Leonidas fell in the thickest of the fight, but the Spartans retrieved his body and protected it until their final fall to enemy arrows. Herodotus says that Leonidas's head was cut off by order of Xerxes and his body crucified, due to his alleged hatred towards the Spartan King. This was considered sacrilegious and an unusual action on the part of Xerxes. Immediately afterwards, he ordered the desecration of Leonidas's body; however, forty years later Leonidas's corpse was returned to the Spartans.
Leonidas was buried with full honours, including a very un-Spartan display of wailing and mourning (Spartans normally accepted death in battle as a matter of course and disapproved of outward grieving, but the oracle at Delphi had ordered this, as well as with the sacrifice of a Spartan king to preserve Sparta).
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