I’ve already written an entire article about how the film 300 is a wildly historically inaccurate piece of propaganda that deliberately distorts history to promote a right-wing extremist message that can be described as borderline fascist at best.
#Hoplite shield art series#
Notably, in the 2006 fantasy action film 300, directed by Zack Snyder and based on the 1998 limited comic book series 300 by Frank Miller, all the Spartans are portrayed using perfectly uniform, unpainted, iron shields embossed with the letter lambda. The misconception that all Spartan hoplites always carried shields bearing the letter lambda is absolutely ubiquitous in popular culture. Although there is evidence to suggest that a few Spartans probably did choose to decorate their shields with the letter lambda, the vast majority seem to have decorated their shields with other symbols, geometric designs, and images. In historical reality, Greek hoplites, including Spartan hoplites, were expected to provide their own equipment and they could decorate their shields however they wished.
This letter, of course, stands for Λακεδαίμων ( Lakedaímōn), which was the most common name in antiquity for the Greek polis (i.e., “city-state”) that included that settlement of Sparta. In popular culture, ancient Spartan hoplites are virtually always portrayed as fighting with shields decorated with the Greek letter lambda (Λ).
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