Leonidas I
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Leonidas I was king of the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the son of king Anaxandridas II and the 17th king of the Agiad dynasty, a Spartan royal house which claimed descent from Heracles.
Sculpture of a hoplite, called "Leonidas" by its excavators. 5th century BC
The Spartans throw Persian envoys into a well.
Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814) by Jacques-Louis David, who chose the subject in the aftermath of the French Revolution as a model of "civic duty and self-sacrifice", but also as a contemplation of loss and death, with Leonidas quietly poised and heroically nude
Achaemenid king killing a Greek hoplite. Circa 500 BC–475 BC, at the time of Xerxes I. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
300 (film)
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300 is a 2006 epic historical fantasy action film directed by Zack Snyder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon. Based on the 1998 Dark Horse Comics limited series of t
Leonidas I
…protagonist of Frank Miller's 1998 comic book series 300. It presents a fictionalised version of Leonidas and the Battle of Thermopylae, as does the 2006 feature film adapted from it. In cinema, Leonidas has been portrayed by Richard Egan in the 1962 epic The 300 Spartans, by Gerard Butler in the 2006 film 300, inspired by the graphic…
Theatrical release poster
Above: the film version compared to the 1998 comic (below)
Above: A scene during filming Below: The finished scene
Lena Headey at the London premiere, 2007