[MattinNJ]

Your absolutely right. I cannot believe that Thermopylae is not required reading by 9th grade. If those 300 Spartans (and 3,000 other assorted Greeks) hadn't held, there would not have been a Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, etc...The Romans never would have been able to build on what the Greeks accomplished and there would have been no Renaissance because there would have been no Western Civilization in the first place. Last but not least, no Romans, no USA. Allbecause Lenidas had the testicular fortitude to tell the Persian "Molon Labe".

[Sparta]

In Louisiana, we got to world history in 10th grade and spent only a few weeks on Ancient Greece. We spent almost an entire semister on Islam.