Edit One

Original:

PERSIAN OFFICER: Spartans! Lay down your weapons!

KING LEONIDAS: PERSIANS! COME AND GET THEM!!

Revised:

PERSIAN OFFICER: Spartans! Lay down your weapons!

KING LEONIDAS: PERSIANS! First, I note that your speaking these words to me face to face strikes me as odd, given how such deliberations concerning détente would generally be handled by way of written correspondence between commanders, as opposed to direct discussions among field officers! Second, I say to you that, though our battle uniforms have been pared down to an unthinkably inefficient yet symbolically selfless and heroic combination of helmet, cape, sandals, and leather skirt, we still menacingly hold forth our metal swords and spears and say to you: COME AND GET THEM!!

Edit Two

Original:

PERSIAN EMISSARY: A thousand nations of the Persian Empire will descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun.

STELIOS: (Laconically.) Then we will fight in the shade.

Revised:

PERSIAN EMISSARY: A thousand nations, hyperbolically speaking, of the Persian Empire will descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun.

STELIOS: (Laconically.) Then we will fight in the shade.

PERSIAN EMISSARY: You filthy Spartan! That sounds exactly like something you might say, seeing as how you are noted, here in antiquity, for your pithily off-the-cuff laconic speech patterns!

STELIOS: (Laconically.) That is correct.

Edit Three

Original:

KING LEONIDAS: Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight we dine in HELL!

Revised:

KING LEONIDAS: Spartans! Enjoy your breakfast of wheat bread, olive oil, and various legumes, for tonight we dine in HELL! For, you see, I am a sharp and seasoned military mind and I understand that this is merely a delaying action, that we have no hope for victory, and that we shall surely lose our lives! Probably today! And when I refer to “hell” I of course mean “Hades,” our conception of the abode of all dead and not necessarily a place of eternal pain and torment! And that is where, tonight, we dine!

Edit Four

Original:

KING LEONIDAS: This is where we fight! This is where they die!

Revised:

KING LEONIDAS: Though heavy silt deposits over the coming centuries will probably cause the coastline to recede from the cliffs, this narrow stretch of beach is presently only a matter of yards from the slopes of Mount Kallidromos, and it is where we fight! Likewise, this conveniently narrow chokepoint is where they die! Although, as I previously mentioned, we ourselves are not likely to survive the day’s battle, either!

Edit Five

Original:

SPARTAN ARMY: (Heading off for battle from Sparta to Thermopylae.) HOO-AH! HOO-AH! HOO-AH!

Revised:

SPARTAN ARMY: (Heading off for battle from Sparta to Thermopylae.) HOO-AH! HOO—

ASTINOS: Leonidas, my king. It appears we are marching southward. If I may be so bold, I am certain Thermopylae is north of Sparta.

KING LEONIDAS: Aww, son of a bitch! Spartans! Turn around, boys, before we end up in fuckin’ Crete!

Edit Six

Original:

(No dialogue. Elephant-mounted Persians charge the Spartans along the cliffs of Mount Kallidromos.)

Revised:

DAXOS: (To Ephialtes, as elephant-mounted Persians charge the Spartans along the cliffs of Mount Kallidromos.) Elephants? All the way across the Hellespont? Seriously?

EPHIALTES: They must have brought them by ship.

DAXOS: Right. Fifty, sixty elephants by ship for hundreds upon hundreds of nautical miles. You sure?

EPHIALTES: Who are you—Zoology Joe? Just try to kill the damn things, will you?