# Leonidas I Leonidas I (d. 480 BCE) was the king of [[Sparta]] who commanded the Greek holding force at the [[Battle of Thermopylae]] against the Persian invasion of Xerxes, dying with his men in a last stand that became antiquity's most famous emblem of disciplined courage against overwhelming odds. That image has made Leonidas a central figure in contemporary right-wing and "vitalist" iconography. His defiant reply to the Persian demand to surrender his weapons — **"Molon labe"** ("come and take them") — is a ubiquitous slogan of American gun culture, and the stylized Leonidas of the film *300* is a recurring avatar of martial masculinity in online-right aesthetics, alongside the broader fetishization of [[Sparta]] and [[Bronze Age Mindset]]. See [[Antiquity in Right-Wing Thought Hub]]. ## See also [[Sparta]] · [[Ancient Greece]] · [[Battle of Thermopylae]] · [[Bronze Age Mindset]] · [[Antiquity in Right-Wing Thought Hub]]