[jcranmer]

Yes, Thermopylae is counted as a defeat in coalition (the author gives a full list of every battle and his categorization in the linked blog post, you can read it for yourself).

One of the Spartan losses is when they decide to pretend to not be Spartan so they can surprise their opponents with their skill, but they turn out instead to be utterly wrecked by their opponents. The Spartans really do seem to be mediocre fighters (not good, but not bad either) with a stellar PR agency.

[siriaan]

I'd love to see someone make a kind of response to 300 based on the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartans got their butts handed to them by the Thebans