Dienekes

A Spartiate warrior in Leonidas's 300 whom Herodotus singles out for the most famous witticism of the whole campaign. A Trachinian had told him the Persian arrows would be so dense they would blot out the sun; Dienekes replied that they would then fight in the shade. Herodotus says he was the bravest of the 300 and quotes the remark as his proudest saying. Plutarch later gave the same line to Leonidas himself in the Apophthegmata Laconica, but Herodotus's attribution to the otherwise anonymous Dienekes is the earlier and better witness.

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