In Popular Culture
Herodotus' account of two warrior elites - the Spartan hoplites and the Immortals - facing each other in battle has inspired a set of rather colorful depictions of the battle, especially in regard of the Immortals.
In the 1962 film The 300 Spartans the Immortals carry a spear and wicker shields like the actual Immortals. However, they are mostly dressed in black and other dark colors, as opposed to historical depictions.
Frank Miller's 1998 comic book 300, and the 2007 feature film adapted from it, present a heavily fictionalized version of the Immortals at the Battle of Thermopylae. These Immortals wear somen-style metal masks, and carry a pair of swords closely resembling Japanese wakizashis.
The History Channel documentary Last Stand of the 300 also features the Immortals as part of the reconstruction of the Thermopylae battle. In this version, the tiara the Immortals habitually wear is depicted here as a full-face black cloth mask transparent enough to see through.
Read more about this topic: Immortals (Persian Empire)
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