Yes, yes, we’re squeezing yet another piece out of the movie 300!

That total popcorn experience that is so homoerotic it goes out of its way to be homophobic — is that classic gay panic or what!

Classic Hollywood, that is; not classic Greek.

The Spartans, as we have all learned by now, when not slashing, gashing and slaughtering, did not tremble or shake when confronted with the willing mouth or open anus of a fellow hardbody warrior.

Part of what made the warrior caste in Sparta so elite was the homosexual sex, which was — do you love it — mandatory. Pairing up with a lover was thought — with perfect Euclidean logic — to strengthen unit cohesion, not weaken it.

In fact, experience had taught them so. There were famous fighting teams, famously devoted to each other. You would think that our own military brass — with all the mutual fucking and sucking that soldiers, marines and airmen have enjoyed over the years — might have learned the same lesson. Alas, no — a modern bias that plays out, anachronistically, in the film.

But if 300 gets their history wrong, they nail it with the hardbodies. Particularly, the mighty, mighty bod of Gerard Butler, whose wall-to-wall chest span and six-cylinder six-pack are featured front and center in every 300 poster, as well as on the box of the Playstation spin-off.

We haven’t seen a male body sold this hard since the glory days of Steve Reeves.

For Gerard Butler, this is an icon-making role — and the icon is his killer body, augmented only slightly by the graphic fireworks of the film’s CGI stylizations. (His body unaugmented and as is, below.)

Men’s Fitness reports:

To become King Leonidas, Butler, who by his own admission was in less- than-ideal shape when he was tapped for the starring role in 300, spent 4 months transforming both his body and his mind…

Butler enlisted the help of Mark Twight, a former world-class mountain climber, who … would argue that a good workout should make you feel almost queasy upon hearing what lies ahead.

For example, to hasten Butler’s mind-body transformation, he created what he calls the “300-rep Spartan workout.” (Trust us, 100 reps is plenty hard.)

It goes like this: Without resting between exercises, Butler performs 25 pullups, 50 deadlifts with 135 pounds, 50 pushups, 50 jumps on a 24-inch box, 50 floor wipers , 50 single-arm clean-and-presses using a 36-pound kettle bell, and 25 more pullups…

“I wanted to look really strong,” says Butler. “I’ve seen so many actors play these kinds of roles, and you see all this equipment on either a big belly or skinny little arms.”

It worked in more ways than one: On-screen, the bearded actor lords over the battlefield like testosterone incarnate, with the steely gaze, cobblestone abs, and broad, chiseled shoulders you suspect one would need to command 300 men to their slaughter.

And that’s the heart attack Butler gave to Men’s Fitness, which purports to be directed at straight men (wink, wink).

In fact, Butler’s workout, as set forth in the Men’s Fitness article, set off a craze for the “the ripped 300 look” at gyms and among personal trainers advertising on the internet, according to a report in USA Today. One interviewer even asked Butler if his abs were real. “Yeah, yeah,” the Scottish actor laughed, “I tried to borrow someone else’s but they wouldn’t give me them.”

He told another interviewer that being in such insane shape helped him warm to his near-naked costume — a cape and a leather codpiece:

“I mean, you have to walk through these studio corridors and all the chippies and the plasterers and the electricians — all these big French Canadian guys — are like, ‘Who’s that guy walking past with nothing on expect leather sandals?’” Thus, his workout became essential. “I trained really hard so that I could deserve to wear that cape and that codpiece and feel invincible.”

Despite the disinformation in the film itself, Butler seems to have understood the true homoerotic nature of the Spartan warrior. When asked how he got his head around playing the Spartan king, he said he decided to center his performance in the might of the body.

“I became a bit addicted to [my workout] … My cape and codpiece became my biggest allies — feeling so strong, so excited that my body was an intimidating factor and an inspiring factor for my army.

“You’re surrounded by probably a few tons of muscle and when you pool that many men together and pull all that spirit together and have nothing but focus and belief and pure intention, you become 1000 times stronger. It actually makes sense that you could hold off an invading army that doesn’t have that belief, that are in disarray, that you could hold them off quite easily.”

Well, he could hold us any way he likes. And while we would love — as always — to see his Hamlet, we hope that Gerard will not neglect those other classics: Hercules Unchained, Duel of the Titans and all the other masterpieces in the Steve Reeves catalog