At the Battle of Thermopylae, Xerxes I of Persia, with 600,000 men, met King Leonidas I of Sparta, with only 300 men. Leonidas had predicted the outcome of the battle, and so he chose only men with sons old enough to take over their family duties. Xerxes promised to spare the lives of the 300 Spartans if they would only lay down their weapons. The Spartans refused, shouting “Molon Labe” (”Come and Get Them”), and held the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae for days. All the Spartans were eventually killed, but they inflicted such damage to the Persian army (20,000-40,000 dead) that Xerxes was unable to utterly conquer the Greek Peninsula. This act of heroism did nothing less than save Western civilization. The world that you know is due in no small part to those brave men who gave their lives 2,500 years ago. Today there lies a plaque at the site of the battle. It reads: “Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, by Spartan law, we lie.” John Ruskin called this epitaph the noblest words ever uttered by man. The story of Thermopylae is very similar to the Alamo. Travis, Crockett, and Bowie considered their lives less important than the freedom of their people. As Otto Scott said, “Ours are the same tests and crises that our fathers and forefathers encountered.” Our people face the threat of extinction today, and unless we count our lives as less important than the lives of our children, our people will perish. Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Thank you for that post. Not for my edification, but for history.
By the way, I parse the term more as “come and get them,” as in ‘get’ or ‘receive,’ rather that “come and take them.”
Anyhow, I am wise only that I know that I do not know.