19 August 480 BC: at Thermopylae the Spartans and a thousand other Greeks, in particular Thespians and Thebans, led by King Leonidas, held off Xerxes' army for three days, while at Artemisio the Greek fleet resisted the enemy. The Spartans were asked by the Persians to surrender and to hand over their weapons in exchange for their lives. Leonidas would then have replied, laconically: "MOLON LABE!" ("Come and get them!").
The following day the Great King also sent the 10,000 immortals against them, who broke against the Greek-Spartan wall.
Only the betrayal of the shepherd Efialte and the circumvention of the mountain passes decreed the defeat of the Greeks (the Phocians that Leonidas had placed in defense of the path ran away from the Persians' sight). It also seems that when the Persians, annoyed, sent an ambassador to ask for surrender, the Lacedaemonians refused. It was then that the Easterners threatened to bury the Greeks under arrows, so many as to obscure the sun and that the Spartans replied: "then we will fight in the shadows".
“Of the dead at Thermopylae
glorious fate, beautiful end,
an altar the tomb, the memory of sobs, compassion the praise.
Such a shroud nor rust
nor will all-consuming time obscure.
This shrine of valiant heroes took the glory of Hellas as an inhabitant. Leonidas, king of Sparta, also bears witness to this, having left great adornment and eternal glory with virtue.
(Simonides of Ceos, fr.531)
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