300 by Demitri

300 by Demitri - June 2025 Scholarship Essay

In the short speech by Queen Gorgo in the movie “300”, she exclaims the importance of sending all the Spartan Army to fight to the councilmen, with the aim of not being conquered by another Greek city-state.
Queen Gorgo starts off her speech by stating how she is a mother, wife, and Spartan woman. She is connecting with the councilmen through emotion to get to them as she is also these things. Such as equal to the people below her. She uses the appeal of ethos and pathos to seal a deeper connection to the people and councilmen. “Councilmen, I stand before you not only as your queen. I come to you as a mother. I come to you as a wife. I come to you as a Spartan woman. I come to you with great humility.” The anaphora “I come to you” is great because It shows her tone as she is very sincere and serious about what she is about to talk about.
During her speech she changes her tone to as a beg or a plead to a leader or justice type tone. With her saying the anaphora “Send it” with the context of her asking for the councilmen sending all the Spartan Army to help aid King Leonidas is war, this shows her explicit purpose of her speech. The deeper meaning of her asking the councilmen to send all of the Spartan Army was because if they didn’t send them, Thermoplyae would be conquered.
She later pursues them more by saying “But most importantly, send our army for hope – hope that a king and his men have not been wasted to the pages of history; that their courage bonds us together; that we are made stronger by their actions; and that your choices today reflect their bravery.” She’s using pathos to emotionally make them send the army to help the king. As she doesn’t want the king, her husband, the head huncho, to not be wasted in history and her country, Thermoplyae to not be conquered.
Queen Gorgo used these things to try and convince the councilmen to send the Spartan Army.