The 300 Spartan Warriors

Hi everyone, welcome to Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. I'm your host, Qiao Yulan. How did you spend your weekend? On weekends I like to watch movies based on real historical events. That way I get to enjoy a big-budget production and pick up some knowledge I was missing at the same time. And after a film like that, I keep thinking about the details, so I put on some background music and go looking for more material to learn about the story behind the film.

That way I get entertainment and learning at the same time. Lately I've become very interested in stories of the weak defeating the strong, so I rewatched a classic film: 300.

Today we're going to talk about the history behind that movie, and about the war between Greece and Persia, a textbook case of a great empire playing against a small city-state.

Ancient Greece is one of the most outstanding civilizations in world history.

It has had a profound influence on modern art and culture.

Ancient Greece was made up of hundreds of city-states, big and small. The most famous were Athens, Sparta, Corinth and so on. Each of these city-states was like a small country. Politically they were not unified, but they shared the same language and cultural identity. When trouble came, they could gather together to discuss things, and they held cultural and sporting events together, such as the Olympic Games. If you had to compare them to something today, the closest might be the European Union. In the 6th century BC, the Greek city-states entered a period of vigorous growth.

At almost the same time, a powerful superpower was quietly rising on the eastern side of the Aegean Sea. That was Persia. The Persians settled on the Iranian plateau around the 7th century BC and then expanded rapidly. In the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great burst onto the scene.

He founded the Persian Empire.

Then, after several generations of building, by the 5th century BC the Persian Empire had grown into a giant spanning Asia, Europe and Africa, covering about 5.5 million square kilometers.

Within the Persian Empire,

apart from the emperor, not a single person was free.

From its birth, the Persian Empire showed strong aggression and expansionism. It kept expanding its territory, and it took in 5.5 million square kilometers of land across Asia, Africa and Europe.

Anyone who has looked at a map would think that next to this vast Persian Empire, little Greece was a tiny speck of land. Persian emperor Darius I thought so too, and so he began to entertain the idea of swallowing up Greece. He sent envoys to the Greek city-states to demand earth and water as tokens of submission, in effect asking the Greeks to bow down to him.

Darius was full of confidence. He thought: my Persian Empire is vast, while Greece is so small, with so few resources. A little intimidation should be enough to make them bow obediently. But the Greeks, who were used to being free, would not take this lying down. Not only did they refuse to submit, they went one step further and killed his envoys.

When Darius learned of this, he was absolutely furious.

Seriously? I am the great Persian king, and I'm supposed to let this go? Just like that, in 490 BC,

Emperor Darius gave the order, and a mighty Persian fleet immediately sailed across the Aegean Sea toward Athens, the most famous city-state in Greece. For this invasion of Greece, Darius sent an army of about 25,000 men, while Athens could only muster 10,000.

Less than half of the Persian force.

Because the Persian army outnumbered the Athenian army two to one, the Persian commanders believed that they could use their numerical advantage to split their forces in two. One part would find a place to attract and tie down the Athenian army, while the other part would send a strike force to sneak in and attack Athens directly while it was undefended.

So the Persians decided to land half of their forces at the Plain of Marathon, north of Athens.

When they heard the Persian fleet would land at Marathon, the Athenians immediately sent their army to Marathon. Everything seemed to be going exactly according to the Persian plan: once the Athenian army was held at Marathon, the strike force could sail around and attack the undefended city of Athens from the sea.

However, the Persians clearly underestimated the fighting strength of the Athenian army. As soon as the Persian army landed at Marathon, it was caught completely off guard by Athenian infantry who had been hidden in the high ground. Led by the general Miltiades,

the Athenian hoplites first routed the weaker flanks of the Persian army, then turned inward and closed in toward the center.

They smashed the center of the Persian army to pieces without wasting a moment. Then Miltiades left only a small force to hold the battlefield at Marathon, and led the main body of troops on a forced march.

They rushed nonstop back to Athens,

and arrived one full hour ahead of the Persian strike force.

So when the Persian strike force reached Athens, the Athenian infantry was already waiting on the shore, ready for battle.

