Expert: Maria - 4/20/2006

Question
Hi,Maria!

Could you give me  a translation in ancient Greek alphabet of the famous Leonidas quote on the third morning of the battle at the Termopylae?It goes something like this:"Breakfast well (hartily),my friends,for we shall dine in Hades!"
                          Thank you very much

Answer
Hi Danko,

In his 'Apophthegmata Laconica' (Sayings of the Spartans) Plutarch, Greek historian, biographer, and essayist(c. 46- 127 AD) has preserved these Leonidas' words he addressed to his soldiers on the third day  of the battle  at Thermopylae in 480 BC: “Breakfast well, for we shall dine in Hades” that in ancient Greek were as follows:

“Eu aristopoieito, en Aidei gar deipnesomen”.


Unfortunately  however I cannot use the Greek alphabet as the system does not allow it and therefore  the only thing I can do is to write this sentence into corresponding letters of Latin alphabet and give you in brackets the name of each Greek letter that you can see at  the sites written below so that you can copy the Greek characters.

-Eu [ epsilon-upsilon] = well

-Aristopoieito [ alpha-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omicron-pi-omicron-iota-epsilon-iota-tau omega]= Breakfast

-en [ epsilon-nu]= in

-Aidei [ alpha-iota-delta-eta-iota subscript ]= Hades (the Underworld)

-gar [ gamma-alpha-rho] = for

-deipnesomen [ delta-epsilon-iota-pi-nu-eta-sigma-omicron-mu-epsilon-nu] = we shall dine

Best,
Maria
__________________________________________________________
http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html
http://www.dur.ac.uk/stat.web/greek.htm
http://religion.cumberlandcollege.edu/biblang/bibgreek/greek/letters.htm#alpha
http://www.greek-language.com/alphabet/