Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
Ephialtes of Trachis
Ephialtes of Trachis betrayed his homeland so terribly that his name has become the word for ‘nightmare’ in his native language. Ephialtes was the Greek who betrayed the Three Hundred Spartans (and about 3,900 other Greeks who are left out of history) to the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae. The Greeks had met the Persians at the Trachinian Cliffs, which created a bottleneck with the neighboring Malian Gulf. The plan was for the Greeks to hold off the Persian Army at the bottleneck (aka the Hot Gates) long enough for the Greek Navy to maneuver and defeat the Persian Navy in the Straits of Artemisium.
The Greek plan was promising, except for one gleaming detail - the Greek position blocking the Hot Gates could be outflanked if a little-known goat trail around the pass was utilized. The Greeks were well aware of said goat trail and did what they could to conceal it from the advancing Persians. Ephialtes revealed this flaw to the Persians in hopes of a reward, and the Persians advanced on the Greeks. Faced with certain doom, King Leonidas of Sparta released the Greeks fighting under his command and stayed behind with only his rear guard of three hundred Spartans, an act that would become the most famous last stand in human history.
According to history, in 470 bc, a man named Athenades killed Ephialtes for an unrelated reason and was happily surprised when he discovered the reward placed that had been placed on his head and as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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