What disturbs me most is the tendency to have an interest in the individual character and achievements of leaders while at the same time treating the gazillion of people on who's sholders this happens as mere "anonymous social forces". I clearly see that in particular in the case of Sparta you spend considerable effort to bring to life the social system forming Leonidas (which, of course, also formed the 299 others at Thermopylae). I don't see this with comparable success for Darius and Xerxes. Maybe it is a lack of contemporary knowledge that lets us focus so much on the King of Kings and treat the diversity of people around him (e.g. the "untrained levies", who are made to run unarmored into the Spartan spears (p.293)) as mere numbers? The untrained levies were certainly an extreme example. There must have been quite a few people willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the KoK. The KoK must have been more than just an individual with a strong personal will and a cynical relation to religion.