Aristodemus (, died 479 BC) was a Spartan warrior, one of the 300 sent to the Battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae Aristodemus was one of only two Spartan survivors, as he was not present at the last stand. Along with a comrade, Eurytus, Aristodemus was stricken with a disease of the eye (they were "ὀφθαλμιῶντες" as Herodotus wrote), causing King Leonidas to order the two to return home before the battle, but Eurytus turned back, though blind, and met his end charging into the fray. The Greek historian Herodotus believed that had both Aristodemus and Eurytus returned alive, or had Aristodemus alone been ill and excused from combat, the Spartans would have ascribed no blame to Aristodemus. However, because Eurytus did turn back and died in combat, Aristodemus was regarded as a coward and subjected to humiliation and disgrace at the hands of his compatriots; in the words of Herodotus, "no man would give him a light for his fire or speak to him; he was called Aristodemus the Coward." The other survivor of the Three Hundred was a man named Pantites, who had been sent by Leonidas on an embassy to Thessaly. He failed to return to Thermopylae in time for the battle, and on finding himself in disgrace in Sparta, hanged himself. Plataea At the Battle of Plataea, Aristodemus fought with such fury that the Spartans regarded him as having redeemed himself. Although they removed the black mark against his name, they did not award him any special honors for his valour because he had fought with suicidal recklessness; the Spartans regarded as more valorous those who fought while still wishing to live. Aristodemus charged, berserker-like, out of the phalanx and fought, in the opinion of Herodotus, with the most bravery of all the Spartans before falling in battle. In popular culture Aristodemos is the main figure in Caroline Snedeker's popular historical novel The Coward of Thermopylae (1911), retitled in 1912 as The Spartan. Aristodemos appears as a recurring background character in Steven Pressfield's 1998 novel Gates of Fire. Four years before the battle of Thermopylae, he is part of an ultimately unsuccessful four-man envoy sent to Rhodes to dissuade the Rhodian navy from serving Xerxes. While at Rhodes the envoy encounters a group of Egyptian marines, led by a captain named Ptammitechus (whom they simply call 'Tommie'), and is given a tour of their warships. Aristodemos is later