This Is Sparta…..n Speech
Molon All The Labes
Full disclosure, dear reader: I’m a history major.
Classical Sparta was, and forever shall be, my jam.
No I don’t love them because of their reputation as warriors or societal quirks (see helots and perioikoi for both a horrendous look at ancient apartheid and the social manipulation of the disenfranchised) but because of their wit.
Spartans, you see, absolutely wrecked people in the public speaking arena.
As Well As In The Physical Arena As It Turns Out
The term “laconic” means to express much in as few words as possible. The historically astute of you out there already know that the word laconic is derived from the word “Lakonia” a region in southern Greece home to the Lakedaimonians. Of course, another word for Lakedaimonian is Spartan.
The use of an economy of words to get across a point (usually in particularly biting fashion) is supposed to have been how Spartans talked. It is part of why they have stuck around the cultural lexicon after thousands of years.
You see, it’s hard to remember the entirety of one of Plato’s speeches word for word but Spartans could just deliver a single zinger and BAM! The dude they just ruined with a word gets his shame recorded (and laughed at) for eons.
Perhaps one of the most famous is the response of Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae. Ignoring Hollywood, comics, novelizations, and 3,000 years of Greek propaganda, there were roughly 7,000 Greeks (yes 300 of them were full Spartan citizens don’t get me started on the perioikoi) against maybe 250,000 Persians. Not quite the 300 vs a million we see in the movies but still lopsided either way. Persia was known as being the largest empire in the (known) world. They rolled over people with machine precision, and quite literally cut through mountains and bridged large bodies of water to do so. Their conquering of Greece was seen as an inevitability save for a few city-states which resisted (because they had killed some Persians and knew they’d be wiped from the face of the earth). When the quarter of a million Persians came to the gates of Thermopylae their king, Xerxes, was stunned. He simply couldn’t believe anyone would dare face his massive force. When he sent an envoy to demand the Greeks lay down their weapons Leonidas called out “molon labe!” which roughly translates to “having come, take!’ or “come and take them!”
Now this may lose something in translation so allow me to give context. An envoy from a massively superior force just told the Greeks, “Surrender your weapons!” and the king of the Spartans gave the ancient equivalent of “Make me, bitch!”
Maybe The Persians Thought He Was Joking
Nothing makes the heart soar quite like the cocksure gallows humor of someone giving the middle finger to overwhelming odds. The Spartan Deinekes is famous for another zinger (also from Thermopylae) when, while standing beneath a burning Mediterranean August sun, he responded to a frightened ally’s claim that the Persian archers were so numerous that their arrows, when loosed, would blot out the sun. Dienekes’ reply? “Good. We’ll be able to fight in the shade.”
I personally feel there’s something to be gleamed from taking a page out of Sparta’s book. You don’t need every piece of dialogue to be a catch-phrase or a wonderfully succinct “fuck you,” but that style of biting minimalism, that easily remembered fire of the delivery, that is something we should all aspire to with our dialogue scenes.
Dialogue shouldn’t be bland. It should be memorable!
And remember: if you have any trouble just try having your characters talk like a Spartan.