Thursday

I have been eagerly anticipating the movie 300. It is out now, and I hope to see and review it for you early next week. I have a few preemptive thoughts, however. You may not know that I am completing a PhD in Classics as we speak. So, I know all about the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, then? This is like asking an expert in contemporary French politics to tell you about Tudor England. What I study is 500 years away from Thermopylae, and yet somehow we are expected to know about it, and all of ancient history in-between and 500 years after. Perhaps, you might say, there are very few sources in ancient history: it is possible to read all of them. Well, yes, but there is so much secondary reading nowadays that comprehensive knowledge of that sort is becoming rarer and rarer. What I think is the issue is people's conception of the ancient world being a neat, compact unit - mainly because it is so in their brains - when in fact it existed and evolved dramatically over 1000 years. What annoyed me recently was an article in a newspaper entitled something like 'The Hollywood Guide to the Ancient World'. It made fun of the inaccurate, exaggerated and biased conception of history the movies presented to us. But since when have films attempted to give detailed time-lines, either within themselves or between each other? Film is art. How hard is that to realise? Anyway, one thing I do know about Thermopylae is that it inspired possibly one of the best poems ever written:

Inform the Lakedaimonians, friend - we rest
Here, understanding their orders to the last.