Leonidas

There was a great struggle between the Persians and Lacedaemonians over Leonidas ' body, until the Hellenes by their courageous prowess dragged it away and routed their enemies four times.

Those allies who were dismissed went off in obedience to Leonidas, only the Thespians and Thebans remaining with the Lacedaemonians.

Having spoken in this way, Xerxes passed over the place where the dead lay and hearing that Leonidas had been king and general of the Lacedaemonians, he gave orders to cut off his head and impale it.

Among the Greeks this is a modest matter:

And Leonidas, king of the Lacedaemonians, set himself and those three hundred whom he had led out from Sparta against the enemy at Thermopylae, when there was offered him either base flight or glorious death.

And after this, Xerxes, having campaigned against Greece, conquered the Lacedaemonians at Thermopylae and killed their king Leonidas, and taking the city of the Athenians razed it, and enslaved as many as did not escape.

For it would be ridiculous if one of your citizens, that Dorieus, or Leonidas, whom they say so often won at Olympia, should train looking to some other man, and that too one never crowned.

But glorious deaths met for one's country are wont to seem to the rhetoricians not only glorious but even blessed.

" What does that leader Leonidas say?

And again, when Xerxes came against Greece and the Thebans went over to the side of the Medes, the Plataeans refused to withdraw from their alliance with us, but, unsupported by any others of the Boeotians, half of them arrayed themselves in Thermopylae against the advancing barbarian together with the Lacedaemonians and Leonidas, and perished with them;

Like a lion, or the lion — Leonidas Lion of the forest — Napoleon Rock — Peter Lover of horses — Philip Gazelle — Darcas Lion — Leo

"So," he said, "breakfast, comrades, as men about to dine in the underworld.