Battle of Thermopylae - 600 Spartans

The Spartans were defeated because Persian scouts found another path through the mountains which allowed the Persians to surround and destroy them. Another 300 Spartans could have been dispatched to defend the mountain pass to prevent any Persians getting through. At least until reinforcements arrive anyway.
So the Persians are defeated earlier and the Athenians aren't forced to evacuate while their city is burned to the ground. So perhaps we have a stronger Athens as a consequence of an early victory.
 
The Spartans were defeated because Persian scouts found another path through the mountains which allowed the Persians to surround and destroy them. Another 300 Spartans could have been dispatched to defend the mountain pass to prevent any Persians getting through. At least until reinforcements arrive anyway.
So the Persians are defeated earlier and the Athenians aren't forced to evacuate while their city is burned to the ground. So perhaps we have a stronger Athens as a consequence of an early victory.

Actually they were betrayed by a Mallian Greek named Ephialtes who showed Persians a narrow pass which lead them behind Thermopylae hoping for a reward from Persian King... Plus Leonidas and the other greeks knew that they couldnt defeat Persians in Thermopylae... They would delay them long enough while Athens was evacuated and the rest of Greeks prepare their last stand in Isthmus and Salamis...
 
Not really, they were good heavy infantry, but not exceptional.
I have to say, the comments on the Spartans really aren't fair.
Back at the times of the Persian Wars, heavy infantry was pretty much everything. Heavy/light Cavalry, light troops, and archers and other missile throwers evolved later, much later and only at Philip and Alexander's time did the heavy phalanx really become yet another factor on the battlefield equal to light infantry and etc. I've seen a map of the battle of Marathoon, it's pretty much heavy phalanxes against each other.
And even only a few years earlier than Alexander's time, during Theban supremacy, the phalanx was important (it was the revolutionary Theban tactic of one weighted wing poised with a deep -50 rows- phalanx waiting to throw the main punch while light troops pinned down the other wing. Philip/Alexander even emulated this a bit by deepening their phalanxes, though not by much).
Also, the Greeks were definetly not some rabble. Emulatewd by the rest of the Med., they trained a lot for the important task of heavy phalanxes and citizen armies appeared with the development of light troops. You could call this rabble, perhaps, but it took skill to throw missiles, especially like the Balearicians and Rhodians.
Early Roman armies had good discipline. At least by Pyrrhus. They also took up military development quite quickly. It was more after the reforms post-Pyrrhus that they grew strong, modifying their phalanx.
However, I'm more of an expert on stuff after the Persian War, but still, Sparta was a major power with good heavy phalanxes. It even kept this power right up till the Thebans came and destroyed their power.
 

CalBear

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the reason the 300 men were able to withstand the assualt was the extremely tight confines of the pass. At the pass the size of the persian army was nuetralized. Having 300 men in a much more open area against the three thousand or so men who were moving to attack the Spartans from behind would do little.


The alternate is generally described as a "goatpath". There is, of course, no way to confirm this today due to changes in the topography of the region. The Hot Gates themselves today are anything but a narrow pass.

If the alternate pass had been held more robustly (the legend is that the Phocians broke and ran because they were afraid that the Persians were going to head for their city-state instead) the Spartan led Greek force might have held for a week, maybe a bit more. The Persians were still tossing arrows and rocks at the Spartan lines with regularity, picking off the random unfortunate soul. Eventually they would have weakened the force to the degree that the Pass could be forced.

From a morale standpoint, the best result was the one obtained IOTL. The phalanx was demonstrated as "unbeatable" unless treachery was involved, regardless of the enemy host's size. This allowed the Greeks to rally and defeat the Persians later at Plataea. With that, the concept of "shock" as one of the three key elements of warfare (the holy trinity being Fire, Manuever & Shock Effect) became entrenched in Western military thought and tradition to this day.
 
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