Perhaps (I'm no expert), but here is what Victor Davis Hanson (who is one) says about the film (see post #15):
"If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts and then blame Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus — who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others."
I'm no stranger to the use of the word "freedom" in history. Yet it was not used to describe freedom as we do today. For some Greeks it was close, but not for the Spartans.
Throughout history "Freedom" is used in reference to the people, not the individual, and that is what I pointed out. "Our freedom" is a royal "our" for most before 1776. As a people the Spartans were extremely independent and incredibly defensive of their sovereignty. As individuals, there was no true freedom in Sparta.