Myke Cole

I’ve often thought what a good idea it would be to have a book that deals not only with ‘the’ Battle of Thermopylae but also with the many other engagements fought before and well after, as recently as the Second World War, in this key pass in north-central Greece named for its thermal springs. The Killing Ground is that book, tricked out with a veritable arsenal – indeed, battery – of supporting illustrations (culminating in Jacques-Louis David’s Léonide aux Thermopyles) and maps, all superb, written expressly for nonspecialist readers. The co-authors make no bones about it: the uber-famous August 480 BC affair – the second of their 16 battles and 27 ‘actions’ at Thermopylae – ‘may be the most famous battle in human history’ or at any rate ‘one of the most famous killing grounds in history’ – certainly one of the greatest stories ever (to be) told. The book parades an apparatus of scholarship in endnotes, though these are used not only to document views expressed in the text or to suggest further, alternative readings, but also to settle the odd score (experto credi).

This is a book that can be read serially, dipped into chapter by engaging chapter, armchair polemology of the best sort. But caveat emptor: space forbids my drawing attention to much in the way of the book’s detail – and for a good long stretch of its contents I wouldn’t pretend to having any expertise whatsoever, not much, anyhow, beyond the 12th action or seventh battle of 191 BC. However, when it comes to the climactic, 480 BC clash, there’s an absolutely fundamental and crucial historiographical issue at stake: the reliability of our nearest surviving contemporary written source that can be called in any way historical, the Histories of Herodotus.

Cole and Livingston do not diss the Halicarnassian completely – how could they, and then go on to write anything about the battle in any detail? But they do adopt what one might call a ‘radical-sceptic’ stance, doubting some of his claims and crediting other alternative ancient sources. On one – to me – utterly vital point, the precise composition of King Leonidas’ famous ‘300’, they ignore him altogether. Herodotus had visited Sparta and socialised with leading Spartans. There, he had learned by heart the individual names of all the 300. His work being the denial of official history, he was not afraid to report – contrary to ‘popular’ belief still current today – that two of the 300 had not died in the pass. And about one thing Herodotus was absolutely certain: that among Leonidas’ criteria for selecting them (they weren’t identical with his regular bodyguard of 20-year-olds, also 300 in number) was that they had to be fathers of living sons. There’s no mention of that in The Killing Ground.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Paul Cartledge is Emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Clare College, Cambridge and author, most recently, of Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Picador, 2020).… (more)