Alexander the Great was antiquity\'s greatest commander

[conon394]

Wars are won by breaking your enemy's will to fight and I know of no other battle in the ancient world that accomplished this more then Leonidas stand in that mountain pass,

I just don’t see any breaking of will – the Persians defeated Leonidas and marched on… Artemisium and Salamis broke the ability of Persia to sustain the invasion; they never lost will to will to until after Eurymedon River and even then they simply moved to other means giving up only armed invasion.

not to mention the fact that he was a spartan king at the age of fifty. thats atlest 20 diffrent wars he fought in before thermopylae. Now I'm not saying hes the greatest general of all time but Xenophon has a place in Tier 3 and his career wasn't much better

That’s a possible assumption; but wars at best your mostly talking about would have minor actions in the Peloponnesus, that are largely undocumented and in which Leonidas was not prominently noted in relation to any innovative strategy or tactics.

I’m not denying Leonidas’ bravery, but rather just that based on the extent record there seems little evidence to rate him T3 - he was at best competent but I would argue that you can also concluded possibly quite a bit less than competent. The problem is (as I see it) that even if you argue Leonidas was competent and effective T3 would seem to demand more otherwise we would have to add thousands of commanders across antiquity…

Given that the Greeks won and Sparta’s (not to mention the anti-democratic, pro Spartan literary set at Athens) desperate need to find an answer to the fact that the naval rabble of Athens (and Aigina) saved Greece (and not to forget Sparta’s rather grudging and late participation – missed Marathon, only stirred north of the Isthmus with token forces until Athens practically threatened to join Persia) combined with the PR black eye that was Pausanias (and he no peach command wise either unable to mange his maneuvering at Plataea and dithering when battle was upon him) it is important to separate the post-victory mythologizing from the actual event. At the time the Greeks seemed to have expected Leonidas to hold the pass for more than just 3 days, which is ‘does not meet expectations’ not a good resume item.