Popular phrases come and popular phrases go but rarely do people actually know where they come from. Sometimes people simply through them around without even trying to acknowledge the origins, and instead misattribute them and create a distorted history. Here lie’s the true history of the popular battle cry “come and take it” that has been used inappropriately as of late.
Key Takeaways:
- The phrase itself is also part of a long tradition quite apart from the Texas Revolution.
- Modern Greece adopted the phrase while fighting for independence against the Ottoman Empire.
- During the American Revolution, Colonel John McIntosh was commander of Fort Morris on the coast of Georgia.
“At the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, during the second Persian invasion of Greece, Leonidas replied to Xerxes’s demand that the Greeks surrender their arms, “molon labe”—come and take them.”
