Person
Leonidas
Spartan king who held the pass at Thermopylae in 480 BCE and was killed there. The reply "Come and take them" is a later report in Plutarch, not a line in Herodotus.
Life
Leonidas was one of the two kings of Sparta, from the Agiad house, and a son of Anaxandridas. In 480 BCE, during Xerxes’ invasion, he commanded the Greek force at Thermopylae. Herodotus is the main early narrative of the three days of fighting and of the last stand after the Persians were shown a path around the pass. Leonidas was killed there.
The sentence “Come and take them” is not in Herodotus. It is preserved under his name in Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartans, in a collection far later than the battle. The same collection gives him the remark about fighting in the shade. Herodotus gives that remark to the Spartan Dieneces. The picture on this page is Jacques-Louis David’s canvas of 1814, a history painting of the men in the pass.
Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, 1814. A nineteenth-century history painting, not a likeness from 480 BCE. Public-domain reproduction via Wikimedia Commons. Image file. Public domain. See the Commons file for the reproduction status outside the United States.