And so the Persian plan completely fell apart. They had no choice but to give up the attack and slink back home, covered in dust and ashes. Poor Emperor Darius had expected to be enjoying a seaside villa in Athens before long.

Instead, he died in 486 BC,

still carrying the regret of never having conquered Greece.

By the way, the marathon race itself comes from this battle. Among the Athenian soldiers at the time was a man named Pheidippides, a distance runner, so he was the one assigned to run back to Athens with the news. The distance from Marathon to Athens is about 42 kilometers. For someone like him, normally, those 42 kilometers were no big deal. But before this, to ask Sparta for help, Pheidippides had already run back and forth nearly 600 kilometers.

And he had just fought a battle.

He was already exhausted. So when he sprinted the 42 kilometers and reached Athens, he passed on the news of victory to his fellow citizens and then collapsed and died on the spot. The modern Olympic marathon was established precisely to commemorate this soldier.

Now let's go on with the Greco-Persian Wars.

If you thought that after the setback at Marathon, Persia would give up its ambitions to expand westward, you'd be wrong. If the Greco-Persian Wars were a movie, we're not even halfway through the progress bar yet. After Darius died, his son Xerxes I inherited the Persian throne and called himself "King of Kings." From this arrogant title you can guess that this emperor didn't think conquering Greece was very difficult at all. So shortly after taking the throne, he was impatient to go to war with Greece again. Of course, Xerxes learned from his father Darius's lesson, and made thorough preparations, mobilizing many more troops. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, when Xerxes invaded Greece he mobilized various kinds of forces totaling 520,000 men, with 1,207 warships and 3,000 other vessels.

Although these figures are obviously exaggerated, they show how determined Xerxes was. The Greeks were also genuinely frightened now, and they clearly understood that no single city-state could hold out alone. So the representatives of the city-states came together for a meeting, and in the end they decided to unite and resist Persia. Naturally, leadership of the Greek alliance fell to Athens and Sparta, the two big brothers. Sparta led the land forces and Athens led the naval forces. The Greeks then began a tense period of preparation for war. And while the Greeks were busy preparing, in order to slow the Persian army's advance as much as possible, 7,000 Greek allied troops, along with the famous 300 Spartan warriors,

led by Spartan king Leonidas, came to Thermopylae.

Leonidas was not only an excellent warrior but also a great strategist. You can see this from his choice of Thermopylae as a base. Although after 2,500 years the Thermopylae of today has changed beyond recognition,

2,500 years ago the distance between the cliffs and the sea at Thermopylae was extremely narrow. The mountain foothills at the Thermopylae pass ran through the entire gorge, making it a superb defensive position where one man could hold the pass against ten thousand. Fighting here was clearly the way to inflict the greatest damage on the Persian army at the smallest cost.

Leonidas proved to be right. Xerxes committed his elite heavy infantry, known as the Immortals, at Thermopylae, but the Greek allied army led by Leonidas dealt them a crushing defeat. Relying on the natural terrain, the Greeks inflicted very painful losses on Xerxes at a tiny cost. On the first day they successfully repelled an attack by 20,000 men. On the second day they again repelled an attack by 50,000. It is considered a miracle in military history.

However, on the third day, the Persians, guided by a local, discovered a narrow path that could be used to outflank the Greeks. Leonidas knew that if they did not withdraw quickly, the only thing waiting for them would be a dead end. So he pulled back the allied troops and kept only the 300 Spartan warriors

and 1,100 Boeotians to launch one last assault against the Persian army. When Leonidas and his men left Sparta, they never expected to return alive. So they fought on until the very last moment, until every one of them had fallen. In the end, the Persian army took Thermopylae thanks to its absolute numerical superiority, but at an extremely heavy price. The 300 Spartan warriors, though all killed, effectively slowed the Persian army's advance.

They gave the Greek allied forces more time to prepare, and lifted the morale of all of Greece.

After winning a hard-earned temporary victory at such a high cost, Xerxes personally led the Persian army, which finally marched straight ahead

and reached Athens. But Athens was already an empty city. The Athenians had earlier been led by Themistocles to move onto the sea. With nowhere to vent his fury, Xerxes could only set fire to the deserted city and burn every building in it to the ground.

