Bret Devereaux

Now I want to change up my tone a little bit because in the first posts I was rather flip and dismissive and I want to offer a bit more intellectual charity here. Now on to 'Episode Six' which is...oh good heavens...which is "Come and Take Them." Because of course it is.

He opens by presenting 'Molon Labe' (still being questionably pronounced 'Molan Labe' rather than mol-own lah-bay) as something we absolutely know Leonidas said. Tricky. μολὼν λαβέ does not appear in Herodotus, our best source for Thermopylae.

Instead, the saying is reported by Plutarch (surprise, more Plutarch read uncritically). Now while Herodotus wrote about the battle probably around 50 years after it happened (and doesn't include the phrase), Plutarch is writing c. 100 **AD**, 580 years later.

Needless to say, Plutarch - who gives no sense of his source and is often willing to rely on hearsay and legend - can hardly be considered reliable at this point. So we cannot be confident that Leonidas even said that thing at that moment (or ever). Not a great start.

"A force of 300 picked Spartan warriors, supported by 4,000 other Greek allies..." That's going to be a hard no. Herodotus gives (excluding the Spartans) 2,800 Peloponnesians, 1,100 Boeotians, 1,000 Phocians, 'the full force' of the Locrians, plus the fleet.

Plus we know there were other Lacedaemonians (Perioikoi) there, around a thousand. That's no less than 5,900 non-Spartiates on land - unclear why we get no number for the Locrians - plus the (mostly Athenian) fleet at Artemisium (271 ships, c. 50,000 men).

Diodorus gives a fuller - but perhaps not more accurate? - accounting and lands at 7,400. So 300 Spartans, supported by c. 6-7k other land troops, supported in turn by c. 50,000 sailors and marines, for a combined operational strength of almost 60,000.

And as Herodotus is quick to note, Thermopylae was *not* imagined as a delaying action. The small force there expected new troops to arrive day by day. The plan - which failed catastrophically - was to hold Xerxes *indefinitely* at the pass.