Time has changed the geography of Greece

If someone were to mention the date 480 BCE to you, you might not realize its significance. Not right off, anyway.

But if someone were then to yell out, “This is SPARTA!” you’d probably – thanks to filmmaker Zack Snyder – smile in recognition.

Snyder, you may recall, is the director and co-screenwriter of the 2006 historical epic film “300,” which is a heavily stylized recounting of the legendary battle of Thermopylae between a handful of Spartans and a whole Persian army.

And the line quoted above is the one that the actor Gerard Butler, whom Snyder cast as the Spartan King Leonidas, famously yells in the face of a Persian negotiator as he kicks him into a seemingly bottomless chasm.

The battle that Snyder explores in his film is often confused with the myths surrounding it. And the reality of the battle, which was passed down by the Greek historian Herodotus and others, is just a bit different from Snyder’s movie.

For one thing, the invading 300,00 or fewer Persian soldiers were initially confronted by some 7,000 Greeks, led by Leonidas. It was only after the Greeks were betrayed that Leonidas let all but his 300 Spartans head home.

Joined by a thousand or more other soldiers, either helots or Thebans, Leonidas and his troops then fought to the death. As the story goes, their sacrifice inspired the rest of Greece to unite and ultimately ride to victory.

It helped, of course, that the Greek navy decimated the Persian fleet a bit later than same year in the Battle of Salamis. And that, during their campaign, a fair number of the Persian soldiers died of disease and other non-combat causes.

But whatever the differences between fact and fiction, the truth is that what remains of the battle site is far different from what it was 2,500 years ago.

For one thing, the battle was said to be waged in a narrow mountain pass. And as Snyder’s CGI-toned scenes capture it, the struggle takes place with stark cliffs on one side and a cliff overlooking the sea on the other. It’s pictured as a perfect bottleneck to stymie any army no matter how big.

Today, though, a bronze statue of a spear-wielding Leonidas , which was erected in 1955 to honor the battle, stands at least a mile from the coastline of what is the Malian Gulf. As the Discover Greece website describes it, “The Spercheios River and the centuries have widened this once narrow pass but, in your mind’s eye, you see Leonidas in full armour, ready to attack.”

However you might want to imagine the scene, the passage of a couple of millennia and more have had a clear effect on the geography of Thermopylae.

Moreover, you have to cross a major highway – the main artery connecting Athens and Thessaloniki – to get from the statue to Kolonos Hill, which is said to be where the final stand took place.

Once there, you can hike up a small hill and stand over a stone plaque, the current one dating from 1955, that bears a famous inscription by the Greek lyric poet Simonides. Translated from the Greek, it reads, “Tell them in Lacedaemon, passer-by, That here, obedient to their word, we lie.”

Reading it, you might feel a sense of reverence for those who died on that spot all those centuries ago.

You might even think to yourself, yes, this is Sparta.

More of Greece: The year my wife and I visited Thermopylae was the first time I’d been to Greece. Our motivation was to meet up with distant relatives of hers who lived in the city of Larissa.

We rented a car on the outskirts of Athens and drove north. I was a bit nervous, but the driving turned out to be easy enough. And the maps we had – this was before the widespread use of GPS – kept us on the right roads.

Besides Thermopylae and Athens, where we visited the normal tourist sites (mainly the Acropolis), we stopped at the Temple of Apollo. It was there that, while older visitors were walking among the ruins, I noted the many Greek teenagers sitting in groups while either talking or playing with their phones.

And not for the first time I thought, kids are the same the world over.

Besides being surprised, and impressed, by the geography of Greece – mountains like Switzerland, seaside villages like Italy, the vast plains of Thessaly – one place that proved particularly scenic was the collection of monasteries known as Meteora.

Beginning in the 14th century, when Greece was wracked by political and social struggles, monks began building a series of monasteries atop what seem like impossibly steep sandstone peaks. By the end of the 15th century, 24 were housing religious orders.

A number of famous artists worked on the monasteries. According to the UNESCO website, the frescoes that artists such as Theophanes the Cretan created were a focal part of post-Byzantine painting.

Only a half dozen monasteries remain active, all of which can be toured on schedules that change according to the season. If stopping at Thermopylae gave us the opportunity to feel reverence for the past, Meteora did the same for different – if no less imposing – reasons.

Those feelings were enough to cause me to whisper, “This is Meteora!”