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Moral of story - Greeks lost.. Movie was a total fantasy.

What? The movie shows that the Greeks lost and all the Spartans were killed.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Actually, the Greeks at Thermopylae achieved their objective of providing sufficient delay for a strategic retreat by most of the Spartan forces. They were all volunteers for a suicide mission. The geography of the pass gave them a huge tactical advantage, until they were betrayed (in today's context, the alternate route around the pass would have been printed in the NY Times).

Despite losing Athens, the Greeks eventually prevailed at the Battle of Salamis.