300 suits of armor

[amyntoros]

Im argueing against myself here in a way but maybe the number had religious properties even before Leonidas, and that is why he used it as the amount of his personal body guard. And Alexander could have dedicated the 300 not as a jab at Sparta, but because that is what could be expected. He seemed to be aiming to please(all the greeks but Sparta) by the looks of the inscription that came with the panoplies. So why not dedicate a large and religiously significant number of them to Athena after the battle?

Well, it looks like Paul Cartledge might agree with your original premise although it's not entirely clear because the next page of his book is missing online:

Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World by Paul Cartledge. Page 167 "Alexander the Great himself is also a major contributor to the Thermopylae legend - though his contribution has rarely been recognized for what it is. After the first of his three major set-piece victories over the imperial forces of Persian Great King Darius III, the Battle of the Granicus River in 334, he ordered precisely three hundred panoplies (suits of armour and weapons) to be sent back to ... ...

Does any Pothosian have the book so we can learn what comes next?

Best regards,

[spitamenes]

Wow, what a place to cut the text off huh? Seemingly right before we get his take on the subject. Haha. Ill have to look, I did have the book at one time but do not remember that specific story and its outcome. Thanks for finding the text though. Maybe we will have a satisfactory outcome after all!

[spitamenes]

In the next couple paragraphs Paul Cartledge points out how Alexander did not refer to himself as "King" in the inscription because "...the Athenians were by no means enthusiastic subjects of his, and he emphasizes that this is to be an almost but not quite panhellenic offering."
He also says, ".. because his whole desire to avenge the sacrilege inflicted on the Greeks and especially the Athenians by Great King Xerxes 150 years before. So why does Alexander choose to spell out 'except the Spartans'?"
...here we go.... "Because in 334 the Spartans were conspicuous only by their absence from this new, ostensibly panhellenic campaign. In fact, to them it was Alexander, not Darius, who was the main enemy at the time, and they even collaborated (in both senses) with the Persian resistance against Alexander behind his back. How different it had all been in 480 and 479, when the Spartans were the acknowledged champions of 'the Greeks' in resistance against Persian invasion. And how, by now, were the mighty fallen. Hence Alexanders choice to dedicate specifically on the Acropolis of Athens precisely three hundred suits of armour and weapons..."

Ok, did I miss something? His last sentance is..."hence Alexanders choice to dedicate specifically on the Acropolis precisely three hundred suits of armour and weapons."
But it really doesn't seem like he gave a direct answer as to WHY he dedicated the 300. Are they supposed to symbolize the fallen Spartans then? "And how, by now, were the mighty fallen."

I think I'm confusing myself...

Oh yeah,.. and what about this whole Sparta collaborating with Persia buisness? Never knew that either.

[agesilaos]

Arrian II 13 v King Agis requests help from Pharnabazos and Datames and recieves thirty talents and ten trieremes. The Spartan rising was bankrolled by Persia. Some of the Greek mercenary survivors of Issos may have joined his revolt too though not in the numbers given in the sources.

[spitamenes]

Thank you kind sir. When it comes to amazingly insignificant details I'm the man to see. But when it comes to things like say... SPARTA collaborating with PERSIA! My mind draws a blank. (Can I blame selective memory loss on PTSD too?)

[agesilaos]

I can't remember

[Paralus]

When it comes to amazingly insignificant details I'm the man to see. But when it comes to things like say... SPARTA collaborating with PERSIA! My mind draws a blank. (Can I blame selective memory loss on PTSD too?)

When it comes to Spartan / Persian relations there is an entire history of "collaboration" my dear fellow. Channeling Capt. Jack Sparrow "I can point sources and name passages"...

[spitamenes]

When it comes to amazingly insignificant details I'm the man to see. But when it comes to things like say... SPARTA collaborating with PERSIA! My mind draws a blank. (Can I blame selective memory loss on PTSD too?)

When it comes to Spartan / Persian relations there is an entire history of "collaboration" my dear fellow. Channeling Capt. Jack Sparrow "I can point sources and name passages"...

