Why is the battle of thermopylae called a victory in defeat

This would have significantly cut down the amount of time required to make this journey. Furthermore, he set up marketplaces and other trading posts all along the route he was planning to take to make it easier to supply his massive army as it proceeded west into Europe. Anyone could see that the Persians would be back, and so most went about preparing for round two. The Athenians, who had led the fight against the Persians the first time around, began building a new fleet using silver they had recently discovered in the mountains of Attica.

However, they knew it was unlikely they would be able to fend off the Persians on their own, so they called on the rest of the Greek world to come together and form an alliance to fight the Persians. But when the threat posed by the Persian forces ended, this sense of camaraderie also disappeared, but the Battle of Thermopylae would go on to serve as a reminder for what the Greeks could do when they worked together.

The alliance was technically under the direction of the Athenians, but the Spartans also played a key role largely because they had the largest and most superior land force. However, the Athenians were responsible for putting together and directing the Allied navy. Greek soldiers at the time were known as hoplites. They wore bronze helmets and breastplates and carried bronze shields and long, bronze-tipped spears.

Most hoplites were regular citizens who were required to buy and maintain their own armor. When called upon, they would mobilize and fight to defend the polis , which would have been a great honor. But at the time, few Greeks were professional soldiers, except for the Spartiates, who were highly-trained soldiers that ended up having a significant impact on the Battle of Thermopylae.

Below is an engraving of a hoplite left and a Persian soldier right to give an idea of what they might have looked like. Although the above scene from the movie is fiction and likely exaggerated, the Spartans who fought the Battle of Thermopylae have gone down in history as one of the most fearsome and elite fighting forces to have ever existed.

This is likely an exaggeration, but we should not be too quick to downplay the superior fighting skills of Spartan soldiers at the time. During this training, Spartan men learned not only how to fight but also how to trust in and work with one another, something that proved to be rather effective when fighting in the phalanx. The phalanx was a formation of soldiers set up as an array that when combined with the heavy armor worn by hoplites proved to be nearly impossible to break.

The Spartans who fought at the Battle of Thermopylae had been trained at this school, but they are not famous because they were good soldiers. The story goes that Xerxes, as he made his way into Greece, sent envoys to the still free Greek cities offering peace in exchange for tribute, which the Spartans of course refused.

However, all of this was happening during the Carneia, which was a festival dedicated to the god Apollo. It was the most important religious event on the Spartan calendar, and Spartan kings were strictly forbidden from going to war during this celebration.

However, Spartan King Leonidas knew to do nothing doomed his people to almost certain death. As a result, he consulted the Oracle anyway, and he was denied permission to summon an army and go to war, leaving him with the tremendous dilemma between appeasing the gods and defending his people.

Outright denial of the will of the gods was not an option, but Leonidas also knew remaining idle would allow his people, and the rest of Greece, to be destroyed, which was also not an option. In this way, he was technically not going to war, but he was also doing something to hopefully stop the Persian forces. This decision to ignore the gods and fight anyway has helped enshrine Spartan King Leonidas as the epitome of a just and loyal king who felt truly indebted to his people.

The Greek alliance originally wanted to confront the Persian forces in Thessaly, the region just to the south of Macedon, at the Vale of Tempe. The Battle of Marathon had shown that Greek forces would be able to defeat the Persians if they could force them into tight areas where their superior numbers no longer mattered.

The Vale of Tempe provided them with this geographical advantage, but when the Greeks got word that the Persians had learned of a way to go around the vale, they had to change their strategy. Thermopylae was chosen for a similar reason. Taking up a defensive position here would bottleneck the Persians and help to level the playing field. The Persian forces were accompanied by its massive fleet, and the Greeks had chosen Artemisium, which lies to the east of Thermopylae, as the place to engage with the Persian contingency of ships.

It was an ideal choice because it gave the Greeks the chance to stop the Persian army before they could advance south to Attica, and also because it would allow the Greek navy the chance to prevent the Persian fleet from sailing to Thermopylae and outflanking the Greeks fighting on land. The Spartans were joined by three to four thousand soldiers from the rest of the Peloponnese, cities such as Corinth, Tegea, and Arcadia, as well as another three to four thousand soldiers from the rest of Greece, meaning a total of around 7, men were sent to stop an army of , That the Spartans had significant help is one of the parts of the Battle of Thermopylae that has been forgotten in the name of mythmaking.

