Messenger: What makes this woman think she can speak among men?
Queen Gorgo: Because only Spartan women give birth to real men.
Persian: A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun!
Stelios: Then we will fight in the shade.
Persion Emissary: This is madness!
Leonidas: Madness? This is SPARTA!
Leonidas: Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty... For tonight, we dine in hell!
Xerxes: There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories. Every piece of greek parchment shall be burned. And every greek historian, and every scribe shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouth. Why, uttering the very name of Sparta, or Leonidas will be punishable by death. The world will never know you existed at all.
King Leonidas: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and that before this battle is over, even a god-king can bleed.
Leonidas: Give them nothing, but take from them everything.
Stelios: Our ancestors built this wall using ancient stones from the bosom of Greece herself. And with a little Spartan help, your Persian scouts supplied the mortar.
Theron: [before raping the Queen.] This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I'm not your King.
Queen Gorgo: Spartan!
King Leonidas: Yes, Milady?
Queen Gorgo: Come back with your shield, or on it.
King Leonidas: Yes, Milady.
Xerxes: It would be a regrettable waste. It would be nothing short of madness for you, brave king, and your valiant troops to perish. All because of a simple misunderstanding. There is much our cultures could share.
Leonidas: Haven't you noticed, we've been sharing our culture with you all morning.
Leonidas: Unless I miss my guess, we're in for one wild night.
Captain: They look thirsty!
King Leonidas: Well, let's give them something to drink! To the cliffs!
Stelios: It is an honor to die at your side.
King Leonidas: It is an honor to have lived at yours.
Dilios: "Remember us." As simple an order as a king can give. For he did not wish tribute, nor song, or monuments or poems of war and valor. His wish was simple."Remember us, " he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, "Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie."
Dilios: Hundreds leave. A handful stays. Only one looks back.
Queen Gorgo: Your lips can finish what your fingers have started... Or has the Oracle robbed you of your desire as well?
King Leonidas: It would take more than the words of a drunken adolescent girl to rob me of my desire for you.
Dilios: Immortals... They fail our king's test. And the man who fancies himself a god feels a very human chill crawl up his spine.
Answer: When Leonidas and Xerxes are talking earlier in the film, Xerxes tells him that no one will remember who Leonidas was. Leonidas tells Xerxes that they will know that free men fought to remain free (or something like that) and that a god-king can bleed. So by wounding Xerxes before he, Leonidas, died, he made good on his taunt.
Phixius ★