281, don't tell me you think they actually slept with each other to tighten the bonds of the unit, or that they're all homosexual and only wanted women for the production of the next generation of soldiers.
Yes the Spartans may have behaved a bit less than manly when they did calisthenics and worked on their hair, but that was so they didn't pull their muscles, so their hair didn't get in the way when fighting and so that when a spartan killed his 100th persian he could do it in style.

The truth of Thermopalae (can't spell it) is that there were about 7,000 Greeks including 300 spartans in the fight, but when they were outflanked the spartans and another city-states' men (can't remember who) decided to stay so the others could successfully withdraw to warn the rest of Greece.
Also, the Persians were believed to be roughly 300,000 troops, but if you include all the baggage that went with an army on the march then the overall number of persians present could have been closer to 1 million (still unlikely), that doesn't mean we can't still enjoy their laconic wit and sheer skill at arms compared with their foes.