"Come and take them": the last stand at Thermopylae

In 480 BC the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece with one of the largest armies the ancient world had seen. To slow him down, a Greek force of several thousand took position at Thermopylae, a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea.

At its core were 300 Spartans led by their king, Leonidas. According to Plutarch, when Xerxes demanded that the Greeks hand over their weapons, Leonidas answered: "Molon labe" — "Come and take them."

Herodotus records another reply. When told that Persian arrows would be so numerous they would block out the sun, a Spartan named Dienekes said that was good news: they would fight in the shade.

For two days the narrow ground cancelled out Persian numbers. Then a local man, Ephialtes, showed the Persians a mountain path around the pass. Knowing he would be surrounded, Leonidas sent most of the army away and stayed behind with his Spartans, the Thespians and others.

They were killed to the last man. But the delay, and the example, helped rally the Greek cities, which defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis weeks later. Thermopylae became the model of a defeat that wins something larger than a battle.