the Spartans aren't.

They have heavy wooden
shields, bronze helmets,

bronze body armor,
bronze greaves.

You turtle up under
all of that...

You can sit there
for hours all day.

The Spartans
fend off the enemy arrows,

and brace for the
inevitable attack on foot.

The historian Herodotus
describes the Persians

sending wave after wave
of soldiers

against the
Spartan troops.

Persian infantry are
traditionally lighter armored.

So, when they when the
lighter armored infantry

crashes into a
Spartan phalanx,

it can't dislodge them.

The Spartans, fighting
in their hoplite phalanx,

are able to hold the line
and execute maneuvers that

trick the Persians, and
magnify the slaughter.

And the natural
human response to such fear

is to evacuate
the bowels.

The smell
of it, the...

the grit of blood,
and urine, and feces,

and dust just mixing
as each man

advances toward
each other.

And it only gets worse
as the day goes on.

And the Persians
are looking out at the

battlefield and seeing hordes
of their dead comrades.

The highly
trained Spartans

hold off the
attack for days...

but the Persian
invaders are relentless.

The Persians are able
to discover that there is a

pass through the mountains
around back

where the Greek
position is.

Leonidas sends
most of the army away.

So, we have about
maybe 300 Spartans

and about 700
other Greeks.

So, Leonidas has
decided that he and his men

are gonna remain in the
pass and fight to the death

against the Persians.

The remaining
forces are outnumbered

by more than 100 to 1.

This is what they
have been training for

all their lives.

This is the fulfillment
of their destiny.

For the final
phase of the battle,

Leonidas and the Spartans
cause great slaughter

among the Persians.

They fight until
their spears break.

Shields are broken.

Swords break,
and at the end,

the Greeks are
reduced to fighting with

nothing but
nail and tooth and kick.

Leonidas
does not give up.

He doesn't surrender.

He's cut down.

And the Persians, seeing that
the Greeks are outnumbered,

their leader dead,
they stand back...

and they shoot them
down from a distance.

For the Spartans,
the real truth of the matter

is that Thermopylae was
a catastrophic loss.

And, what Sparta and what
the other Greeks have to do

is turn a military defeat

into a PR victory.

The heroic story
of Thermopylae becomes

a rallying cry
across Greece.

And a new group of Spartan
warriors once again

leads an alliance against
the Persian occupiers.

The next year at
the Battle of Plataea,

the Persians still
have a superior force and,

terrifically hard
infantry battle ensues,

and once again the Spartans
proved to be the heroes

at this battle, not because
of a heroic death like at

Thermopylae, but because of
their skill at arms.

And once they kill the
Persian commander,

the rest of the Persian
forces fall apart,

and the Greeks are
able to win the battle.

And that is
the last time

the Persians came to Greece.

After the Persian Wars,

the Spartan warrior has
earned his reputation as

the greatest warrior in the
ancient Greek world.

But like all great warriors,

the Spartans cannot
endure forever.

For centuries,
Spartan military training

produces the most feared
warrior in ancient Greece.

But, by the end of
the 5th century BC,

generations of war
against rival city states

deplete the ranks of elite
Spartan warriors.

After 27 years of the
Peloponnesian War...

And years of the
Corinthian War...

Sparta is now down on its
most important commodity,

its warriors.

In the early 4th century,
it gets to the point where

they have something like
1,500 full Spartan,

citizen soldiers, whereas
they had something like

8,000 available for battles
in the previous century.

The lure of
mercenary pay is

too great for
many warriors...

further weakening
the Spartan military.

The training of
young Spartans...

is excellent...

in terms of teaching them
to endure hardship.

It does nothing to teach
them to resist temptation.

And when the Spartans are
offered bribes when

on campaign, they very
frequently take them.

Sparta's
conservatism also

undermines success
on the battlefield.

Sparta is dominant
on land for centuries.

A couple things bring them to
the end of their dominance.

The primary thing is a

fault in Spartan
military culture,

and that's a
unwillingness to adapt...

an unwillingness
to innovate.

Sparta really relies
on that heavy infantry class.

But ancient warfare isn't
just about heavy infantry.

Ancient warfare is about
something that we call

in the modern military
"combined arms".

That means light troops,
that means cavalry.

That means navy.

And that means flexibility
and the ability to adapt.

Other states have
come up with new military

strategies, and the Spartans
are doing the same thing,

and it doesn't
work anymore.

Ultimately, the
Spartans fight a battle at

Leuctra in 371 BC,

where the Thebans adopt
some particular

tactics designed to defeat
the Spartans in battle.

So a traditional
phalanx battle has the

strongest part of the phalanx
on the right of each army.

But a commander
named Epaminondas

of the Thebans decided
to flip that.

This heavy, reinforced left
is able to push and

press harder against
the Spartan right,

where the traditional elite
of the Spartiate society is,

and they're able to press it
back and break it.

This is crushing
for the Spartans,

not just because of the
men they lost at Leuctra,

but because of the loss
of their reputation.

The Thebans are
able to march south and

free the enslaved
Messenian population.

They are finally freed
from Spartan enslavement.

From this
point forward,

Sparta is no longer the
great power in Greece

that it had been.

Sparta's fall from
the world stage is swift,

but its reputation
for producing

great warriors lives on.

Sparta has a
greater hold on the modern

imagination than a
lot of their peers.

There's video games
made about the Spartans,

there's movies made
about the Spartans.

When we see sports
teams throughout the world

named the Spartans, it speaks
to the enduring legacy of

Sparta as the gold
standard for warriors.

People think of the
Spartans as some of the

greatest warriors
who ever fought.

This is not an
undeserved reputation.

Not all the stories
that are told about

the Spartans are true.

But they were the best
hoplite soldier fighting

on the battlefields
of Greece.

On the classical
Greek battlefield...

...where two armies are
pressing and pushing against

each other, at the
limit of desperation-

beyond fear,
beyond pain-

that is where the Spartans
really shine.

2,500 years on,

the Spartan legacy is known
around the world.

A fierce dedication to the
ultimate warrior mindset...

Legendary victories...

And great courage in the
face of certain defeat...

Clinch the Spartan's
rightful place among

History's Greatest Warriors.