One of history's shortest replies came from Sparta.
Philip II warned: 'If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.' The ephors answered with one word: 'If.' Laconia gave us the word 'laconic'.
More amazing facts
- 351 BC The word 'mausoleum' is a man's name.
- 350 BC · 1963 A schoolboy in Tanganyika noticed what Aristotle had written about: hot water sometimes freezes faster than cold.
- 340 BC Diogenes did not live in a barrel but in a pithos, a huge clay storage jar, in Athens.
- 326 BC Alexander’s men marvelled at an Indian reed that “yields honey without bees”. That was how his admiral Nearchus described sugarcane in 326 BC, a plant Europe barely knew.
- 326 BC Alexander the Great named a city after his horse.
- 323 BC · 322 BC India's Maurya Empire arose about a year after Alexander the Great died — and its founder, Chandragupta, is said to have met Alexander himself.