About
This Battlefield Garden is the legacy of Rev Basil Patras Zula, a Greek patriot, who found refuge in Ireland after involvement in the 19th century struggles for Greek independence. After training and ordination to the Moravian ministry, he served Kilwarlin Moravian Church 1834-1844. The terrain of the garden is a replica of Thermopylae, where a most significant battle was fought between the Greeks and the Persians in 480 BC.
The Persion Emperor Xerxes spent more than four years gathering soldiers and stockpiling supplies from every corner of his empire. The resulting host amounted to a colossal cosmopolitan army of armies. From Mt Oeta the Greeks received intelligence about the size of the Persian army. To the Greek strategists in 481 BC, Thermopylae represented their best chance to stop or at least delay the Persian army long enough to allow their combined fleets to draw the Persian navy into a decisive sea battle. A narrow mountain Pass of Thermopylae was a bottleneck between the Trachinian Cliffs and the Aegean Sea, through which the Persian army somehow had to proceed . Forced to fight there, the Persians were unable to take advantage of their massive numbers; instead, they had to face the Greeks in close hand-to-hand combat. Xerxes ordered his men in for the kill. His commanders lashed their own troops to drive them forward. Many Persians were trampled to death by their own comrades. Others, shoved aside, drowned in the Aegean Sea. All the while, the Spartans and Thespians did their deadly work. No one, wrote Herodotus, could count the number of the dead. In the end it was a Greek who betrayed the Greek forces.
The traitor, Ephialtes, was apparently motivated by greed when he revealed to Xerxes the path around Mt Callidromos which became known as the Path of Ephialtes. Acting immediately on the new information, the king sent Persian troops up the path during the night. Near the top, they completely surprised the 1000 Phocians posted to guard the track. The Persian archers attacked, and the Phocians withdrew to the highest part of the mountain.
The Spartan leader, Leonidas, was killed. When the Persians who had taken the mountain path arrived in their rear, the Greeks were surrounded and withdrew to Colonus for the last time behind the wall, forming themselves into a single compact body. Here, wrote Herodotus, they resisted to the last, with their swords, if they had them, and, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the Persian artillery coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them.
Although the Greeks were defeated at Thermopylae, they inflicted considerable losses on the Persians, who were eventually defeated in the naval battle of Salamis (480 BC) and the land battle of Plataea (479 BC). Otherwise Europe, which Xerxes aspired to conquer, would have been quite different today. Thermopylae thus acquired a place in history that transcended its military impact. In the end, the battle's significance lay not in land gained or lost or in men killed or captured, but in inspiration.
The Spartans and Thespians had taught Greece and the world an enduring lesson about courage in the face of impossible odds. This was no doubt on the mind of the Greek freedom fighter and later Moravian Minister, Basil Patras Zula, when he built the terrain which brings Thermopylae to Kilwarlin.
