What most interested Johnnie about 300

A reader writes:

Do you remember in 300 when it was said that twenty-seven nations paid tribute to Iran under Xerxes? I don’t, but it makes sense, that’s why Xerxes was invading Greece, to gain their subjugation to his rule, and it may well have been said by the narrator. Well, Johnnie [VFR’s nickname for the Iranian president] had a Ramadan dinner during his stay in NY when a lot of Iranians and Iranian Americans were invited, some women wearing chadors (they shrank in disgust from bomb sniffing dogs—Dog! one cried). Anyway, Johnnie told the crowd at this dinner that he took the opportunitiy of some meeting he had been in, presumably while here in NY, to correct this information from the movie. Forty-two nations paid tribute to Iran under Xerxes, he said.

That whole movie was about the bravery of the Spartans in resisting Xerxes and pointed to his eventual defeat, but Johnnie remembers the thing that showed Xerxes’s power. That is something.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 11, 2007 01:10 AM | Send