Themistocles, on the other hand, was indeed present, but rather than carrying and throwing a javelin he was fighting in a dense phalanx formation and wielding a long, heavy pike armed with a fearsome iron tip made for thrusting into the Persian enemy hand-to-hand. Actually, though Darius had indeed launched the Persian expedition that came to grief at Marathon, he was not himself present there, nor was Xerxes. (2) The movie gets underway with a wondrously unhistorical javelin-throw - cast by Athenian hero Themistokles (note the pseudo-authentic spelling of his name with a Greek вЂkвЂ™) on the battlefield of Marathon near Athens in 490 BCE, a cast which kills none other than Persian Great King Darius I, next to whom is standing his son and future successor Xerxes.

But which Empire is supposed to be on the rise here? I suppose that itвЂ™s meant to be, distantly, the вЂAthenian EmpireвЂ™, but that didnвЂ™t even begin to rise until at least two years after the events the movie focuses on: the sea-battles of Artemisium and Salamis that both took place in 480 BCE. (1) Error sets in with the very title: the вЂ300вЂ™ bit is a nod to Zack SnyderвЂ™s infinitely more successful 2006 movie to which this is a kind of sequel, and there is not just allusion to but bodily lifting of a couple of scenes from the predecessor. But in case any classroom teachers of Classical civilization or Classical history should be tempted to use it as a teaching aid: caveant magistri - let the teachers beware! Here are just five ways in which the movie is at best un-historical, at worst anti-historical. This is in fact a historical fantasy-fiction movie and should be viewed and judged only as such. It wilfully commits the grossest historical blunders. It uses historical characters but abuses them for its own dramatic, largely techno-visual ends. It references a couple of major historical events but is not interested in вЂgetting them rightвЂ™. LetвЂ™s be clear of one thing right from the word go: this is not in any useful sense a historical movie.

Full movie 300 part 2