Blog Number 43 - The last breakfast in Frank Miller's '300'

According to the historian Herodotus, King Leonidas had heard from the seer Megistias that the omens foresaw that 'death was coming with dawn'. Another historian Ephorus, wrote that an Ionian Greek by the name of Tyrrhastiadas of Cyme had delivered the fateful news to the leader of Sparta.

After receiving the news that the Greek forces would soon be surrounded, King Leonidas said to the remaining Spartiates: 'Have a good breakfest, men, for we dine in Hades!' In '300', Frank Miller also wrote, 'Spartans. Ready your breakfast and eat hearty..For tonight we dine in hell!' In 480 B.C. the Greeks were polytheistic and Hades in mythology was believed to be the underworld; in other words, what the ancients believed to be hell.

The Spartans and other Greeks that fought that last day, knew of their impending deaths and rather than surrendering fought to the end. It was their self-sacrifice which became part of the Thermopylae legend and is the reason why their story continues unabated after 2,500 years.