By training, if not by trade, I am an historian.

Now, I'm not claiming to be James McPherson or even David McCullough. Heck, I'm not even claiming to be my late history professor Glenn Martin, or even my most recent favorite professor Jennifer Green. Still, I am, by training, an historian. Just because I am not one by trade does not invalidate my credentials.

Having said that, as an historian, I am able to look at the movie 300 without trying to dissect the historical inaccuracies. You see, I'm also a fanboy. So, I know that 300 is not intended in any way to be historically accurate. It is intended to represent a graphic novel, a comic book.

I suppose, though, what disturbs me about Professor Lytle's review is that it doesn't focus as much on the true historical details, but it contains phrases like "brutal apartheid state" and words like pedastry.

Now, I know the conservative bloggers and commentators have been all over "revisionism" in history for years. As an historian, I don't have a problem with the ideas behind revision. I fully believe that our stories need to be retold and reinterpreted if they are to be meaningful to each generation.

However, in practice, revision becomes a bad thing when it is only done a certain way. In other words, today's historical revisionism is based around the "holy trinity" of historiography: race, class, and gender. But, by revising only along these lines, we miss much of what history has to say to us.

In this way, Frank Miller may have been a better historian than professor Lytle. Miller tells us that, sometimes, you can beat the odds. That sacrifice can have rewards. That war doesn't have to be meaningless. These are the lessons of history, not whether "to spartanize" used to mean "to bugger."