The Moment the words were spoken they were assured eternity

Molon Labe! (Greek: Μολὼν Λαβέ, modern (IPA): [molon lave], Erasmus pronunciation: [molɔːn labe]) means "Come and take them!"

Μολὼν λαβέ was the response of King Leonidas I of Sparta to Xerxes I of Persia at the onset of the Battle of Thermopylae. Xerxes, whose forces vastly outnumbered the Spartans and their allies, offered to spare the lives of Leonidas and his few thousand defenders if only they would lay down their weapons. Instead, the Spartans held Thermopylae for three days and, while they died to the last man, they inflicted serious damage on the Persian army, delaying it and essentially preventing the conquest of the Greek Peninsula.

The first word μολὼν, is the aorist active participle (masculine, nominative, singular) of the Greek verb βλώσκω, meaning "having come."^[1] Λαβέ is the aorist active imperative (second person singular) of the verb λαμβάνω, translated "take [them]."

The two words function together in a grammatical structure not present in English called the circumstantial participle.^[2] Where English would put two main verbs in two independent clauses joined by a conjunction: "come and take", a strategy sometimes called paratactic, ancient Greek, which is far richer in participles, subordinates one to the other, a strategy called hypotactic: "coming take." The first action is turned into an adjective. The English speaker can understand it with a little thought, but he would never use it. In this structure the participle gives some circumstance attendant on the main verb: the coming.

The Greek has a nuance not present in the English: aspect. The aorist participle is used to signify completed action, called the perfective aspect. Moreover, the action must be completed before the time of the main verb. The difference in meaning is subtle but significant: the English speaker is inviting his enemy to begin a process with two distinct acts or parts—coming and taking; the Greek speaker is telling his enemy that only after the act of coming is completed will he be able to take. In addition there is a subtle implication: in English "come and take it" implies that the enemy might not win the struggle—the outcome is uncertain; in Greek in the implication is that the outcome is certain—"after you have come here and defeated me, then it will be yours to take."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe