Thermopylae Memorial of King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans (Greece) скачать в хорошем качестве

Thermopylae Memorial of King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans (Greece)

Please turn ON English subtitle! - Vă rog să activați subtitrarea în românește! The memorial at Thermopylae transcends millennia and civilizations to pay tribute to the Greek heroes under the command of the Spartan King Leonidas who sacrificed themselves here to save an entire army. The monument is located at Thermopylae, about 190 km northwest of Athens, near the national road to Thessaloniki. In 480 BCE, the huge Persian invasion army, estimated by modern historians to be 70,000-250,000 men, was opposed by a small army of about 7,000 fighters gathered from several Greek city-states and led by the Spartan King Leonidas. The small Greek army blocked the Persian army here at Thermopylae, at the entrance to a gorge which at that time was next to the sea. Now the landscape is completely different and the sea is several kilometers away. After two days of fighting, a local betrays and gives the Persians a path over the mountain by which they can get behind the Greek army. In these conditions, in order not to risk the encirclement and total destruction of the army, King Leonidas decides to cover the retreat of the Greek army, remaining to face the Persians with only 300 of his famous Spartan fighters, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, almost all dying in battle. The monument, erected in 1955, has in the center the bronze statue of the Spartan King Leonidas, completely naked (that's how they fought back then), but in a warrior's attitude and equipped for battle with spear, shield, helmet and sword at his waist. On the plinth of the statue is the inscription "Μολών λαβέ" - "Come and take them" which reproduces the laconic and defiant response of King Leonidas to the request of the Persian emperor Xerxes I to lay down their arms. The plinth of the statue is framed in a wall with bas-reliefs (metopes) which reproduce battle scenes. At the ends of the wall are the marble statues of two youths who personify two symbols of Sparta, namely Taigetos, the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, and Evrotas, the river that runs through Laconia.