Nationally acclaimed classicist Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, will visit campus Tuesday, March 13, and talk about warfare and the new Warner Bros. movie “300,” based on the Battle of Thermopylae.

Hanson co-founded the Department of Classics at Fresno State and helped boost it to national prominence. He also is a nationally syndicated columnist, much of whose writing is informed by his expertise on Ancient Greece. Tuesday’s event will be hosted by Fresno State’s Classics Program, through support from the McClatchy Foundation. It will be from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Leon S. and Pete P. Peters Education Center in the Student Recreation Center.

Loosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae, fought in 480 B.C., “300” is a close adaptation of a graphic novel by Frank Miller. The movie and book talk about Spartan King Leonidas and 300 Spartans fighting to the last man against Persian King Xerxes and his million-man army. The Spartans’ sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds, inspires Greeks to unite against the Persian invaders.

“This topic is timely because a new film is being released this Friday [March 9] about this historical event,” said classics professor Dr. Bruce Thornton. “Frank Miller has been inspired by Victor’s writing on warfare and the ancient Greeks and Victor wrote the introduction for a book released with the movie.”

Hanson joined the Fresno State faculty in 1984 to initiate a classics program and left the program in 2004 to become a classicist and historian with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has received numerous awards, including the American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award (1991), the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (2002); and Alumnus of the Year from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2002).

For more information, call 559.278.2386.

For more information contained in this release, please go to the following Web site(s):

Victor Davis Hanson Bio