300: Closer to the historical record than you might think

That's the point of an article by Victor Davis Hanson, “History and the Movie 300”:

If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others.

(via Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy)