Thermopylae
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Thermopylae is a narrow pass and modern town in Lamia, Phthiotis, Greece. It derives its name from its hot sulphur springs. In Greek mythology the Hot Gates is one of the entrances to Hades.
Thermopylae seen from the area of the Phocian Wall. The ancient coast was closer to the mountain, near the road to the right.
The hot springs from which Thermopylae takes its name
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.
Thermopylae
…Spercheios. The A1 motorway linking Athens and Thessaloniki now follows the ancient shoreline and thus splits the pass; a modern-day monument to King Leonidas I of Sparta is situated on the east side of the highway, directly across the road from the hill where Simonides' epitaph to the fallen is engraved in…
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.