Meanwhile, the Athenian navy, under the command of Themistocles,

was preparing to fight the Persian fleet to the death. The Persian warships were large in size and great in number, suited to battle on the open sea.

Athens's warships were small and few in number, suited to fighting in narrow waters.

Themistocles thought it over and decided they needed to fight in a narrow body of water. He picked the Bay of Salamis, not far from Athens. But how could they lure the Persians there?

The cunning Themistocles came up with a plan.

He sent a spy to Xerxes to falsely report that the Athenians were planning to escape through the Bay of Salamis. Perhaps because his anger had not yet been vented, Xerxes actually believed this nonsense, and immediately ordered the fleet to sail into the Bay of Salamis to intercept the Athenians. The entire Persian navy plunged into the trap. Just as Themistocles had predicted, the fleet was too huge and the sea too cramped, so the Persian navy soon fell into complete chaos. Xerxes had set up his golden throne on a hilltop beside the Bay of Salamis, intending to watch from above as his enemies were wiped out. But instead he saw his warships being sunk one after another by the enemy, and his men dying in droves in the sea. According to Herodotus, after the Battle of Salamis the Persian fleet lost more than 200 warships sunk, more than 50 captured, and tens of thousands of casualties. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, lost only 40 warships.

A great victory.

Emperor Xerxes, who watched the whole thing from start to finish, probably nearly had a heart attack. After the baptism of the Battle of Salamis, Xerxes finally stopped being so overconfident. Afraid that his empire would fall into internal turmoil because of the defeat, he hurried back home.

He left behind General Mardonius and the Persian land army to keep fighting in Greece and seek a chance to turn the tide. But one year after the Battle of Salamis, Mardonius and his Persian army met the Greek allied forces led by Sparta at Plataea. They were given another thorough beating, and General Mardonius himself died in that battle. From then on, Xerxes's plan to conquer Greece was finally and completely shattered.

We can see that even when facing a giant, bulky opponent, the Athenians never retreated or feared. Instead, they cleverly used their own advantages and fought back with flexible tactics. Well then, that's all for this episode of Cold-Knowledge Blind Box. If you have any other stories you'd like to hear, you can also open the NIO app, go to the Friends section, find the community for NIO Radio's Shenzhen city channel, and come share the cold facts you like.

A giant state, fully concentrated and hugely powerful, with the largest territory in the world and overwhelming military strength, looked down on its neighbor, thought conquering it would be as easy as turning over a hand, and ignored the determination of the people of that land to defend their freedom. It launched a war on a whim and paid a terrible price. This script was already written 2,500 years ago. History does not repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes. Because rulers always long for absolute power, and people always long for freedom. As long as human nature stays the same, history will keep repeating itself again and again. Of course, war always has a passive skill: it pushes social progress forward. But the price of that progress is simply too heavy, so all we can do here is wish that wars end soon and the world finds peace as soon as possible.

Last time we talked about whether the Mars settlement plan can succeed, which depends to a large extent on the overall transformation of the planet Mars. And no matter what the future holds, there is one company that will certainly swallow almost all of the planetary transport market. That is the subject of this episode: SpaceX.

We will not only talk about this company, but also about how Musk pulled off comeback after comeback against one impossible odd after another, growing a private rocket company into something that can compete with national space powers.

The story starts with Musk's childhood dream. Like many people, Musk watched plenty of science fiction films when he was young.

Perhaps it was the scenes of devastation from Star Wars that gave Musk the idea that "humanity living only on Earth is very unsafe." An ordinary person might laugh it off after the movie, but Musk never seemed to think about spending his life on Earth. He was determined to make interstellar travel happen within his own lifetime.

In 1991 he entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned two degrees, in economics and physics. During this period, his horizons also began to widen, and he started thinking about how to combine technology with business to realize his dream of Mars.

But he was also a very practical realist. Founding a rocket company directly in the 1990s was indeed a fantasy. A fresh graduate with no money and no connections, and in an era when phones and computers were not as common as they are now, computing power was limited. Time and place were both against him.

