Apophthegmata Laconica

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

And when again they said, Hae ye decided to dae aught else save to keep the barbarians from gettin’ by? Nominally that, he said, but actually expecting to die for the Greeks.

When he had arrived at Thermopylae, he said to his comrades in arms, They say that the barbarian

has come near and is comin’ on while we are wastin’ time. Truth, soon we shall either kill the barbarians, or else we are bound to be killed oursel’s.

When someone said, Because of the arrows of the barbarians it is impossible to see the sun, he said, Won’t it be nice, then, if we shall have shade in which to fight them? [*](The remark is attributed to Dieneces by Herodotus, vii. 226. Cf. Stobaeus, Florilegium, vii. 46; Valerius Maximus, iii. 7, ext. 8; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, i. 42 (101).)