"You can't join us, we don't break formation."

[immediately breaks formation]

My 'favorite' is when the hyper-eugenic proto-Nazi Spartan king is very kind and accommodating towards someone who was disabled and supposed to be murdered at birth, as hyper-eugenic proto-Nazi leaders are known to be, of course! Or when the Persian monarch is depicted as some despotic demigod when in reality Persia was probably the more tolerable of the two polities. Or when the much larger contributions of other Greek city-states were brushed off with a little casual mid-2000s homophobia and like two scenes of screentime. Or when there's a complete absence of the ~80% of literal fucking slaves who let the Spartan polity function, so we can maintain the "GOOD Spartans, BAD Persians" narrative for modern audiences. Or when the Persian troops are depicted as literal monsters. Or etc etc etc