Leonidas' Spartans versus Suenaga's Samurai

[Kunoichi no Kiri]

Leonidas was the leader of the 300 Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae in the year 480 BC.

Takezaki Suenaga was the most celebrated of the samurai who turned back the Mongol invasion at Hakata Bay, in the year 1274 AD.

Some background -

Spartans:

King Xerxes of Persia had decided to invade Greece, and brought along an army that most historians agree contained at least one million men. The Greek city-states banded together, and a small army of Greeks, led by 300 Spartans, went to hold off this colossal army at a pass called Thermopylae.

The Spartans were supremely disciplined warriors, trained from birth to be the best soldiers in the world at that time. The Spartan soldiers had mastered the phalanx formation - essentially a tight wall of overlapping shields.

The Spartans held back the advance of the colossal Persian army for a week. Only when the Greeks were betrayed, and the Persians showed another pass, did they break the Spartan ranks - and even then, the Spartans fought to the death. King Leonidas and his 300 men were all killed, but not before inflicting huge casulties on the Persian Army.

The Spartans fought with a combination of short swords, short spears, and shields. They wore leather armor.

Samurai:

Takezaki Suenaga is widely regarded as the greatest Samurai of Japan's Kamakura period - 1185-1333.

When the Mongols sent a fleet of 800 ships - containing some 15,000 Chinese warriors - to invade Japan, The Japanese responded with a force of about 2,000 Samurai. The Samurai were used to a very ritualistic way of battle - warriors would step out of rank and challenge someone of approxmately equal rank to one-on-one contests.
To their dismay, The Samurai found that the Chinese were more fond of shooting clouds of poison-tipped arrows the fighting one-on-one. The Samurai were doing poorly.

However, Suenaga and his 5 retainers rallied a force of 100 samurai, and despite the Chinese use of gunpower as explosives (something the Japanese had never seen) and their superior bowmen, Suenaga's group of 100 held off the Mongols until nightfall, when the Korean boat pilots decided to reembark their troops and sail, fearing a tempest would wreck them on the rocks of the bay - but instead, a typhoon came and sank their fleet at sea. The Typhoon that would later be called Kamikaze- the divine wind.

The Samurai fought with the familiar katana, short swords, and a long, unwieldy polearm called a Naginata. They wore wooden/woven armor.

Anyway, to the question: Which elite group of uber-warriors would prevail in a battle?

[Yami no Takeshi]

The Samurai.
While no doubt the Spartans were amazingly brave and strong........
The Samurai held back an army that was obviously superior in technology and had an excellant team of bowmen.
But considering i am more bias towards Japanese history, u probably shouldn't take my word for it.

[Gunshin]

Beating a technologicaly superior army with much bigger numbers from the famed undefeated mongol army? Samurai.

[hobofromdowntown]

in a one on one battle, i would have to go with the samurai. They are just superior swordsmen. However for the badass contest, i would go with the spartans.. I mean shit, they fought for and held back a force of 1 million people for a week. If that's not badass i don't knwo what is.

[Kunoichi no Kiri]

I'm fairly certain the Spartans would take this.

The two avantages the Samurai had were
1. Superior weapons - The Katana was generally the best type of sword ever made. This wasn't because the Japanese were superior swordsmiths, but because iron was scarce, and they had to make the most out of every bit of it. The Katana would make short work of the armor and perhaps the shields of the Spartans, while the even wooden armor of the samurai would stop a slash from the heavy, dull Spartan swords.

2. Superior swordplay - One on one, the thrusting and hacking of the Spartan's short swords just wouldn't cut it against the samurai.

The thing here is that the Spartans are trained to fight as a group. It's true that the Phalanx formation loses effectiveness at melee range, but with the Samurai attacking individually and the Spartans lined up in formation, any samurai who approached the Spartan ranks would die, even if he managed to take out one or two in the process. Lacking shields, the Samurai cannot attack and defend at the same time - their swords are their shields.

[Shunsui]

The katana has been known to be able to slice a human body cleanly in half. A katana would make quick work of a relatively thin metal shield. Also note that the phalanx formation is weakened as the front line falls, and can be easily flanked. The success at Thermopylae was almost entirely due to the fact that it was a narrow beach, and there was no way to attack from another angle.

[Yami no Takeshi]

Originally Posted by Naota

The katana has been known to be able to slice a human body cleanly in half. A katana would make quick work of a relatively thin metal shield. Also note that the phalanx formation is weakened as the front line falls, and can be easily flanked. The success at Thermopylae was almost entirely due to the fact that it was a narrow beach, and there was no way to attack from another angle.

