Simonides composed a well-known epigram, which was engraved as an epitaph on a commemorative stone placed on top of the burial mound of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. It is also the hill on which the last of them died. The original stone has not survived, but in 1955, the epitaph was engraved on a new stone. The text from Herodotus is:[
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
- κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
- Ō ksein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tēide
- keimetha tois keinōn rhēmasi peithomenoi.
- "Stranger, announce to the Spartans that here
- We lie, having fulfilled their orders."
The alternative ancient reading πειθόμενοι νομίμοις for ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι substitutes "laws" for "orders." In other words, the "orders" are not personal but refer to official and binding phrases (the Ancient Greek term can also refer to a formal speech).
The form of this ancient Greek poetry is an elegiac couplet, commonly used for epitaphs. Some English renderings are given in the table below.
It was well known in ancient Greece that all the 300 Spartans who had been sent to Thermopylae had been killed there (with the solitary exception of the hapless Aristodemus), and the epitaph exploits the conceit that there was nobody left to bring the news of their deeds back to Sparta. Greek epitaphs often appealed to the passing reader (always called 'stranger') for sympathy, but the epitaph for the dead Spartans at Thermopylae took this convention much further than usual, asking the reader to make a personal journey to Sparta to break the news that the Spartan expeditionary force had been wiped out. The stranger is also asked to stress that the Spartans died 'fulfilling their orders'.