Anubis, Egyptian god of embalming and the dead, from a chest in the form of a shrine, from the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62). New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Tutankhamun, ca. 1332-1323 BC. Valley of the Kings, West Thebes. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
By Kieron Gillen (writer), Ryan Kelly (artist), and Jordie Bellaire (colorist), and Clayton Cowles (letterer)
There’s not enough good historical comics, that don’t include some sort of ahistorical or fantasy element to it, so I was happy to come across this. Especially as it’s an era of history glossed over when people think of Ancient Greece. Never read anything by Gillen so I went in with no real expectations beyond being interested in a book that was conceived as the “anti-300″.
For those who want a brief summary. Set in the years post the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartan rule of Greece was shattered forever. The story follows three Helots who suddenly find themselves on the run from their Laconic overlords with one Sparta’s two kings being, reluctantly, forced to lead the charge to ensure other Helots don’t get any ideas. As one would expect, the chase going not going well for either our three titular Helots or the Spartans chasing after them.
Three flips the script on Miller’s 300 and the Spartan myth in many ways with this story. The smartest, in my opinion, being not simply doing a perspective shift on the Battle of Thermopylae and making our main POV be Persians or another Greek city-state like Athens or Thebes, but rather making our characters we follow Helots; the people who would have been the true victims of Sparta’s brutal society and would have no mythic illusions about Sparta’s warrior image that outsides would have had.
I also very much appreciate the historical research that went into this. Even though I’m an amateur Historian, I’m not a particular stickler of historical accuracy in fiction in most cases but I appreciate when there is a genuine effort made on the part of the creator to try and stick to what we know. There’s a good discussion included in the trade between Gillen and
The ending coda that sums up the reigns of the two Spartan kings featured in this story, Agesilaos and Kleomenes, is an interesting insight into how we remember figures from history and how we in the modern age also view Sparta. As the epilogue notes Agesilaos was largely a failure of a leader who oversaw Sparta’s rapid descent but is nevertheless was considered one of Sparta’s greatest kings while Kleomenes (the main king charged with hunting down the Helots in the story) is noted for having waged no wars and Sparta’s decline was halted under him but is for the most part forgotten by history. Stating those from history who were spectacular in some way, whether successful or not, than those who were competently mediocre. Like Agesilaos, Sparta was ultimately a failure
