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King Leonidas Procedure In Spartan History

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In fact, this procedure is very much true. Throughout Spartan history, babies were brought to the council by their parents, for an inspection. This inspection would now be called infanticide. Infanticide is the killing of a child within a year of birth. During the inspection, council men who are generally sixty years old or older would check for any deformities in the children before deciding if they were fit to be a Spartan. The inspection determined their fate. Would they grow up to be a strong Spartan warrior or cast over the hillside?

In this scene, a Persian emissary asks to speak to King Leonidas as he was training Pleistarchus. As the messenger tries to persuade King Leonidas to submit to King Xerxes, he mentions how King Xerxes "conquers everything he lay his eyes on." King Xerxes wants an offering of "Earth and Water" from King Leonidas. King Leonidas says …show more content…
He then goes along to say how the Spartan wall does not scare the Persian men, until he notices that the stone wall is not only built with stone, but also with bodies of dead enemies defeated by Sparta. The fight starts when the messenger tries to swing his whip, but ends up getting his arm sliced off by a Spartan man. He then threatens the Spartan by telling him that the people of their village and women will be slaves. Afterwards, the Spartans secures the wall referred to as the "Hot Gates", and awaits for the Persian army slaves. Prior to the Spartans awaiting the arrival of the Persians, a hunched back deformed man by the name of Ephialtes, appears and begs King Leonidas to fight in the war against Persia. He mentions that his father is a former Spartan and his parents kept him from the elders because of love. After Leonidas asks him one simple task, that he fails to perform, he betrays Spartan by assisting Persia. Only 300 stayed and the other city-states left them to fight

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