Oh, the humanity

Hydarnes, Commander of the Immortals: "When we attack today, our arrows will blot out the sun."
King Leonidas: "Good. Then we will fight in the shade."






Hydarnes: "Leonidas, you cannot win this fight."
Leonidas: "Every day we stand is another day for Greece."

In the hit new film "300," Marines see parallels between the current war in Iraq and the film's story, which tells of hopelessly outnumbered Spartans fighting heroically to the death against mighty Persian invaders at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.

Meanwhile, the film has sparked outrage in modern Iran, which denounced the blockbuster's depiction of the ancient battle as "hostile behavior which is the result of cultural and psychological warfare." According to Reuters, poor-quality pirated DVDs are already circulating in Iran and a broad spectrum of government leaders and bloggers have denounced the movie as portraying the Persians as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks. Some elected officials in Iran are urging other Muslim countries not to show "this anti-Iranian Hollywood movie."

At the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans were hopelessly outnumbered, but they fight to the end, refusing to surrender.

"They fight even when they could have escaped," she noted. "They are making a statement of what it is to be a Spartan. It's a hugely tear-jerking thing." Furthermore, she said, history remembers these men as virtuous defenders of freedom and civilization. "That's the way the Greeks saw it. It made a huge impression at the time. These dead warriors were considered heroes ever after."

Vincent Farenga, who teaches classics at USC, said via e-mail that he believes the movie "300" strikes a chord with young people because they are "very curious about the ancient world.

"As [the film] 'Gladiator' proved, film can burn right through the impediments of verbal histories and archaeological studies — but only if it has a 'look' and 'feel' that strikes young people as 'right on.' "

Bill Stutzman, an upper-school humanities teacher at Foundations Academy, a nondenominational Protestant K-12 school in Boise, Idaho, that stresses teaching of the classics, said one of his students showed a trailer for the film in class and described what it would be like living in Sparta as a woman.

"What we are seeing is that kids, from the youngest age on up, love these stories," he said.