Battle of Thermopylae

The pass of Thermopylae — Greek for 'Hot Gates', named after the sulfurous springs nearby — was the site of one of antiquity's most consequential last stands in the late summer of 480 BC. King Leonidas I of Sparta held the narrow coastal pass against the invading Persian army of Xerxes I for several days with a small Greek coalition, including his 300 Spartan hoplites, before a local man named Ephialtes betrayed a mountain path around the Greek position. Leonidas dismissed most of his allies and died fighting with his Spartans in the final stand. The geography has changed dramatically since antiquity: river sediment from the Spercheios has pushed the coastline outward, turning what was once a narrow cliff-edge defile into an open coastal plain. A modern monument bearing the epitaph attributed to Simonides marks the site, managed today as an archaeological attraction by the Greek antiquities authority.