WAR / DEFIANCE (pure “Laconic” fire)
- Leonidas — “Come and take them.” (Μολὼν λαβέ)
- Spartan mothers — “Either this or upon this.” (ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς)
- Dienekes (Thermopylae) — “If the Medes hide the sun we shall fight them in the shade.”
- Spartans (to Antipater) — “If the orders you lay upon us are harsher than death, we shall find it easier to die.”
POWER MOVES / POLITICS (one-line domination)
- Spartans (to Philip) — “If I invade Laconia… / If.”
- Spartans (to Philip) — “Friend or foe?” / “Neither.”
- Spartans (to Philip’s “orders”) — “No.”
- Archidamus (to Philip) — “If you should measure your own shadow, you would not find it any greater…”
- Archidamus — “As much [land] as they can reach with the spear.”
DISCIPLINE / CULTURE (Sparta mindset in a sentence)
- Spartan reply to long-winded ambassadors — “We forgot the first part… and the later part we did not know because we forgot the first.”
- Spartan on weapons — “Why do you use short swords?” / “So that we may get close to the enemy.”
- Spartans (to Thebans) — “You should have less pride or more power.”
- Agesilaus (on big walls) — “Grand indeed… not for men though, but for women to live in.”
- Gorgo — “Because we are the only women that are mothers of men.”
- Leonidas (to Gorgo) — “Marry a good man, and bear good children.”
- Argileonis (mother of Brasidas) — “My son was a good and honourable man, but Sparta has many a man better than him.”
If you want, I can go full Plutarch-mode and dump 50+ of the sharpest Spartan one-liners (still all Spartan speakers).