However, Musk was very good at programming. In 1995 he and his brother co-founded Zip2, a company that dealt with compressed archive files commonly found on computers. Within four years, the company was acquired by another big company, and Musk earned 22 million dollars.

That same year he founded X.com again, an online payment company, which later became PayPal. It is said that this company's product was also an inspiration for, and a model studied by, Alipay.

Musk did not sink into the lifestyle of a young man who became a billionaire before he turned thirty. Instead, he chose to step back at the height of the industry's boom, and sold both companies for good prices, earning his first pot of gold. Money was only one part of it. These two deals also gave him experience in company financing, investment, and mergers and acquisitions, laying a solid financial and legal foundation for his continuous entrepreneurship that followed.

In 2002, Musk was on top of the world. After selling PayPal, he held at least 165 million dollars in cash and had built up many connections in the investment world. He had never forgotten his rocket dream, but had long been frustrated by never having seen a real rocket. So, accompanied by two good friends, he flew to Moscow.

Only after they got off the plane and met the Russians did the two friends understand exactly what Musk wanted to buy. It was intercontinental ballistic missiles! After a few rounds of drinks and negotiation, the Russians gave their final offer: 8 million dollars per missile. Musk countered: 8 million dollars for two. The Russian looked at him and said, "Alright, kid, stop messing around." He then mocked Musk for not having enough money.

Musk was completely enraged. This Russian not only looked down on him, but also wanted to raise the price. After the talks broke down unhappily, Musk sat on the plane, sulking over his laptop. The two friends breathed a sigh of relief. "I knew Old Musk never really wanted to buy a rocket." But just as they were nearing America, he suddenly blurted out: "Brothers, I think we can build our own rockets." Then he used an Excel spreadsheet to show his friends the cost data for building a rocket.

No matter what friends and relatives advised him, he always believed that building it himself was the only way out. After this fantastic trip to Moscow, a young man who had just become a billionaire threw caution to the wind and spent tens of millions of dollars to found SpaceX. He was determined to give every American fan a real rocket to look at.

But this road was bound to be extremely hard. Before Musk, many billionaires had tried to enter the space industry. But it is an industry with high investment, high risk and a long payback cycle, and it demands far more in scientific research and applied engineering than any other industry. So a joke went around the industry: in space, what is the fastest way to become a millionaire? Start as a billionaire.

Because space exploration is not purely a technical problem.

Space programs were once a market monopolized 100% by NASA, the US space agency. High levels of national monopoly also brought its own problems. With the end of the Cold War, the biggest rival no longer existed. Space exploration was simply a very expensive project that was not popular. The rocks collected and the data obtained could only be used for scientific research. On top of that, the tragedy of the Challenger in 1986 happened: Americans watched on live television as the spacecraft exploded and broke apart. More and more people began to feel that spaceflight was no longer important, and talent and funding were no longer as easy to come by as before. Add to that a bureaucracy that was growing old and rigid, and American space technology stagnated for nearly 40 years.

As a new player who wanted to get in, you not only needed technology, but also had to deal with Washington. Faced with NASA's preference for big companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing when placing orders, Musk did not bow and scrape to get connections. Instead, he chose to take the fight straight to the Senate. At a hearing in 2004, he had his lawyers present questions about the unfairness of the bidding process for NASA's rocket projects, accusing the national space agency of colluding with big companies and leaving small companies with no room to grow.

In the end, SpaceX narrowly won. It forced its way into the game from within a tightly guarded bureaucratic system, and from then on it could take part in market competition that seemed "fair." After all, NASA was almost the only buyer of rocket launches in the whole of America. Only a steady stream of orders could let SpaceX gain a foothold in the market.

After clearing the monopoly barrier at the order level, SpaceX also recruited many employees with plenty of rocket manufacturing experience from NASA. In 2006 it finally built its first Falcon rocket and began launch tests. But by 2008, SpaceX had carried out three rocket experiments, and fate did not favor Musk and the newborn SpaceX. All three experiments failed without exception, and they nearly burned through every penny he had accumulated from his earlier ventures.

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