15 Quotes by Simonides

The Athenians, front-fighters of the Greeks, at Marathon destroyed the power of the gold-bearing Medes.

O Stranger, send the news home to the people of Sparta that here weAre laid to rest: the commands they gave us have been obeyed.Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδεκείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.[Epitaph of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae]

Stranger, go back to Sparta and tell our peoplethat we who were slain obeyed the code.

When her fate rested on the razor's edge,we gave away our lives to save all Greece.

We are all debts owed to death.

Through their extraordinary courage, the widefarmlands of Tegea have not shot fire and smoke into the sky. For they made their choiceto leave their children in a country greenand sweet with freedom,and died for this in the wild ranks of battle.

This is the tomb of the famous Megistias, slain bythe Persians near the Spercheios River,a seer who even when aware that death was nearwould not desert his Spartan kings.

I who lie here, Brotachos of Gortyn, was born in Krete,and I did not come here for death but weighty business.

With mindless bravura Ares washed his long sleek arrowheadsin the crimson waters within their chests,and dust now lies not on the living flesh of javeliners,but on the vivid remnants of lifeless bodies.