However, this does not take away from the fact that the Greeks were severely outnumbered as they took up their positions at Thermopylae. The Greeks 7, men made it to the pass first, but the Persians arrived shortly thereafter.

When Xerxes saw how small the Greek force was, he allegedly ordered his troops to wait. He figured the Greeks would see just how outnumbered they were and eventually surrender.

The Persians held off their attack for three whole days, but the Greeks showed no signs of leaving. During these three days, a few things happened that would have an impact on the Battle of Thermopylae as well as the rest of the war. First, the Persian fleet was caught in a wicked storm off the coast of Euboea that resulted in the loss of around one-third of their ships.

Second, Leonidas took 1, of his men, mainly people from the nearby city of Locris, to guard the relatively unknown passageway that circumvented the narrow Pass of Thermopylae. At the time, Xerxes did not know this back route existed, and Spartan King Leonidas knew his learning of it would doom the Greeks. The force stationed up in the mountains was set to serve not only as a line of defense but also as a warning system that could alert the Greeks fighting on the beaches in the event the Persians found their way around the narrow pass.

With all of this done, the stage was set for the fighting to begin. After three days, it became clear to Xerxes the Greeks were not going to surrender, so he began his attack. According to modern historians, he sent his army in waves of 10, men, but this did not do much. The pass was so narrow that most of the fighting took place between just a few hundred men in close quarters.

Strive to be humble in victory and gracious in defeat. The Athenians were not represented at the Battle of Thermopylai. They were manning their warships as part of the Greek fleet which fought a losing sea battle in the adjacent strait at Artemesion. The Greek land force at Thermopylai also was defeated by the Persians. A synonym for victory is conquest. An antonym for victory is defeat. That today its purpose of precipitating a sea battle in the nearby strait of Artemesion to defeat the Persian fleet has been replaced by emotional stories of trying to defeat the Persian army, and that it was a Spartan effort rather than a coalition of Greek cities who rallied to the dangerous mission.

The Roman army was able to defeat its enemies in battle because of better training, better discipline, better equipment and better tactics. They also had a determination to win, and even if they lost a battle, they would keep coming back until they secured a victory. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was both a victory and a defeat for the Native tribes involved. Undeniably, it was a victory, given the destruction of that portion of the 7th Cavalry that had been led into a trap by Lt.

Colonel Custer. It was, at the same time, a defeat, as it gave away their position and intentions to a larger number of enemy troops in the vicinity without securing any decisive tactical advantage.

They sprang the trap too soon. Log in. Ancient History. See Answer. Best Answer. Study guides. Q: Why is the battle of thermopylae called a victory in defeat? Write your answer Related questions. Why is the battle of Thermopylae called the victory in defeat?

When Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, it secured an unrivaled hegemony over southern Greece. It was never able to regain its military supremacy and was finally absorbed by the Achaean League in the 2nd century BC. While the Battle of Thermopylae was technically a defeat for the Greek coalition, it was also a conquest.

It marked the beginning of several important Greek victories against the Persians and represented a morale shift among the Greeks. Rather than existing as separate entities, the Greek poleis would have been absorbed by the invasive Persian government. As a part of this empire, the Persians would have emphasized coercion over free will. Whips were only for slaves, not free men; they were appropriate for a barbarian master to use on his slave subjects, but out of the question for the citizen soldiers of a free Greek polis.

Such an action would have turned the Greeks into barbarians and slaves instead of freemen, thus eliminating the distinction between the Greek poleis and the Persian Empire. In fact, the Greeks might even change their understanding of key virtues like freedom since they would be treated like slaves.

The ideals that motivated the Spartans to fight against the Persians at Thermopylae would have died under the Persians. Americans can thank the Greeks, and especially the Spartans, for things they love and sometimes take for granted like the Constitution, Chick-fil-a, and capitalism. Had the Spartans not stood up, there may not have been enough freedom-loving Greeks left to defend against the Persians.

For you are now attacking the most noble kingdom of all the Hellenes, and the best of men.