The Puzzles of Thermopylae

The Puzzles of Thermopylae
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The Persian fleet's job was to supply them with food and other necessities, as the army was too large to live off the land. It is reasonable to view Thermopylae as a delaying maneuver, although due to political differences between the Athenians and the Spartans, it's also reasonable to view the Greek defenders as having been backed into a strategic corner by indecision.

Anyway, while the Spartans and a small Athenian contingent were marching off to Thermopylae, Themistocles, an Athenian leader, sent word to Xerxes that the (much smaller) Greek navy was fearful and likely to surrender - partly true, as the Peloponnesian contingent was less firmly committed than the Athenian one. Xerxes has his navy block the Greek ships into a relatively narrow strait, but then (on Themistocles' orders) the Greeks navy ran from the Persian ships instead of giving battle. The Persians, sensing victory, chased them into the strait.

But whereas a narrow passage provided a huge geographic advantage to the Spartan and Athenian foot soldiers bunched together in a phalanx, it was a fatal mistake for a naval force, which depends on freedom of maneuver. The huge Persian navy crowded into the narrow strait, leaving the ships bunched up against each other, at which point the Greeks reversed course and attacked their flanks, laying waste to them. With his supply system in pieces, Xerxes was forced to withdraw his army.

Incidentally, the popular book/film 300, which focuses heavily on the bravery and martial ethos of the Spartans, instead depicts the Persian fleet as being destroyed by a storm prior to the decisive battle. This makes for a simpler story, but at a rather significant loss of historical accuracy.

That's probably the easiest question to answer: the Spartans were war-crazy.

This is well-documented, and the tales of Leonida's wife asking him what to do if he doesn't return, and the 300 celebrating their own funerals, etc, are par for the course, for Spartans. Their whole society was hyper-militarised, their highest ideal was bravery in battle, to kill their enemies with no regard for their own life (in the service of the City, of course). They drilled their children from a young age to this mindset and they all became mad with it. So when the time came to choose between ditching their shield and running to fight another day, or staying and dying, the Spartans stayed and died. "Ή ταν, ή επί τας" as a Spartan mother said to her child ("with it, or on it"; "it" being his shield: either he carried it home, or they carried him home on it).

It is perhaps difficult to interpret this mindset from the point of view of a rational actor, because in terms of a strategy that maximises rewards and minimises losses, heroism does not compute. But a good general must take into account the fact that people are not perfectly rational, that they are in their most irrational when faced with death, that men with their backs to the wall fight to the death to a man. And that, at the end of the day, some troops will never break and run.

Remember also the Sacred Band of Thebes.