Roughly 2500 years ago 300 Spartans fought and died defending a small seaside pass in northern Greece. They held off an estimated one million Persian soldiers for three days before being betrayed when a local farmer showed the Persians a way to the rear of the Spartan's lines. They fought until their armor was wrent and their weapons broken or blunted. Even then they fought on with their teeth and fingernails until the Persian emperor, pulled back and buried the exhausted and now unarmored Spartans in a hail of arrows. None of the 300 survived but they slowed the Persian advance long enough and delivered such a heavy psycological and physical blow to the Persian army that it was easily defeated the next Spring by a Greek coalition of City-States.