Talk:Come and take it

Thermopylae reference

This is ridiculous, the assertion that what was said in Thermopylae had anything to do with Goliad. Is this just silly revisionism based on the current popularity of a Hollywood movie? Who among the great defenders of Goliad was a Greek historian? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.110.74 (talk) 09:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Laconic means Spartan. That is clearly what McIntosh had in mind. 96.254.154.47 (talk) 18:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Ancient Greek history (and language) was taught in schools as a matter of routine in the 19th century - one can assume that the ancient Greek origin of the phrase was common knowledge amongst educated men of the time. As pointed out above, McIntosh showed he knew the Spartan origin of the phrase with his use of the phrase "laconic reply".

Sparta was in the ancient Greek region of Laconia, hence "laconic" meaning "Spartan".

Michael F 1967 (talk) 20:34, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Laconic phrase means "concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder", due to the reputation the Spartans had for speaking in that way. Dimadick (talk) 07:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Exactly so. The thing is, "laconic phrase" means "Spartan phrase', using "laconic" as a metonym for "Spartan" (and as far as I can tell, nobody says "Spartan phrase" to communicate the meaning in question). I suspect me adding this point isn't remotely useful, but there you go. Michael F 1967 (talk) 15:59, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Also: "great defenders of Goliad"? Goliad isn't mentioned in the article. The town of Goliad is known for the Goliad massacre during the Texas revolution, when Mexican forces massacred more than 400 Texian troops who had surrendered - the Wikipedia page suggests this was required by Mexican law at the time.Michael F 1967 (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Just a meta-comment here, while there's no specific policies regarding this, it's generally best not to reply to very old threads on the talk-page as took place here, on a more than decade commentary. This is not a complaint! The overriding problem is the lack of archiving, which I'll take care of now. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 04:44, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I spotted that the comment at the start of this section was quite old. The reason I added remarks was that Special:Permalink/1207338245 had removed the text referring to the Spartan origin of the phrase at 15:28, 14 February 2024.

The edit summary was similar in spirit at least to the reasoning put forward in the start of this section.

To my mind, that means that while the origin of this talk page section is essentially ancient history from the point of view of Wikipedia editing, it's also a currently-relevant discussion due to recent edits.

Michael F 1967 (talk) 13:36, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

You are referring here to this difflink You then quickly re-added the reference here despite the words "Molon labe" (translated: when you come, take [our arms]) only partially having the same meaning of "Come and take it [it = the fort, the flag, the post]." Similar but different: that is the reason why we have two different articles with long histories each, for each of the phrases. The English phrase does not subsume the Greek one: the latter is historically relevant and belongs into the history section, but not into the article intro as the most important example. No ancient Greek ever uttered the English phrase, not even in Old English - yet that is what the article claims.

I also think that we should not even mention a "first" use, just state examples of when these words were used. --Enyavar (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

0) "When you come, take it!" is a translation of "molon labe" given by the Wikipedia page on the phrase.

1) The article doesn't claim that an ancient Greek spoke English - I've no idea where you got that idea from.

2) The article doesn't claim to present the first use of the phrase - merely the first recorded use.

3) The article provides dated uses of the phrase in all cases, as you suggest.

4) The article quotes a recorded use of the phrase by an English speaker who overtly connected his use of the English phrase to what he considered its origin in ancient Sparta.

5) Since the earliest reference to the use of the English phrase includes an overt reference to its earlier use in ancient Sparta, the article needs to refer to that use in order to make sense of the English usage.

6) The precise meaning of the phrase "molon labe" is not crucial, if only because Leonidas spoke a different dialect of Greek. "Come and take it" was used in the sense of "come and take our arms" at the Battle of Gonzales in 1835. It's wrong to suggest that "Come and take it" in English hasn't been used in that sense.

The phrase is a defiance - you want it, you come and take it from us, and we're willing to fight. That's the important point.

All translations are approximations. The recorded ancient Greek version was an approximation to whatever version had been passed on. Exactly what the words refer to in English - well, that's a complicated matter of dialect and context and a whole load of other stuff. However, what's important is that the earliest recorded English use of the phrase is clearly based on an understanding of the recorded version of the supposed Spartan original. There's no point in being deadly literal about the translation when it's the spirit of the phrase that's important - as understood by Colonel John McIntosh in 1778.

7) The English and Greek versions of the phrases are linked by history and the record - the later version being inspired by the earlier. Therefore, Wikipedia needs to ensure that this link is made clear. Why not right at the start? That seems the most sensible place to me.

8) Quite why there are two articles for the two phrases is not at all clear - personally, I think that they belong together, but that would be linguistically awkward. Obviously, both the English and Greek versions of the phrase are connected, the later version derives from the earlier version, and they are both historical. There is no separate "historical" section of Wikipedia in any case.

9) I'm assuming good faith on the part of others here. I hope the same courtesy will be extended to me. I'm not going to raise the issue of weasel phrases at this point, but that doesn't mean I've not noticed.

10) I'm loquacious, not laconic - apologies...

Michael F 1967 (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

(Replying to Michael F 1967 comment) Totally cool, as I said, not a complaint. There are no rules, policies, guidelines, or anything about doing so on WP. As an "old-timer" on the internet, going back to the early 1980's before even UUCP ruled the "airwaves", I've plowed through probably a million threads on thousands of forums, BBS's, 'social media', ran BBS's, and there's even a forum site I administrated a couple of decades ago that's unbelievably still around. It sort of became an unwritten tradition to not "wake up" old threads.

Since WP isn't a BBS, forum, or social media—in fact, talk pages are specifically not to be used for socializing—I think perhaps my meta-comment was probably more out of place than on point.

In other (and fewer) words - I retract my meta-comment! cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 18:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Mmm... I reckon your meta-comment was totally on point. It's the sort of point that needs making.

It's a funny old thing, though, isn't it? Us humans are devils for communicating. Chat, chat, chat - but none of this chatter here will survive a century, unlike the record of the words of King Leonidas or Colonel McIntosh.

Now, that was a meta-comment which needn't have been made - I considered deleting it, but thought: perhaps it's a useful point to make. I might be wrong.

Michael F 1967 (talk) 00:06, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I'm reasonably sure that every word we've written here will survive beyond centuries. It's just that nobody will ever read them, nor will anyone ever shout, defiantly, in the war with SkyNet,

"I RETRACT MY META-COMMENT!"

cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 05:31, 5 April 2024 (UTC)