I've learned a bit about the historical truths to the invasion and the Thermopylae battle that were either false or left out of the movie 300. There some things that I still am curious about though.
When looking at this map of the Greco-Persian wars it appears there were two routes the Persians took, one by land and one by sea, with the land route ending up at Thermopylae. Were the Persian forces at Thermopylae just the forces that took that long winding land route, or did ships from the sea route join there too? This map makes it look like the ships avoided Thermopylae and headed south.
Was there a particular reason that Persia had to land at Thermopylae in order to advance to Sparta? Why couldn't they have sailed to the south part of Greece and landed on the eastern shore there?
Both your questions are asking the same thing. The Persian sea route was the route by which the fleet advanced parallel to the army. Thermopylae was not an action that took place in a vacuum, there was a naval battle at Cape Artemisium occurring simultaneously with the action at Thermopylae. Most scholars would considerIt's possible the battle of Artemisium was the more important of the two actions, as it appears tomay have been a true attempt to decisively defeat the Persian fleet, as opposed to the action at Thermopylae which was intended to delay the army enough to allow the Greek land forces to assemble, as well as to support the fleet at Artemisium by preventing the Persian army from taking the harbors to their rear. As it was the battle of Artemisium concluded indecisively, resulting in the need to eliminate the Persian fleet at Salamis. But the Persians could not simply land troops in the Peloponnese (also, mind you, Sparta was not their objective, the Spartans were only one part of the Greek forces fighting against them) because the Greek fleet still existed
