The Persians are also racial monsters. In an early scene, an African messenger from the Persian court, reminiscent of a cross between a giant and a Black Saracen or Black Turk, arrives at the Spartan court. Wearing a human garland of skulls, he is accompanied by other Persians wearing turbans and face veils. He has a vile hatred for women that is expressed in his behavior toward Queen Gorgo, played as an emancipated Western woman. King Leonidas refers to the Persians as “philosophers and boy lovers” (an ironic charge given the sexual history of Sparta) before the Black Persian and his companions are killed, pushed into a bottomless pit.

SEED: Potential essay angle: how 300's Persian caricature intertwines racial stereotypes with gendered and Orientalist tropes, and the irony given Spartan history.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 676