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| one of thousands of decals and other accessories commercially available with the phrase "molon labe" on it |
The phrase “Molon labe”
has special meaning to pro-gun extremists, but if they bothered to learn more
about the arms-control beliefs of the tyrant who said those words, I believe they
would immediately renounce the phrase.
In fact, the saying may not have actually been uttered at all.
When King Leonidas I of Sparta and his legion of 300 Spartan warriors,
at the Battle of
Thermopylae, were told by Persian King Xerxes I to surrender and lay down
their weapons, King Leonidas supposedly said “Molon labe!” in response, which
translates to “Come and take them!” Over
the next three days, he and his brave warriors defied and beat back the massive
Persian army, with up to 150,000 soldiers, at a very tight pass along the route
that the Persians were trying to take to invade Greece. Defiant to the end, Leonidas and his brave
Spartans nearly all died in the battle, buying time for Athens to evacuate to
safety. The war later ended due to
superior Greek naval strategy and sea battles, and Xerxes was forced to retreat
back to Persia.
There's no doubt about it: Leonidas and the rest of his army (not just
300, by the way, but at least 7400 including all the other Greeks there) were a
model of defensive positioning, and their act was indeed very heroic and
altruistic. They fill a very worthy
position in the annals of History. The
defiance of Leonidas and his warriors rightly became a symbol of patriotic
defense and self-sacrifice against overwhelming odds.
The account of the battle fits in well with the pro-gun fantasy of
defending one’s home against an invasion of bloodthirsty, drug-dealing gangs or
“jackbooted government thugs”
The translation of “molon labe” (come and take them) also goes
hand-in-hand with the simplistic and wrongheaded ideology that any and all gun
control proposals are actually a prelude to total civilian gun
confiscation. Like Charleton Heston’s
famous “From my cold dead
hands!” speech, “Molon labe” evokes the same Leonidas-like defiance against
a supposedly tyrannical government intent on complete disarmament of its
people. It’s an ideology pushed hard by
the NRA and other gun lobbies, the arms manufacturers who fund them, and anyone
who defends them. The more they push
this belief, the more their customers will buy their products.
And buy them they do! A huge
cottage market has sprung up around the phrase “Molon labe” (like THIS site or THIS site). You can purchase all sorts of gear with the
phrase on it: hats, shirts,
stickers,
pens, dog tags, and, yes, gun parts. There are even bikini
thong panties with the phrase across the crotch. Many of these are sold in combination with
anti-Obama themes. Here’s one
that shows Obama’s election logo shot up (no violent implications, I’m
sure). Here's a pro-gun forum named after the
phrase, and the name of a small-time firearms dealer. The gun guys even
get tattoos of it, like this one
and this
one.
But I wanted to dig a little deeper.
I like to think of myself as a little bit of an ancient history buff,
and what I knew of ancient Sparta didn't seem to jive with the philosophies of
the modern pro-gun movement. Though
Sparta had a reputation of being warlike (which may be undeserved), it was also a highly stratified
society with slaves and requirements to earn honors and titles. It didn't seem like a place where weapons designed
for killing were freely available, able to be carried in public by just anyone,
as modern gun extremists would like to see with firearms in America. Could it be true, then, that the man who
uttered those famous words was actually leading a society with (gasp!) strict
arms control?
So I contacted one of the world's foremost historians on ancient
Sparta: Stephen Hodkinson, BA, PhD, FSA, Professor of Ancient History and
Director of the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies at the University
of Nottingham.
Professor Hodkinson edited and helped write the book (along with co-author Ian
Macgregor Morris) “Sparta
in Modern Thought.” Dr. Hodkinson was even made an Honorary Citizen
of the modern city of Sparta in Greece for his academic contributions to the
history of Sparta.
He responded quickly to my email, and wrote a very good, unbiased,
scholarly opinion. PLEASE GO TO PART I
of this two-part series. There you can
find his response, un-edited by me.
What Professor Hodkinson wrote surprised even me.... See some selected quotes below.
The right to
possess a weapon in Sparta at that time wasn't guaranteed to just anyone. As Professor Hodkinson outlines in Part I,
there were a number of different castes in Spartan society. The helots, who were essentially slaves, couldn't
possess them at all, outside of a few historical exceptions or farming tools:
Each Spartiate was normally accompanied on campaign by a helot
personal servant; but there were strict precautions to prevent these helots
gaining access to usable arms. So there is every reason to believe that within
Spartan territory helots would normally have been prevented from owning or
gaining access to military weapons ...
Other groups had to go through certain "hoops" before they
could be granted weapons:
Returning to the various groups who are attested as fighting as
hoplites, did they have to earn the right to bear and own arms? Again, there is no text that specifies the
exact legal position; but there were certain hoops that men from the different
groups had to go through. A Spartiate boy almost certainly had to fulfill all
the demands of the upbringing, in order to be allowed to join the army at age
20; the same surely also applied to young mothakes. The neodamodeis had to
agree to perform military service for Sparta in return for being granted their
freedom. As for members of the perioikoi, on reaching adulthood they had to be
accepted as legitimate citizens in their own local communities and they
probably also had to have sufficient wealth to afford the hoplite equipment –
as was the case in most other Greek states.
Women likely
couldn't own or use weapons, either:
No women from any of the groups in Spartan society fought in the
Lakedaimonian army or had any guard duty roles, so they probably had no right
to own or use military weapons.
Is
discrimination against women and socio-economic class for gun ownership sound
like something the modern pro-gun movement would support?
