Aug 9

Anniversary of the Iranians victory At the Battle of Thermopylae, in the year 480 BC

On August 9th, 480 BC (Amordad 18th) the mountain infantry units of the Iranian forces – the only super power on earth at the time – in the course of the military expedition of Shahanshah Xerxes I to Greece and the southern Europe, after a series of wars in the heights looking over the pass of Thermopylae, in the north of Greece, destroyed the Spartan soldiers and the Thespians and Thebans, together with Leonidas the King of Sparta, and opened the way for the cavalry and infantry forces of the Shahanshah to pass and proceed towards Athens, because he set out to conquer all of Greece. After the mountain infantry units of the Iranian army, including 1000 soldiers from the Paktia area (this was an eastern province of Iran, which is still called by this name and situated in the east of Afghanistan) laid siege on Spartans, Xerxes, who was present in the battlefield, proposed to Leonidas that he would keep the way open for him and the rest of his soldiers to escape, but the Sparta law prohibited soldiers from retreating or surrendering. Therefore, the     Spartans continued fighting until all died, in order to be faithful to the law of their homeland.     It is written that Xerxes I, the son of Atossa (daughter of Cyrus the Great) and the Darius the Great and his successor and husband of Ester, who is buried in the city of Hamedan, told his soldiers to keep one of the Spartan soldiers alive to send him back to his Athens and give the news of their defeat to the Athenians. Then the Iranian army conquered Athens after passing through Thermopylae. Resistance of Leonidas in Thermopylae and the delay in the progress of the Iranian army gave the Commander-in-Chief of Greece forces(Themistocles) enough time to empty Athens from its inhabitants and move them to safe islands.     The Greek have allocated a spot in the Thermopylae battlefield to Leonidas, where his statue and his last statements are placed and visited by tourists.     In the course of the expedition the Shahanshah Xerxes built a long waterway in Greece, so that the ships were not forced to go around the peninsula which was surrounded by stormy sea. The remains of this waterway have been discovered recently and show how far the Iranians, 25 centuries ago, were progressed in engineering science.     Some historians of the 20th century, as a result of fresh calendar calculations, have written the end of the Thermopylae war as August 10th, 480 BC and that this war lasted 3 days, which was written before to have been two days.     In his 9-volume book “The Persian War”, Herodotus has described, in detail, the wars that the Iranians fought, from the beginning, up to the military expedition of Xerxes I to Greece.     The world science of historiography started with the same writings of Herodotus (The Persian War). But, nevertheless, the figures that Herodotus mentions about the Iranian forces and the warships of Xerxes in the attack to Greece seem to be exaggerated. Other documents show these figures much less than Herodotus.          Translation by Rowshan Lohrasbpour(Amordad-News writer)      The site of the battle      Leonidas monument      Xerxes I (his golen coin)