# Summary

The article provides a humorous perspective on the historical Battle of Plataea, emphasizing the significant death toll and drawing parallels to modern-day events.

# Abstract

The Battle of Plataea, the final land battle of the Greco-Persian wars, is recounted with a comedic twist, highlighting the transition of Greek city-states from internal conflict to united defense against Persian invasion. The author likens the conflict to a neighborhood dispute over local development, and compares the battle's impact to a memorable football match. Despite uncertain historical records, estimates suggest a staggering 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers lost their lives, an event the author vividly illustrates by comparing the number of casualties to the attendance at Coachella's main stage. The article concludes with a plug for another piece by the author, an open letter to Windows 10.

# Opinions

- The author expresses skepticism about the historical accuracy of media portrayals of ancient battles, particularly in films like *300*.
- There is a suggestion that the Greeks' unity against Persia was akin to reluctant neighbors banding together against a common issue.
- The article humorously downplays the significance of the Persian Emperor Xerxes I's role in the battle by comparing him to someone who leaves their friend to deal with their mess.
- The author implies that the aftermath of the Battle of Plataea was a logistical nightmare, questioning who would have been responsible for cleaning up the vast number of casualties.
- The comparison of the battle's death toll to a music festival audience is used to convey the sheer scale of the loss of life in a relatable way.

A FUNNY TAKE ON

The Battle of Plataea

And the ungodly mess it made

I’ve always had a mild fascination with Ancient Greece, but just lately I started to feed that fascination with books and documentaries and wildly inaccurate movies.

Now, it won’t surprise anyone to know that there’s a lot of artistic license taken with movies like 300, but there was no shortage of drama in the real thing, either. But there was one particular battle that caught my eye.

The Battle of Plataea

This was the final land battle in the famed Greco-Persian wars, and was a crushing victory for the Greeks. Although they weren’t really Greeks at this stage, but a bunch of squabbling city-states who spent more fighting each other and had very little interest in the outside world. Kind of like an English village.

In fact, the whole war was essentially like a bunch of passive-aggressive neighbours who were forced to stop leaving angry notes about hedge heights on each other’s windscreens and band together against the developer who wants to build a shopping centre over the local park.

Sorry, I’m getting distracted.

The Battle of Plataea

The Persian Emperor, Xerxes I, had already done a runner by this point after an embarrassing defeat at pool down the local (The Battle of Salamis), and left his mate, Mardonius, to clean up his mess.

We’ve all got a mate like that.

The Greeks, though, had got their act together by now, and rocked up the battle with everyone from the street to make sure this shopping centre wasn’t getting built.

It was a battering the likes of which would not be seen again for thousands of years — when England beat Germany 5–1 in a World Cup qualifier match in 2001.

The Aftermath

With this being literally ancient history, there’s a lot of guesswork regarding things like how many people participated. In the battle, that is, I’m confident we could find out how many people participated in England Vs Germany if we needed to.

Loose record keeping, the passage of time, and a tendency to exaggerate makes things a little hard to pin down, but, if we were to pick a safe average between some of the more extreme guesses, it’s likely that between 30,000 and 40,000 soldiers died in this battle.

Let’s put this in perspective — Coachella sees approximately 50,000 in attendance over a single day, but they’re spread out around the grounds and potentially not all there at one time, so let’s pull some convenient numbers out of our backside and say that 35,000 people could be found staring at the main stage at once.

Now imagine you’re in that crowd of 35,000 people.

Now, imagine all the other people are corpses.

And whose cleaning that up, anyway?

If you liked this, you might also like my open letter to Windows 10 regarding its very problematic approach to consent.

An Open Letter to Windows 10

I can’t do this any more

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