When it comes to age, here
in the U.S. you have to be at least 18 to purchase a rifle or shotgun, and
at least 21 to purchase a handgun (though the gun lobby has been trying unsuccessfully
to lower those ages), but anyone younger can possess a gun that their parents
buy for them, of any age. Some
guns are even special-made for children so young they are still learning
their ABC's! But in the Sparta of Leonidas, you likely had to be of military age of
20, or at least close to it, with military training, before earning the right:
As already indicated, for the Spartiates (and probably for the
other groups too) eligibility for hoplite service began at age 20. Whether or
not a Spartiate teenager possessed his own weapons before he started hoplite
service is not mentioned in any ancient source. It may be that youths in their
late teens, soon about to become hoplites, did so, but it is very difficult to
demonstrate. In Athens, and possibly in other Greek states, 18-19-year-olds from
citizen families who could afford it (families had to pay their teenagers’
costs) could serve as ephebes, being assigned static guard duties inside
Athenian territory. Athenian teenagers would necessarily have their own weapons
during this period of service. However, no source mentions anything parallel in
Sparta ....
The only implied reference to formal military training (and this
was for hoplites generally, not specifically part of the upbringing) is to
formation drill: coordinated manoeuvres to get the phalanx into the right
position before or during battle. It would be reasonable to assume that
18-19-year-old Spartiates were included in this formation drill training in
preparation for when they turned age 20; and also that it was probably
practised spear in hand, to make it more realistic. However, this is only
assumption and it cannot be used to infer that boys below age 18 had access to
military weapons.
The pro-gun movement has
been very successful in recent years in making it ridiculously easy to
legally carry firearms in public, concealed or openly. Did
Spartans carry their weapons around in civilian life, too? Certainly not:
However, apart from these specific occasions, the Spartiates (and
no doubt the other groups who fought in the army) normally went about their
daily lives unarmed: i.e. without carrying weapons. ....
Thucydides (1.5-6) says that in certain (less civilised) parts of
Greece – he mentions various peoples in central Greece – the old practice of
carrying arms still survives because of the continuing danger of piracy. The
clear implication is that in more secure and civilised Greek states people no
longer carried weapons in everyday life; and this is confirmed when he goes on
to say that the Athenians were the first to give up the habit of carrying
weapons and also to adopt the fashion of wearing luxurious dress. He then says
that the Lakedaimonians (i.e. Spartans) were the first to dress more simply in
accord with modern taste. The implications are: (1) that by the time of their
shift to simpler dress the Spartans had already followed the Athenian example
of not carrying arms in everyday life; (2) that the Athenians and other
civilised Greeks then adopted the Spartan example of simple dress, so that by
Thucydides’ time in the late 5th century they all dressed simply and
without carrying arms.
And this in spite of the fact, as Hodkinson goes on to point out, that
the Spartans were vastly outnumbered by helot slaves and other subordinate
groups who could easily arm themselves with tools and other dangerous,
non-military implements found in markets or in the course of their labors.
The pro-gun
lobby in modern America argues that people need to carry their weapons at all
times to protect against imminent threat, even in places like schools and
coffee shops. Clearly Leonidas and his
culture didn't feel the same.
Ah, but here's the real surprise that I wasn't aware of: the
utterance of "molon labe" may not have even happened at all! It didn't appear in extant writings from close
to the time of the Battle of Thermopylae. We know the phrase from the writings of Plutarch, some 580 years after the battle:
Finally, some comments on the “molon labe” phrase ascribed to
Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It does not appear in
Herodotus’ account, written in the later 5th century, which records the witty
sayings of another member of the 300, Dienekes. Neither does it appear in
accounts of the battle deriving from Ephorus, who wrote in the 4th century and who himself drew upon a
contemporary poem about the battle by Simonides. To my knowledge, the only
appearance of the phrase in all the ancient evidence about Thermopylae is in a
work by Plutarch, writing in the early 2nd century AD: the Apophthegmata Lakonika (Sayings of Spartans),
which is part of Plutarch’s Moralia.
It is no. 11 out of fifteen sayings ascribed to Leonidas.
He later clarified in an email (updated 6/11/13):
He later clarified in an email (updated 6/11/13):
As far as we can currently tell, many of [the Spartan sayings] were probably invented in the late 4th or early 3rdcenturies BC, at a time when Sparta had ceased to be a major international power and became instead an attractive source of moral examples for the new and rising Hellenistic schools of philosophy. However, the late 4th or early 3rd centuries BC is still 150-200 years after Thermopylae, a long time after the event.
In sum, the historical authenticity of the phrase “molon labe” is
uncertain. One cannot prove that it is a later embroidering of the Leonidas
legend; but its sole appearance in a late work which is known to contain many
other inventions and its somewhat odd context in that work do not inspire confidence
that it is genuinely historical.
So what can we make of all this?
The answer is shockingly clear: for anyone who uses "molon labe"
as a rally cry for the pro-gun movement, the joke's on them!
It leaves me laughing to think that all those people who tattoo their
bodies with "molon labe", apply bumper stickers to their cars, or
wear hats, shirts, or even panties with the words on them, are likely
celebrating a fiction. The society of
the man who supposedly uttered those words would horrify any pro-gun person if
the culture of Sparta in the time of Leonidas were applied to modern life, and
the saying itself may have been a fabrication to begin with!
But that won't stop these people.
After all, the gun guys cling to myths, based on half-truths, to justify
their beliefs -- like the belief that the American
Revolution was won by valiant farmers wielding their hunting rifles in
militias and picking off the British using
guerrilla tactics, ignoring the largest role by the Continental Army and
French allies, or that the American
West was tamed by cowboys with revolvers, ignoring the fact that guns were
prohibited in city limits of the time, and rarely carried or owned at all
except for hunting. Using "molon
labe" as a symbol for the pro-gun movement focuses only on the one,
defiant sentiment, and ignores all other aspects of the arms-controlling
society of the man who supposedly uttered it.
