Spartans 300, battle of Thermopylae

This small monument commemorates the battle in 480 B.C. in which a small band of about Spartan soldiers held off a huge Persian army for three days. The delay was long enough to allow for the successful defense of Athens against the Persians. The Battle of Thermopylae (Greek: Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν) was fought between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I. Lasting over the course of three days, it was one of the most prominent battles of both the second Persian invasion of Greece and the wider Greco-Persian Wars.