What Does Molon Labe Mean? The Spartan Origin, Explained

You have seen it on bumper stickers, rifle receivers and range hats: two words in Greek capitals, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ. It is one of the most popular slogans in the American gun-rights movement, and one of the oldest. Here is what "molon labe" means, who is said to have said it, and why it has lasted 2,500 years.

What does molon labe mean?

Molon labe (μολὼν λαβέ) is ancient Greek. Literally, it means "having come, take," and it is usually translated as "come and take them." The "them" is weapons. It is a dare: if you want our arms, come and get them yourself.

English speakers usually pronounce it "MOH-lon LAH-bay." In modern Greek it sounds closer to "MO-lon la-VEH."

Who said molon labe?

Tradition credits King Leonidas I of Sparta. In 480 B.C., the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece with a vast army. Leonidas led a few thousand Greek soldiers, including his famous 300 Spartans, to block the narrow pass at Thermopylae. According to the story, Xerxes demanded that the Greeks hand over their weapons. Leonidas wrote back two words: molon labe.

The Greeks held the pass for days before they were outflanked, and Leonidas died with his men. Their stand became a lasting symbol of free people refusing to submit to an empire.

An honest note on the history: the line comes from Plutarch's collection of Spartan sayings, written nearly six centuries after the battle. Herodotus, our main ancient source on Thermopylae, does not record it. Historians treat it as tradition rather than a transcript, but it is a tradition the Greeks themselves have honored for centuries.

Molon labe in Greece today

This is not an American invention or a fringe slogan. The words are carved on the monument to Leonidas that stands at Thermopylae today, and they appear on the emblem of the Greek Army's I Army Corps. To modern Greeks, they are a statement of national defense.

Molon labe and the Second Amendment

American gun owners adopted the phrase in the 1990s and 2000s as a short, defiant answer to proposals to confiscate firearms. It sits alongside two homegrown versions of the same idea: the "Come and Take It" flag flown by Texas settlers at the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, when they refused to surrender a cannon to Mexican troops, and Charlton Heston's "from my cold, dead hands" at the NRA's 2000 convention.

The logic is the same in all three. A free people that gives up its means of defense on demand is not free for long.

Is molon labe a white supremacist slogan?

Some academics and commentators have tried to make it one. Classicist Owen Rees's widely shared essay "Molon Labe and White Supremacism," for example, examines the phrase's use on the far right, and similar arguments show up in press coverage whenever the slogan appears in a news photo.

It is true that extremists have used the phrase. Extremists have also used the American flag, the Bible and the word "liberty." A symbol is not defined by its worst users. Molon labe is the motto of a sovereign European army corps, the inscription on a national monument, and the slogan of millions of law-abiding American gun owners. Treating all of them as suspects because of a few bad actors is not scholarship. It is guilt by association.

Molon labe vs. "come and take it"

They mean the same thing. "Come and take it" is the English rendering made famous in Texas, usually shown on a white flag with a black cannon and a single star. Molon labe is the original Greek, usually paired with a Spartan helmet. Plenty of gun owners fly both.

For another founding-era symbol that has been unfairly recast in the press, read the real history of the Appeal to Heaven flag.

Wear the history. The Right Ledger shop carries designs built on liberty's oldest symbols. Browse the shop →