I just didn't recall reading about it in our sources on Alexander. When you have a moment maybe you can "point some sources and name some passages" for me. Id appreciate it. I'm already thumbing through Arrians chapter on the Tyre seige to find Alexanders significance (or lack there of) while he was taking charge onship.

[spitamenes]

Was Sparta collaborating with Persia mentioned in our main Alexander sources? I do not remember reading about it in any of them. But like I said, could be my memory letting me down again.

[amyntoros]

Was Sparta collaborating with Persia mentioned in our main Alexander sources? I do not remember reading about it in any of them. But like I said, could be my memory letting me down again.

Here are a couple of quotes from Diodorus Book 17. There could be more references elsewhere but I'm a little short of time this morning.

XXIX [1] When Nicocrates was archon at Athens, Caeso Valerius and Lucius Papirius became consuls at Rome In this year Dareius sent money to Memnon and appointed him commanding general of the whole war. [2] He gathered a force of mercenaries, manned three hundred ships, and pursued the conflict vigorously. He secured Chios, and then coasting along to Lesbos easily mastered Antissa and Methymna and Pyrrha and Eressus. Mitylene also, large and possessed of rich stores of supplies as well as plenty of fighting men, he nevertheless captured with difficulty by assault after a siege of many days and with the loss of many of his soldiers. [3] News of the general's activity spread like wildfire and most of the Cyclades sent missions to him. As word came to Greece that Memnon was about to sail to Euboea with his fleet, the cities of that island became alarmed, while those Greeks who were friendly to Persia, notably Sparta, began to have high hopes of a change in the political situation. [4] Memnon distributed bribes freely and won many Greeks over to share the Persian hopes, but Fortune nevertheless put an end to his career. He fell ill and died, seized by a desperate malady, and with his death Dareius's fortunes also collapsed.3

XLVIII [1] In Europe, Agis king of Sparta engaged the services of those mercenaries who had escaped from the battle at Issus, eight thousand in number, and sought to change the political situation in Greece in favour of Dareius. [2] He received from the Persian king ships and money and sailed to Crete, where he captured most of the cities and forced them to take the Persian side.

Best regards

[Paralus]

I just didn't recall reading about it in our sources on Alexander. When you have a moment maybe you can "point some sources and name some passages" for me. Id appreciate it.

Not everything we know comes from "Alexander sources". Spartan / Persian collaboration dates from well before Alexander. The Spartan king, Archidamus, in 432...

...what can justify us in rashly beginning such a struggle? Wherein is our trust that we should rush on it unprepared? Is it in our ships? There we are inferior; while if we are to practise and become a match for them, time must intervene. Is it in our money? There we have a far greater deficiency. (Thuc. 1.80.3-4)

Sparat's biggest problem in a forcoming war with Athens? Ships and money - the former a direct funtion of the latter. What does the king propose as the means to address these deficiencies?

The means will be, first, the acquisition of allies, Hellenic or barbarian it matters not, so long as they are an accession to our strength naval or monetary... (Thuc.1.82.1)

Lest this be seen as Thucydides - an Athenian - putting "Medising" words into Archidamus' mouth, in 425/4 the Athenian commanders in the Aegean

arrested at Eion, on the Strymon, Artaphernes, a Persian, on his way from the King to Lacedaemon. He was conducted to Athens, where the Athenians got his dispatches translated from the Assyrian character and read them. With numerous references to other subjects, they in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the King did not know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they had sent him no two ever told the same story; if however they were prepared to speak plainly they might send him some envoys with this Persian. (Thuc.4.50.1-2)

Clearly the King wanted a return on his cash and the Spartan envoys were not clear on what they could or could not agree to. This would, as the war went on, come to head with Spartan naval disasters in the "Ionian War". Hard headed Spartans - knowing that what Archidamus had said nearly a generation earlier was true and that Athens' defeat could only come at sea - traded the "freedom of the Greeks of Asia" for Persian silver. After the war Sparta's alliance with Persia would underpin its hegemony in Greece.