The whole Persian campaign would have failed if it hadn't been for Efialtes, who showed Xerxes a secret passage to the Hellenic flanks. King Leonidas replied 'molon lave,' which means 'Come and get them.' The three-day battle began, with the 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians (the other Hellenes where sent by Leonidas to protect passages to their flanks) slaying thousands of Persians with minimal losses. Xerxes tried to convince Leonidas to drop weapons, give up his position, kneel before him and live on as a local governor under Xerxes. King Xerxes waited four days for the Hellenes to be frightened and eventually surrender and was quite astonished by his opponents' complete apathy. The great historian Herodotus, possibly exaggerating, states that there were 1,700,000 Persians (their true number could have been anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000) against 7,000 Hellenic hoplites and slaves, including the 300 men of the Spartan King elite guard. This passage was, at that time, 12 meters wide. It is then decided that a small force should block Xerxes' way to southern Hellas in the Thermopylae passage. A year earlier (481, BC) a Panhellenic consortium of all southern city-states had already recognized the superiority of the Spartan army (the best organized and trained army at the time) and had declared King Leonidas as supreme commander of the combined Hellenic army.

In Sparta, King Leonidas consults the local oracle, who gives two options: Either a spartan king will have to be sacrificed, or Sparta will be burned to the ground. But the people of Athens and Sparta, the largest Hellenic powers at the time, feel quite insulted by the Persian emissaries' request to surrender to Xerxes, and so slay them. The previous Persian invasion and diplomatic attempts have already turned most northern Hellas tribes and states to the Persian side. It is spring 480 BC, Persian King Xerxes, continuing his father Darius' master plan to conquer the Hellenic city-states, arrives in Hellas.

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