^^
What he said. :D

[Sabaku no Ira]

*Sigh* You CAN'T pit the Spartans of 480 BC against the Samurai of 1274 AD. There's a freaking 2000 YEARS of time difference, and in those 2000 years, technology and warfare will surely improve drastically (for example, the use of long range weapons like bows was UNHEARD of in the Greek world in 5th century BC until the arrival of the Persians). Pitting them together would be like modern USA with NUCLEAR WARHEADs against the MONGOLS that only have BOWS AND ARROWS. You just can't pit them together like that: the time difference is so great that it's like two entirely different worlds (like Naruto vs any DBZ character, to be exact).

[Jeltz]

The samurai have several advantages. They have good bows which the ancient Greek lacked. They also have generally better weapons. The samurai just have to falnk the phalanx formations to get rid of them.

[less]

Put them in a narrow mountain pass and watch the spartans rule. Put them on an open battlefield and watch the spartans die.

[Kunoichi no Kiri]

Bumping this.

Spartans still eat the Samurai for breakfast.

The katana has been known to be able to slice a human body cleanly in half. A katana would make quick work of a relatively thin metal shield.

No Katana hype allowed. Katanas cannot slice a human in half - only a superior swordsman could cut a limb off through the bone. I destroyed a 200 dollar katana trying to cut through a tree branch about 1 1/2 inches thick. It would also bounce off any kind of metal, except in a thrust. Which the Spartan swords could do as well.

[potential]

^He's right Leonidas is too badass to lose!

[Sylar]

Enough with the Spartan threads!

Yes, Leonidas was BA but come on, enough is enough.

[Havoc]

Actually spartans wore bronze armor.

[potential]

He's more BA than afro luffy. BUt on a serious note do you think those samurai can hold off 1 million men for even two days i dont think so. What the spartans did was an extradoniary ft. that dosent happen everyday

[Sylar]

Watch The Last Samurai. That's how this goes only without the guns and more manly yelling.

[potential]

Leonidas eats them all for breakfast. "For Sparta!!!!!!!!!!

[Kunoichi no Kiri]

Originally Posted by Sylar

Enough with the Spartan threads!

Yes, Leonidas was BA but come on, enough is enough.

I made this thread a year and a half ago.

[Coaxmetal]

Assuming that you are talking about the remaining 100 samurai vs just the 300 spartans, I would have to go with the spartans.

The samurai do have the advantage of more advanced military technology, however advancement in military technology in one region cannot be simply compared to advancement to another region isolated from the first one. (for example: The America's were still using primitive weapons when the conquistidors came over.).

For the samurai, the big problem would be dealing with the phallax and its ingenious design that remained (with modification) all the way throught the time of the Roman empire. One possible way to get around this is liberal use of long range bows but that is not allowed according to the orignial post since the weapons available to the Samurai does not include bows. So the only option for them is melee. In this situation, they would be have a very tough time dealing with the shields (used far more often in western society). I think the spartans would be able to pick them off before the samarui could learn to combat this.

So Spartans win, but it would still be an awesome fight.

[Thanos]

The Samurai have more than a thousand years of technological advancement over the Spartans. However, it is important to remember that Spartan society was never recreated anywhere else in the world. While I believe the samurai would win the battle due to the superiority of their weapons (namely superior bows and arrows), I do not think that they equaled Spartan physical ability or discipline.

Spartan born men where bred for fighting, that is all they had to do. From the moment they could walk, preparations were made for their Agoge (literally raising), a process which would mold the young men into strong, loyal, quick thinking soldiers. They were encouraged to kill or steal, if they needed to. Babies thought unfit for Spartan life were cast into the wild at birth, showing that they took every possible step, however extreme or degenerate, to craft a disciplined society. Sparta was home to the Helots, or a slave underclass, which did all the manual labor. This allowed all Spartan men to be career soldiers. Part of the Agoge was the Crypteia, where indiscriminate killing of Helots was encouraged, to "keep them in line."

Samurai on the other hand, while also trained for war, also had the leisure to concentrate on other aspects of life, such as administration, or the arts, like poetry, and theater. While both groups were military nobility, they were different in this way. A Samurai's life is not always completely focussed on war, but rather was focussed on serving ones feudal ruler. While this mostly always meant war, it also left room for doing other things. When a baby was born into a noble family, he was a Samurai. No rigorous selection process was needed.