Immortal Swords from 300, the Movie  SBNE-300-IMMORTALSWORDS   $214  On Sale! Originally $289 In Stock - Ships in 1-3 days    The Persian Immortals were the elite troops of the Persian armies. They didn't wear super-cool masks or wield super-cool paired swords like in the movie 300, but in a stylized movie taken from a gorgeously stylized graphic novel, a little misrepresentation is inevitable. And anyway, Miller's Immortals look fantastic. The Immortals got their name because a Greek historian once called them "Immoral" and a half-deaf scribe wrote the wrong word down. Okay, that's completely made up. They were called the immortals because there were always 10,000 men in the unit. If one man fell in battle or was killed in some sort of bizzare camel incident, another man was promoted and took his place. In this way, it's as if the unit never loses a man, thus, the men of the unit are immortal. The Immortals wore very little armor, and carried shields made of wicker. You can imagine why they fared badly against the heavily armored Greeks (another point that was altered slightly in movie). Imagine a man with a very large, heavy spear. Now, imagine attacking him and using your grandmother's old wicker chair to block the spear. Yeah, not too pretty is it? The shields were covered with leather for extra protection, but that's not much better than trying to stop a car with shaving cream. If you don't know what that means then join the club. I'm a little confused by it myself. The Immortals really were badly matched against the Greeks. Their main weapon was the bow, which was kind of irrelevant against the Greek Phalanx. Their next best weapon was the short spear, which wasn't so great against the long spears used by the Greeks. They wore little armor, which didn't help against any opponent, and they used wicker shields, as mentioned earlier. Despite all this, though, they were feared and respected as masterful warriors. Almost every civilization that met them was defeated by them. No one but the Greeks were able to figure out how to defeat them.