Even before the thrilling movie 300 (2006), many Westerners were familiar with the even more thrilling history of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). At the “hot gates,” the historical record tells us, Spartan king Leonidas I led his fellow Greeks against a much bigger invading force under “King of Kings” Xerxes I.

In the movie, Xerxes is presented as a sensuous god-king, drunk on his own ego and wielding absolute power over subjects who grovel and scrape before him, an ocean of slaves. In real life, Xerxes was the ruler of the troubled Achaemenid Empire. Whatever mask of serene and godlike invincibility he wore in public, behind the scenes he would have been painfully aware that his power was fragile and his person always subject to attack.

By contrast, the Greeks, in the 2006 movie as well as in the countless retellings of Thermopylae that have gone before and come after the film, are almost always shown to be resourceful, wily, manly, rugged, and impeccably brave. They refuse to bend the knee to Xerxes, just as they had refused the same to Xerxes’ world-bestriding father, Darius the Great.

Thermopylae was also, we often hear, not fought in vain. Despite many setbacks, including the Greeks’ inevitable loss at Thermopylae, Greek civilization, and by extension the West, was saved when the invading Persians were finally run out of most of the Greek lands.

But who are the Greeks and who is Xerxes now?

The Battle of Thermopylae is justly famous, but while the hard fighting was going on between Leonidas and his men and the Persian host, Greek ships were busy holding the Straits of Artemisium, which were strategically as important as the Thermopylae pass for keeping the Persians bottled up and away from Greek population centers. Contemporary readers might pause a bit here, because there is another battle over a key strait going on today, as I write this, between latter-day Achaemenid fighters, namely the Persians (whom we now call the Iranians), and latter-day Greeks in spirit, those in Washington who think of themselves as defenders of “the West.”

“The West” is supposed to be the good guys. That’s what generations since Thermopylae have been told. But does that hold true in our time?

The leader of the Western forces recently posted a picture to his social media in which he apes the Messiah. Xerxes might have pretended to be divine, but the blasphemy of someone half-joking (or maybe not joking at all) about being the Son of God is surely beyond what any Achaemenid “king of kings” would have dared, no matter how inflated his ego.

The Greeks, for their part, would have blanched at the presumption. Hubris was a big no-no among the Hellenes. On that score, too, “the West” has fallen greatly since Leonidas’s sacrifice among the crags to save Greek civilization.

Rank blasphemy may or may not be how “the West” rolls now, but the truth is that it’s getting more and more mainstream. On Easter morning, 2026, the invader of Iran, who also happens to be the online mocker of Jesus of Nazareth, threatened to eradicate the Persian civilization. As Christians the world over rejoiced, proclaiming, “He is risen!” the modern Xerxes I, apparently sleepless and deranged, had a different message: “You are all going to die.”

Meanwhile Pope Leo XIV, who is not a pretender to office but who really can claim to be a messenger of the Prince of Peace, took notice of the mad blasphemer’s murderous rampage and chided him for it. It was a gentle, firm, and necessary intervention. But it did not reach the crazed mind of the world-bestriding warrior-king. The civilization-destroyer, miffed, pointed out that the pope did not enjoy the privilege of having been elected in a landslide. It was not much of a comeback, but it did prove a point in its own way.

“My subjects adore me,” Xerxes I might have put it. “Behold, I shine like the sun, and I conquer all in my path.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a recovering member (as am I) of the Cult of American Power, said she was “praying against” what the bogus meme-world faith healer is doing. Greene put it best when she denounced his blasphemy as the “Antichrist spirit.”

And yet, still, legions bow down before the blasphemer, the non-god, the pitiful attempted usurper of Christ’s glory. A man puts on not the mantle of Christ but the Halloween mask of the Savior, and makes lurid gestures of miracle-working in rank insult to God. The “Catholic” vice-president does not resign in protest. Instead, he tries to explain that it was all in good fun (see here).

Who is Xerxes in 2026? Think hard. And then ask yourself this: If you are not with Leonidas in this version of the clash of civilizations, then, in God’s name, who are you with?